: My Friday Night Files :: Hikaru no Go Games :: Introduction (original) (raw)

As soon as Hikaru no Go first appeared in Shonen Jump, it was quite a hit and many young people started to play Go because of it. Also some more experienced players got interested into the series for another reason: they started recognising some of the games. A new sport was born: try to find out what the actual games were.

It turned out that most of the games are professional games. I myself got interested when I found the exciting game (and a key episode in the whole story) between Hikaru and Hon Suyon in an obscure Chinese database that I had. Interestingly, one of the actual players, Yun Yeong-seon, I have met quite frequently in the last couple of years.

Although the series has stopped, it is still being published in translation in several countries, and the official versions of the Anime will appear in the US on DVD starting december 27, 2005. So there is also still interest in this site, and I decided to give it an uplift, and add some of the new things that have been found. I have tried to keep the original structure of this part of the site intact, as some people are still deep linking into it. However, as things progress, it might change - so don't count on it forever. If pages become too long to my liking, I will split them.

[2005-12-22]

What's new

Several people pointed out that I made a mistake in the names in the game of chapter 9. That has been finally corrected now.

An interesting anecdote is that the "fake sai" game was played by a mister Kosemura during lunch time. Mr Kosemura was at that time involded helping make Hikaru no Go. Mr. Kosemura told this on his blog, which unfortunately I cannot read. Maybe more facts will come from that source in the future.

[2006-07-29]

Jaris from Latvia discovered the game in Chapter 9! Many thanks Jaris!

[2006-03-02]

During the site redesign, first of all I made many small corrections. There are also 18 new games:-

• Merlijn Kuin found the second game between Sai and Toya. Or I should say: he found a part of it that was shown in the anime clearly and in some flashbacks in the manga. One quarter of the board is definitely modelled after a classical game, so the remainder is quite likely a product of Umezawa's imagination.
• I have also included a game that is identical to the one Hikaru ran out on (Volume 1, chapter 6 and 7). Somebody else proposed another game, but this one fits best. Also something that Merlijn found.
• Fifteen games that can be briefly seen in the anime (episodes 12, 16, 17, 23, 26, 28, 29, 35 , 58 and 72). Except one they were all already mentioned on the hikagokifu site.
• Finally I have added a game (diagram) that is visible in episode 2 of the anime. I knew about this a long time, but clearly I forgot to add it to the list.

If I have time I will start compiling a complete list of games that have not been identified, and also make a cross reference list from the anime to the manga.

[2005-12-22~29]

How to ...

The right hand side bar gives many possibilities to navigate. The pages for the Manga are the most complete, and will also refer to relevant items in the anime, for instance when the anime has a better picture or a scene of a game not in the manga. The anime pages contain only remarks about points where the anime really differs from the manga.

Some pages might still be empty. After the conversion I have put everything on-line again, but I will do some of the new stuff later.

[2005-12-22]

Thanks ...

Thanks to many people for suggestions and corrections, to Sensei's Library for a large initial list, and the webmaster YAMATO of hikagokifu (in Japanese) for our mutual collaboration.