Hikaru no Go: review

I've finished watching all of Hikaru no Go.  I can see why people would enjoy it, though not being Japanese myself, it's hard to actually get myself involved in something so foreign to American life.  If I change the premise to being Chess though, I can understand it clearly  enough.  I'm going to see if I can find the manga that handles a part of the story that the anime doesn't cover.  All in all, this is certainly a quality anime, but it lacks any explicit action.  To fully appreciate it, you need to be a Go player yourself.  I'm not really that, but as someone who appreciates gaming in general, I can certainly appreciate the spirit even if I don't see exactly what's going on in their minds.  Anything less than that, you'll probably find it uninteresting.  Yes, this actually is an anime about Go.  No, they do not artificially inflate the action similar to Yu-Gi-Oh.
The basic premise is that, while rummaging through his grandfather's old things for something to sell, Hikaru finds an old Go board that he just can't clean of a blood stain.  This gets the attention of the ghost who inhabits the board, Fujisawa no Sai.  He was a Go mentor to the emperor many years ago and had great skill at the game.  He played against another mentor for the right to be the sole teacher to the emperor, and ended up losing due to his opponent cheating.  He had no other way to make a living and killed himself soon afterward.  Later, he inhabited the man we know today as Hon'inbo Shusaku, considered the greatest Go player in the world, and now he follows this young boy Hikaru.
I can see several story arcs going through this series.  Of course there's the initial introduction of the setting.  Hikaru, a total rookie at the game, upsets another boy Akira Toya in a match.  Toya, who is working to become a professional player, is unable to handle losing to someone like Hikaru, and thus starts the single thread that goes throughout the series.  Of course, Sai was playing through Hikaru, a fact that leads to a somewhat bittersweet ending.  The first storyline basically shows off the skill of Sai while introducing Hikaru to the world of Go in his school's fledgeling Go club.  There's a small story following that during summer break, when Sai makes a big scene playing online.  Hikaru doesn't want to be in a position of taking credit for Sai's play, and the anonymity of the internet made a good tool for that.  After that concludes, Hikaru's game has improved, and he wants to be strong enough to take on Akira Toya himself without Sai.  He becomes an Insei, a student specifically aiming to become a professional.  This is an extensive story by itself, but the heat really turns up in the pro exam.  The thing takes over a month to finish!  Sai certainly understands that this is all very important to Hikaru, but after the pro exam concludes, things get really tense between them.  Hikaru essentially refuses to let Sai play anymore, minimizing his role to that of mentor alone.  The story just gets so full of major shakeups that I really can't go into any further detail, but I can say it ends rather nicely.

Every episode also ends with a section called "Go! Go! Igo!" (Japan refers to Go as Igo)  At first, it introduces the basic principles of Go, but it doesn't really do much to teach about the game itself beyond that.  Most of the episodes later on have to do with the overall culture of Go.  I was rather hoping for more game tips than it had, but the puzzles they show in later episodes are quite nice.