hikaru no go
21 Jul 2006 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimorenerunning commentary kept up as i watched.
57:
hikaru's like, "oh my god! THIS wasn't how i wanted to meet akira's mom!"
i understand that it could cause more problems to tell people that sai is his teacher, but with the connections they are already making and the fact that it's actually the closest he can come to the truth, it seems that would be the best thing for him to tell them. he's at a critical moment here. i wonder if he will say something like that? or say that he plays with sai?
oh, but he was saved for the moment by the power of sai's playing and the impression it made on the meijin. but... here comes ogata (in his lame anime suit). is he going to get another clue? hikaru! hurry! leave!
wow. close. and akira has figured out they're in the same person! knowing what he does, that was inevitable, i think: because he played those first two games against hikaru and then sai re-enacted the second one on the internet.
meanwhile, ogata's vehemence about being allowed to play a match with hikaru is kind of adorable.
58:
kurata! i really love kurata.
i think in some ways the reason hikaru and sai get along so well is that sai is incredibly childish. i keep wondering why he doesn't talk more, and i think that's part of the reason. sai is very childish and somewhat selfish, and, well, he died in his thirties and at that time he was selfish and childish, so he couldn't really help that. and of course being that obsessed with go is kind of crazy. at the same time, part of the reason he doesn't talk to hikaru more about his worries is that he's mature enough to feel he should shield hikaru from them, but not mature enough to think that it might be better (or easier) for them both (or at least for hikaru) in the long run to tell him, after all - or that it could make them feel better to talk about it. as close as they are, it's funny that they don't talk more - but hikaru is very naive, just like sai is. he's more perceptive and tactful than sai gives him credit for, though.
59:
akira starts to ask the existential questions: "why did shindou appear before me and why does he chase after me? why do i chase after him?" oh, baby. well, he's fifteen. i suppose he'll understand soon.
although with the kami-sama and the ghost thing in this story, i think answers to the existential questions probably do exist - even if we aren't going to be given them.
and oh, sai, it's really sad, and i can even understand his childishness here. of course he feels that it's unfair. i wish he would tell hikaru what he's thinking though. if only hikaru - who really does see that something is wrong! occasionally! - would say something to him about it. aw, and then he made a gesture but hikaru refused to play after all. they're such BOYS. ;.;
60:
sai finally tells hikaru about his worries, and it doesn't even do any good! so much for my lofty plans. granted, he possibly could have told him in a better way, but still... hikaru is too immature to draw the suspicion he should from his observations of sai's strange behaviour when his feelings are hurt and he's inclined to a) look less charitably on sai's motives because of that and b) take sai for granted, since to him it must be like sai has always been there, almost.
i really thought he was going to learn to be less selfish by learning to love hikaru and be selfless through these arcs - oh. maybe i spoke too soon. it looks like he might learn that after all in the next few minutes. dammit, sai, apologise out loud to him!
OMG,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thefourthvine WASN'T KIDDING, ASHIWARA/OGATA *_____* man, i love ogata's voice - it reminds me of the guy who voices inui, but i don't think it actually is that guy - it's not as smooth.
i suppose i don't have much to say about the end of this ep except that it made me cry. i think the last movie or tv to do that was the return of the king, if you don't count scenes where people's dogs die.
[some eps pass that i don't have much to comment on except that i was quite impatient in some of the filler bits - the seagulls and things when hikaru is on innoshima. but i was too absorbed in the rest to say much.]
65:
it's the return of isumi/waya! there's a whole episode about them! and then isumi meets a child waya doppelganger who... lifts up his shirt to show isumi his belly-button? o.O; okay, this really isn't that subtle. isumi, don't worry. he'll wait for you forever ♥! oh, the baby is twelve? heh, isumi probably met waya when waya was about that age. i wonder if he has age issues. well, waya is sixteen now - maybe almost seventeen? so he really doesn't need to. hahahahha! "i don't need to be relaxing just because i met a small version of waya!" just seeing the lookalike made him subconsciously relax. man... ♥♥♥ now the baby waya's going to crush him, isn't he? and then baby waya laughed at him and said he sucked! isumi, what are you going to do?
ahahah, and now some random chinese dude is coming on to him - and his self confidence problems! come on, isumi! stop being so pathetic! fight!
