Hikaru no Go
Hotta is best known as the author of the best-selling manga and anime series "Hikaru no Go", which is widely credited for the late 90s-2000s boom of the game of go in Japan. The idea behind Hikaru no Go began when Yumi Hotta played a pick-up game of go with her father-in-law. She thought that it might be fun to create a manga based on this traditional board game, and began the work under the title of , named for the nine "star points" on a go board. She later worked with Takeshi Obata (the illustrator) and Yukari Umezawa (5-Dan, the supervisor) in the creation of "Hikaru no Go". She won the 2000 Shogakukan Manga Award and the 2003 Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for "Hikaru no Go".