You may find here the answers for all the questions you might ask about this website or about Hikaru no Go.
Or... Even better than that ! You may find on this page... the answers for all kind of questions you never asked !

- Questions about the website -

The series Hikaru no go are published in the United States, the manga as well as the anime version.

So it is illegal to put on this website downloadable extracts for free.

Besides, nothing can match the pleasure to read real paper, stain it, read it again, turn over the pages… as you wish. And books are so lovely in a bookcase ! They really are !

We are not going to lecture you at great and tiresome length, but just think that the more mangas are sold, the more publishing houses are encouraged to publish other series. And this is for the pleasure of all the fans ^^. Besides, think about the loss of earnings of the authors that we love, that we venerate don't we ? ;-)

Because it does ! Didn't you notice that this background and the white font make us think about the Go game ? No ? Really not ?

It is useless to contact us or even beg us night and day about this matter, we wont' change anything (we are so lazy.)

As for the optical expenses, it is useless to contact us we won't pay you back for them ! :-D Yes, we are also stingy !

- Questions about Hikaru no Go -

Exactly. It may look 'cool' when you are 13 years old, but it is obivous that when you are 35, you look like an old fogey ! Yet, as it is now, it seems that Hikaru will keep bleaching his bang (no this is not a natural hairstyle) even when it becomes old-fashioned. Indeed, he could have wanted to change his look between his eleventh and fifteenth birthday but he didn't make it. He kept using liters of hydrogen peroxide in order to look cool. Then why does he persist in doing so ?

We found only one reasonable answer : in order to be recognized ! Without his bang, Hikaru wouldn't be Hikaru and his friend would probably confuse him with Suyon or even worse ! Hikaru would be an ordinary manga hero and would look like all the others !

Look at the picture if you don't believe us !

Very indiscreet indeed ! Does that really concern you ? ;-) Yet it is true that we can easily wonder how he made. He talks about Go, he lives only for Go, he always plays Go and always frequents Go club full of old guys who play Go…

Where did he find the lovely Akiko ? (And when did he find the time to make a boy ?)

Honestly, we run out of answer here. But it may be an arranged marriage…

Last-minute information : we have learned from well-informed sources that Akiko was the receptionist of the Go club that the young Koyo used to frequent. Miss Ichikawa stands a good chance of becoming the girlfriend of Ogata (or Akira ?) doesn't she ?

Akira is a very well-behaved boy, he still hasn't made his adolescence crisis. There is many indications that show us he may accept every thing that his parents impose without batting an eyelid. And as you can see in the manga, who are Akira's parents ?

Koyo Toya who keeps only company to people like Kuwabara or Zama (both really haven't a look that reminds us of the latest fashion) or Ogata (dress a kid with Cardin or Dior, is it really reasonnable ?). And Akiko Toya who always pass her time at home waiting for her husband to come back.

In order to kill time, she does the housework, some ironing or she watches the TV. But her favourite field is the sewing ! So, since Akira first went to the nursery school she mends his white socks, knits checked pullovers and makes hems on his clothes. And dear God knows how much she loves making hems !

As his son is always stuck to the Go club she doesn't see him grow and she finally comes to cut his pants too much ! But she's hopeless at cooking and can't lovingly prepares wonderful meals for him so this is her way to take care of him and tell him that she loves him.

Akira feels guilty because he lets her alone at home so he doesn't want to deprive her of her only pastime and dare not protest.

This allows us to answer to another question you may asked yourself : Why does the Meijin always wear kimonos ? To avoid the hems of course !

Sai played his very last game against an exhausted Hikaru who fell asleep. Then Sai disappeared from the story and left a desperate young boy behind. Next, if you have read (or seen) the story, you should remember the adventures of Hikaru who keeps searching for Sai everywhere… almost (yes he forgot the brooms cupboard, but see, at least he didn't forget the rest room !) You may usually watch "Without a trace" on TV so then you probably think Hikaru has not been on the right track. That might be true ! (Why didn't he suspect Koyo Toya or even Ogata of having kidnapped him for instance ?)

So then what's happened to Sai ? It's rather hard to find it out by reading the story only. But if you look at the anime version and particularly at this scene, you might find the answer as we found it ! Sai has gone… to the moon ! Indeed, Sai's body begins to be surrounded by light. It shows that his reactors have been ignited. A noise of a takeoff can be heard very well and indicates that Sai is really going to travel through the space. By the way, the small green lights that fly all around him may be signs from his friends from Venus (who pretend to know the secret of the Hand of God because they have a more advanced technology than ours). However, we have no pictures of his moon landing, so we can feel some skepticism among you people. In order to please you and to show we can accept all kind of theories, we can expose another possibility (much more far-fetched than the others yes ) such as : Sai's soul found peace at last… So he merely vanished… Credibility : 2%

Really… Poor old Kuwabara, everybody calls him Kuwabara only, so then many people think that his first name is Honinbo or Sensei.

We asked for his birth certificate (it was rather hard to find it, the management wasn't computerized in 1875…), we finally got an answer : Braxton.