67:
ahah, so now isumi took the chinese guy up on his offer. is this his wild youth? he's all naked now. this is kind of sweet. i want to compare it to some kind of other story but i can't put my finger on what it reminds me of. maybe one of those things where some older woman takes a young lover and teaches him the meaning of life (although isumi might be too serious to cheat on waya even in his head... he's got a touch of oishi about him, although he's not into mothering other people). i'm sensing now:
a) that zhao that isumi wanted to beat is le ping's isumi.
b) le ping is a super tensai even though he never studies. there's some kind of punchline behind all the sentences people start and don't finish about him.
":O i can learn how to control my emotions?" hahahahahah! what an idea! isn't 19 a little late to learn that?
ahahha, baby waya attached himself to isumi. ♥ will this give isumi the... something... he needs to finally make a move with waya, i wonder? :x
although i was apparently wrong about le ping, huh.
68:
mitani's getting older too. the drawing style is gradually changing in the anime too - that's good.
why do they all wear the same clothes all the time? waya, throw out that camouflage shirt already!
man, i hope we're not going to have another long flashback now... wouldn't it be unrealistic for hikaru to get over his grieving this fast? it must be like if a parent or older brother had gone missing and presumed dead. his depression is completely understandable.
at least hikaru doesn't always wear the same things. i'm glad he gets to wear long jeans and fairly normal shirts now. although the brilliant coral maybe wasn't the best choice. and i'm not sure if the deformed & badly drawn bits are getting more frequent. possibly i'm just noticing them more. at least the manga really does get even prettier as it goes along. but the anime didn't have to try to make up for that in ugliness. it's a pity, too, because it would be a lot more exciting to have hikaru and akira looking adult if they looked... human at the same time.
[more episodes i was in too much hurry to comment on]
73:
the last few episodes have felt rushed and a little sloppy in terms of plot development too. i hope that won't be true in the manga. since i have a lot of it left, i have hope that it won't be.
but the hikaru/akira is as good as i hoped. it's kind of sad that even i can tell when the translation isn't conveying the full sense of the japanese dialogue a lot of times. sad, i say, because i don't actually understand japanese. i probably wouldn't follow more than a tenth of what is going on without the subtitles, yet it's not infrequent that i notice a bad line. the problem isn't their japanese skills - they obviously understand the japanese - but their english skills. they lack the ability to find the best english expression for what they're trying to say. translating really is hard. it takes a lot of skills.
for instance, in this scene hikaru says "we can't start until we play!", which is kind of ambiguous. it should really say something more like "'us' can't start until we play each other", or maybe something like an "us" or our "us", to make it clear that that we is a thing that hikaru knows will be starting when they finally play each other. ♥♥ i wonder if the translation in the manga will make it clear. (that's one thing that both watching and reading has helped with - making up for sloppy translations in one place or the other.)
ashiwara is extremely cheerful, isn't he? what, did he just get laid? he sounds like sengoku. is that intonation (and the attitude the actor is affecting) or could it be the same voice? they draw him older than he is, but i think he should only be 22 now, from something they said in the flashback-to-akira&hikaru's-destined-first -meeting ep. i wonder how old ogata is. older, obviously.
