This is the series' "short story" volume. It's an anthology composed of shorts focused on particular characters.

"Akira Toya" takes place just before Akira first met Hikaru and shows his loneliness at not having kids his own age to properly play Go against. He plays against a kid who has a high opinion of his own skills only to utterly crush him.

"Tetsuo Kaga" takes place after all the original Go club members have left. Kaga, the kid who was good at both Go and Shogi, goes back to his junior high and is accidentally mistaken for Tsutsui, a misunderstanding that he uses to gather up new members for the school's nearly dead Go club.

In "Asumi Nase,"Asumi considers quitting being an insei and skips out on Go in order to go on a date. They end up at a sketchy Go salon, where her obvious skill and comfort in that atmosphere end up scaring off her date.

"Yuki Mitani" takes place at some point in the past (I remember him less than Kaga, which is a bit sad considering I think Mitani was around more). Mitani cheats at Go for cash but isn't as slick about it as he thinks he is.

"Atsushi Kurata" takes place prior to Kurata becoming interested in Go. When he was a student, Kurata used to collect horse-racing data and guess winning horses, becoming increasingly good at it, although he never placed any bets.

The final story in the volume is "Fujiwara-no-Sai," which obviously takes place in the past. Hikaru and Sai play a game of Go in order to win back a prized Keicho vase that has a "floating" flowers optical illusion when you fill it with water.

This was okay, I guess. The best stories were Sai's and Asumi's - they felt the most complete. Sai's gave me a little Sai fix. It was lovely to see him again, and Hotta basically made him go through his full range of emotions in a single story - adorably earnest, goofy, serious, and a bit nostalgic about the past. Asumi's story made me wish the series focused on its female Go players a little more. It was nice seeing her actively choose Go over a "normal" life (although, granted, the guy she was out on a date with wasn't exactly a winner).

Kurata's story was nice, too, I suppose, a glimpse of what he was like before he got into Go. I just didn't find it to be as interesting as Sai and Asumi's stories. Most of the other stories, unfortunately, felt more like outtakes from the original series than complete stories in their own right. Mitani's was particularly annoying, since it ended just before the game that was supposed to teach him a lesson about his behavior up to that point.

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

This one takes a break from the main narrative with six stand-alone stories. They're fun, and fill in some more of the series' background.

(One minor annoyance: in between the chapters, we get Yumi Hotta's interview of Takeshi Obata from a different book, an illustration collection. Getting Obata Sensei's feelings about pictures we can't see (with page numbers, even) seems pointless, if not mildly frustrating.) ( )

Entertaining, but disappointing at the same time. Encountering the occasional filler is fine from time to time. But to have one for an entire volume, immediately after the end of the main arc, feels excessive. It's as if these are the stories that the author liked and had laying around, but was only able to publish them now since there was no real story left to continue. The last volume was bittersweet as well, since it involved a flashback to when Sai was still around. ( )

Interludio. ( )