Hikaru no Go/YMMV

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• Cargo Ship: Sai and a Go board. He's completely in love with the game.
• Foe Yay: Between Akira and Hikaru. And how.
• Ho Yay:
  • Oh yes, with plenty of slash Fanfic and Fan Art to support it.
  • Hikaru & Akira's mutual obsession frequently tips the line into subtext and much of the dialogue could easily be seen to support this pairing. As analyzed in this essay: Intentional Ambiguity - coded references to same-sex attraction in Hikaru no Go.
  • Kaga & Tsutsui also danced around this trope occasionally.
• Memetic Molester: Ogata-san. A creepy guy with Scary Shiny Glasses who is awfully obsessed with playing a game with little boys. His rape face here after he had dragged Hikaru over to a dark room where they can play Go alone (while drunk) didn't help matters.
• Paranoia Fuel: A dead person's spirit can randomly possess you at any time and demand that you do all sorts of things. And if you refuse he can probably make your life a living hell, considering the fact that he's with you all the time. Sure, Sai is pretty nice, but imagine what it could have been with a nastier person.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Sai is probably the most unintentionally effeminate male characters in all of manga. His effeminacy is perfectly in line with the sensibility of Heian period nobility, but that doesn't make the experience of watching an adult man giggle like a schoolgirl any less jarring. In fact, the author had to correct the English translator(s?) when they used "she" to refer to him.
  • Touya Akira looks strangely girly too, with his jaw-length bob hairstyle and rather ambiguous clothes. There is lots of fan-art around which puts him girl's clothes. Akira's case isn't helped by the fact that he's voiced by a woman.
• Wangst: After Hikaru realizes that Sai has disappeared, probably forever, he goes into a state of complete moping. He ignores his scheduled pro games (even vowing to quit Go altogether, even after coming so far), he ignores his friends, he ignores his family, he just locks all his emotions up and mopes.
• What an Idiot! / What the Hell, Hero?: There are several times when Hikaru rashly ignores Sai's advice and plays haphazardly, losing as a result. Akira even gets pissed off when he thinks Hikaru is doing this to spite him. And of course, continuously ignoring him leads to Sai's disappearance.
• WTH Costuming Department: Akira's pink sweater-vest and lavender suit. His clothes were always a bit... unique, shall we call it, but this was going too far for some people.
• The Woobie:
  • Sai, in his Backstory of how he was Driven to Suicide.
  • A milder case than most (characters don't really suffer horribly in Hikaru no Go): Hikaru after he realizes that Sai is gone for good and sinks into depression.
  • And an even milder case: Isumi during his emotional breakdown.