The first great originality : the two oppositions, Hikaru-Sai / Akira-Koyo Toya.

Hikaru Shindo and Akira Toya, who is a young and exceptionally gifted player, first meet and play a game. Hikaru wins thanks to Sai (the ghost who haunts him). Akira is astonished by losing against a boy who is just his age so he decides to improve himself in order to become stronger than him. Meanwhile it arouses Hikaru's interest and gives him the desire to learn Go and compete with Akira. As for Sai, he always daydreams about a game against the best Go player at that time. Luckily this one is Koyo Toya, Akira's father and trainer. Throughout the story, these two oppositions remain : on the one hand there are Hikaru and Sai who play a Shusaku kind of game (so a rather old kind of game), they are cheerful and they enjoy themselves, on the other hand there is the very serious, strict and proud Toya family which is more traditionnal. Nevertheless its game is modern compared to Sai's.

Yet a new opposition is drawn between the 'old players' like Toya Meijin or Sai and the 'new wave' with Akira and Hikaru. The older ones reprensent the old generation (we can see it in their age and their outfit too). They have more experience, they guide the next generation and finally hand over to it and stand down. Even if the story stops before that, we know that Akira and Hikaru will both become tomorrow's stars of the Go world, they have a brilliant future for sure.

Even if the story is long developped Hikaru will never let Akira gets out of his mind. From the beginning until the end Akira will remain his rival number one.

The second originality : well built story and well known opponents.

Though some characters will appear throughout the story, we already know the greatest players at least by name from the first book (Sai, Toya Meijin, Akira, Kurata, Ogata…) and the hierarchy will evolve very little (even if there is the introduction of the Koreans, the Insei or other professional players…). No pretty strong opponent comes from nowhere to thwart the hero in his plans, Yashiro may be the exception however.

The story just evolves in a very logical manner. There is no boredom, Yumi Hotta has spared us illogical series of announced games (apart from the pro examination there is no tournament where everybody already know that the hero will have to face 10 games against 10 stronger and stronger opponents) against opponents who always say they are more powerful, for example : "I am the Taurus knight, I am stronger than all the other knights !" "I am the Aquarius knight, the only one able to terrorize all the other gold knights !" (Do you remember this ? :-D)

There is no stadium full with overexcited people who watch some games between high school pupil either (on the contrary it is the case for Captain Tsubasa for example).

You surely never heard a word about the Go game before Hikaru no Go just like us ^^. You may have bought a Goban after the reading of one of the first books and you may have tried to play this so complicated but so exciting game just like us once again !

Yet, as far as we are concerned this game is all new and exciting (just wondering if it would have seemed this attractive without HNG ? Wouldn't it ?) but it had a rather old-fashioned image up to now in Japan. Nevertheless, Hikaru no Go has succeeded not only to sell itself well, but has also created a revival of the youth's interest in the Go game.

The beauty of the game has been well retranscribed in the paper and in the anime version, the characters hold the stones in a pretty handsome manner, put them on the Goban with a background filled with light as if that was an attack, bright lights ring the strongest moves… in brief, all this kind of things contribute to keep us in suspense.

Yumi Hotta managed to fascinate us with games that normally last for hours and hours. Though we don't understand pretty much the technical point of view, we could have been afraid of being bored but we will never be because what is expressed during a game is often the thoughts or the feelings of the characters.

However, very much unwillingness is necessary to read HNG without learn more about Go thanks to it. Indeed the manga is very educational, we just learn at the same time than Hikaru and without putting any effort in it or even realize it.

- Some summaries of the story

- The manga

- Animated series

- A chronology

- HNG's authors

- Musics