74:
we learn that isumi called waya when he passed the pro exam. is he going to be ready to make a move soon? i think so! he wouldn't before the exam - he knows to put first things first.
so do hikaru and akira, obviously. their rapport in this episode is beautiful. and this time it's obvious that hikaru knows exactly what it means when touya walks by him without turning and looking. it's like he's looking out of the back of his head - it's not an insult, it's a challenge. well, a demand. "koi!" indeed. their little conversation before the match and during lunch - akira reciting the years and moths (two and four) since they've played each other. and he already understands so much about sai that there's little left for hikaru to tell him. well, of course, there are happy memories of sai - i'm sure hikaru will be able to share something of those eventually.
i'm so glad the manga has gotten so much more beautiful. hopefully it will make up for the continued sloppiness in this episode. akira was beautiful most of the time, as usual, but they even manage to deform him sometimes.
manga:
in the manga for the corresponding parts, issue 141 (which is around episode 70) contains the fateful confrontation when hikaru decides to play go again and rushes to the go institution to tell akira after his match. the scene is gorgeous. it's prettier in the manga because of being better drawn, but it was nice that it took longer to be over in the anime. ♥ and sadly, the voice bubbles and the text sometimes detract from my enjoyment. i wish they'd made the text smaller.
in the end although it's prettier the manga goes past the end of the anime without evening out about sai very much, so i somehow feel not completely satisfied. hikaru buying that fan in the gift shop was good, and of course in images like this, the pov isn't tight so we don't have to see everything that goes through hikaru's head. still, i'm still hoping for more. now the japan-china-korea under-18 tournament arc is starting i'm somewhat hopeful.
the extra about mitani was great. i love the clothes in manga, especially the cover of the mitani issue. also, mitani himself is just plain adorable through the whole thing. he really is a cute little kitten. i wish there'd been more of him in the plot proper. the nase one was nice too. she's hotter in the manga. and the kaga one was just kind of hilarious. i should probably ship kaga/tsutsui and give up on my dreams of pairing tsutsui with mitani. alas.
anyway, the last scene with akira and hikaru in the anime (where they fight at the go salon) was more wonderful and adorable than i could have hoped, and it wasn't as funny (lack of comic timing) in the manga, but it was still just as good because the art is so beautiful just to look at. their relationship continues now... and ah-hah! hikaru stops going to akira's salon. that must be when they start having their dates other places. ♥!
57:
hikaru's like, "oh my god! THIS wasn't how i wanted to meet akira's mom!"
i understand that it could cause more problems to tell people that sai is his teacher, but with the connections they are already making and the fact that it's actually the closest he can come to the truth, it seems that would be the best thing for him to tell them. he's at a critical moment here. i wonder if he will say something like that? or say that he plays with sai?
oh, but he was saved for the moment by the power of sai's playing and the impression it made on the meijin. but... here comes ogata (in his lame anime suit). is he going to get another clue? hikaru! hurry! leave!
wow. close. and akira has figured out they're in the same person! knowing what he does, that was inevitable, i think: because he played those first two games against hikaru and then sai re-enacted the second one on the internet.
meanwhile, ogata's vehemence about being allowed to play a match with hikaru is kind of adorable.
58:
kurata! i really love kurata.
i think in some ways the reason hikaru and sai get along so well is that sai is incredibly childish. i keep wondering why he doesn't talk more, and i think that's part of the reason. sai is very childish and somewhat selfish, and, well, he died in his thirties and at that time he was selfish and childish, so he couldn't really help that. and of course being that obsessed with go is kind of crazy. at the same time, part of the reason he doesn't talk to hikaru more about his worries is that he's mature enough to feel he should shield hikaru from them, but not mature enough to think that it might be better (or easier) for them both (or at least for hikaru) in the long run to tell him, after all - or that it could make them feel better to talk about it. as close as they are, it's funny that they don't talk more - but hikaru is very naive, just like sai is. he's more perceptive and tactful than sai gives him credit for, though.
