Notari Matsutaro, the sumo hero manga by boxing manga Ashita no Joe's creator Tetsuya Chiba, is inspiring a television anime 16 years after the manga's end. Abarenbō Rikishi!! Matsutarō (Roughneck Sumo Wrestler!! Matsutarō) will premiere on the TV Asahi network at 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, April 6. The story follows Matsutarō Sakaguchi, a giant roughneck man with strength far beyond ordinary people. He never uttered words like "work hard," "strive," and "dream" like the typical shōnen manga protagonist. However, he is stronger than anyone and peerless in sumo wrestling. His greatest weakness is his own carefree personality. He grows into a full-fledged sumo westler.
The voice actor for the title character will be announced in the near future, but it will be "someone famous whose name everyone in Japan has doubtlessly heard." Yuko Mizutani (Black Jack's Pinoko) will play Reiko Minami, the woman five years older than Matsutarō who eventually marries Matsutarō.
The long-running original manga ran from August 1973 to June 1993 and again from October 1995 to May 1998 in Shogakukan's Big Comic Magazine. It won the Shogakukan Manga Prize in 1977. It already inspired a string of original video anime episodes in the 1990s.
