Hinomaruzumou

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Sumo of the Rising Sun, Sumo Wrestler Hinomaru, Kiseki no Mattanashi Taiketsu!!

Japanese: 火ノ丸相撲

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Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 28

Chapters: 252

Status: Finished

Published: May 26, 2014 to Jul 22, 2019

Genre: Sports

Theme: Combat Sports

Demographic: Shounen

Serialization: Shounen Jump (Weekly)

Authors: Kawada (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 7.76¹ (scored by 5,250 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1459²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1423

Members: 13,699

Favorites: 186

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7.76

Ranked #1459Popularity #1423Members 13,699

MangaShounen Jump (Weekly)Kawada (Story & Art)

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Volumes: /28

Chapters: /252

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Synopsis

It is a divine ritual, a martial art, a combat sport—it's sumo!!

A "small" new student, Ushio Hinomaru, appears before the weak little sumo club of Oodachi High School! The words "big" and "heavy" are the rules to this sport, which does not fit this newbie any inch, but this guy goes and does what...!? Ushio and the small sumo club climbs its way to the top!

The goal is Hinoshita Kaisan (a title for the highest rank in professional sumo, equivalent of Yokozuna)!

A fired up high school sumo tale—no retakes allowed!!

(Source: MangaHelpers)

Included one-shot:
Volume 8: Kiseki no Mattanashi Taiketsu!! (Crossover one-shot between "Kuroko no Basket" and "Hinomaruzumou")

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Background

Hinomaruzumou was simulpub in English as Hinomaru Sumo through MANGA Plus service.

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Related Manga

Side story:	Hinomaruzumou: Shijuuhatte
Adaptation:	Hinomaruzumou

More characters
Characters

Ushio, Hinomaru

Main

Gojou, Yuuma

Main

Ozeki, Shinya

Main

Kunisaki, Chihiro

Supporting

Gojou, Reina

Supporting

Tsuji, Kirihito

Supporting

Kuze, Sousuke

Supporting

Sada, Mizuki

Supporting

Mitsuhashi, Kei

Supporting

Tennouji, Shidou

Supporting

Reviews

Oct 18, 2019

Dzonatan

Recommended

Hinomaruzumou the story of Ushio Hinomaru a sumo wrestler who aims to become a Yokozuna, little in size Hinomaru is the underdog everyone wants to win wanting to prove everyone wrong and with an incredible passion for sumo, hinomaru joins the Oodachi High sumo club and meets his awesome friends together they aim to become the best high school sumo club in the country.

So what makes this manga so good? The character development in my opinion, the character development is amazing every character is likeable and has their own backstory and reason they want to win and be the best. Over all the ...

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Aug 25, 2022

Chaf

Recommended

In Japan, there is no lack of sports manga. Although not very popular in the West, especially because of their length and the themes they deal with, which do not necessarily speak to the majority of the public, the genre is doing quite well in Japan. In the different pre-publication magazines, especially those related to shonens, there are at least one or two of them proposed according to the times. Not so long ago, the WSJ proposed us two monsters: Haikyuu, one of the best sports manga of the decade and the much more discreet Hinomaru Sumo. I have the opportunity to come back on ... the second one in this review.
Hinomaru Sumo is a manga full of quality, and unfortunately it didn't benefit from the popularity of Haikyuu. Indeed, the latter was so exceptional that it totally overshadowed Hinomaru Sumo. The anime adaptation did not really help to rewrite the letters of nobility manga. It's a sad thing.
However, I think Hinomaru Sumo is an excellent sport shonen.
First of all, Hinomaru Sumo is one of the heirs of what we can call "manime". Indeed, the manga adopts the same spirit as its predecessors in Jump, notably Toriko and Hokuto no Ken. The characters are often inflated in muscle and have atypical physiques for high school students, although they are sumos. Some characters are literally inspirations for our greatest joy.
On the sports aspect, I found the manga really excellent. In its approach, we are very down to earth with the high level sport in general. The author took care to show the evolution of the characters, and to confront them with the reality of sport. He shows us their evolutions, their victories and their defeats. In a sport manga, I think it's very important to confront the characters to the reality of things. By applying himself on this point, the author was able to develop many personalities and develop the different themes of high level sport, whether high school or professional. Kawada also relied on slice-of-life sequences to make the mentalities evolve and confront the characters with various situations.
The artwork of the manga is quite unique in its kind. The series has a very personal imagery which is inspired by Japanese myths and legends. In the catches specific to Sumo, Kawada has fun to show us bestial situations where the protagonists are completely unleashed. I found it great personally. Hinomaru Sumo really excels on this aspect of graphic metaphor. The author doesn't hesitate to abuse it and the result is really honorable. The cutting of the series is rather clean. We have two distinct parts which have their own thematic.
In short, it is a pity that the series did not have the success it deserved. Hinomaru Sumo is a wonderful sport shonen with really explosive and atypical characters. Although it doesn't really revolutionize the sport shonen genre, Hinomaru had the merit to bring back the sport nekketsu spirit which was missing in Jump during its publication. Since the end of these two monsters the magazine has a hard time to bring a new sports nugget in the magazine...

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Jun 27, 2018

KayB

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (195/252 eps)

**Spoiler Free**
I normally don’t write reviews for series I’m not overly passionate about, but I feel partially more motivated to at least comment on Hinomaru Zumou; despite its popularity and the recent conclusion of its “Part 1,” the latest review written on MAL only goes up until chapter 25 of the (current) 195 chapters at the time of this review.