Well… Why don't you believe us ?! Yet Braxton Kuwabara sounds good, doesn't it ?

Damn ! It seems that we have been deceived by the English adaptation !

Sorry but we are not one commercial website ! We are very often asked this question but you just have to refer to the yellow pages.

Besides, according to our sources, it seems that these fishes are very rare species. They can be found in a particular lake at the South of Japan only. You must climb a cliff (4 miles till the top !) to reach it. In addition to this, these fishes can be seen only at night. So one can only fish them during a full moon night.

So if you want the same fishes, good luck ! (No they are not piranhas either !)

Everybody wears white shirt with the uniform of Haze school whereas Mitani stands out from the others and wears coloured shirts. However, everybody will agree that a colour such as the red is not very handy. It runs in the wash, comes off on the other clothes and it gets highly visible marks because of the sweat of the armpits.

So then why such a choice ?

In fact it brings to light his dark past as a member of the communist youth. So many years of paramilitary training as a Komsomol member. That's why it remained automatic for him to wear suspenders and to turn up his pants for them not to drag in the mud.

However, as he grew older, he broke away from the movement and was seduced by the capitalist society which offered him its mass consumption. He totally threw himself in it after all this frustrated years imposed by his parents. All this explains his real CD and clothes buying spree.

Mitani thinks only about money. Meanwhile his sister did not break away from the revolutionary movement. In fact she works in a cyberspace because she keeps a close eye on the messages which circulate on the internet for the KGB. She will be exposed and fired. We won't see her again because she will be put in prison in the end.

So true ! Have you ever seen a guy with that kind of hairstyle ? As far as I'm concerned, I never saw that kind of guy except during the 'gay pride'. In my opinion his parents or even Akira himself (maybe all of them ?) are great fans of Chantal Goya (who is so famous in Japan, we all know it). We're trying hard to find another explanation, but there is not… (No don't think "That's because Akira is a little girl !") Or else, they live in very distant suburbs where there is no hairdresser…

Or maybe that is for some reasons of marketing : Akira is immediately recognized !… A little boy with short dark hair would go unnoticed.

By the way, the picture shows Akira with another haistyle. Did you recognized him ?

This question has been asked many times and Akira's short pants have often been mocked. But I think that in the end, we have been highly mistaken. So we took the other side of the problem .

Hikaru's obsession with following the fashion in effect among boys of his age actually shows a lack of personnality. He plays Go because Akira plays Go, he wears cool sports clothes because his friends do so… It seems that Hikaru doesn't know how to act and can't help copying the others. In fact he doesn't want to be at the top of the fashion mood, he just wants to be a normal integrated kid.

Our mistakes doesn't concern Hikaru's kind of clothing only, we also totally misunderstood Akira.

That Toya junior doesn't care about his dress sense is totally wrong. The fashion victim is Akira and not Hikaru as we might believe !

Hikaru content himself with buying (or probably making his mother buy) his clothes at the nearest shop on the corner whereas Akira must specially travel numerous miles in order to reach the only trendy shop which sells the kind of clothes he likes.

He's got nerves of steel for searching for such clothes that you won't find anywhere when shops are filled with big coloured basketball boots, baggy pants and sports tee-shirts (clothes for young guys in brief !)

Akira is far away from the old-fashioned style, he is just an avant-gardiste who can't help imitating his idols.

Didn't he copy at all the hairstyle of Chantal Goya (in the middle of her revival) ?

His collection of striped pullovers or pullovers with diamond patterns looks totally like Christophe's (also known as the 'turtle'), don't you think so ?

All this for what ? Maybe the real aim of Akira is to become a gay icon…

This is the question of the major concern ! (usually asked as " Does Sai follow Hikaru even in the toilets ? ")

Because you all are burning to know the answer to this enigma (which takes the central interest of the manga), we have led the investigations. Actually it seems that Sai haunts Hikaru (because this one, in spite of himself, let him take a little place in his mind), so it appears logical that Sai has to follow Hikaru everywhere to exist. By the way when Torajiro dies (Sai haunted him before), Sai went back in his goban.

So throughout the manga Sai follows Hikaru : he sleeps when Hikaru sleeps as well, he stays behind him when he is in class, he cries when the young boy doesn't want to do what Sai whises for (when Hikaru leaves a Go festival before the end of a game they were watching for example) and finally when Sai disappears Hikaru admits that this is the first time he has ever gone far from him.

However, we are obliged to notice that despite of this, Sai is able to move by himself (when he sits on the seat during the Shin Shodan series for instance). Plus, Hikaru often speaks to him with some "Come on Sai !".

Besides when Sai disappears Hikaru strongly believes that the angry ghost is just gone for a walk (but Hikaru is not very cunning that's right). In order to make it possible, the young boy thinks that Sai used a draft. So it subtantiates the idea that the ghost can't move on its own.

Would Sai be condemned to follow the bleached bang boy anywhere and everywhere ? It seems that the answer is yes.

