effex | The Totally Epic HikaGo Reread

Happy Wednesday, everyone!
ARE YOU READY FOR SOME HIKARU NO GO?

Yes? Excellent. Let's get this party started - to the comments with your thoughts, observations, revelations, etc!

(A reminder - there are several people who are reading the series for the first time, let's try to keep spoilers to a minimum.)

A question - how did the one volume/week work for you? Was it doable, difficult, ridiculously easy? Do we want to stay with it or kick it up to two volumes a week (or down to chapters a week)?

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Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

effex

* Boys! Ahaha, Hikaru, I forgot what a snot-nosed brat you were. And how instantly you and Akira got emotionally entangled. And how much of a drama queen Sai is (I <3 you, Sai!).

* It's always so interesting to go back to the start (or near the start, I know Obata did a couple of things before this) of someone's artistic career and look at the progress they've made. The start of HikaGo looks nothing like the end of HikaGo (or, say, DeathNote).

* Although, early art or not, the man knows how to make a game of Go exciting.

* I continue to be super amused by Ogata's nosejob + makeover.

* I need more HikaGo icons.

From:

dancing_serpent

One Volume /Week - easy thing. I'd like to keep it like that.

Ogata, oh my. I love that character so much and later he gets so attractive, it's hard for me not to wince at the early drawings. But yeah, part of what fascinates me about long manga (or comic) series is the artist's development.

I adored Sai right away, the panels that show him kind of floating over Hikaru are so beautiful.

Also, I love the recurring theme of "goban as universe".

Edited (for wrong icon) Date: 2010-05-12 05:24 pm (UTC)

From:

effex

Mmm, yes - the stones as stars/board as plane of existence metaphor is really lovely and, I think, keeps the Hand of God thing from being completely ridiculous.

<3 Sai - there are so many ways to screw a character like him up (too annoying, too 2D, too serious) and they avoided all of them.

From:

dancing_serpent

Sai annoyed me a bit in the anime because of the voice that was chosen for him - I read the manga first and imagined a soft bariton and not...uh, that. But in the manga he and Hikaru are my favourites.

From:

dancing_serpent

* I need more HikaGo icons.
Urks, yes. Most definitely!

From:

zanzando

I agree about Ogata. He's one of my favourite characters, and whenever I re-read the first couple of manga, I have to squint a little so I don't have to see him clearly.

From:

effex

[goes to track down icons]

From:

effex

Maybe Sai the excruciatingly pretty wasn't filling their handsome dudes needs? And the boys were all too young.

'cause seriously, the change is pretty drastic.

From:

dancing_serpent

Oh yeah. I keep trying to substitute early-volume-Ogata with glinty-glasses-anime-Ogata to get over the *shudders*

From:

bookshop

oh hikaruuuu. Look how much he's changed from his first impression, when he just comes across as this bored dorky kid who's barely listening to Sai, even though Sai has all these DRAMATIC PANELS and EPIC GO TALES, Hikaru's like LA LA LA PENCIL ON MY NOSE LA LA LA

sdkfljsdfdsf; he grows up so much over the course of the series, oh, my heart.

From:

effex

Yeeees, a nice baritone - something that would fit his image but be unmistakably male. I've scrubbed his anime voice from my memories.

From:

dancing_serpent

The boys may be a bit young at first, but later...I think a lot of them turned out very beautiful. Even Hikaru. *g*

From:

effex

Hikaru is totally bored by this ghost and go crap, okay, he has better things to do. Seriously, what kind of self-respecting ghost give you go superpowers? Where are his laser eyes?

From:

dancing_serpent

Then I'll refrain from describing it in detail here. *g*

From:

zanzando

I've been having thoughts about a certain aspect of Hikaru no Go and HikaGo fandom over the last couple of days.

This is related to re-reading and re-watching the first few episodes, and reading

bookshop's very first reaction to it. (Basically: "It's a board game, for God's sake.")

Hikaru no Go transcends that. It's not just a board game. It's not just people competing over territory.

I have to admit that I never saw it as ironic in any way that these characters, these people would care so much about a board game in the first place.
I didn't need to be drawn in, I didn't need to be convinced.
But: I'm biased. I spent most of my time in school competing in the IMO (International Maths Olympiad), up to the national level. There were rivalries*. There was passion.
I never thought being passionate about a board game was ridiculous or laughable in the first place.

HikaGo doesn't just rob you of your irony. It sands down a layer of jadedness.

* Yes, I *did* have my very own eternal rival. ;)