Character essays, story and visual analysis about March Comes in Like a Lion.
Rei Kiriyama has reached professional shogi unusually young, but his rooms offer little evidence that achievement has made a home for him. The series turns his apartment and the surrounding city into a portrait of independence with its costs still visible.
Around the Kawamoto sisters, Rei encounters a household whose rhythms are made through shared space, ordinary sounds, and hospitality. Their table changes how time feels in his day without turning a meal or a welcome into a simple solution to loneliness.
Professional shogi in March Comes in Like a Lion is a game of skill and a structure that organizes working life. Reading it as a workplace reveals how age, reputation, and repeated judgment shape Rei’s place in the room.
Nikaido’s insistence on rivalry gives Rei more than an opponent across the shogi board. Their early relationship presses him to recognize that competition can be a form of attention, and that being taken seriously can connect one player’s future to another’s.