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 about sumo wrestling. It's written and illustrated by Tetsuya Chiba.

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 comics, magazines, light novels, dictionaries, literature, non-fiction, home media, and other media in Japan. Shogakukan founded Shueisha, which also founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but ...

in ''

Big Comic is a semimonthly ''seinen'' manga magazine published since 18 February 1968 by Shogakukan in Japan. Publication history It was originally launched as a monthly magazine, but switched to twice monthly on the 10th and 25th beginning in April 1 ...

'' 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 A is a standard publishing format for books in Japan, alongside other formats such as ''shinsho'' (17x11 cm paperback books) and ''bunkobon''. Used as a loanword in English, the term specifically refers to a printed collection of a manga that w ...

'' 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 special episodes of a series made specially for release in home video formats without prior showings on television or in theaters, though the ...

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, began broadcast on

TV Asahi JOEX-DTV (channel 5), branded as , and better known as , is a Japanese television station serving the Kanto region as the flagship station of the All-Nippon News Network. It is owned-and-operated by the a subsidiary of , itself controlled by ...

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

Crunchyroll Crunchyroll is an American Video on demand#Subscription models, subscription video on-demand Over-the-top media service, over-the-top Streaming media, streaming service owned by Sony, Sony Group Corporation. The service primarily distributes fi ...

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. Slu ...

Reception

''Notari Matsutaro'' received the 1978

Shogakukan Manga Award The is one of Japan's major manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is ...

for ''

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

''/general manga.

Katsuhiro Otomo is a Japanese Mangaka, manga artist, screenwriter, animator, and film director. He first rose to prominence as a pioneer founder of the New Wave (manga), New Wave in the 1970s. He is best known as the creator of ''Akira (franchise), Akira'', bo ...

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

References

External links