Eight years have passed since Shion Ishiwatari witnessed the brutal murder of her parents, an event so traumatic it left her mute. Now living as Shion Yasuoka, the adopted daughter of the Yasuoka family, she has found a semblance of peace. Her past, both known and unknown to her, shapes her growing interest in shogi, leading her to pursue a career as a kishi—a professional shogi player. Her ultimate dream is to become the meijin, Japan's most revered shogi master.
However, her path is disrupted when a stalker threatens her aspirations. Despite the danger, Shion remains resolute and continues on her journey to become a meijin. As she sharpens her skills, the mysteries of her past gradually surface, revealing hidden truths both on the shogi board and in her own life.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
Is it interesting?
If you asked me this question when I was on the initial chapters of this manga, I would have given a completely different answer than what I am about to give now. Starting the manga, for me, was extremely boring, maybe even tedious to get through the chapters sometimes. Now? I have essentially read the whole manga in a day. Once I locked in, the manga just didn't let me stop reading more of its chapters. I just kept reading chapter after chapter without any breaks, which only stopped after I finished it.
I hate Shogi. Actually, not hate—it's more like I don't understand it well. I once tried to learn some of its terminologies and its workings, but it was all so boring that I gave up halfway. And the Shogi in this manga isn't any different. It is the same boring game. To my mind, it is just people randomly placing pieces on the board in a certain pattern. But what this manga does to camouflage that boredom induced by Shogi is to add a hue of crime thriller into it. And it works extremely well.
The murder mystery is written well to a fault. I never would have believed that Murder x Shogi would sync that well. For me, this manga was a murder mystery first and a Shogi manga second. As I have repeatedly said, I don't know jack shit about Shogi, so during all the matches, all I could grasp was that one person won over the other. I was just nodding along with the things the manga told me about the match. How an opponent won, what tactics they used, how grand and difficult the matches actually were—I didn't understand anything. So all the weight behind those matches came from the drama of the plot. And I don't feel like I've missed out on anything.
The characters were very interesting and well-written. No one was there just for the sake of the plot; everyone had their purpose and served it. Great character development went hand in hand. I think what made this crime thriller even more interesting than it already was were its characters.
The art has certainly improved as we progressed. You can certainly see the difference between the first chapter and the last one. One thing about the art style that I wanted to talk about is that I weirdly waited for any chibi drawings to appear, and I would become happy like a kid when I saw them, as if he had been given his lollipop to hold onto. So I don't have any qualms regarding the art or the art style.
For me, it was a damn good manga.
No edgy cuck ending. Also, AoT's 4th season is a blatant copy of Dune, Code Geass, Eternal Champion, or Muvluv, but failed to deliver the same quality.