Overview: Hikaru no Go

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(So late, I know. So, so late.)
Hikaru No Go

Hikaru No Go (also known as Hikago, as I will undoubtedly slip into calling it sooner or later) is a manga that was serialized in Weekly Jump a few years back. There are 23 volumes of the manga and an anime which covered a good portion of that, with further material in specials. The series is the brainchild of Hotta Yumi, illustrated by Obata Takeshi (later of Death Note), with go professional Umezawa Yukari providing consultation on go matters (many of the games in the series are based on actual go games).

Basically, go is a board game, and Hikaru no Go is about a boy and his ghost playing that game. How could you go wrong?




(Very) Brief Introduction to Go & Other Sundries

Go is played on a grid 19x19 with a set of stones for each player, one black and one white. Stones are placed in the intersections with the objective of capturing territory on the board by surrounding it with your pieces. It's been around for quite a while, and if interested in more there are some links at the end of this essay that should get one started, at least.

Many of the go terms come to fan fiction untranslated from the Japanese, so you'll see things like goban - go board, nigiri - 'squeeze' (used to determine who goes first), or insei - a young player studying to go pro.) Dan is the ranking of a player; the lower the number, the lowering the ranking. The term often seen in fanfiction as 'hand of god' (Kami no Itte) is, I think, translated in the liscensed American version as 'divine move'.

Both the manga and anime are finished in Japan, but the manga is ongoing in the American Shounen Jump, with 6 tanks completed in English. The anime, licensed by VIZ, is being released on DVD with vol. 3 set for later this month. It's also slated to be released via the Toonami Jetstream service starting next month. According to the pairings list it looks like Shindou/Touya is coming up on ship_manifesto as well. Yay!

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The Story Begins

The series opens with Shindou Hikaru and his friend Akari rummaging through Shindou's grandfather's shed. Shindou finds an old go board which he thinks will be perfect to sell except for the stain in the corner. When he mentions the stain to Akari, she doesn't know what he's talking about - but someone else does; the ghostly Fujiwara no Sai, who attaches himself to the living world through Shindou.

Sai was a go instructor at the Emperor's court in Heian era Japan - but he wasn't the only one, and his counterpart felt the palace wasn't big enough for the both of them. A game was arranged to see which would hold the position, and the other instructor cheated and then turned the tables on Sai by accusing him of the same thing; cast out in disgrace, Sai drowned himself... but came back as a ghost, possessed a go-ban, and eventually met a boy who allowed Sai to use him to play games and thus the kid became a legendary genius at go - Honinbo Shuusaku. At first, he probably wouldn't be adverse to doing the same with Shindou, but Shindou has other ideas.

He isn't interested in go, but Sai is persistent and so Shindou tries to turn it to his advantage by using Sai's expertise to win money (from his grandfather again, poor guy). It doesn't work; he doesn't know the slightest thing about go and so can't even follow Sai's instructions. He ends up taking a go class in order to learn the basics, and from there gets recommended to a go salon where the thinks he can let Sai play. But all the people there are old... except for one kid, Touya Akira.

And so it goes. As a ghost, Sai probably represents the only true supernatural element in the series, which becomes more mature in tone as it progresses. Despite the subject matter and dearth of flashy gimmicks, it's a strong story with a fandom that, while small, is by no means dead.

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Main Characters

Fujiwara no Sai:
The ghost of the go-ban that Shindou encounters. Sai's goal in life (and afterlife) is to experience the hand of god, the perfect expression of his love for go. Once Shindou starts playing games on his own he's unable to let Sai play, as the difference in skill is too apparent. As a solution, he allows Sai to play go on the web, but he becomes too notorious for his own good, and when Touya suspects him and tracks Shindou down, Sai's time on the internet comes to an end. His legend and mystery live on as a topic of speculation for go players, however.

At the beginning Sai is impressed by modern technology, but he seems to settle in faily quickly.

Shindou Hikaru:
Shindou isn't a bad kid, though he starts out a something of shounen staple - he's got that whole brash impish scamp with a good heart thing going on (and he likes ramen), and he's probably not at his best being so out of his element with go at the first part of the series. Through the course of the story he matures a lot, although he's still the same old Shindou in a lot of ways. The series does a good job of making his talent impressive without him necessarily having to come off on top all the time.

Shindou is easily identifiable by his blond bangs and his fetish for clothing bearing the number 5 - a homophone for go in Japanese.
His eyes are green in the anime.

Touya Akira:
Touya is the first go player Hikaru meets that's close to his own age. He's the son of a very famous go professional, and has been playing since the age of 2. He's a nice kid, mostly, with a habit (as inferred from the Kaga and Hideki incidents) of casually crushing other children so severely at go that he makes them rethink their future career options, but when the tables are turned and he gets schooled by Sai in the form of Hikaru, he's eager to take up the challenge and does his best to engage an initially reluctant Shindou.

Other than his skill at go, Touya is known for his bad fashion sense and having the same interesting haircut his entire life. I have a soft spot for argyle and I think he looks adorable in his horrible lavender suit and bee-stripe tie, but these are likely not the worst of his sartorial offenses.

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Schoolmates
The next step in Shindou's path once he's got the basics is go club, but there isn't enough interest to make up the three man team required to compete in tournaments...


