While sports manga are extremely popular and have managed to break into the mainstream time and time again, another offshoot of the genre utilizes many of the same tropes. Instead of using popular team sports to create suspense and action-packed set pieces, there’s been a persistent niche that focuses on the suspense that comes from playing high-skill, classic tabletop games. Perhaps one of the most classic examples of this manga sub-genre is Hikaru no Go, a Weekly Shonen Jump series that follows Hikaru Shindo, a young boy who, after poking around his grandfather’s shed, finds himself haunted by the ghost of Fujiwara-no-Sai, a famous Go player from Japan’s Heian era. Sai yearns to play Go again, so the ghost begins to share a mind with Hikaru to continue paying the game and pursue the “Kami no Itte” – the divine move.
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Hikaru no Go was truly a gem when it was originally published in 1998, having over 25 million copies in circulation and becoming a multi-award-winning manga. It left a legacy behind that’s been seemingly impossible for another series to fill, but, much like Fujiwara-no-Sai, it seems as though a series has finally begun serializing that embodies the same spirit as Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata’s masterclass manga, Kodansha’s Go to Go.
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Go to Go Works as an Earnest Successor To Hikaru no Go
Created by Hasuo Toto and serialized through one of Kodansha’s seinen imprints, Young Magazine, Go to Go follows Akiyama Kosei, a young man who’s excelled in everything – baseball, soccer, and his school studies – but, for whatever reason, has struggled to master Go. After dropping the game in middle school, Kosei decides to try once again in high school, which ultimately leads him down a road he never could have expected. While Go to Go lacks many of the supernatural elements that aided in Hikaru no Go‘s popularity, it still possesses a deep knowledge and passion for the game at the center of the narrative, which is ultimately the direction the Shonen Jump classic took. Interestingly, many of its themes seem to make it akin to Blue Period, wherein the main character is effortlessly talented in every aspect of his life except for one thing that completely consumes their mind.
It’s a story that anybody is familiar with, to become so overwhelmed with ambition toward the one hobby or thing that struggles to click. It’s a frustrating yet rewarding mountain to climb, which makes the main focal point of the manga, an already abstract tabletop game like Go even more interesting. One of the oldest board games in human history, players are expected to go head-to-head and “fence off” more territory than their opponent using stones to beat their opponent. It’s extremely challenging and requires players to be fully invested mentally in everything happening on the board – which, in the context of a medium like manga, is the perfect choice for a game that allows the author to explore their character’s motives, feelings, and frustrations through matches. It’s something Hikaru no Go mastered with Hikaru and Fujiwara-no-Sai’s unique “shared mind” gimmick, and it seems to be something that Hasuo Toto is utilizing to make Kohei’s journey all the more dramatic.
