Paperback, 194 pages
English language
Published Jan. 6, 2008 by Viz Media.
"Hikaru's classmate Ochi has won enough games to guarantee his place among the top three players who will pass the pro test. Hikaru, on the other hand, still needs to win more games, and he'll soon face his friend Waya and Ochi himself, who has been preparing for their match with Akira's help! When the dust clears, who will be left standing?"--P. [4] of cover.
Nice tension up until the very end - that felt pretty rushed.
We finally start wondering what will happen to Sai!
A particularly enjoyable volume in a very enjoyable series. It may seem small to some, but I really appreciated how luck and nerve were brought to the forefront. Considering how skilled the vast majority of these characters are, even Hikaru at this point, it's so Incredibly true that a lot of all this tension will really just boil down to complete chance! And yet it would still be oh so easy to play it up as pure genius on any given character's part - because that's what we (over here in north America anyway) do. We put so much pressure on ourselves to succeed when really a majority of it isn't even up to us.
And I'm not taking this personally at all lol.
Are they really ever going to guess what's really going on though? Really?
