I'm thankful for anime! Again!
Did you think I had abandoned this?
Never fear, I was just waiting until I was at work again! Apparently!
2. Hikaru no Go, episode 75, That Same Old Smile
For the sake of the hell of it, I went and re-watched this episode a couple of days ago, just to check. Yep, still awesome. And not only a tearjerker, but a sobjerker; ya know, when you cry enough that your nose starts running, and you start gulping back loud noises of grief, trying to muffle yourself and only half succeeding? (Or is that just me?)
Seeing as how this series made the list already, I don't feel a need to recap the premise again. But a lot happens in between that episode and this, which is the series finale. Following the loss of Sai, Hikaru is striken with intense grief, which is made even worse because of guilt. He feels guilt because he thinks that maybe it was something that he did that made Sai go from him, because he realizes that he had completely ignored and dismissed all of Sai's premonitions, and most of all, because it is only through his pilgrimage in search of Sai that he realizes what an incredible Go player that Sai was.
Sai's original life was in feudal Japan, around a thousand years ago and back in the days of legend. After his tragic death by suicide, he had only ever manifested to one other person, Kuwahara Torajiro, a boy living in mid-19th century Japan. Torajiro, unlike Hikaru, had let Sai play every game, having recognized from the beginning Sai's wonderful talent and being content just to be the vessel through which that talent could manifest once again in the world. Naturally, Torajiro became what was considered to be the best Go player of all time, the legendary Honinbo Shusaku.
During Hikaru's search for Sai, he visited places that he knew had been of importance to the Honinbo, but the really profound moment came to him upon returning home from his pilgrimage, when he went to the Go institute and asked to look at kifu (which are records of old matches) that Honinbo had played. Hikaru broke into tears, finally good enough at Go himself to realize what a wonderful talent Sai had, and feeling like he had completely wasted it out of his own "selfish desire" to play Go for himself. He then bargains with the universe, promising God or whoever listens to these things to give up playing Go for himself forever, if only he could have Sai return to him.
Then he waits.
Hikaru goes for months without playing, skipping all of his scheduled pro matches. This period of time is contracted into several episodes, where we get a focus on other characters so as not to be treated to "all Hikaru emo, all the time." And yet, we know acutely that it is going on, so when finally Izumi (a player who had trained with Hikaru and had not yet succeeding in becoming pro, because of how is own insecurities would sabotage him in matches) returns from China, we breath a sigh of relief when he goes to Hikaru and askes him for a match. Hikaru had been a key player in Izumi's initial loss of confidence, so Izumi wanted to play him again in order to prove to himself that he could still play Go, and play it well, without letting his emotions get to him.
Hikaru initially refuses, remembering his vow. But, after seeing Izumi's determination, and realizing how justified the request was (and how unkind it would be to refuse him), he gives in and agrees to playing Izumi, after telling Sai in his mind that he was not doing this for himself, but for Izumi, and hoping that Sai can forgive him. Sai, of course, is no longer around to answer. During the game, however, Hikaru finds himself really getting into it, allowing himself to become absorbed in what he was doing, until finally he made one move that jolted him back to reality. For him, he had a brief flash of memory of Sai, and realized that Sai had been with him all along, in the very game of Go that Hikaru had been avoiding.
After that, Hikaru returns to Go with a vengeance, and with that also resumes his intention to some day meet Akira in a match, and prove to Akira that he is good enough to be considered his rival. (Akira is the rising star of the Go world, the son of the famous Toya Koya who had been responsible for the decisive Go game that caused Sai to begin to fade from the world).
And these are only the events leading up to episode 75.
