Once, when I lived in New York City, I watched two speed-chess players doing their thing a couple of tables down from me at the Wendy’s in Times Square. They set up their board and drilled their way through something like five games, possibly six, in the time it took me and my wife to finish our meal. The only sounds they made were the slap of the pieces on the board and the clack of the chess clock, and their faces were as blank as freshly-cleaned blackboards. Right then, I thought, there’s nothing else going on inside these guys except chess.
There are many moments throughout Hikaru no Go when I look at the cast and think about those two guys. Everything they are, everything that validates their worth as a human being, boils down to what happens on that board in front of them in the next ninety minutes. And when you battle one opponent, you’re not just fighting him: you’re fighting all the people that taught him, too.
Hikaru no Go Volume 11: Hikaru Vs. Ochi divides its time between two conflicts that Hikaru faces during the grueling Pro Exam. He’s set to face off against Ochi — young, bespectacled and even more uptight than Hikaru’s main rival-at-a-distance, Akira Touya. Ochi has also suffered his first defeat of the tournament — to Isumi, himself down by three but now making a strong comeback. Small wonder Ochi has been tapping Akira for tutoring during this period, and Akira is only too happy to force Ochi to play over his head: this way, he can strike back at Hikaru through Ochi as a proxy.
It doesn’t take long for Ochi to figure out Akira’s ulterior motives, however, and he’s incensed at being so blatantly used — at least until Akira reconstructs a game he played with Hikaru to show the other boy just what he’s up against. (Except, of course, that Akira was really playing against Sai at the time, and not Hikaru proper — a plot device that the show continues to use judiciously to advance tension.) “If I beat Hikaru,” Ochi insists to Akira, “then recognize me as your rival!” If you’re worthy of being called the rival of someone of skill, that implies you too have skill — and the last thing Ochi wants is to be someone not even worth challenging.
Most of the disc is taken up with the clash between Hikaru and Waya, and it’s during this battle that Hikaru does something that pushes all of his skills up a notch. At one point Waya has him backed so far into a corner that there is literally only one possible move Hikaru can make that will turn the game around in his favor. But when you’re dealing with a board where over 300 moves are possible at any given time, how would you know which one was the right one? Even though Sai is right there, Hikaru refuses to fall back to him for an answer (and even if he did, I doubt Sai would have given it to him). Instead, he asks himself: What would Sai do here?, and to his amazement he gets an answer that works.
Last year Scientific American ran a piece named “The Expert Mind,” which talked about how prodigies in any field — chess, or go — come about. Experts or geniuses are made, not born, they asserted. The reason some people are better at things than others is because they have an affinity for doing the thing, and are happy just to be doing it, whether or not they succeed. They get that much more exposure to the subject by default, and learn what works in the laboratory of their own experience. When schooled into it by their parents, albeit in a positive way, they can fare even better.
This could scarcely serve as a better model for the show’s core drama. Akira prides himself on his mastery of the game and has his family’s reputation to uphold as masters of go — he was trained in the family way, and his expertise reflects that. Hikaru, however, plays the game because a) he’s come to genuinely enjoy it and b) whether or not he realizes it, the game — or, more precisely, the socialization with the people surrounding the game — is making him into a better person, which draws him back to it all the more. Here is something far more satisfying and real than anything else life has offered him so far, something that rewards him for playing over his head and honing his existing skills. By contrast, Akira’s narrowed his focus: he’s not interested in playing the game so much as he is interested in beating this cur who humiliated him. He no longer wants rivalry, but revenge.
When I first caught wind ofHikaru no Go back when it was an import-only title, I lamented that the vast majority of American audiences would probably never get a chance to see it. I’m glad Viz proved me wrong. I savor it for some of the same reasons I like Mushi-shi, even if it’s nowhere nearly as visionary as that show (but doesn’t need to be): a show with no violence, no mindless sleaze, no gratuitous distractions from the main subject, and that manages to be totally enthralling precisely because of all that.
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