But then, where is Sai when Hikaru goes for a ride with Tsubaki and his motorbike ? Or when Hikaru plays his one colour game ? Not far away for sure. Sai probably ran behind the motorbike and hid under Hikaru's chair on the Go club (it would be useful to check anyway :-D)

What about Hikaru's intimacy since Sai is always with him ? Here we go ;-) Actually, we have no real certainty about it. The wiser people would say that Sai quietly waits for Hikaru behind the door, carrying his bag and bringing some pieces of bog paper when Hikaru finishes. The others would think whatever they like (after all, guys are more shameless with each others)

When we think about all this, we can conclude that Sai vanishes in the fifteenth book not because he has complete his mission but rather because Hikaru has grown up, he has reached the puberty and it becomes embarrassing to have Sai watching over him since he would want to try his first emotions of love.

To conclude this essential point about the rest room, you would notice that when Sai disappears, the rest room is the very first place where Hikaru looks for him (we can guess that strong links have been created between them in this place).

For real, stories which take place in the toilets (when we don't say the bog) are always interesting to many people !

It's good to know that many readers had a wrong idea about who Ochi really is. He's the granddaddy's boy, a spoilt child of course but, deep inside of him, he hides a soul in revolt against life and he fights against his impulses of rebellion with difficulties. But sometimes when he loses he can't take it anymore so then he locks himself in the toilets to relieve himself and express his anger by tagging the door.

Well ! We are blowed ! Because in the manga we have been told that he does that in order to replay the game he lost by tapping the door !

Well it is not wrong, it happens sometimes. So what is the sense of this ritual ? Why does he tap the door when other toilets' squatters (like Honda) can hear him ? His big magnifying glasses (which gives him the look of a serious boy although he is not. He even has dyed his hair red since he was 4 even when his grandfather is against it) should have given you some hints. Actually Ochi is almost blind (that is why he could buy this ugly orange coat). So he had learned the Go game through Braille. So then he needs to tap the door in order to regain the feelings he had during his training.

Useful to know : he also has a very small bladder.

Go players usually try their best to show a handsome look and an impenetrable face. On the contrary, Yashiro has a bovine look, his tongue hangs out and his body language is rather expressive. So why does Yashiro pull such faces which are worthy of a dairy cow ? In order to look like his idol ! Hatsuharu Soma of course ! If you had taken a look at the " lookalikes " page (or the " HNG vs Fruits Basket " page), you should have noticed the great physical resemblance between Yashiro and Hatsuharu.

Both rebels take particular care of their look, they wear the same grey hairstyle and their personnalities are rather similar. But it's true that Yashiro's expressions have no equivalent in Hatsuaharu's.

So why ? The reason is very simple. If you know Fruits Basket, you should also know that Hatsuharu (called Haru), as his little comrades, is under a terrible curse : he is haunted by one of the signs of the Chinese zodiac. And as if by chance, Haru's sign of the zodiac is… the bullock ! Don't you see any connection… ?

Too easy ! He is in the shower ! Don't be afraid, he didn't spend two years having a wash. :-D Or maybe he was very dirty so he occupied the bathroom for all this time. By the way it brings an answer to the tricky problem about Hikaru's intimacy : he never took a shower when Sai haunts him because his father occupied the shower room.

It's so true when you come to think that the only moment we see Hikaru's father (rather his shadow than him), he's taking a shower !

He is the great missing of the series. That is why his brat son is so ill-mannered. He deserved some good slaps !

Does Hikaru's father neglect his family ? Has he got a mistress (Akiko Toya who is bored to death for instance) ?

We can guess that he works a lot in order to provide for his family (the yellow basketball boots, the collection of tee-shirts "5" and Hikaru's fridge). The more romantic will imagine that he has an exciting life that takes him away from his family (secret agent, humanitarian doctor, reporter on wars, boys band singer…). But in reality, his life must be so ordinary (subway, work, shower, sleep) that the screenwriters just got rid of him. It might explain Hikaru's dreams of a different life and why he creates some imaginary friends (Sai) who will lead him to live exciting adventures.

Such a historic piece, it must be so expensive ! It is very odd to find it in the garret of Hikaru's ancestor. Even so the grandfather seems to lead a rather comfortable life, he is not millionaire ! Yes he is passionately fond of the Go game but not so much so that he would buy a Goban from one century ago.

In fact, it must be a legacy. Hikaru is the grand-grand-grandson of Torajiro. If it was true, he would know it, don't you think so ? Yes but Torajiro only played Go in his life, so he didn't have time to lead a family life. So he had numerous mistresses all over the country (when Sai allowed him to do something else than playing Go). And he just forgot his Goban when he left one of them.

It also may be that Hikaru's grandfather did antiques traffic. That's some possibility. With his gold tooth he is worthy of a Yakusa's Godfather. In addition to this, he doesn't know anything else than putting a price on his grandson's presence (with banknotes). So typical from a mafioso ! He probably kept this Goban for himself and forgot it in his garret.

Thank you Bunowa, Elenoa and Lelfe for your questions. :-)

You people also have some weird questions that forbid you to sleep ? Don't hesitate anymore and contact us in order to share your metaphysical questioning with us. Maybe the website team will provide you an answer !