English Dub Review: Hinomaru Sumo “The Honest Clown”

Mitsuhashi doesn’t back down from a challenge.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Some time has passed, and the Chiba Prefectural Preliminary Bouts have begun. It’s the first day, and the stakes are high for Odachi High’s fledgling sumo club. Hinomaru is the first to step up against a much larger opponent, and Hinomaru is able to use the techniques he’s learned to immediately bring his foe to the ground. Chihiro follows up next, and he too brings his opponent down using his wrestling moves. Yuuma uses his powerful strikes to win his match as well, giving the Odachi High team three wins in a row, meaning they get to advance to the next round. Unfortunately, Kei, the shrimp of the bunch, isn’t able to do much in his fight. However, Shinya brings it back by railroading his match and ending it in an instant.

The bouts continue to go in Odachi’s favor, while Mitsuhashi isn’t able to win a single round. They manage to get to the finals, where Ishigami High awaits them. Against Ishigami, Mitsuhashi is the first to fight, and despite everyone’s doubts about him, he seems confident enough to face the powerful wrestler, Mamiya, before him. The match starts, and Kei moves with incredible agility. In an instant, he’s able to get behind Mamiya with a leaping charge. In a brief flashback, we see how Kei trained with Kirihito to be useful to the team despite his physical weakness, and how he actually has a secret technique saved up for this fight.

Back in the present, Mitsuhashi unleashes his flanking technique on Mamiya, but the skilled sumo is quick enough to turn around and send Mitsuhashi soaring out of the ring. Kunisaki, who’s been watching Mitsuhashi train his technique, is frustrated to see him lose and tells him to make it up to the team during the nationals. With that, Chihiro is up against Gennosuke, wielding a burning intensity to win this fight for the team. The match begins and, surprisingly, Chihiro and Gennosuke freeze up. Neither wants to give away the first strike, but Chihiro is the first to act. Gennosuke’s judo is able to counter Chihiro, but Chihiro’s foot training has given him incredible strength of balance and is able to retain his integrity. Gennosuke does a front flip to regain balance, but Chihiro brings it back and ends the match by slamming Gennosuke into the ground with a demon wheel.

Our Take:

We’re only seven episode in and Hinomaru Sumo has plunged headlong into its first major tournament. After assembling the team and kicking off the intense training necessary to compete, we’re finally able to see the Odachi High sumo team bring their A-game and compete in this week’s episode. Per usual, I’ve no doubt that the audience will be well entertained by this episode, as it brings a lot to the table both in terms of economy of content and intensity. Hinomaru Sumo doesn’t waste any time, delivering on two major fights and bringing us near to the end of the tournament. While not perfect, I enjoyed this episode quite a bit, and am overall pretty happy with how things are turning out, with some reservations.

Pacing is a bit wonky for Hinomaru Sumo. I was surprised that we’re already onto the preliminary tournament when I thought we had a few more episodes of training to go through before we were going to get there. I suppose that in the modern anime format, we can’t take an entire season’s worth of episodes to hype us up to the next battle, so its understandable, but the quickened pace doesn’t give the viewer much time to breathe. Things that I thought would be long-term character conflicts, like Gennosuke and Chihiro testing their respective wrestling styles against each other, are actually going down right now, bringing resolution quicker, but in a way that’s less satisfying.

The major success of this episode is the Mitsuhashi fight, which is both clever and a great insight into Mitsuhashi’s character, which has gone undeveloped for some time now. Being the smallest member of the team, Mitsuhashi has the most to prove, and it looked like he might just end up being a shrimpy cheerleader for the other members. How surprised I was, then, that his determination and technique made him far more formidable, especially with him throwing the first few fights to appear as the “Honest Clown.” I love clever characters, and Mitsuhashi has demonstrated that he’s got more than enough smarts for the whole team.

Unfortunately, Chihiro’s fight was too rushed to have the same impact, making his struggle more of a footnote in the episode’s story. Not to mention, his inner monologue was written pretty poorly, and felt way too cheesy for the moment he was in. Most of the fight he’s in is just him explaining what he’s trying to do, too. The clunky dialogue just gets in the way.

But, despite that, this was still a relatively strong showing for Hinomaru Sumo. We can expect much more of the show, I’m sure, in the episodes to come.