Hinomaru Zumou isn’t the absolute best sports anime at any one thing I can think of.  But it does everything well, pretty much without exception (that’s why the word fits).  And while I’ve noted its devotion to genre tradition and how it makes the series’ appeal more tied in to sasuga than surprise, it’s not exactly predictable.  Some of that comes down to the nature of best-of-5 team competition (even if you know who precedent says should win, there are myriad ways to get there) but also to the scenarios that mangaka Kawada-sensei sets up.

That team competition is the opportunity for the spotlight to once more be shared among the supporting players.  As Ushio is carted off to the hospital (this ep is a reminder that the word has a different meaning in Japanese than English) by Shibakiyama-san, his teammates prepare to take on Kanazawa Kita in the very first round – another example of their less than ideal luck of the draw.  One question is seemingly answered by the shots of the squad – Kirihito is in his mawashi belt, so he’s ready to wrestle if needed.

The doctor chosen to check out Ushio’s arm has the look of a quack to him, and by outward appearances his clinic is a ramshackle old house.  Bur he’s clearly a specialist, well-versed in doing whatever it takes to get rikishi back in the ring (perhaps not always legally or with their long-term health at heart, one could speculate).  His inner sanctum is the polar opposite of his waiting room – spotless and gleaming white, with a hyperbaric chamber and other futuristic looking medical equipment I don’t recognize.  He initially refuses to treat Ushio on the grounds that Daichi has no chance to advance against Kita High anyway, but Ushio is legitimately taken aback even by the idea that they could lose.

Neatly (perhaps too much so) Shinya has his chance for revenge against the imperious Kita captain in the very first match, and damn if he doesn’t make short work of it.  Yuuma follows up with another fairly quick and straightforward win, but batting third for Kita is their heavy hitter, the national treasure Tenma-kun.  He draws Chihiro, who in Ushio’s absence is probably the strongest fighter on the Daichi side, and it’s this match with is the focus of much of the episode.  Tenma, like Tennouji, is a veritable bear of a man, an imposing figure to say the least.  But national treasure or no, he clearly lacks Tennouji’s inner peace and calmness under pressure.

This is quite a bout, with a number of twists and turns.  Chihiro has basically copied the style of his sparring partner Sada-kun, but being a tensai himself he adapts in the moment to make it his own.  As he says he wants his sumo to be “unsettling”, and that it certainly is – with his wrestling background he’s definitely an odd proposition for most of his opponents.  He eventually ends up winning the bout on a rare but classic sumo move called the tasukizori (kimono-string drop) – one rarely seen in professional sumo since the 50s – that he didn’t even know was a sumo move.

While the Kita match has been won, I’m still sort of curious what happened in the final two bouts.  I can’t help but notice that Kei is nowhere to be seen when Ushio rejoins his teammates outside the Budokan – what’s up with that?  And if I were Daichi I would have Kirihito forfeit his match for sure – he only has so many bullets in the chamber, and to waste one on a meaningless bout makes little sense.  With Ushio back I suppose Kirihito won’t be wrestling for now, but Kei remains the one member of the team whose efforts have not met with any success as of yet.  Traditional as Hinomaru Zumou is, that has to change sooner or later, and we’re running out of later.