I very much enjoyed the second episode of Hinomaru Zumou.  It checked all the boxes as an entertaining sports anime ep, and it definitely dropped hints that’s it’s going to approach its chosen sport with both intelligence and realism (mostly).  It has an appealing protagonist and what seem to be an interesting group of side characters as well.  Still, for all that it’s already obvious that it’s going to be almost totally ignored in the western fandom, which is generally the fate of sports anime that aren’t ticketed for the first day of Comiket.  And it doesn’t seem to have a hold in that market, even in Japan.  Too bad, but it is what it is.

Even if “Hinomaru” isn’t the sort of sports series that spawns a swathe of thin books, I can see it having appeal to fans of old-school takes on the genre.  For me, I appreciated the fact that it didn’t ignore the obvious challenges in getting teenaged boys to wrestle in a fundoshi – I don’t know that it could have, but at least it didn’t try.  And even steaming bowls of chanko (the hearty stew rikishi chown down on to bulk up) couldn’t win over any converts on club recruitment day (even if Hinomaru hadn’t messed up the recipe I doubt it would have been that easy).

Only one person likes the stew, and that’s Kunisaki Chihiro (Satou Takuya) – but even he’s not interested in joining the sumo-bu.  He’s a wrestler (western style) with an intent to eventually become a pro MMA fighter.  He sees Hino as a bit of a kindred spirit but that’s all; it’s not till Hino shows up at the wrestling club’s demonstration bout that things heat up.  Kunisaki thinks he’s going to handle the sumo kid with ease, and Hinomaru even makes things easier for him – offering to hold himself to sumo rules for defeat, while Kunisaki can stick with wrestling rules.

The thing about sumo is that these guys are serious athletes, no matter what westerners may think.  It is, as the intro notes, the only type of close combat sport with no weight classes, and defeat is as simple as a toe out of the ring or a hand on the mat.  Despite their girth these men (and boys) are enormously strong, with the good ones possessing a preposterous degree of balance.  Leverage, positioning – sumo is actually a delicate sport in the sense that victory or defeat is balanced on the head of a pin.  Hinomaru isn’t arrogant or cocky about any of this – he simply wants to prove to the world that his chosen sport is truly second to none.

Does the sumo club manage to get its requisite five members a little too easily?  Yeah, but I’d just as not soon see another sports anime that spends an entire arc on that process.  Kunisaki joining makes sense – he wants to get stronger, and Hino has proved to him that sumo can help him do that.  Another name in the hopper is totally at random, tiny first-year Mitsuhashi Kei (as required of all shota types per special Diet resolution, he’s played by Murase Ayumu), who was impressed by the bout and shows up intent on joining.  And then there’s Yuma, who wants to to exorcise the demons of his loss to Hinomaru.  His participation is complicated by the fact that his sister Reina (Komatsu Mikako, who has a history of falling for guys named Ushio) is the student council president and seriously holds a grudge over her aniki’s public humiliation.

Sumo is interesting, and it’s always been a near-total mystery to me – one of those enigmatic elements of Japanese culture that seems especially opaque to outsiders.  I’m very curious to learn more about it through anime, just as I did karuta, volleyball, rakugo and kabuki (among other things).  It’s not enough for a series to teach in that fashion, though it certainly doesn’t hurt – it has to entertain too.  But Hinomaru Zumou seems like it has that half of the equation covered as well, so I’m fairly optimistic this show is going to be a winner.