I love watching anime & I have decided to add a couple of shows to my favorite anime list, Prince of Tennis (PoT) and Hikaru no Go (Hikago). I actually have already seen these series in the original Japanese, fansubbed, but I am enjoying them on my big screen at home. Even though I always prefer Japanese over the English dub, I will watch either. I'm not as picky about it as I was a few years ago.
Prince of Tennis is a shounen anime (anime that is specifically geared toward boys) that concentrates on a team of tennis players for the Seigaku School. I believe it is a middle school, but the Japanese school system is a little different, so I'm not sure. The main character is a tennis prodigy by the name of Echizen Ryoma (Ryoma being his given name since the surname is always first in Japanese). His father was as much of a prodigy as the son, so Ryoma continues to hone his talents by competing with his father.
What I find interesting about this show is that Ryoma isn't playing tennis because he *loves* it. His main motivation is to finally beat his father. He never expresses that verbally, but it is implied early on in the series. Of course, you can't help but notice that he enjoys his gift & will challenge anyone who thinks they are better than him.
The other characters each have their unique personality types that you can't help but love. The mysteriousness of the team captain, Tezuka, is what originally had me watching because I needed to know what secret he was keeping. However the other characters are equally entertaining & create a wonderful dynamic in order not to make a tennis show not too boring. It is a long series with over 150 episodes, so I am looking forward to watching all of it on DVD over the next few months/years.
Hikaru no Go is another shounen anime that features a boy names Hikaru that encounters a spirit in his grandfather's old Go board. Go is a board game, much along the same lines of chess in its complexity, but don't think the games are too similar. Go features small round game pieces that you strategically place on a gridded gameboard with the objective of capturing your opponents pieces. I bought a smaller version on eBay when I first started to watch the series, but I became too overwhelmed to learn more.
Hikago focuses on young Hikaru & his relationship with this spirit, Sai. Sai was a Go instructor centuries earlier for a Japanese royal court. He was disgraced when another Go instructor challenged him to a game & accused him of cheating, when in fact the challenger was the one who had framed Sai. Sai was so despondent over the shame that he committed suicide by drowning himself. Sai's spirit did live on because of his love for Go & his desire to play "God's Hand", the ultimate move in Go. Apparently this is an extremely rare event, but I cannot talk to it much since my knowledge of Go is very limited. Sai meets up with various people over the years that he is able to play through, but when he meets up with Hikaru, Sai discovers that Hikaru doesn't care about playing Go & finds Sai's presence an annoyance. It only takes a few episodes to determine that Sai finding Hikaru was more than just dumb luck, it was fate since Hikaru would find a talent for playing Go & would soon come to love it as much as Sai.
Hikaru immediately finds a nemesis, even though he doesn't know it at first, when he goes to a Go parlor & meets a child prodigy who possesses great skill in playing Go names Akira. Hikaru tells Akira he had never played Go before, but Akira has no idea that Sai is guiding Hikaru. Hikaru beats Akira & while the entire Go salon is astonished that Akira could be beaten, Akira is even more shocked & becomes obsessed with finding Hikaru & beating him.
Hikaru no Go is a great series with interesting characters who obtain some great dimension throughout the series. Additional supporting characters are added, but the way you can feel the emotions of the characters is what compelled me to keep watching -- well, that and the music. I'm an anime music junky, but that is a post for another time...
Anyway, I went ahead & presented the previews, much as they are on the blog. If you want to watch more you can either rent/buy the DVDs or go over to the toonami.com website & view the streaming episodes on Jetstream.
'til later...
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