59:
akira starts to ask the existential questions: "why did shindou appear before me and why does he chase after me? why do i chase after him?" oh, baby. well, he's fifteen. i suppose he'll understand soon.
although with the kami-sama and the ghost thing in this story, i think answers to the existential questions probably do exist - even if we aren't going to be given them.
and oh, sai, it's really sad, and i can even understand his childishness here. of course he feels that it's unfair. i wish he would tell hikaru what he's thinking though. if only hikaru - who really does see that something is wrong! occasionally! - would say something to him about it. aw, and then he made a gesture but hikaru refused to play after all. they're such BOYS. ;.;
60:
sai finally tells hikaru about his worries, and it doesn't even do any good! so much for my lofty plans. granted, he possibly could have told him in a better way, but still... hikaru is too immature to draw the suspicion he should from his observations of sai's strange behaviour when his feelings are hurt and he's inclined to a) look less charitably on sai's motives because of that and b) take sai for granted, since to him it must be like sai has always been there, almost.
i really thought he was going to learn to be less selfish by learning to love hikaru and be selfless through these arcs - oh. maybe i spoke too soon. it looks like he might learn that after all in the next few minutes. dammit, sai, apologise out loud to him!
OMG,
thefourthvine WASN'T KIDDING, ASHIWARA/OGATA *_____* man, i love ogata's voice - it reminds me of the guy who voices inui, but i don't think it actually is that guy - it's not as smooth.i suppose i don't have much to say about the end of this ep except that it made me cry. i think the last movie or tv to do that was the return of the king, if you don't count scenes where people's dogs die.
[some eps pass that i don't have much to comment on except that i was quite impatient in some of the filler bits - the seagulls and things when hikaru is on innoshima. but i was too absorbed in the rest to say much.]
65:
it's the return of isumi/waya! there's a whole episode about them! and then isumi meets a child waya doppelganger who... lifts up his shirt to show isumi his belly-button? o.O; okay, this really isn't that subtle. isumi, don't worry. he'll wait for you forever ♥! oh, the baby is twelve? heh, isumi probably met waya when waya was about that age. i wonder if he has age issues. well, waya is sixteen now - maybe almost seventeen? so he really doesn't need to. hahahahha! "i don't need to be relaxing just because i met a small version of waya!" just seeing the lookalike made him subconsciously relax. man... ♥♥♥ now the baby waya's going to crush him, isn't he? and then baby waya laughed at him and said he sucked! isumi, what are you going to do?
ahahah, and now some random chinese dude is coming on to him - and his self confidence problems! come on, isumi! stop being so pathetic! fight!
67:
ahah, so now isumi took the chinese guy up on his offer. is this his wild youth? he's all naked now. this is kind of sweet. i want to compare it to some kind of other story but i can't put my finger on what it reminds me of. maybe one of those things where some older woman takes a young lover and teaches him the meaning of life (although isumi might be too serious to cheat on waya even in his head... he's got a touch of oishi about him, although he's not into mothering other people). i'm sensing now:
a) that zhao that isumi wanted to beat is le ping's isumi.
b) le ping is a super tensai even though he never studies. there's some kind of punchline behind all the sentences people start and don't finish about him.
":O i can learn how to control my emotions?" hahahahahah! what an idea! isn't 19 a little late to learn that?
ahahha, baby waya attached himself to isumi. ♥ will this give isumi the... something... he needs to finally make a move with waya, i wonder? :x
although i was apparently wrong about le ping, huh.
68:
mitani's getting older too. the drawing style is gradually changing in the anime too - that's good.
why do they all wear the same clothes all the time? waya, throw out that camouflage shirt already!
man, i hope we're not going to have another long flashback now... wouldn't it be unrealistic for hikaru to get over his grieving this fast? it must be like if a parent or older brother had gone missing and presumed dead. his depression is completely understandable.
at least hikaru doesn't always wear the same things. i'm glad he gets to wear long jeans and fairly normal shirts now. although the brilliant coral maybe wasn't the best choice. and i'm not sure if the deformed & badly drawn bits are getting more frequent. possibly i'm just noticing them more. at least the manga really does get even prettier as it goes along. but the anime didn't have to try to make up for that in ugliness. it's a pity, too, because it would be a lot more exciting to have hikaru and akira looking adult if they looked... human at the same time.
