Hikaru no Go

STORY

This is an Igo-based comic. Igo is a Japanese traditional board game played by two persons in a game. The players alternately put white or black stones in order to expand each territory on the board.
The main character, Hikaru, is a 6th grade elementary school boy. One day, he finds an old bloodstained Igo board at his grandpa’s storehouse. In the board, a genius Igo player in Heian Era (an old Japanese era approx. 794~1185), Sai Fujiwara is inhabited, and Hikaru gets haunted by Sai by touching the board.
After haunted by Sai, Hikaru is forcibly led into the world of Igo along with Sai’s purpose, ‘to master the god’s mate’ although Hikaru had no knowledge or interest about Igo till then.
Despite that, he begins deeply drawn into Igo world by meeting several stimulative rivals, and gradually steps forward the winding road to be a professional Igo player.
(Yumi Hotta&Takeshi Obata/1998-2003/23 books/Shueisha)

COMMENT by Shun

For reading this comic, you don’t need to know about the rule of Igo because there are clear descriptions when necessary. In fact, when this comic became a big hit in SHONEN JUMP, very surprisingly most of the readers rarely had knowledge of Igo.
I would say, in general, there are two patterns of hit comic; one is, ‘‘a weak grows up and beats a strong,’ and the other is, ‘‘a genius flourishes with a gift he’s got.’’ Usually a comic has to choose one of those because main character usually cannot play more than one role.
In this comic, however, the former pattern fits when Hikaru plays by himself and the latter does when Sai plays in Hikaru (it seems Hikaru plays the both roles.)
By this method, it makes possible that one person who is an amateur can suddenly change to be a professional. This makes me feel satisfied after finishing the comics, and leads me to read them again and again.
By the way, in my opinion, the heroine, Akari Fujisaki, is one of the big four carton heroines whose hair is twin tail… Well, I may comment about this later…

Shun's Score 10