Hikaru no Go, Vol. 3: Preliminary Scrimmage

I love the manga and anime both. It is such a great story! Go is an awesome game, and this story really showcases the game.

Excellent

Love it!

Hikaru has refused to play against Akira Toya but he has joined the Haze Middle School Go Club. Akira joins the Kaio Middle School Club in hopes that the two will meet in one of the periodic school tournaments. Of course, Akira is a million lightyears ahead of anyone on the Kaio team when it comes to Go. While some players on his team admire his skill and want to learn from him, his arrival has thrown the hierarchy of the team into chaos, and has made some feel a great deal of resentment towards him. Three of the members plan to knock him off his pedestal in a dishonest scheme to shame him. Meanwhile, Hikaru's team might not be able to enter the upcoming tournament if they can't find a third player. They post an extremely difficult Go problem on the school bulletin board, thinking that whoever solves it could be their next prospect. A kid named Yuki Mitani solves it but unfortunately he sees Go only as a method of making money on games he bets with gullible old timers. In addition, he has a fondness for cheating. Will Hikaru and Sai be able to reform him and add him to the Haze Go Club?I'm not going to lie and say that my knowledge of how to play Go or understand all the strategies involved has improved after 3 volumes, but that doesn't even really matter when reading this manga. Obata's art and Hotta's writing convey the suspense in each game and the emotional content without the reader having to understand each and every move. I'll probably never pick up a Go tile myself but I still really enjoy this manga. Maybe it's because the characters invest so much passion and honor in the game they play? Or maybe it's seeing them try to improve their skills to where they're worthy of calling each other equals? A good read even if you have no interest in the game itself.

Yumi Hotta, Hikaru no Go: Descent of the Go Master (ViZ, 1998)It's kind of hard to imagine a manga about one of the world's oldest games being as absorbing as Hikaru no Go actually is. This first volume of the series gets things off to a fast start, with the ghost of a master Edo-period go player awakening and attaching himself to Hikaru, a sixth-grade class clown who knows nothing, and cares less, about go. As the volume goes on, however, he finds he has something of an affinity for the game, even without the ghost's help. We meet the first batch of characters, get the general story arc outline, and (if you don't know it already) learn quite a bit about go. I've been meaning to start learning the game, so I may be biased, but I thought this was the bees' knees. ***** * *Yumi Hotta, Hikaru no Go: First Battle (ViZ, 1998)Hikaru has made himself a rival in just-shy-of-pro go player Akira Toya, and while his presence at his first go tournament ended up getting his team disqualified, he certainly didn't embarrass himself. Now it's a year later and Hikaru is actually enrolled in Haze middle school. He refuses to play Akira again, though, so Akira's only option is to go against his father's wishes and join his own middle school's go club so the two can meet in middle school tournaments. Akira's father Meijin, however, has played a few moves with Hikaru himself, and is just as curious as Akira about the boy's talent... great stuff, this, and well worth your time. ***** * *Yumi Hotta, Hikaru no Go: Preliminary Scrimmage (ViZ, 1998)It's time for the first tournament of Hikaru's middle-school career, but first Haze's go club has to find a third player, or they can't compete. A well-placed poster with a go problem on it leads them to a third-year student who spends his time in a seedy go parlor playing for a thousand yen a game, but when Hikaru goes after him, he finds out the kid's cheating; do they really want someone like this on their team? Yeah, you wouldn't think this stuff would make for gripping manga, but trust me, it does. Hotta's got a great sense of pace, which makes sections that would otherwise lag zip by. There are quite a few novelists who could take a page out of Hotta's book when it comes to sandwiching exposition into the action to stop the pace from flagging. Well worth checking out, whether you're a go fan or not. ****

Good story line and wonderful illustrations. The series is a great go themed diversion for players. Even in black and white on kindle.