is a Japanese

sports manga is a genre of Japanese manga and anime that focuses on stories involving sports and other athletic and competitive pursuits. Though Japanese animated works depicting sports were released as early as the 1920s, sports manga did not emerge as a di ...

series written and illustrated by

Tetsuya Chiba is a Japanese manga artist famous for his sports stories. Chiba's works include ''Ashita no Joe'', his best known work, and ''Notari Matsutarō''. Many of his early titles are still in print due to continued popularity. Life He was born in Ch ...

about

sumo wrestling is a form of competitive full-contact wrestling where a ''rikishi'' (wrestler) attempts to force his opponent out of a circular ring (''dohyō'') or into touching the ground with any body part other than the soles of his feet (usually by thr ...

Plot

Matsutarou Sakaguchi is lazy and quick tempered. As a result, he is stuck in middle school even though he is an adult. One day he gets in a fight with a sumo wrestler and they take the fight to a sumo ring. The attending sumo stable masters are impressed by Sakaguchi's strength and convince Sakaguchi to come to Tokyo. Sakaguchi has an ulterior motive though. A teacher he has a crush on, Reiko Minami recently moved to Tokyo and the sumo stable is close to her home. Sakaguchi begins training and competing in sumo while dreaming of the day he can marry Reiko.

Publication

''Notari Matsutarō'' was serialized by

Shogakukan is a Japanese publisher of dictionaries, literature, comics (manga), non-fiction, DVDs, and other media in Japan. Shogakukan founded Shueisha, which also founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but are together called the Hit ...

in ''

Big Comic is a semimonthly ''seinen'' manga magazine published since 18 February 1968 by Shogakukan in Japan. It was originally launched as a monthly magazine, but switched to twice monthly on the 10th and 25th beginning in April 1968. It is paired wit ...

'' magazine from August 1973 to June 1993, then after a hiatus it returned from October 1995 to March 1998. From 1995 to 1998, Tarō Nami was also responsible for the storyboard of the series. The complete series was originally encapsulated into 36 ''

tankōbon is the Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or cultur ...

'' volumes by Shogakukan between March 1976 and March 2000. It has been republished twice; 8 volumes were released between 1988 and 1991, and 22 volumes were published in 2003–2004.

Adaptations

It was adapted as a series of ten

original video animation , abbreviated as OVA and sometimes as OAV (original animation video), are Japanese animated films and series made specially for release in home video formats without prior showings on television or in theaters, though the first part of an OVA s ...

s (OVA) released between November 22, 1990 and April 25, 1991. It was directed by Yoshio Takeuchi and its ending theme, , was performed by Ikuzo Yoshi. A television series titled , with lead character Matsutarō Sakuguchi voiced by

Ken Matsudaira is a Japanese actor and musician from Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan. His real name is . Career In 1974, he joined Shintaro Katsu's production company and made his debut with the television series Zatoichi as a guest. For a quarter of a century, he ...

, began broadcast on

TV Asahi JOEX-DTV (channel 5), branded as (also known as EX and and stylized as TV asahi), is a television station that is owned and operated by the subsidiary of certified broadcasting holding company , itself controlled by The Asahi Shimbun Compan ...

affiliates on April 6, 2014. It was also streamed on

Crunchyroll Crunchyroll is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by Sony through a joint venture between Sony Pictures and Sony Music Entertainment Japan's Aniplex. The service primarily distributes films and tel ...

for, among others, English-language countries United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and United Kingdom. Yukio Kaizawa directed the series that was produced by Tomohiro Tsuji from

and Gyarmath Bogdan from

Toei Animation () is a Japanese animation studio primarily controlled by its namesake Toei Company. It has produced numerous series, including ''Sally the Witch,'' ''GeGeGe no Kitarō,'' ''Mazinger Z'', ''Galaxy Express 999'', ''Cutie Honey'', ''Dr. Slump'', ' ...

Reception

''Notari Matsutaro'' received the 1978

Shogakukan Manga Award The is one of Japan's major manga awards, and is sponsored by Shogakukan, Shogakukan Publishing. It has been awarded annually for serialized manga and features candidates from a number of publishers. It is the oldest manga award in Japan, being ...

for ''

seinen is an editorial category of Japanese comics marketed toward young adult men. In Japanese, the word ''seinen'' literally means "youth", but the term "''seinen'' manga" is also used to describe the target audience of magazines like ''Weekly Ma ...

''/general manga.

Katsuhiro Otomo is a Japanese manga artist, screenwriter, animator and film director. He is best known as the creator of '' Akira'', in terms of both the original 1982 manga series and the 1988 animated film adaptation. He was decorated a ''Chevalier'' of th ...

cited the pacing of ''Notari Matsutarō'' as an influence, particularly on his series ''

Domu Xen (pronounced ) is a type-1 hypervisor, providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently. It was originally developed by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory a ...

''.

References

External links