At least since 1940, when Pinocchio got lectured by Jiminy Cricket for smoking cigars and playing pool, the animation of billiards has been a staple of television and film. In fact, the 1950s experienced two of the greatest billiards animations: Donald in Mathmagic Land (1957), a cinematic odyssey that takes Donald from ancient Greece to a game of three-cushion billiards, and Cue Ball Cat (1950), a 7-minute Tom & Jerry episode that pits cat and mouse against one another in pool hall mayhem.
Fast-forward 70 years, and billiards shows up in animation everywhere, from the groundbreaking anime Death Billiards to the meditative and poignant New York Billiards; from the otherworldly Fresh Green to the mainstream Teen Titans Go! “Pool Shark” episode.
Today, I’ll pilot you 15,677 miles across three continents and eight countries to review eight billiards animation episodes and short films from the past 25 years. Buckle up, we’re taking off.
🇯🇵 Prince of Tennis – “Prince of Billiards”
Anime is more popular than ever before. Over half of the $36 billion industry comprises international sales. It’s no wonder that this Japanese form of animation has included multiple series featuring billiards, including City Hunter (“Mokkori Is the Best Medicine: A Pool Shot to a Pretty Hustler’s Heart”), Magic Kaito 1412 (“Hustler vs Magician”), and Fairy Tail (“Moulin Rouge”).
Prince of Tennis, which focuses on a tennis prodigy who attends a school for gifted tennis players, began as a manga series in 1999, and then was released as an anime series in 2001. In the 2003 “Prince of Billiards” episode, available to stream on Crunchyroll, the students trade in their rackets for cue sticks to compete in a 9-ball tournament. The winner earns a voucher for all-you-can-eat sushi, and the losers are subject to the “Inui Rule,” which stipulates if a player commits three fouls in one game, that player has to drink a foul-tasting red vinegar cocktail that mixes Aozu and Akazu.
The animation delivers on billiards. The games are intense, enjoyable, and highlight the students’ competitive dynamics and personalities. Some of the players improvise by bringing special tennis shots to the table, such as the “Dunk Smash,” causing the cue ball to jump and pocket the 1-ball, and the “Boomerang Snake,” to curve around a ball to pocket the 2-ball.
Worst shot goes to Inui, a mathematical genius, who botches a shot by assuming, “with the coefficient of restitution and the coefficient of friction, the angle of reflection is greater than the angle of incidence. So if I hit the bank at approximately 45 degrees, the cue ball will strike the six ball at the optimal angle, and then the six ball will hit the nine ball, and the nine ball will sail easily into the corner pocket.”
🇨🇳 Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf – “The Focus is Billiards”
Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf is a Chinese anime-influenced series aimed at children ages 3-10. The series focuses on a group of goats, led by Weslie, and a clumsy wolf (Wolfy) that wants to eat them but never succeeds. In “The Focus is Billiards” episode from 2016, billiards becomes a visual metaphor for that pursuit, where Wolfy is steering a cue ball and attacking (i.e., sinking) various goats that inhabit the colored balls. One by one, they fall into pockets until Weslie intervenes and makes Wolfy scratch. This not only ends Wolfy’s scheme, but also introduces the first of several billiards rules taught in this cartoon: “the cue ball should never ever fall into a pocket and it has to get the colored balls into the pockets to score.”
That instructional tidbit alone makes this episode noteworthy. But, the lesson continues when Wolfy then competes against another goat (Sparky) in a tournament. The goat gets distracted, prompting an intervention from Master Kangaroo, who shares, “Billiards requires focus…as long as you keep your focus…you can sink your ball any time.” That’s some Van Boening-level wisdom!
The lessons keep coming as Sparky stands in front of a table with a seemingly impossible shot: the cue is on one side and the object ball is flat against the opposite side’s rail. A third goat advises him, “More than just learning to focus, you have to learn different techniques too…look at the shot from different angles.” Sparky then makes a three-rail kick shot to pocket the object ball. The episode concludes with an open invitation, “You see that kids: billiards is an interesting game! Why don’t you play with us?” Bam! That’s how you get the next generation of Zhao Xintong.
🇮🇳 Motu Patlu – “Motu Ka Billiards”
He’s either the best billiards player in India or the luckiest. That’s my assessment of Motu, the mustachioed, corpulent half of the eponymous duo behind India’s popular animated sitcom Motu Patlu. In the 2020 “Motu Ka Billiards” episode, Motu is challenged to a game of billiards by a local hotshot. Motu has never picked up a cue and wonders why you can’t use your fingers, like you do in marbles, to shoot at the balls. Patlu, his best friend and sometimes-smartest guy in the city, seems a bit stymied by the game as well. The only rule seems to be that one’s turn continues so long as any ball is pocketed. That suits Motu well, for his shots never stay on the table, but rather ricochet around the mall, bouncing off of walls, furniture, and people’s heads, until miraculously a ball falls in. And when the local hustler cries foul, Motu brings out the whup-ass and makes his opponent swear to never challenge the people of Furfuri Nagar to a game of billiards. You can watch the full episode here.
