Manga Blogging Part One Million - Hikaru no Go

I meant this to be a single post, but I think it's going to end up being another multiparter chronicling my journey through sports shounen/WSJ series: one post each for Hikaru no Go (1998-2003) and Medalist (2020-ongoing), and a final post exploring the narrative structure of shounen series that incorporates Akane-banashi (2022-ongoing), which I've touched on before in other reviews and has some new developments and fandom responses that I want to explore in more depth.

I love all three of these series for different reasons, and, looking back on them, I feel like they create a nice set way of thinking about sports and sport-ish cultural/game shounen manga within the Weekly Shounen Jump tradition and shounen manga more generally. Keeping in mind that I'm not a manga scholar, just a casual manga enjoyer who regularly subjects himself to manga he does not like in the hopes it will magically transform into something that he'll enjoy… keeping in mind, too, that I love imposing my rigid standards of narrative effectiveness on works… keeping in mind that I am trying to meet these works on their own terms… keeping in mind that I am a genius and an idiot, etc.

Okay, Hikago time.

( 2500 words of Hikaru no Go )