Fujisaki Akari:
Shindou's longtime friend, Akari is a nice girl, and seems to have a bit of a crush on Shindou at the beginning of the series. She joins Go club as well, though Shindou seems reluctant to teach her. Unfortunately, she doesn't make up the numbers; girls compete separately.




(from left to right)
Kaga Tetsuo:
An excellent shougi(japanese chess) player, he's good at go as well. He's not actually a member of the club, though.

Shindou Hikaru:
Hello again, Shindou.

Tsuitsui Kimihiro:
He's trying to get a go club started when Shindou comes along at the school festival.... Kaga seems to enjoy giving him a hard time.

Mitani Yuuki:
Mitani plays go to gamble, cheats, and refuses to join the club at first. It's his sister that provides Shindou to access at the computer cafe when Sai is playing internet go.

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Insei

There comes a point in Shindou's game when he needs to advance beyond go club; he takes the test to become an insei, but as such he's not permitted to compete at the go club level, which creates friction with his old teammates...

Waya Yoshitaka:
An insei with Shindou, though before we're introduced to him there, he played Sai on the internet as 'Zelda'. Waya is Shindou's first friend as an insei a member of Morishita's 9-dan's study group, which he invites Shindou to join. He's friends with Isumi and generally doesn't seem to like Touya Akira that much. As illustrated, Waya has messy hair and a weakness for camo.

Isumi Shinichiro:
Somewhat older insei, friends with Waya. His personality is the more reserved of the two. Due to a mistake on his part during an important game with Shindou he develops a confidence problem, which he travels out of country to Korea to attempt to overcome.

Ochi Kousuke:
Known for his 'bathroom habit' of replaying games he loses by tapping out the moves on the bathroom stall, Ochi gets instruction from Touya in order to attempt to defeat Shindou in the pro exams. Not well liked.

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Title Holders (and other pros)
Old(er) People

Touya Kouyo, Touya Meijin:
Touya's father. Meijin is his title - He's got several titles, actually, but Meijin is the one he's referred to by. He looks a little imposing, but isn't so bad. Touya Meijin is also looking for the hand of god, would really like for Sai to come out and play with him.




Ogata Seiji:
To the left: Ogata. To the the right: Ogata shakes out his hair and slides off those disfiguring glasses to the tune of You Sexy Thing (or maybe Obata's art just gets prettier over the course of the manga). Ogata is a 9-dan at the start of the series. He shows up several times; He's close to Touya Meijin and it's his sponsorship that allows Shindou to become an insei, among other things. He's a smoker, likes aquarium fish, has got the white suit/red sportscar thing going, and has a Grace Jones poster on his wall.




Kuwabara Honinbo:
'Honinbo' was the title carried by Sai's former protoge, Honinbo Shuusaku. This one is a sneaky old so-and-so.



Other Pros:
Ashiwara Hiroyuki:
4-dan. A member Touya Meijin's study group. He's cheerful, with sort of a seventies hairstyle. Often seen in fanfiction in conjunction with Ogata.

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Hokuto Cup
An international tournament for young(er) people.

Yashiro Kiyoharu:
From the Kansai institute, Yashiro shows up toward the end of the manga, as the third member on the Hokuto Cup. He looks wild, but he's really looking to prove himself to his parents...



Ko Yonha:
Feisty Korean go player that Shindou hears has insulted Honinbo Shuusaku (in other words, Sai) - which makes it Hikaru's driving ambition to put him down in flames, naturally.

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Pairings

This is hardly an exhaustive list of the characters Shindou interacts with; I've tried to touch on most of the ones likely to play a larger role in fanfiction.

Common slash pairings include Ogata/Ashiwara, Kaga/Tsuitsui, Waya/Isumi. Shindou/Touya would be the big pairing. A variety of other Shindou/M pairings pop up not infrequently - Shindou/Waya, Shindou/Sai, Shidou/Ko Yonha and so on.

As far as het, there's Mitani/Akari and Shindou/Akari, and Touya/Akari shows up sometimes as well. There's Nase (an insei), too, but I don't seem to see as much about her; at the bottom of it there just aren't that many female characters with large roles in the series.

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Links
Fanfiction:

I looked around for a site hosting het, but couldn't find one; this may be my weak g-fu. For yaoi, there's

Hikago Yaoi
Jumpy Boys! - a site that archives yaoi from Shounen Jump series, including Hikago (seems to be down at the moment)

...and Fanfiction.net accepts all sorts, of course.

Livejournal Fanfiction:

hikarunogo - General Hikaru no Go community
igo_yaoi - All pairing yaoi community
hikago_yaoi - Shindou/Touya specific
wayasumi - for Waya/Isumi fanfiction
kagatsui - Kaga/TsuiTsui (bluepard made this list of KagaxTsuitsui stories at fanfiction net there.)
jump100 - for drabbles from shounen jump series; seem dead for the moment, but there are some Hikago offerings in the memories.
hikago_djs - Has fiction sometimes too. (thanks, ladysorka)

Other links:

Go at Wikipedia - there are a great deal of further links there.
Sensei's library - a wiki just for go.
Hikaru no Go games at Friday night files.
Hikaru No Go at Shounen Jump