Review: "Hikaru no Go" (anime)
Feb. 11th, 2023 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_los- Hikaru: Wow, they have players in Korea? Who knew.
Korean Japanese Go Club:
- I cannot believe that the audience knows the show’s Korean and Chinese characters aren’t Japanese because they’re drawn with realistic Asian eyes rather than anime eyes: they’re not ethnically Anime.
- Someone also told me about ‘Chinese eyebrows’ in anime, which is odd to me because if you said ‘what features do you associate with Chinese guys?’, large eyebrows would be perhaps eleven millionth on any such list (which I would avoid making, because it feels awkward). I guess maybe? Compared to Japan? Honestly, I have no idea. It’s odd because it’s also something you’d say about Eastern European-descended people, but honestly, that’s a fair cop, guv. I do host two facial caterpillars, that is true.
- ‘At last Japan will be able to compete with the world! We could make a comeback!’ This again? The cdrama version was also hung up on Korea (and Japan). Every country thinks Korea is cooler than them, I guess (or at least better at Go in the 1990s). Though why is there still a ‘sexy dangerous Korea!’ episode in this version when Yu Liang didn’t even used to fuck this guy, because he’s twelve now?
- Korean boy: WE ARE RIVALS NOW, HIKARU!!
Hikaru: Oooh Um. See. I already HAVE a—
- Imagine Akira’s reaction to being rival!cheated on. It wouldn’t be pretty.
- The bratty rich insei kid is more successfully loathsome in the cdrama, in part because he’s older. In the anime I’m like, ‘stop glinting at me with your glasses, you’re all of nine. Do you think you’re Gendo Ikari? No. He needs a mythical Catholic apocalypse. You need a juice box and a nap.’
- Omg who gets to be Akira’s rival?? ❤️
- The rule about not playing in highschool tournaments as an insei should not technically specify that you can’t play in them as a pro. Fully Realised!Hikaru should still come back and fuck about with highschool tournaments, because it would be funny.
- Tfw your dad embarrasses you by asking to play your rival.
- There’s a sequence where one of the Chinese players (the professional scene here is depicted totally differently than it is in the cdrama version, by the by) is futzing about with his computer, and suggests that the Divine Move will be played by a machine. I was surprised that HnG was so cheery about the prospect of ‘breaking’ Go. To me, watching in an era after the game’s been solved, that’s deeply depressing rather than a moment of futuristic tech optimism. What does the Divine Move mean if it’s computer generated? It feels like saying ‘maybe the computer could cultivate to immortality for me!’ Well it wouldn’t be you doing it then, so would you reap any benefit? There are things you can’t outsource. Isn’t the divine move a lived experience and philosophical contemplation? Isn’t the point of this doing it oneself? (I think this aspect of it is more stressed in the cdrama than in the anime, to be fair.)
If the computer played the perfect move and you sought to understand it, it would still be a consciousness seeking and understanding that would be valuable. The move itself would now be fairly pointless. It would be like if sticks fell from a tree and the alignment of the branches on the ground formed a word. That wouldn’t be a particularly meaningful literary act, on the tree’s part (though arguably the gardener who planted it might have somehow engineered this). It’s hard to conceptualise what an AI-generated divine move would even look like, as well—Helena suggested it could be akin to a computer writing ‘the perfect book’, but how could any one book be the perfect book?
Helena also mentioned that some pros quit after Alphago solved the game (though some were apparently energised or excited). Honestly in their position I’d seriously consider killing myself. At the very least, it would take a lot of reckoning with and I’d probably feel a need to change careers. I understand that for connoisseurs a game can be beautiful, which makes it into an art-act or tradition practice, which would have a kind of value. (Helena observed that people also used to use Go to tell fortunes.) I can see the role of a professional in actively teaching others to have more broadly enriching experiences with the game by playing it better. I can also see wanting to achieve greater personal proficiency as a hobbyist.
But as far as professionally playing itself goes, it’s like if I were a librarian and like the computer could just suddenly do card cataloguing better than me. I wouldn’t want to do card cataloguing professionally anymore (it already bugs me that my job should mostly done by a computer, but I’m cheaper). Helena pointed out that most pro players already aren’t top tournament winners, but in a pre Alpha-go environment you’d be meaningfully contributing to that winnowing process. Now the winnowing is valueless, because the winner is always already Alphago. You’re just fighting to determine the best meat-based runner-up. Theoretically a human could invent a wildly divergent play style which computers trained on iteration couldn’t immediately beat, but even in that case, well done, you’ve bought a year. In essence, the show deals very breezily with something immensely upsetting that undermines the very core of what they’re all doing here (especially in this version of the story, which is perhaps more about victory and technical proficiency as such).
