Hikaru no Go

Hikaru no Go is a drama with a primary theme of passion for the game of Go. However it goes beyond your regular sports based story and explores important slice-of-life themes such as friendship, perseverance, teacher-student relationship, hardships faced while trying to achieve your dream, bi-directional family support (between children and parents) and many others.

Strengths of this drama:

• Fantastic screenplay (pulls you in from the first episode and keeps you engaged throughout its runtime)
• Enlightening short story arcs in the middle of the drama (drifting painter, temple monks)
• One of the best child actors i have ever seen (the kid who played ML was so charismatic)
• Support characters add such great depth to the story and each one contributes something significant to the main lead's journey
• Great bromance between the main leads (true to adage 'bringing out the best in each other')
• Peppy and 80s/90s nostalgic music is a bonus as well

It's a pity not many people know about this drama. It certainly gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling. You may not love it as much as I did but it definitely deserves a watch from anyone who is looking for something sweet and fulfilling.

A very interesting story on the journey of a teenager to become professional Go players. Passion, practice and experience, friendship and learning how to solve your problem. There are many ups and downs in the struggle. Strong acting and chemistry! Many sweet moment too.

Definitely not regret watching it. The emotions content is very rich and the characters development are also well introduced throughout the series. At first, i am thinking of the drama would be not interesting as many viewers claimed, but upon trying to watch a few episode, immediately you will like to finish it due to the good development of storyline in this drama. The acting of the characters are also very good which i did not expect from a Chinese film production which rarely I would usually watch it. You would also able to feel the flow and individual characters development and the uniqueness of each inside the drama. Apart from that, the series has also well introduced the realistic of the world that has stopped us from going after the things or dreams we like in real life. This drama has definitely brought many of us some awareness whether the things we like are worth to be sacrificed in this realistic society. Overall i would say it is definitely worth to watch and not as bad as others claimed.

Okay, the acting was not great, the script not great, the plot hackneyed. The characters irritating. What's to like, not much. But I ended up binge watching this in about 2+ days. I still can't figure out why. I think it failed a many levels I mentioned, but it remained addictive. Surprise yourself and watch this. Two guys and a ghost take a walk through life and make each other much better. This series will not win awards, but once you get through a couple of episodes it like popcorn, just a few more, then a few more, then ... . The growth in the characters was not surprising, but well done. I still am trying to figure out why I liked this series, but in the meantime you should give it a try and judge for yourself.