Manga Reviews 2

Shion no Ou (Story: Masaru Katori, Art: Jiro Ando)



This is another manga that I decided to try because of its unusual premise (I have a weird taste!!) It tells the story of a young girl by the name of Shion Ishiwatari. At the age of 4, Shion’s parents were murdered at their house. The police didn’t find anything at the crime scene that might lead them to the murderer apart from a shogi board upon which the pieces were lined up in an orderly fashion. Shion was not harmed even though she was at the house at the time of the murder but the shock of seeing her parents lying dead in a pool of blood resulted in the loss of her voice. The Ishiwatari neighbours and close friends, the Yasuoka family (made up of Shinji Yasuoka and his wife Sachiko) adopted Shion after the murder and raised her as their own daughter and so she was renamed Shion Yasuoka since then. Shinji is a professional Shogi player and during the years that passed after the murder, he taught Shion how to play shogi. Shion was a natural at playing shogi. She learned the game very quickly and mastered it at an early age. She rose quickly in the ranks of the game and became a genius professional player just like her new father. The story is about Shion’s life 8 years after the murder and how her chosen path as a professional shogi player might one day lead to finding her parents’ murderer.

The art in the manga is excellent and I really like the character designs. The first volume even starts with a few fully coloured pages.

Shion is one of the most adorable girls in manga and the fact that she lost her voice and can communicate only by writing what she wants to say on a note pad she carries along with her, makes you sympathise with her and want to protect her. Her refined and gentle personality commands the respect of many of the adults in the story. Another interesting character is Saori Nikaidou who is another shogi player. She has the interesting habit of hugging Shion whenever she sees her (Think about the way Kitagawa san treats Mika sensei in Sensei no Ojikan and you will know what I mean) (^_^;;) It seems that Saori is from a rich family and she might play against Shion in the future. Another important character is a shogi playing boy who for some reason always plays his matches disguised as a girl by the name of Ayumi Saitou. He is a very strong and talented player who doesn’t give his opponents much of a chance during a game. His intentions for disguising himself will probably be revealed later.





Shogi is sometimes called “Japanese chess”. If you want to learn more about it then you can go here. At the end of each chapter, there is a commentary page that explains the details of the shogi matches you read about in that particular chapter. That page is written by the story writer Masaru Katori. Very educational and interesting in my opinion and shows a great attention to detail. I also think that including the details at the end of the chapter is better than doing it in the chapter itself so as to not distract the reader from following the general story.



I’m actually enjoying this combination of mystery, drama, action and sports (if you can call it a sport). The manga is a joint project between “Tsuzuku Jinsei o...” and “Hanashi”. You can download the latest chapters online here or using Bittorrent here. The scanlators actually leave many of the common Japanese words untranslated which gives a more authentic feel to their work.