Maybe if you’re a person who likes professional sports, this makes more sense to you?
- The dub link broke and I had to listen to the sub for one (1) episode. It was the worst. (Whatever format I start watching a show in is Correct, all others are blasphemy. I would sooner stop watching than put up with the BNHA dub.) Japanese Hikaru sounds like a little girl. Helena reminded me that most young men in anime are (were?) voiced by women, but I’m usually not quite so blatantly confronted with the trousers-roleness of it all.
- Here at the end of the story, Akira is stropping about to classical music. I emotionally need him to trip over a shoelace.
- There should be fic wherein having talked to a ghost constantly for years has made Hikaru a ying-magnet, just an open door for ghosts and related problems.
- There should also be fit wherein Yu Liang (aka Akira) believes that Shi Guang (aka Hikaru) is doing the anal bead cheating trick of chess scandal fame, when in fact the cheating he’s doing is actually way weirder. Helena thinks that having Chu Ying (aka Sai) in your head is definitely cheating, but “I guess according to what's his face, cheating when you're 16 doesn't count.” Helena also notes that the way Alphago plays is noticeably non-human, but suggests that Sai could be Alphago, sent back in time: the plot thickens, and deepens.
- “Qi Hun” is one of my favourite cdramas; I think it holds up to multiple viewings and can easily imagine showing it to my kids one day. I wish I could find a dvd of it with subs so that my continued ability to access it wouldn’t be at the mercy of streaming platforms. It was my first exposure to the HnG story, and my preference for it over the anime comes from both this and the ability this later iteration of the text has, by virtue of both its medium and the very fact of being a remake, to do different things—to come back and revise this popular story, to add depth to some characters and relationships established by the original. It’s an adaptational treatment I think could be valuably executed elsewhere, a way to capitalise on nostalgia and the popularity of existing IP in a fashion that’s respectful and worth doing in its own right rather than thin and cheap. There are definitely elements of this earlier version that worked differently and were engaging on account of its being an anime, as well. Helena prefers this Akira’s laser-focus on his rival, where I enjoy this cartoonier Kurata.
And of course, this is the only version where Chu Ying’s costume makes any fucking sense.
Korean Japanese Go Club:
- I cannot believe that the audience knows the show’s Korean and Chinese characters aren’t Japanese because they’re drawn with realistic Asian eyes rather than anime eyes: they’re not ethnically Anime.
- Someone also told me about ‘Chinese eyebrows’ in anime, which is odd to me because if you said ‘what features do you associate with Chinese guys?’, large eyebrows would be perhaps eleven millionth on any such list (which I would avoid making, because it feels awkward). I guess maybe? Compared to Japan? Honestly, I have no idea. It’s odd because it’s also something you’d say about Eastern European-descended people, but honestly, that’s a fair cop, guv. I do host two facial caterpillars, that is true.
- ‘At last Japan will be able to compete with the world! We could make a comeback!’ This again? The cdrama version was also hung up on Korea (and Japan). Every country thinks Korea is cooler than them, I guess (or at least better at Go in the 1990s). Though why is there still a ‘sexy dangerous Korea!’ episode in this version when Yu Liang didn’t even used to fuck this guy, because he’s twelve now?
- Korean boy: WE ARE RIVALS NOW, HIKARU!!
Hikaru: Oooh Um. See. I already HAVE a—
- Imagine Akira’s reaction to being rival!cheated on. It wouldn’t be pretty.
- The bratty rich insei kid is more successfully loathsome in the cdrama, in part because he’s older. In the anime I’m like, ‘stop glinting at me with your glasses, you’re all of nine. Do you think you’re Gendo Ikari? No. He needs a mythical Catholic apocalypse. You need a juice box and a nap.’
- Omg who gets to be Akira’s rival?? ❤️
- The rule about not playing in highschool tournaments as an insei should not technically specify that you can’t play in them as a pro. Fully Realised!Hikaru should still come back and fuck about with highschool tournaments, because it would be funny.
- Tfw your dad embarrasses you by asking to play your rival.