[more episodes i was in too much hurry to comment on]
73:
the last few episodes have felt rushed and a little sloppy in terms of plot development too. i hope that won't be true in the manga. since i have a lot of it left, i have hope that it won't be.
but the hikaru/akira is as good as i hoped. it's kind of sad that even i can tell when the translation isn't conveying the full sense of the japanese dialogue a lot of times. sad, i say, because i don't actually understand japanese. i probably wouldn't follow more than a tenth of what is going on without the subtitles, yet it's not infrequent that i notice a bad line. the problem isn't their japanese skills - they obviously understand the japanese - but their english skills. they lack the ability to find the best english expression for what they're trying to say. translating really is hard. it takes a lot of skills.
for instance, in this scene hikaru says "we can't start until we play!", which is kind of ambiguous. it should really say something more like "'us' can't start until we play each other", or maybe something like an "us" or our "us", to make it clear that that we is a thing that hikaru knows will be starting when they finally play each other. ♥♥ i wonder if the translation in the manga will make it clear. (that's one thing that both watching and reading has helped with - making up for sloppy translations in one place or the other.)
ashiwara is extremely cheerful, isn't he? what, did he just get laid? he sounds like sengoku. is that intonation (and the attitude the actor is affecting) or could it be the same voice? they draw him older than he is, but i think he should only be 22 now, from something they said in the flashback-to-akira&hikaru's-destined-first -meeting ep. i wonder how old ogata is. older, obviously.
74:
we learn that isumi called waya when he passed the pro exam. is he going to be ready to make a move soon? i think so! he wouldn't before the exam - he knows to put first things first.
so do hikaru and akira, obviously. their rapport in this episode is beautiful. and this time it's obvious that hikaru knows exactly what it means when touya walks by him without turning and looking. it's like he's looking out of the back of his head - it's not an insult, it's a challenge. well, a demand. "koi!" indeed. their little conversation before the match and during lunch - akira reciting the years and moths (two and four) since they've played each other. and he already understands so much about sai that there's little left for hikaru to tell him. well, of course, there are happy memories of sai - i'm sure hikaru will be able to share something of those eventually.
i'm so glad the manga has gotten so much more beautiful. hopefully it will make up for the continued sloppiness in this episode. akira was beautiful most of the time, as usual, but they even manage to deform him sometimes.
manga:
in the manga for the corresponding parts, issue 141 (which is around episode 70) contains the fateful confrontation when hikaru decides to play go again and rushes to the go institution to tell akira after his match. the scene is gorgeous. it's prettier in the manga because of being better drawn, but it was nice that it took longer to be over in the anime. ♥ and sadly, the voice bubbles and the text sometimes detract from my enjoyment. i wish they'd made the text smaller.
in the end although it's prettier the manga goes past the end of the anime without evening out about sai very much, so i somehow feel not completely satisfied. hikaru buying that fan in the gift shop was good, and of course in images like this, the pov isn't tight so we don't have to see everything that goes through hikaru's head. still, i'm still hoping for more. now the japan-china-korea under-18 tournament arc is starting i'm somewhat hopeful.
the extra about mitani was great. i love the clothes in manga, especially the cover of the mitani issue. also, mitani himself is just plain adorable through the whole thing. he really is a cute little kitten. i wish there'd been more of him in the plot proper. the nase one was nice too. she's hotter in the manga. and the kaga one was just kind of hilarious. i should probably ship kaga/tsutsui and give up on my dreams of pairing tsutsui with mitani. alas.
anyway, the last scene with akira and hikaru in the anime (where they fight at the go salon) was more wonderful and adorable than i could have hoped, and it wasn't as funny (lack of comic timing) in the manga, but it was still just as good because the art is so beautiful just to look at. their relationship continues now... and ah-hah! hikaru stops going to akira's salon. that must be when they start having their dates other places. ♥!
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Date: 21 Jul 2006 09:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21 Jul 2006 09:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22 Jul 2006 10:31 am (UTC)