Hikaru no Go

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Hikaru no Go (ヒカルの碁) is a popular Japanese anime and manga coming of age story based on the board game Go written by Yumi Hotta and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. The production was supervised by Yukari Umezawa (5-dan). The manga is largely responsible for popularizing Go among the youth of Japan in recent years, and in other areas such as China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea.

First released in Japan in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1998, Hikaru no Go has achieved tremendous success, spawning a popular Go fad of almost unprecedented proportions. Twenty-three volumes of manga were published in Japan, comprising 189 chapters plus 11 "omake" (extra chapters). The anime series, which was created by Studio Pierrot, ran for 75 half hour episodes from 2001 to 2003 on TV Tokyo, along with extra New Year's Specials in January 2003 and January 2004.

In January 2004, the manga series debuted in the United States in the English language periodical Shonen Jump published by VIZ, now VIZ Media. In 2005 it was announced that VIZ Media also 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.

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