Jou Koizumi

Jou Koizumi coaches the Katase High table tennis club, a job he seems to have drifted into rather than chosen. Once a promising junior player himself, he now watches over Peco and Smile with a weary, watchful eye, doling out blunt observations and cigarettes in equal measure, never quite letting on how much he still cares about the game.

The show could have made him a stock gruff mentor, but Jou is written with real ambivalence about his own failed ambitions, and Yūsaku Yara's flat, unhurried delivery keeps him from ever tipping into cliché. His deadpan exterior barely masks a coach who recognizes something rare in his players and is quietly terrified of what that means for him.