Hikaru learns that he's going to be taking part in the Oteai, the rank promotion tournament, and his first opponent is Akira. Unfortunately, Akira has to forfeit - his dad, the Meijin, had a heart attack. Toya Meijin recovers enough to win his last match against Ogata. Then he keeps a promise to Hikaru to play against Sai online, even though he believes that Sai's decision to only play online is cowardly (he has no idea Sai is a ghost). Toya Meijin takes this match seriously and declares to Hikaru that, if Sai wins, he will retire.

Now that I make sure to record translators, I end up taking a closer look at the folks involved in creating manga, and one of the things I was pleased to discover was the Viz took this series seriously enough to hire a Go consultant, Janice Kim (3 Dan), for their English translation. Nice job, Viz!

It's weird going back to this series after so long. There are even more adult (middle-aged and older) characters than I remembered. In this volume, their faces occasionally looked a bit odd to me. Obata might have just been a bit off, because every volume after this looked fine. The artwork at the beginning of Sai and the Meijin's match was gorgeous.

I wasn't sure how I'd do, jumping into the middle of this series after a 10-year break, but I got swept up by Sai and the Meijin's match pretty quickly. It was fun seeing all the other Go players all over the world get excited about Sai and Toya Meijin's online match (getting up early, in some cases), not even knowing what the stakes were.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )