Hikaru no Go | |
The cover of Hikaru no Go volume 1 as released by Viz Media
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ヒカルの碁 | |
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Genre | Psychological, Sports, Supernatural |
Manga | |
Written by | Yumi Hotta |
Illustrated by | Takeshi Obata |
Published by | Shueisha |
English publisher | |
Demographic | Shōnen |
Magazine | Weekly Shōnen Jump |
English magazine | |
Original run | December 1998 – July 2003 |
Volumes | 23 |
Anime television series | |
Directed by | Susumu Nishizawa (eps. 1–15) Jun Kamiya (eps. 16–58) Tetsuya Endo (eps. 58–75) |
Music by | Kei Wakakusa |
Studio | Studio Pierrot |
Original network | TV Tokyo |
English network | |
Original run | October 10, 2001 – March 26, 2003 |
Episodes | 75 |
Anime television series | |
Hikaru no Go: New Year Special | |
Directed by | Tetsuya Endo |
Music by | Kei Wakakusa |
Studio | Studio Pierrot |
Original network | TV Tokyo |
Original run | January 3, 2004 |
Episodes | 1 |
Hikaru no Go (ヒカルの碁?, lit. "Hikaru's Go") is a Japanese manga series based on the board game Go, written by Yumi Hotta and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. The production of the series' Go games was supervised by Go professional Yukari Umezawa. It was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1998 to 2003, with the chapters collected into 23 tankōbon volumes by Shueisha.
It was adapted into an anime television series by Studio Pierrot, that ran for 75 episodes from 2001 to 2003 on TV Tokyo, with a New Year's Special aired in January 2004. Viz Media released both the manga and anime in North America; they serialized the manga in Shonen Jump in addition to releasing its collected volumes in entirety, while the anime aired on ImaginAsian in addition to a DVD release that was cancelled prematurely.
Hikaru no Go was well-received, with over 25 million copies in circulation and winning the Shogakukan Manga Award in 2000 and the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2003. It is largely responsible for popularizing Go among the youth of Japan since its debut, and considered by Go players everywhere to have sparked worldwide interest in the game, noticeably increasing the Go-playing population around the globe.
While exploring his grandfather's shed, Hikaru stumbles across a Go board haunted by the spirit of Fujiwara-no-Sai, a Go player from the Heian era. Sai wishes to play Go again, having not been able to since the late Edo period, when his ghost appeared to Honinbo Shusaku, a top Go player of that period. Sai's greatest desire is to attain the Kami no Itte (神の一手?, "Divine Move") – a perfect move. Because Hikaru is apparently the only person who can perceive him, Sai inhabits a part of Hikaru's mind as a separate personality, coexisting, although not always comfortably, with the young boy.