Now, in the world of anime, there are several different series-lengths: the ubershort 13 episode series; the very common 26 episode series, and then the longer series. Longer series tend to have 50-60 episodes, although there are a few series that extend well into the hundreds (and in the case of Doreamon, perhaps into the thousands). Let me just say right off the bat that I have no trust, or patience, for the very long series. Prince of Tennis, One Piece, Naruto, Bleach... these are all series where I looked at the first few episodes and found them enjoyable, but could not for the life of me find a concept that seemed like it could make for a single unified story as spread throughout hundreds of chapters of incident. In fact, even though I have given up on all of them, my understanding is that they fall either into the trap of being entirely episodic, or plumped to the gills with filler.
So with anime, my personal policy is to restrict myself to series that are under 100 episodes in length, or (if ongoing) have a reasonable promise of resolution in approximately that time period. In practice, I rarely follow anything that goes past 26 episodes... I tried Kaliedo Star, for example, and after the first season I realized that I had seen everything I needed to, and had no desire to go further. I had a similar experience with Blood+.
So, Hikaru no Go is fairly exceptional, in the fact that it sustained my interest for the entire series, despite going to 75 episodes. It really felt like a journey, one in which I had invested a piece of myself as I followed along with Hikaru's attempts to master Go. However, if HnG had kept Sai for the duration, and had made it simply about Hikaru becoming stronger and stronger and coming closer to both Akira and Sai, it would have become boring fast. The story in the second act, that of Hikaru's loss of, and longing for, Sai, elevates everything WITHOUT feeling like a tacked-on element. In fact, the loss of Sai is central to everything, and was clearly anticipated in the story from the very beginning.
I suppose I could say that HnG is about death. Or grief. Or more broadly, rivalry. Self-improvement.
But it feels cheap to reduce this series to a theme, or a collection of themes. Instead, this is the story of Hikaru, and it is our chance to watch a regular young boy come of age, during a time in his life when he is both discovering his own special place in the world, and when he deals with the first major loss of his lifetime. And by the skill of the storytelling, we are transported into Hikaru's experience, feeling what he feels. It's the most incredible feat of empathic storytelling I've ever experienced in anime form.
Episode 75 begins where we left off from episode 74; Hikaru is finally having his match with Akira, the first where he faces Akira BOTH as himself, AND as a serious rival. They have reached the point in the match where a lunchbreak has been called, and Akira has already come to the conclusion that Hikaru is everything that he had hoped for him to be, and in his head has already realized that Hikaru would be his lifelong rival. Akira is the hope of Japan's next generation of Go players, to perhaps return Japan to its once-cherished position as the top country of Go. And so, by recognizing Hikaru, it is implicit that Hikaru is also good enough to represent Japan on the world stage of Go.
Were this the sole aspiration of the series, it would be a pretty cheap goal. But despite these outward honors, what we are really expected to see is that by Hikaru and Akira "finding each other," these two immense talents will together help push each other closer to the Divine Move, to bring all of humanity closer to this zen triumph by serving as examples to inspire those who come after them to create a better and better game of Go. Because Sai's final epiphany before he faded into nothingness was this; that the Divine Move is not something that any one human can achieve on his own, but is something that is built up through the centuries and through generations of Go players, each adding something to the lessons learned from the past.
I'm the kind of person who naturally gravitates towards a Tolkienesque romanticizion of the past. I don't go so far as to think that the people in the past were better than the people of today, but I don't think they were worse, either, and I definitely envy their gift of being able to live in a relatively unspoiled world. I think I could endure a severely shortened lifespan (I would be near death at my current age, by standards of more than 100 years ago), and even the greater degree of desperation and hardships, if only I could walk free in a world where there is no pollution in the air, when nature was not so tame and was therefore scarier, but also more exciting.
Nevertheless, this dream of the past is profoundly unrealistic. Worse, always looking to the past is something that neither any individual person nor any collective society should get too hung up in. It is important to understand the past in order to learn from it, but it is also important to take those lessons to heart and attempt to transform them into improvement in the future. Perhaps in science there is no such thing as "positive evolution," wherein organisms through the process of natural selection become better and better as they increase in complexity... it is ridiculous to impart value judgements to the working of nature, and it is even more ridiculous to think that nature has some grand plan or goal it is striving after. However, even though humans don't seem to have improved too much throughout the centuries, in our power of choice, and our ability to act collectively on these choices, we could.
