English Dub Review: Hinomaru Sumo “National Treasure Onimaru Kunitsuna”

It’s sumo shounen time, baby.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Our story begins in modern-day Japan, where Hinomaru Ushio is riding the train, searching for Ishigami High School, a high school known for its incredible sumo wrestling club, which Ushio wants to join. Ushio gets a bit lost, but eventually finds his way there, where he sees a young sumo wrestler practicing his technique on a dirt ring on the school grounds. Without hesitation, Ushio asks the boy for a match and declares his intention to be the next Yokozuna, the champion of all sumo wrestlers.

After a quick change, the two square off, and Ushio swiftly takes the young man down. He introduces himself as Shinya Ozeki, and he’s just tickled to find another sumo maniac interested in joining his high school. Ushio asks Ozeki to show him the school dojo, which Ozeki agrees to, though with some hesitation. When they arrive at the dojo, Ushio finds it chock full of thugs who immediately try to pick a fight with him. When one of them drops their garbage in the dojo, Ushio immediately brings him to the floor, which provokes their leader, Yuma, to scare them off.

It’s then that Ushio realizes he’s not at Ishigami High at all, but Odachi High, whose sumo club only has one member. Disappointed, Ushio leaves for Ishigami, using a map that Ozeki drew for him. Ushio gets lost, however, and winds up back at Odachi, only to find that Ozeki’s ring has been destroyed by Yuma’s thugs. Ushio declares a duel with Yuma, and the two head to the dojo.

Yuma’s rules for the duel are simple: he gets to beat up Ushio for ten minutes without him fighting back. If Ushio can do that, he wins the duel and gets the dojo for sumo practice. If he fails, then Ozeki can never do sumo again. The duel is on, and surprisingly, Ushio is able to endure everything Yuma throws at him with a determined grin on his face. Once that’s done, Ushio tosses Yuma out of the ring in a single hit.

The duel completed, Yuma acknowledges Ushio’s strength, and Ushio decides to stay at Odachi High to join Ozeki’s sumo wrestling club.

Our Take:

Well, we’ve got a different take on the “sports shounen” anime genre with the premiere of Hinomaru Sumo. We’ve gone through all the major sports: American football, tennis, basketball, volleyball and a whole lot more, so no one has to dig a little deeper to find a properly masculine sport ripe to be turned into a new shounen. So far, I like what I see, with some reservations. This first episode is distinctly average for shounen expectations, but isn’t half bad for a start, and sets things up to get more interesting in the future.

Our main character is Hinomaru Ushio, who is already an outrageous sumo talent by the time this series begins. This makes it a little bit hard to endear me to him since he lacks any real weaknesses, other than his apparent lacking of a sense of direction. He’s likable to a fault, virtuous to the point of boredom. With a shounen protagonist, there has to be something that puts him in the “Underdog” position, and for Ushio, that’s definitely his height. He’s too short to be a sumo wrestler, but that doesn’t stop from putting the hurt on anyone unfortunate to stand against him in the ring. He’s powerful, but I’m not really sure where this show can go with a character like him, who already seems to have achieved a high level of power.

That being said, though, there is a lot this episode does right. Ozeki’s character is attractive, being the kind of character who wears his weakness on his sleeve. The writing is solid, accompanied by good voice acting that crafts a distinct image of who each character is. Thankfully, this show doesn’t get bogged down in a whole lot of exposition, which is always a blessing in an anime. There is a flow and purpose to their lines, and the dialogue between Ozeki and Ushio feels like that of real friends.

So far, the animation style is enticing but doesn’t have enough motion to make the fighting fun to watch. So far, Ushio just ends his fights with one swift motion, and one that often gets flashed over so we can see the result of the attack, but not the power of its violence. Shounen has a lot more work to do when it comes to drawing the viewer’s eye since the action is always harder to animate and more expensive to create, but its necessary to attract the audience’s attention.

I’m sitting on the fence with this one right now. There’s a lot more work to be done in the story before I can really understand its quality, but I can say with certainty that this premiere episode is a bit too middling in its quality. It doesn’t grab me. It’s functional, yes, and its entertaining enough, but in the world of hundreds of anime competing for audience attention, Hinomaru Sumo just isn’t doing enough.