🇷🇺 Rattic the Mini – “The Billiards”
To the best of my knowledge, Rattic the Mini, the web series featuring a curious, resourceful rat who lives in an attic, is the brainchild of 3D Sparrow, an animation company that originated in Moscow. Each webisode is just a couple of minutes long, featuring silent, slapstick-style visual comedy without dialogue. In “The Billiards” (2023), our big-eyed rodent is intrigued by a pool table, but struggles as the table continues to fold and collapse and the cue stick keeps breaking apart. I guess it’s hah-hah, though I’m not sure what game is played on this four-pocket table with three identical balls. For those especially into this kind of humor, also check out the “Game Room” webisode from Booba, another animated concoction from the team at 3D Sparrow. Here, the bearded hobgoblin falls onto a billiards table, vacuums up all the balls in his mouth, and then regurgitates them when he lands on a trampoline.
🇬🇧 SuperNormal – “Earth Ball, Corner Pocket”
Alas, our visit to the UK will be short, since the Lost Media Wiki indicates that this particular episode of SuperNormal is, like the majority of the British animated TV series’ 52 episodes, permanently lost. SuperNormal was about four students at a superhero school: an ordinary 13-year-old boy named Eric Normal, who somehow got into the school, and his three super-powered friends Changrella (shapeshifter), Brass Butt (super strength), and Buzz Girl (flight). The quartet are regularly saving the world from the antagonist, Mr. Bad. In “Earth Ball, Corner Pocket,” a 2007 episode, they must stop Mr. Bad from using his enormous pool cue to pot the Earth into the Sun. If you can locate this missing SuperNormal episode, please let me know. (Interestingly, a variant of this apocalyptic idea first popped up in 1992 in “The Intergalactic 147” episode of the British animated series Danger Mouse. In that episode, our murine hero must stop a massive alien spaceship from using planet Earth as a billiard ball.)
🇫🇷 Belfort & Lupin – “Billiards on the Move”
Next stop: France, albeit in the 17th century in the Palace of Versailles, where Louis XIV rules. That’s the setting for Belfort & Lupin, a French animated television series that focuses on an intelligent spaniel (Belfort) and a generous wolf (Lupin), who both reside within the palace. In the 2025 “Billiards on the Move” episode, the four-legged duo attempt to fix the billiards table that the local Siamese cat, Ariane, has irreparably scratched. Efforts to resew the felt with llama fur fail miserably, which leave the animals ultimately attempting to hide the table from the Sun King. That ploy backfires, too, but Louis XIV, ever charming and disciplined, blames his staff for not having appropriate furniture available for the cat to use for scratching. No animals were harmed in the making of this episode, and unfortunately, no billiards was played, either. There is some historical accuracy here: Louis XIV was a huge fan of billiards and played on a table with no pockets, as shown in the episode, though the depicted cue stick should have looked more like a curved croquet mallet (as seen in this 1694 engraved print by Jean Lepautre). You can watch the full episode, with its terrible auto-dubbing, below.
🇪🇸 Danny & Daddy – “Billiard Balls?”
For the tots, there is the clever webisode series Danny & Daddy, featuring a cartoonish father who attempts to guess what his son Danny has painted. The series was created by 3de3 Animation in Spain, though the characters speak entirely in gibberish, making it more universally accessible to children. The 2006 “Billiard Balls?” webisode begins with Danny showing his father a picture of three overlapping circles. A man after my own heart, Daddy guesses “billiard balls,” which is plausible (except no such ball has the striped pattern that Daddy imagines). Alas, Danny does not seem to be a pool prodigy in the making. Through additional guesses, we learn that the three circles form the shape of a pig. The webisode is available to stream on ToonGoggles.
🇺🇸 SML – “Jeffy the Pool Shark!”
Leave it to the US of A to excise all of the niceties, etiquette, and family friendliness and bring to the genre the crudest and most potty-mouthed of billiards animations. SML is a live-action, adult raunchy comedy sitcom web series – with over 10 million subscribers – consisting of short films with puppet characters. In “Jeffy the Pool Shark!” (2022), Marvin and Brooklyn Guy learn that Jeffy – yes, the bucktoothed, rather grotesque fella with the pencil up his nose – is a pool prodigy. He can sink all the balls on one shot…that is, when he isn’t attempting to masturbate the fat end of the cue stick. (Says Jeffy, “I don’t want to use the skinny side. The women prefer the big side.”) Recognizing Jeffy’s hidden talents, the duo hatch a get-rich-quick scheme to air a fake commercial claiming Jeffy is terrible at pool to lure people into betting money against him. The plan kinda works, as they fleece an eight-year-old Girl Scout of her cookies and eight dollars, but when the President of the Girl Scouts Foundation subsequently comes knocking to play Jeffy for $100,000, the duo lose because the balls get stuck on cookie crumbs. Apparently, the “Girl Scout Rule” in billiards did not apply.
