The Totally Epic HikaGo Reread - Vol. 4

[effex]

~Volume 4 of Hikaru no Go~

(Is really late today)

ETA: It's been pointed out that including chapter numbers would be useful which, yes. Yes it would. Volume 4 spans chapters 26-34, volume 5 will be 35-43. Fortunately, Wikipedia has a handy guide for this!

To the comments!

Comments

[lacygrey]

This volume brings together several amazing moments for me.

Firstly, the Junior high tournament where Hikaru wins in the first round on his own merits but then has to face Touya much sooner than he would have hoped.

Then Hikaru finds himself torn between playing Touya and letting Sai play him, with the final outcome that he takes over and loses horribly upsetting everyone. I found the tournement sequence of the anine particularly pretty, with heaps of suspense piled on to boot. Also, we see a lot of the games, and these are closely enough linked to the story for a non Go player to follow: The exchanges between Kishimoto and Mitani are priceless. Touya's victory is absolute and crushing, even if one only knows the basics of Go.

Then there's the internet sequence - what would this story be without internet? And the iMac - already starting to look a little retro! Sai, standing beside Hikaru and telling him what to play gives me chills: you so often cannot know whether something on the internet really comes from the person who supposedly wrote it - and not from some other person, some hired hand or 'ghost' who's 'standing beside them'.

[effex]

I love how the series chooses to show go - they don't beat you over the head with explanations, they don't overload you with technical or obscure terminology, and the whole thing is easy for someone with no idea what go even is to follow. [grins] No wonder it helped introduce a whole new generation to the game.

I've always found Akira and Hikaru's game at the tournament to be wonderfully tragic - the buildup! the let down! the crushing disappointment! [hugs everyone involved] It's a great point, storytelling-wise, in the Hikaru-Akira-Sai relationship.