Hikaru no Go 15

I was so happy that this came in the mail today!  I absolutely had to read and review it tonight since it was May 5th and all.  This is the climax of the series, and the day the major plot point happens is May 5th.  After the chapter in question, Hotta calls attention to the date (which is also Children’s Day in Japan) and mentions that the day is also Torajiro’s birthday.  She also mentions that 5/5 should be Hikaru no Go day, since 5 is “go” in Japanese.  Also, when I first read the series, I consumed the first 16 volumes of it in one day, and it also happened to be May 5th (2004… it doesn’t seem like it was 5 years ago).  So it was all sorts of awesome that I got this volume today.

This one’s all about Fujiwara no Sai.  He’s even there on the cover.  Spotlighting him at this late stage makes for a fairly dark and depressing story.  Sai is unusually persistent about wanting to play go in the early chapters of the volume, to the point where Hikaru lets him play a game against drunk Ogata.  After that, though… well.  Most of the rest of the story here goes over a lot of the Torajiro/Shusaku sites in Inushima and Hiroshima.

The entire volume is heartbreaking, and it’s just hard to see Hikaru sad and desperate the whole time, especially since the rest of the series is so positive and upbeat.  It also helps call attention to the relationship between Hikaru and Sai, the strong bond they share, and how important Sai really is to the story.

Hikaru’s trip to Hiroshima ends with him back in Tokyo in an ancient records room in the Go Association.  There’s an excellent scene where he tries to barter, and it just shows him in the empty room with nobody to answer his requests.  Then he breaks down.  It was so sad.

Now, the events here lead up to Hikaru saying he’s going to quit go.  There’s even an excellent scene at the end of the volume where Akira shows up randomly at his school to try and figure out why Hikaru hasn’t been coming to his matches.  I liked this bit of story.  The problem, though, is that the series is never this good again.  I would have preferred that Hikaru’s problems be resolved and the series draw to a close, because a lot of the best themes are reinforced here and it’s an excellent place to leave it.

Instead, we get an entire volume next time about Isumi, the fomer Insei with confidence problems.  Sigh.  I won’t go into that until later, though.

But yes, this is the best volume in a series that still knocks my socks off five years after I first read it.  Good stuff.