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At Manga Edge you can find the best Manga cartoons online.. You gotta have it too?! Well, you came to the right place. Enjoy! Hikaru no Go, sometimes known as HnG, is a Japanese manga series, a coming of age story based on the board game Go. Hikaru no Go is written by manganka (cartoonist) Yumi Hotta and illustrated by manganka Takeshi Obata with an anime adaptation. The production of the series' Go games was supervised by Go professional Yukari Umezawa (5-dan). Hikaru no Go is greatly responsible for spreading the game of Go amongs the youth of Japan since its debut, and in other countries as well including mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea. In recent times the game of Go has even gained much popularity in the United States.

The board game of Go is well known in eastern Asia for being rich in strategic complexity despite its having simple rules. The game of Go originated in ancient China, where it has been played for more than 2,500 years, and gradually spread to nearby areas. The game of Go is played by two players who alternately place black and white stones (playing pieces, typically made of glass or plastic) on the empty intersections of a grid of 19×19 lines. The object of the game is to control a larger portion of the board than the opponent. A stone or a group of stones is captured and removed if it has no empty adjacent intersections, the result of being completely surrounded by stones of the opposing color. Hikaru no Go helped to revive this great ancient board game among the contemporary youth and adults as well.

First released in Japan in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1998, Hikaru no Go claimed great success, creating a popular Go trend on an unprecedented scope. In fact, Hikaru no Go received the Shogakukan Manga Award in 2000 and the creators received Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2003 for the series. These are considered prestigious awards in the Japanese manga industry.

Twenty-three volumes of manga were published in Japan, compiling 189 chapters plus 11 "omake" (additional chapters). The anime series, which was created by Studio Pierrot, ran for 75 30 minute episodes from 2001 to 2003 on TV Tokyo, along with the 77-minute extra New Year's Special that aired in January 2004.

In January 2004, Hikaru no Go made its debut in the United States in the English language periodical Shonen Jump published by the American company VIZ, now known as VIZ Media. In 2005 VIZ Media announced it has the license to the anime. Hikaru no Go Volume 1 DVD was released on December 27, 2005. A Hikaru no Go "Sneak Preview" DVD (first episode) was released in the January 2006 issue of Shonen Jump (Volume 4, Issue 1) to subscribers. Hikaru no Go airs on ImaginAsian TV in the United States. It premiered on the online streaming service Toonami Jetstream on July 14, 2006. In the April 2008 issue of Shonen Jump, it was revealed that it was the last chapter to be published in the Shonen Jump magazine. However, the series was not cancelled, it is just going to be finished out in Shonen Jump graphic novels. Shonen Jump has mentioned that since Hikaru no Go will not be featured in the magazine anymore, the manga volumes will be arriving faster in bookstores.

So let’s explore the unique storyline of Hikaru no Go. While checking out his grandfather's shed, Hikaru discovers a Go board haunted by the spirit of Fujiwara-no-Sai, a fictional Go player from the Heian era. Sai wishes to play Go again, something he hasn’t been able to do since the late Edo period, when his ghost appeared to Honinbo Shusaku, an actual Go player of that period. Sai's greatest desire is to attain the "Divine Move", or the "Hand of God" – a perfect game. Because Hikaru is apparently the only person who can perceive him, Sai inhabits a part of Hikaru's mind as a separate personality, coexisting, although sometimes disturbing, with the child.

Encouraged by Sai, Hikaru begins playing Go despite at first lacking interest in the game. He begins by mimicking the moves Sai dictates to him, but Sai tells him to try to understand each move and really think. In a Go salon, Hikaru defeats Akira Toya twice, a boy his age who plays Go at professional level. Hikaru becomes easily victorious by following Sai's instruction. The stunned Akira subsequently begins a quest to figure out the source of Hikaru's strength, an obsession which will come to dominate Akira’s life.
Hikaru becomes interested by the great dedication of Akira and Sai to the game and then decides to start playing on his own. Hikaru is a complete novice at first, but has some unique abilities to his advantage. For example, once he has a basic understanding of Go, he can reconstruct a game play by play from memory. Through training at Go clubs, study groups, and practice games with Sai, Hikaru manages to become an insei and later a pro, encountering various dedicated Go players of different ages and styles along the way. While Hikaru is at this point not yet up to the level of Akira, he demonstrates a natural talent for the game of Go and is determined to show his own abilities to Akira, Sai, and to himself.