Hikaru no Go Returns Next Summer with a Live-action Web Drama in China

It has been around 15 years since the Go-themed series, “Hikaru no Go” reached its end. Now, it’s been announced that coming in 2019, a live-action web drama adaptation of the series is to be released.

Back in June 2017, the Chinese streaming service iQIYI acquired the right to adapt the internationally popular series. With the announcement of the live-action adaptation, it’s been confirmed that Chang Liu would be acting as the director while Houhai Culture would take charge of the production.

“Hikaru no Go” first made its debut as a manga series written by Yumi Hotta and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. It was serialized from 1998 to 2003 in Weekly Shōnen Jump and had a total of 23 tankōbon volumes collected by Shueisha. A special feature of the manga was that the production of the series’ Go games was supervised by Go professional Yukari Umezawa.

By 2000, the manga had reached over 25 million copies in circulation and won the Shogakukan Manga Award. The series is best known for popularizing Go among the youth of Japan since its debut and is considered by Go players everywhere to have sparked worldwide interest in the game.

The anime adaptation series was premiered in 2001 and had its production done by Studio Pierrot. The series ran from October 10, 2001, to March 26, 2003, and had a total of 75 episodes released. On January 3, 2004, though, a New Year’s special was released.

More than the anime and manga, the series also had three Go themed video games for the Game Boy Advanced released with the third game also released for the Game Cube. Other than this, characters Hikaru and Sai had appeared as support characters in the Weekly Shōnen Jump crossover game Jump Super Stars.

The story of the series takes focus on a 12-year-old boy named Hikaru Shindo who ends up discovering an old Go board. He had been looking for anything to sell from his Grandfather’s things and instead encounters a ghostly apparition from the board. The spirit introduces himself as Sai Fujiwara, a man who was a Go instructor to the emperor of Japan a thousand years ago.

Due to an occurrence of bad sportsmanship during a game, Sai ends up accused of cheating and is summarily banished. Left with nothing and having lost his will to live, Sai had committed suicide. For the past years, he has haunted the Go board in hopes of accomplishing the perfect Go game, called the “Hand of God” which he hopes to do through Hikaru. Now the choice lies with the boy on what to do next.

Source: Crunchyroll News