Perhaps unusually, I’m predisposed to like manga and anime about board games. Shounen Jump’s Hikaru no Go remains my favourite manga, and amongst my favourite anime. So even when people were mocking the exaggerated animations for shougi players making their moves, I wasn’t at all phased by the concept. This was one of the series the anime club watched in my masters’ year on the day of the week I didn’t attend, but the club president’s taste was usually pretty spot-on (possibly excepting Allison and Lillia) so I picked this up.It’s taken me until now, more than a year later, to actually finish watching it, and however similar the titles sound, Shion no Ou is certainly no Hikaru no Go. While both revolve around teenagers playing board games with, despite any exaggerated animations for placing pieces, a generally realistic tone, the genres each borrow from to create their drama are very different, and I find Shion no Ou markedly less sophisticated.
While, despite its supernatural conceit, Hikaru no Go mainly revolved around the relationship between two rivals and interpersonal relationships, Shion no Ou has at its centre a murder mystery. Murder stories can be sophisticated and extremely clever, but this one is rather predictable, obvious and cheesy.
Shion was born into the world of shougi, or Japanese chess. Her father is a Kishi, a professional player, and by the age of four she was recognized as prodigiously talented. However, an unknown murderer kills both her parents, the trauma leaving her struck dumb. However, she is taken in by fellow shougi players, and the story starts when she is in her teens and ready to enter the world of professional players. Is the killer somewhere amongst them?
It’s slightly odd, considering the thought processes behind these characters. Shion is adorable, childlike and while very strong in her chosen field, rather hapless and very naïve outside it. It’s an increasingly familiar type of character, seen in other works aimed at an older-teenaged male audience, like Bamboo Blade, Gunslinger Girl, even the likes of Lucky Star. Essentially, she is a little child that the insecure male would feel comfortable dominating and find extremely sweet. Normally that’s just fine for me, but the way this anime seems to seek to make a character moé by making her experience a grisly murder and giving her a disability that can most likely be magically overcome later on doesn’t sit quite right with me, even if Shion is extremely likeable. The rest of the cast are largely uninteresting: a cross-dressing boy who will very soon see his duplicity is wrong, a girl whose primary characteristic is hero-worship of a father figure, a prime suspect who seems to snarl and posture far too much and thus more or less counts himself out as the actual villain, leaving only one other person it could have been, making for a very obvious ending.
For its shortcomings, though, I enjoyed Shion no Ou quite a lot. These characters may be unoriginal but they were all likeable, and Shion’s sweet nature and painful past makes you care what happens to her, even for rather cheap reasons in writing terms. There is real warmth in the interactions between the friendly characters and even if Kawasumi Ayako is just doing her default thoughtful-Nodame voice and Paku Romi has done this exact performance a zillion times already, the voice acting is strong. The animation is largely stilted and functional, but the penultimate episode has some nice experimental segments, unusual for Studio Deen.
Ultimately, though, Shion no Ou just lacks a real hook. The characters are likeable, but you’re never on the edge of your seat wanting to see what’s going to happen. The murder angle is clichéd and slow. So rather loathe as I am to say it, I can’t call this anime anything other than mediocre. Cute and worth seeing, but certainly no classic.
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