It doesn't just apply to Go. It applies to everything. We could all be better if we let ourselves enjoy "friendly rivalry" with each other, being inspired by others to work harder and to better them by creating something new, and hopefully in turn inspiring others to exceed our own efforts.
So, at the beginning of this episode, Akira has already recognized to himself that Hikaru will be his lifelong rival, the person through which he we be able to better perfect his own game. But now, he tells Hikaru this.
And there is more. Akira has been privileged like no-one else to see how Sai played through Hikaru. Akira had been Sai's first opponent after waking into the modern world, and playing Akira on Sai's behalf had been Hikaru's first time ever playing Go, period. Akira sees this in Hikaru's play, sensing a presense that flashes in and out of Hikaru, a formidable force that seems beyond the skills of the obviously talented Hikaru. Akira recognizes the power and personality of this play as being similar to the first time he played Hikaru, and also similar to games that he observed on the internet of a prodigy named "Sai," who had indeed been Hikaru's Sai. And in thinking this over aloud, alone with Hikaru after everyone else had already left for lunch, he finds Sai. And then, Akira shakes this off, and says that he might be being irrational. But it didn't matter. Hikaru's Go was who he was, and Akira was content with that, and would accept it for what it was. He formally acknowledges Hikaru as his rival.
This is only the first point in the episode where I lose it. Hikaru is shocked, and so so grateful that finally, finally someone else has seen Sai besides him, if only in the game of Go. Sai had been a precious person to him, and in grieving him he had to grieve alone. As youkofujima also noted, this is one of the worst part of Hikaru's grief: since Sai had been a ghost, he could not confide in anyone why he was suffering. He had to work hard to actively suppress showing outward signs of that grief, because it would make no sense. It reminds me of the pain that a closeted person might feel at the death of a lover, unknown to friends and family, but so inexpressibly dear. But now, here was someone who had seen a glimpse of the person that Hikaru felt obliged to hide, and furthermore accepted him as he was, as well as for the mystery of "Sai" inside of him. By doing so Hikaru finally found someone to whom he felt like he would be able to someday tell the full story of his experience.
This scene ends with Hikaru and Akira going off to lunch, Akira demanding to know the secret which Hikaru has promised to tell him "someday."
I should also take a moment here to mention that the music throughout this episode is fantastic. There are several recurring themes that have been present from the very beginning of the series, and we get versions of these themes that are slower, more melancholy. This is emotional manipulation at its finest, but I don't care... the music makes me feel even more nostalgic for everything that has gone before, as well as filled with sorrow that the series is so close to the end.
The next scene opens with Hikaru returning home, and although he offers to tell his mom who won, she doesn't really care and just asks him if he wants any dinner. We also get the first semi-shot of Hikaru's father, who has been notably absent throughout the series; we see his silohette through (mercifully) frosted glass as he nakedly scrubs his back while preparing for the bath. Hikaru goes upstairs, saying he is tired and just wants to sleep.
While he is sleeping, he has a lucid dream (a dream in which he realizes that he is dreaming; lucid dreams tend to be particularly vivid and real). In this dream, he sees Sai. At first, Hikaru starts babbling to Sai about his recent match with Akira, revealing that he lost but that it is okay because he will play Akira in hundreds, no thousands! of games from there on in. He goes on for a little bit about other bits of news, while Sai smiles on at him, saying nothing. Hikaru then becomes somber, asking why Sai left him, and wondering if Sai was okay at the end, before he disappeared. If he was smiling. Hikaru hoped he was smiling. Sai continues to say nothing, although his expressions change a little as Hikaru speaks to him, but very soon Sai becomes distracted, looking towards a light away from Hikaru, clearly being called away.
God, this scene makes me so sad. ;___; Just writing about it, it is difficult to keep my composure.
