Hakkeyoi

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Hakkeyoi is very much your stereotypical sports manga.

It features the story of Chinmi, a sumo wrestler who wins the local Hokkaido Junior Sumo Championship, despite his small stature. Unfortunately, he receives no scouts due to his being short - instead, the head of a small sumo school in Tokyo takes him in. The plot then begins along the route towards becoming yokozuna: nothing special, but a good foundation.

The art is typical of the 90s, and is simple and clean. There's nothing much to say about it, but there's distinctions between the characters and that's all that really matters. I will say that the fights in ... the first few chapters are quite well drawn though, clearly depicting the moves used by the wrestlers.

Characters are also quite simple. We have Chinmi - the short but determined wrestler, hard working and ready to do whatever it takes - and the owner of the sumo school, who promises to take Chinmi to new heights if Chinmi agrees to take on a different stype of sumo. Other characters (the fishermen, the wrestlers, and so on) serve their role decently enough but there's nothing else to say about them.

Overall, I did enjoy Hakkeyoi. Ultimately, though we see the hard-working, cheerful mc all the time in sports anime/manga, it's hard to dislike them. I'd recommend Hakkeyoi to anyone who enjoys the genre, and, in particular, fans of Hinomaruzumou - a series which I am sure received some inspiration from this manga, due to the similarity in one of the fights at the beginning of Hakkeyoi. It's a shame that only a few of the chapters have been translated, but those which have been translated are worth a read nonetheless.