If I had to describe how I felt about Hinomaru Zumou in a few words, I would say it’s a sports manga that *almost* gets everything right. If I had to phrase it a little more bluntly though, I’d say it’s a sports manga that ... barely gets everything wrong.

To elucidate, it’s not as if Hinomaru Zumou is some terrible manga, nor is it a title that tries to rely on its flash in the same way that titles like Prince of Tennis does. It makes a commendable effort trying to tackle the themes like competition that has made series like Eyeshield 21 and Ashita no Joe so popular, and it does this all while tackling a relatively unpopular and comparatively less dynamic sport. However, despite its epic speeches about heart and competition and the wide cast of characters that have blessed the 200 chapters thus far, the manga in my opinion lacks a fundamental soul that ties all these pieces together.

There are two major components of really any story that provides the fuel to keep the narrative going: one, the main character, and two, the motivation. While really this is helpful for any story format, it’s particularly more relevant when addressing sports narratives as they naturally always gravitate towards the hero’s journey. In my opinion, Hinomaru Zumou is weak because it doesn’t tackle either of these components very effectively.

There are usually two ways that shounen mangaka like to write their main characters; they’re either already shining jewels blessed with talent and experience (Prince of Tennis, Kuroko’s Basketball) or they are diamonds in the rough with potential for talent requires training (Haikyuu, Eyeshield 21). As entertaining as the former can be, it’s usually the latter that ends up leaving a lasting impression past the sport itself because it allows readers to grow with the characters that they read about, which forces the stories to tackle themes that don’t only exist within the court; as they say, the best sports narratives are ones that aren’t actually about the sport itself.

Hinomaru Zumou is kind of in a weird spot because it seems apparent it doesn’t really want to be like the exaggerated shounen sports titles, but it’s foundation doesn’t seem to really reflect that. This can be exemplified by how the main character, Hinomaru, is structured. He isn’t like Joe from Ashita no Joe whose talent is hindered by his brash personality, nor is he like Sena from Eyeshield 21 where his unreal speed hasn’t reached its full potential yet. Straight from the start, Hinomaru is an already talented sumo wrestler with years of experience behind his belt; much like Kuroko’s Basketball, he was already endowed with a special title due to his accomplishments as a sumo wrestler before the events of the manga take place. Of course, you can’t have an underdog story without an underdog, so the manga tries to rectify this by giving Hinomaru a small figure, a natural disadvantage in any sport, much less one as tough as sumo. However, the damage is done, and it is already incredibly difficult to write Hinomaru in a sympathetic way in which readers can grow with the character; despite any attempts that the manga tries to make you think otherwise, it’s very apparent that the main character is both highly physically and mentally developed. Normally, manga like Kuroko’s Basketball and Prince of Tennis can get away with doing this by making the sport visually interesting to see, but Hinomaru Zumou is unfortunately hindered by its sport of choice. It’s comparatively much harder to draw competitive sumo in an endearing way like tennis and basketball, especially when the reader is unaware of how the sport functions past its most basic rules. Hinomaru Zumou does make a heartful honest effort to make sumo look as interesting and epic as possible, but at the end of the day the techniques blend together too often due to how visually inflexible the sport is and how difficult it is to understand the nuances by the layman.

The second major issue that Hinomaru and frankly tons of new shounen manga are suffering from is its lack of a strong central goal. Now people will argue with me on this one, saying the high school championship is the ultimate goal for Hinomaru and his team, but in my opinion it isn’t conveyed nearly as well as it could be. Motivations in sports manga can be expressed in many ways, but often they’re expressed as some form of emotional debt: in Eyeshield 21, Sena and the Devilbats are highly driven to win the Christmas Bowl by how much they owe Hiruma and Kurita for bringing the team together. In Hajime no Ippo, Ippo is motivated to become the world champion by how much he feels he owes Takamaru and his coach for getting him into boxing. In Ashita no Joe, what pushes him forward is the legacy that Rikiishi left behind after their match. In Hinomaru Zumou’s case, while he does have some kind of debt that he feels through his mother, it isn’t really referenced much, and more importantly, it has very little to do with sumo wrestling itself. Of course it’d be shortsighted to say this is the only way to write an end goal, but in Hinomaru Zumou’s case there isn’t really anything else that exists in the narrative to supplement a motivation in any convincing way past just winning. Thus, in my case, it was extremely difficult to feel emotionally attached with the team’s journey no matter how far the story progressed, much less Hinomaru.

While I have other issues and compliments I can shower this manga with, all of them are less relevant because they all are negatively affected by these two issues in some way. The problem is that these two components are extremely hard if not impossible to fix and will most likely persist until the manga finally completes its serialization.

Another reason why I choose the words “this manga does almost everything right” is that the line between my less-than-positive impressions of the manga and thinking very highly of it (which is where a good deal of people I feel like seem to lie) is fairly thin; you could find yourself really enjoying this title if you’re able to look past these two issues or not believe they exist at all. Perhaps you do sympathize with Hinomaru in some way, perhaps you do find the way sumo is drawn in this manga to be captivating. Past that, the manga in reality is actually mostly solid in quite a few places. However, it isn’t enough to do it for me, and as much as I want to believe it, I can’t get myself to see the soul that the manga tries to convince me it has.

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Jul 21, 2019 11:14 AM by Sakana-san | Discuss (7 comments)

TV Anime Adaptation of Manga 'Hinomaruzumou' Announced

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Dec 28, 2017 8:22 PM by Vindstot | Discuss (27 comments)

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