REVIEW: Hikaru No Go (Vol.1) by Yumi Hotta

 A six grader with a Go board that’s inhab­ited by a ghost who was a Go mas­ter. It’s a game in Japan. I highly rec­om­mend this series as it has great art, great char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, depth and thus far it is a very intel­li­gent series. I’ve read the first three and after going through my col­lec­tion, I real­ized that I was miss­ing vol­ume 5 and 7! Any­way, here is a descrip­tion of the plot of vol­ume 1 just in case you might want to give this one a try:

Hikaru Shindo is like any sixth-grader in Japan: a pretty nor­mal school boy with a two-tone head of hair and a pen­chant for antics. One day, he finds an old blood­stained Go board in his grandfather’s attic-and that’s when things get really inter­est­ing. Trapped inside the Go board is Fujiwara-no-Sai, the ghost of an ancient Go mas­ter who taught the strate­gi­cally com­plex board game to the Emperor of Japan many cen­turies ago. In one fate­ful moment, Sai becomes a part of Hikaru’s con­scious­ness and together, through thick and thin, they make an unstop­pable Go-playing team. Will they be able to defeat Go play­ers who have ded­i­cated their lives to the game? Will Sai achieve the “Divine Move” so he’ll finally be able to rest in peace? Begin your jour­ney with Hikaru and Sai in this first vol­ume of Hikaru no Go.

I have no clue how to play Go but it seems to be a pretty pop­u­lar game/fad in Japan. Hikaru is clue­less at this game until he learns that his grandfather’s old Go game board has a ghost liv­ing in it.  Fujiwara-no-Sai, is a mas­ter Go player born dur­ing the Heian era of Japan. His spirit inhab­its the Go board. Sai loves to play Go all the time. His aspi­ra­tion is to make the “Divine Move”.  Hikaru had never played Go in his life and is fine just going to school every­day and never play­ing Go ever again. As with all things, his pas­sion to play Go increases day by day. He starts to enter tour­na­ments and such and just about wins them all with assis­tance from Sai.  Hikaru’s rep­u­ta­tion as a Go player spreads and his biggest rival ends up being Akira Toya. Fujiwara-no-Sai is just itch­ing to take on Akira, too. This is a great rivalry with plenty of sus­pense and drama.

Just some infor­ma­tion stuff: This manga reads right to left. The art­work is pretty good and the dia­logue, descrip­tive detail is pretty clear and leg­i­ble. After read­ing this first entry, it did intrigue me just a bit to under­stand how to play Go. The author does go onto explain how the game works but I have no patience for under­stand­ing it all. I just love the story. Anyway,  give this title a try next time your in the book­store espe­cially if you enjoy Death­note. It’s not hor­ror but the level of com­plex­ity is about the same. My grade, A-. This is a series I can see keep­ing and reread­ing again and again. I’ll review the rest later. More titles that I am read­ing this week include Vam­pire Knight (vol.1), Hells­ing vol (3), Blood Alone (Vol.2), Cry Free­dom (Vol.1) and Beck (Vol.2,3) and more. I am just in the mood to read manga these days. I prob­a­bly might dig into a “real” book in a week or so. See “Now Read­ing” sec­tion for more details.

For Fur­ther Reading

• Ikigami: The Ulti­mate Limit, Motoro Mase (Author, Illustrator)
• Vam­pire Knight Story & Art by Mat­suri Hino
• Under­whelmed with “Chil­dren of the Sea” by Daisuke Igarashi
• Reviews Of Two Note­wor­thy Graphic Novel(s)
• Real (Vol.4), Take­hiko Inoue (Manga)
• REVIEW: ‘Cora­line’ Writ­ten by Neil Gaiman and Illus­trated by Dave McKean
• REVIEW: ‘Girl Got Game’ by Shizuru Seino
• REVIEW: ‘Mon­ster’ Story & Art­work by Naoki Urasawa
• REVIEW: ‘Vam­pire Knight’, Vol. 5 with Story and Art­work by Mat­suri Hino
• REVIEW: Blood Alone by Masayuki Takano (vol.4)

Tagged as: Action, Ghosts, Go board, Manga, Yumi Hotta