On Thursday, May 8, 2003, at 07:25  PM, Aishuu Shadowweaver wrote:

Toriyama High School was
not a Go school, but being able to claim me as a
student was a coup for them.

Ha ha ha. How could I refrain from responding to this?

It's great to see some Hikaru no Go on the FFML. There sure isn't much 
good HikaGo fanfiction out there. Perhaps that's because Go is not your 
typical exciting manga topic, and it's mostly Hotta's amazing gift for 
storytelling that makes Hikaru no Go itself such a great series. It's a 
very hard act to follow.

As far as your story goes, I've got a few minor comments and one major 
one.

The mechanics of the writing seemed fine; nothing jumped out at me, 
though the last half had missing quotation marks, in my email viewer. 
The prose was smooth and the dialogue flowed well enough.

The timing of events seems off. This can take place only a few months 
after the end of the manga, if Touya Akira is just entering high 
school. Yet you have Hikaru beating Akira already? He never did beat 
him in any official game in the manga, and it seemed like he never beat 
him in practice either. You also have Hikaru challenging for a title? 
You mean Kisei rather than Kiseki, right? Or am I confused... Anyway, I 
don't think there's enough time at all for Hikaru to realistically 
challenge for a title; even if he wins every single game after the 
Hokuto cup, title tournaments last all year long and he wasn't even in 
the league for any of them.

Well, as I really only have thoroughly read up to the end of vol. 19, 
and have only read summaries past that, and I'm also not really a Go 
fan (just a Hikaru no Go fan), I could have some things wrong, so take 
that into consideration.

The major issue I had with the story is Akira's personality. He has 
never struck me as someone who would be shy about being a Go pro. The 
only person he ever seems to be nervous around is Hikaru, and that's 
mostly gone after volume 17. At Kaio his reputation preceded him and 
everyone knew who he was. I'd think it would likely be the same at his 
new school. Well, granted that the Kaio people we saw were mostly the 
Go club people, but even at Haze, random people knew that Hikaru was a 
Go pro. Anyway, I'd think Akira's teachers would know ahead of time 
about his schedule conflicts, etc. Though you do make a case with the 
principal not being a Go fan... Anyway, even if the teachers and 
students didn't know ahead of time, I still think Akira would be very 
straightforward about it. I can't see him blushing or wishing to 
conceal it. Go is his life.

The overall tone of this chapter was pretty serious. Was that 
intentional? The title of the story suggests humor, but there wasn't 
any in the first chapter. If the story's intended to be humorous it's 
easier to accept non-canonical actions and personalities, but so far 
it's not exactly working for me. It does seem though that you should be 
able to address these issues through revision, but it wouldn't exactly 
be minor.

Anyway, good luck with the fic.

Now, if someone would just write the natural fanfic outgrowth from vol. 
15 page 179, THAT could be a great story. Well, tons of different 
directions that idea could go... >_>

Anyway I'm sure you have a good idea with this fic, and it sounds like 
something that could be a lot of fun, but the fun isn't there so far.

Peter


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