Hikaru begs for Sai not to leave, but Sai turns to him and then holds out his fan, which he had held through the entire anime series when he was a ghost, using it to point out moves for Hikaru which he could not make himself. Hikaru reaches out to take the fan, and then suddenly, everything is black. Hikaru blinks, and then wakes up in his bed, realizing that that had all be just a dream, only a dream, and yet it was exactly what he needed. Without moving, tears quietly begin to stream down Hikaru's face, but his mother calls to him telling him that he'll be late for school, so he scrubs the tears away and runs off to get ready.
After this, there are two more major scenes of note: both the scene where Akira and Hikaru finally meet for a casual match at Akira's regular Go salon, and the scene where Hikaru is at one of his make-up 1st Dan matches, with Waya's conversation with Hikaru's match opponent ("He must be the best 1st Dan player ever") which followed with Waya meeting up with Hikaru right after he went and purchased a fan (which is clearly meant to be his own memento of Sai, as well as an rememberance of what Sai gave him in the dream). Both of these scenes are magnificent, and I especially cry once Hikaru brandishes the fan (it is such a beautiful scene of hope in the face of sorrow! ;__;), but I've gone on long enough as it is.
The episode then ends with the long (and I mean LONG) form of the final closing theme, "Get Over." It's a very hopeful song, and should be a lesson to all anime series everywhere in how to gracefully sum up the fates of various characters in brief but beautifully eloquent cuts. Just about every major secondary character you can possibly think of gets a little moment, and the moment is sufficent to give you a strong sense of how they are doing and where they will be going next in life.
And there is the indelable image of Hikaru, running happily, with his brief final monologue, describing his intention to one day be able to play Go again with Sai.
This episode will mean little, I think, if you have not invested in the series and seen all the previous episodes. But within that context, I feel it is one of the most powerful single episodes ever, particularly when it comes to pure emotional impact. There is a lot that I find personally meaningful, but the themes are universal, so I suspect that most people who watch through to the end will experience at the very least a feeling of supreme satisfaction.
Never fear, I was just waiting until I was at work again! Apparently!
2. Hikaru no Go, episode 75, That Same Old Smile
For the sake of the hell of it, I went and re-watched this episode a couple of days ago, just to check. Yep, still awesome. And not only a tearjerker, but a sobjerker; ya know, when you cry enough that your nose starts running, and you start gulping back loud noises of grief, trying to muffle yourself and only half succeeding? (Or is that just me?)
Seeing as how this series made the list already, I don't feel a need to recap the premise again. But a lot happens in between that episode and this, which is the series finale. Following the loss of Sai, Hikaru is striken with intense grief, which is made even worse because of guilt. He feels guilt because he thinks that maybe it was something that he did that made Sai go from him, because he realizes that he had completely ignored and dismissed all of Sai's premonitions, and most of all, because it is only through his pilgrimage in search of Sai that he realizes what an incredible Go player that Sai was.
Sai's original life was in feudal Japan, around a thousand years ago and back in the days of legend. After his tragic death by suicide, he had only ever manifested to one other person, Kuwahara Torajiro, a boy living in mid-19th century Japan. Torajiro, unlike Hikaru, had let Sai play every game, having recognized from the beginning Sai's wonderful talent and being content just to be the vessel through which that talent could manifest once again in the world. Naturally, Torajiro became what was considered to be the best Go player of all time, the legendary Honinbo Shusaku.
During Hikaru's search for Sai, he visited places that he knew had been of importance to the Honinbo, but the really profound moment came to him upon returning home from his pilgrimage, when he went to the Go institute and asked to look at kifu (which are records of old matches) that Honinbo had played. Hikaru broke into tears, finally good enough at Go himself to realize what a wonderful talent Sai had, and feeling like he had completely wasted it out of his own "selfish desire" to play Go for himself. He then bargains with the universe, promising God or whoever listens to these things to give up playing Go for himself forever, if only he could have Sai return to him.
