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 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 H ...

in ''

Big Comic is a semimonthly Seinen manga, ''seinen'' manga List of manga magazines, 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 begin ...

'' 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 term for a book that is not part of an anthology or corpus. In modern Japanese, the term is most often used in reference to individual volumes of a manga series: most series first appear as individual chapters in a weekly or ...

'' 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 animations (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 (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 Comp ...

affiliates on April 6, 2014. It was also streamed on Crunchyroll 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 awards, and is sponsored by 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 given since ...

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

References

External links