Hikaru no Go (ヒカルの碁, lit. Hikaru's Go) is a Japanese manga series based on the board game Go, written by Yumi Hotta and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. The production of the series' Go games was supervised by Go professional Yukari Umezawa. It was serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1998 to 2003, with its chapters collected into 23 tankōbon volumes. The story follows Hikaru, who discovers a Go board in his grandfather's attic one day. The object turns out to be haunted by a ghost named Sai, the emperor's former Go teacher in the Heian era. Sai finds himself trapped in Hikaru's mind and tells him which moves to play against opponents, astonishing onlookers with the boy's apparent level of skill at the game. It was adapted into an anime television series by Studio Pierrot, which ran for 75 episodes from 2001 to 2003 on TV Tokyo, with a New Year's Special aired in January 2004. Viz Media released both the manga and anime in North America; they serialized the manga in Shonen Jump, released its collected volumes in entirety, and the anime aired simultaneously on ImaginAsian. Hikaru no Go has been well-received. The manga has had over 25 million copies in circulation, making it one of the best-selling manga series. It won the 45th Shogakukan Manga Award in 2000 and the 7th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2003. It is largely responsible for popularizing Go among the youth of Japan since its debut, and considered by Go players everywhere to have sparked worldwide interest in the game, noticeably increasing the Go-playing population around the globe. Source: Wikipedia (en)