Then he waits.
Hikaru goes for months without playing, skipping all of his scheduled pro matches. This period of time is contracted into several episodes, where we get a focus on other characters so as not to be treated to "all Hikaru emo, all the time." And yet, we know acutely that it is going on, so when finally Izumi (a player who had trained with Hikaru and had not yet succeeding in becoming pro, because of how is own insecurities would sabotage him in matches) returns from China, we breath a sigh of relief when he goes to Hikaru and askes him for a match. Hikaru had been a key player in Izumi's initial loss of confidence, so Izumi wanted to play him again in order to prove to himself that he could still play Go, and play it well, without letting his emotions get to him.
Hikaru initially refuses, remembering his vow. But, after seeing Izumi's determination, and realizing how justified the request was (and how unkind it would be to refuse him), he gives in and agrees to playing Izumi, after telling Sai in his mind that he was not doing this for himself, but for Izumi, and hoping that Sai can forgive him. Sai, of course, is no longer around to answer. During the game, however, Hikaru finds himself really getting into it, allowing himself to become absorbed in what he was doing, until finally he made one move that jolted him back to reality. For him, he had a brief flash of memory of Sai, and realized that Sai had been with him all along, in the very game of Go that Hikaru had been avoiding.
After that, Hikaru returns to Go with a vengeance, and with that also resumes his intention to some day meet Akira in a match, and prove to Akira that he is good enough to be considered his rival. (Akira is the rising star of the Go world, the son of the famous Toya Koya who had been responsible for the decisive Go game that caused Sai to begin to fade from the world).
And these are only the events leading up to episode 75.
Now, in the world of anime, there are several different series-lengths: the ubershort 13 episode series; the very common 26 episode series, and then the longer series. Longer series tend to have 50-60 episodes, although there are a few series that extend well into the hundreds (and in the case of Doreamon, perhaps into the thousands). Let me just say right off the bat that I have no trust, or patience, for the very long series. Prince of Tennis, One Piece, Naruto, Bleach... these are all series where I looked at the first few episodes and found them enjoyable, but could not for the life of me find a concept that seemed like it could make for a single unified story as spread throughout hundreds of chapters of incident. In fact, even though I have given up on all of them, my understanding is that they fall either into the trap of being entirely episodic, or plumped to the gills with filler.
So with anime, my personal policy is to restrict myself to series that are under 100 episodes in length, or (if ongoing) have a reasonable promise of resolution in approximately that time period. In practice, I rarely follow anything that goes past 26 episodes... I tried Kaliedo Star, for example, and after the first season I realized that I had seen everything I needed to, and had no desire to go further. I had a similar experience with Blood+.
So, Hikaru no Go is fairly exceptional, in the fact that it sustained my interest for the entire series, despite going to 75 episodes. It really felt like a journey, one in which I had invested a piece of myself as I followed along with Hikaru's attempts to master Go. However, if HnG had kept Sai for the duration, and had made it simply about Hikaru becoming stronger and stronger and coming closer to both Akira and Sai, it would have become boring fast. The story in the second act, that of Hikaru's loss of, and longing for, Sai, elevates everything WITHOUT feeling like a tacked-on element. In fact, the loss of Sai is central to everything, and was clearly anticipated in the story from the very beginning.
I suppose I could say that HnG is about death. Or grief. Or more broadly, rivalry. Self-improvement.
But it feels cheap to reduce this series to a theme, or a collection of themes. Instead, this is the story of Hikaru, and it is our chance to watch a regular young boy come of age, during a time in his life when he is both discovering his own special place in the world, and when he deals with the first major loss of his lifetime. And by the skill of the storytelling, we are transported into Hikaru's experience, feeling what he feels. It's the most incredible feat of empathic storytelling I've ever experienced in anime form.