- There’s a sequence where one of the Chinese players (the professional scene here is depicted totally differently than it is in the cdrama version, by the by) is futzing about with his computer, and suggests that the Divine Move will be played by a machine. I was surprised that HnG was so cheery about the prospect of ‘breaking’ Go. To me, watching in an era after the game’s been solved, that’s deeply depressing rather than a moment of futuristic tech optimism. What does the Divine Move mean if it’s computer generated? It feels like saying ‘maybe the computer could cultivate to immortality for me!’ Well it wouldn’t be you doing it then, so would you reap any benefit? There are things you can’t outsource. Isn’t the divine move a lived experience and philosophical contemplation? Isn’t the point of this doing it oneself? (I think this aspect of it is more stressed in the cdrama than in the anime, to be fair.)
If the computer played the perfect move and you sought to understand it, it would still be a consciousness seeking and understanding that would be valuable. The move itself would now be fairly pointless. It would be like if sticks fell from a tree and the alignment of the branches on the ground formed a word. That wouldn’t be a particularly meaningful literary act, on the tree’s part (though arguably the gardener who planted it might have somehow engineered this). It’s hard to conceptualise what an AI-generated divine move would even look like, as well—Helena suggested it could be akin to a computer writing ‘the perfect book’, but how could any one book be the perfect book?
Helena also mentioned that some pros quit after Alphago solved the game (though some were apparently energised or excited). Honestly in their position I’d seriously consider killing myself. At the very least, it would take a lot of reckoning with and I’d probably feel a need to change careers. I understand that for connoisseurs a game can be beautiful, which makes it into an art-act or tradition practice, which would have a kind of value. (Helena observed that people also used to use Go to tell fortunes.) I can see the role of a professional in actively teaching others to have more broadly enriching experiences with the game by playing it better. I can also see wanting to achieve greater personal proficiency as a hobbyist.
But as far as professionally playing itself goes, it’s like if I were a librarian and like the computer could just suddenly do card cataloguing better than me. I wouldn’t want to do card cataloguing professionally anymore (it already bugs me that my job should mostly done by a computer, but I’m cheaper). Helena pointed out that most pro players already aren’t top tournament winners, but in a pre Alpha-go environment you’d be meaningfully contributing to that winnowing process. Now the winnowing is valueless, because the winner is always already Alphago. You’re just fighting to determine the best meat-based runner-up. Theoretically a human could invent a wildly divergent play style which computers trained on iteration couldn’t immediately beat, but even in that case, well done, you’ve bought a year. In essence, the show deals very breezily with something immensely upsetting that undermines the very core of what they’re all doing here (especially in this version of the story, which is perhaps more about victory and technical proficiency as such).
Maybe if you’re a person who likes professional sports, this makes more sense to you?
- The dub link broke and I had to listen to the sub for one (1) episode. It was the worst. (Whatever format I start watching a show in is Correct, all others are blasphemy. I would sooner stop watching than put up with the BNHA dub.) Japanese Hikaru sounds like a little girl. Helena reminded me that most young men in anime are (were?) voiced by women, but I’m usually not quite so blatantly confronted with the trousers-roleness of it all.
- Here at the end of the story, Akira is stropping about to classical music. I emotionally need him to trip over a shoelace.
- There should be fic wherein having talked to a ghost constantly for years has made Hikaru a ying-magnet, just an open door for ghosts and related problems.
- There should also be fit wherein Yu Liang (aka Akira) believes that Shi Guang (aka Hikaru) is doing the anal bead cheating trick of chess scandal fame, when in fact the cheating he’s doing is actually way weirder. Helena thinks that having Chu Ying (aka Sai) in your head is definitely cheating, but “I guess according to what's his face, cheating when you're 16 doesn't count.” Helena also notes that the way Alphago plays is noticeably non-human, but suggests that Sai could be Alphago, sent back in time: the plot thickens, and deepens.
- “Qi Hun” is one of my favourite cdramas; I think it holds up to multiple viewings and can easily imagine showing it to my kids one day. I wish I could find a dvd of it with subs so that my continued ability to access it wouldn’t be at the mercy of streaming platforms. It was my first exposure to the HnG story, and my preference for it over the anime comes from both this and the ability this later iteration of the text has, by virtue of both its medium and the very fact of being a remake, to do different things—to come back and revise this popular story, to add depth to some characters and relationships established by the original. It’s an adaptational treatment I think could be valuably executed elsewhere, a way to capitalise on nostalgia and the popularity of existing IP in a fashion that’s respectful and worth doing in its own right rather than thin and cheap. There are definitely elements of this earlier version that worked differently and were engaging on account of its being an anime, as well. Helena prefers this Akira’s laser-focus on his rival, where I enjoy this cartoonier Kurata.
And of course, this is the only version where Chu Ying’s costume makes any fucking sense.
