‘Hikaruo No Go’ delivers intense quest of contests

By: Noah Forker

“Hikaruo No Go” in the anime form is a very intense but inaccurate portrayal of the manga. In the anime, several events happened in a certain order that they don’t happen in the manga. In the show, we join Hikaruo, an everyday Japanese 6th grader trying to make a little cash. He stumbles upon a Go board and in doing so, has obtained the spirit of Sai inside of him. Now with the spirit of Sai driving him, Hikaru strives to find out if playing Go is really what he wants. As he searches for his own goal, he also helps Sai achieve his goal: to play the divine move.

In the manga of “Hikaruo No Go,” we start off in the same point as the show, or as I should say, the show starts off in the same point as the manga. As the manga progresses, there are very small things to note in difference, but those will come later. Overall, the artwork for this manga is very nice and compliments the story very nicely. As for the story itself, it is very intense, and the manga and the show follow very close to each other.

As I said earlier, the manga and the show are close, but not exact. In the show, Hikaruo only gets sick once because of Sai. However, in the manga, Sai is able to get Hikaruo sick several times. Secondly, Hikaruo faces his grandfather in the manga, though he loses, but this does not happen in the show. Finally, several small changes like using different languages, a different order of events and other such things vary when the show was made based on the manga.

Personally, I like the show better, as perusal, because the show represents the Go matches very well and they really help intensify the boring Go matches.