Episode 75 begins where we left off from episode 74; Hikaru is finally having his match with Akira, the first where he faces Akira BOTH as himself, AND as a serious rival. They have reached the point in the match where a lunchbreak has been called, and Akira has already come to the conclusion that Hikaru is everything that he had hoped for him to be, and in his head has already realized that Hikaru would be his lifelong rival. Akira is the hope of Japan's next generation of Go players, to perhaps return Japan to its once-cherished position as the top country of Go. And so, by recognizing Hikaru, it is implicit that Hikaru is also good enough to represent Japan on the world stage of Go.
Were this the sole aspiration of the series, it would be a pretty cheap goal. But despite these outward honors, what we are really expected to see is that by Hikaru and Akira "finding each other," these two immense talents will together help push each other closer to the Divine Move, to bring all of humanity closer to this zen triumph by serving as examples to inspire those who come after them to create a better and better game of Go. Because Sai's final epiphany before he faded into nothingness was this; that the Divine Move is not something that any one human can achieve on his own, but is something that is built up through the centuries and through generations of Go players, each adding something to the lessons learned from the past.
I'm the kind of person who naturally gravitates towards a Tolkienesque romanticizion of the past. I don't go so far as to think that the people in the past were better than the people of today, but I don't think they were worse, either, and I definitely envy their gift of being able to live in a relatively unspoiled world. I think I could endure a severely shortened lifespan (I would be near death at my current age, by standards of more than 100 years ago), and even the greater degree of desperation and hardships, if only I could walk free in a world where there is no pollution in the air, when nature was not so tame and was therefore scarier, but also more exciting.
Nevertheless, this dream of the past is profoundly unrealistic. Worse, always looking to the past is something that neither any individual person nor any collective society should get too hung up in. It is important to understand the past in order to learn from it, but it is also important to take those lessons to heart and attempt to transform them into improvement in the future. Perhaps in science there is no such thing as "positive evolution," wherein organisms through the process of natural selection become better and better as they increase in complexity... it is ridiculous to impart value judgements to the working of nature, and it is even more ridiculous to think that nature has some grand plan or goal it is striving after. However, even though humans don't seem to have improved too much throughout the centuries, in our power of choice, and our ability to act collectively on these choices, we could.
It doesn't just apply to Go. It applies to everything. We could all be better if we let ourselves enjoy "friendly rivalry" with each other, being inspired by others to work harder and to better them by creating something new, and hopefully in turn inspiring others to exceed our own efforts.
So, at the beginning of this episode, Akira has already recognized to himself that Hikaru will be his lifelong rival, the person through which he we be able to better perfect his own game. But now, he tells Hikaru this.
And there is more. Akira has been privileged like no-one else to see how Sai played through Hikaru. Akira had been Sai's first opponent after waking into the modern world, and playing Akira on Sai's behalf had been Hikaru's first time ever playing Go, period. Akira sees this in Hikaru's play, sensing a presense that flashes in and out of Hikaru, a formidable force that seems beyond the skills of the obviously talented Hikaru. Akira recognizes the power and personality of this play as being similar to the first time he played Hikaru, and also similar to games that he observed on the internet of a prodigy named "Sai," who had indeed been Hikaru's Sai. And in thinking this over aloud, alone with Hikaru after everyone else had already left for lunch, he finds Sai. And then, Akira shakes this off, and says that he might be being irrational. But it didn't matter. Hikaru's Go was who he was, and Akira was content with that, and would accept it for what it was. He formally acknowledges Hikaru as his rival.
This is only the first point in the episode where I lose it. Hikaru is shocked, and so so grateful that finally, finally someone else has seen Sai besides him, if only in the game of Go. Sai had been a precious person to him, and in grieving him he had to grieve alone. As youkofujima also noted, this is one of the worst part of Hikaru's grief: since Sai had been a ghost, he could not confide in anyone why he was suffering. He had to work hard to actively suppress showing outward signs of that grief, because it would make no sense. It reminds me of the pain that a closeted person might feel at the death of a lover, unknown to friends and family, but so inexpressibly dear. But now, here was someone who had seen a glimpse of the person that Hikaru felt obliged to hide, and furthermore accepted him as he was, as well as for the mystery of "Sai" inside of him. By doing so Hikaru finally found someone to whom he felt like he would be able to someday tell the full story of his experience.
This scene ends with Hikaru and Akira going off to lunch, Akira demanding to know the secret which Hikaru has promised to tell him "someday."
I should also take a moment here to mention that the music throughout this episode is fantastic. There are several recurring themes that have been present from the very beginning of the series, and we get versions of these themes that are slower, more melancholy. This is emotional manipulation at its finest, but I don't care... the music makes me feel even more nostalgic for everything that has gone before, as well as filled with sorrow that the series is so close to the end.
The next scene opens with Hikaru returning home, and although he offers to tell his mom who won, she doesn't really care and just asks him if he wants any dinner. We also get the first semi-shot of Hikaru's father, who has been notably absent throughout the series; we see his silohette through (mercifully) frosted glass as he nakedly scrubs his back while preparing for the bath. Hikaru goes upstairs, saying he is tired and just wants to sleep.
While he is sleeping, he has a lucid dream (a dream in which he realizes that he is dreaming; lucid dreams tend to be particularly vivid and real). In this dream, he sees Sai. At first, Hikaru starts babbling to Sai about his recent match with Akira, revealing that he lost but that it is okay because he will play Akira in hundreds, no thousands! of games from there on in. He goes on for a little bit about other bits of news, while Sai smiles on at him, saying nothing. Hikaru then becomes somber, asking why Sai left him, and wondering if Sai was okay at the end, before he disappeared. If he was smiling. Hikaru hoped he was smiling. Sai continues to say nothing, although his expressions change a little as Hikaru speaks to him, but very soon Sai becomes distracted, looking towards a light away from Hikaru, clearly being called away.
God, this scene makes me so sad. ;___; Just writing about it, it is difficult to keep my composure.
Hikaru begs for Sai not to leave, but Sai turns to him and then holds out his fan, which he had held through the entire anime series when he was a ghost, using it to point out moves for Hikaru which he could not make himself. Hikaru reaches out to take the fan, and then suddenly, everything is black. Hikaru blinks, and then wakes up in his bed, realizing that that had all be just a dream, only a dream, and yet it was exactly what he needed. Without moving, tears quietly begin to stream down Hikaru's face, but his mother calls to him telling him that he'll be late for school, so he scrubs the tears away and runs off to get ready.
After this, there are two more major scenes of note: both the scene where Akira and Hikaru finally meet for a casual match at Akira's regular Go salon, and the scene where Hikaru is at one of his make-up 1st Dan matches, with Waya's conversation with Hikaru's match opponent ("He must be the best 1st Dan player ever") which followed with Waya meeting up with Hikaru right after he went and purchased a fan (which is clearly meant to be his own memento of Sai, as well as an rememberance of what Sai gave him in the dream). Both of these scenes are magnificent, and I especially cry once Hikaru brandishes the fan (it is such a beautiful scene of hope in the face of sorrow! ;__;), but I've gone on long enough as it is.
The episode then ends with the long (and I mean LONG) form of the final closing theme, "Get Over." It's a very hopeful song, and should be a lesson to all anime series everywhere in how to gracefully sum up the fates of various characters in brief but beautifully eloquent cuts. Just about every major secondary character you can possibly think of gets a little moment, and the moment is sufficent to give you a strong sense of how they are doing and where they will be going next in life.
And there is the indelable image of Hikaru, running happily, with his brief final monologue, describing his intention to one day be able to play Go again with Sai.
This episode will mean little, I think, if you have not invested in the series and seen all the previous episodes. But within that context, I feel it is one of the most powerful single episodes ever, particularly when it comes to pure emotional impact. There is a lot that I find personally meaningful, but the themes are universal, so I suspect that most people who watch through to the end will experience at the very least a feeling of supreme satisfaction.