I watched the anime adaption on TV when I was a little kid. When I read that they plan to create a remake I decided to read the manga. I did not have high expectations. I was fond of it for nostalgic reasons but thought it is just a cliche shounen. I was wrong. I will start with the negative.

The manga starts from the perspective of Manta. An interesting character: Heir of a big powerful company, has dwarfism, smart and can see spirits. And he just becomes totally useless.

Some sentimental backstories are mildly annoying (I liked the ones of Hao, Anna and of Yo's father).

Over the course of the story we learn how powerful Anna is. The whole time I asked myself: Why is she not participating? She seems to be almost as talented as Hao in his first life. Way more than Yo for sure. She should fight!

In school Yo uses the ghosts to help him with homework and tests. It would have been great if ghosts had played a more crucial role later to gather intelligence and strategize and so on.

Normally I hate it when the MC wants to save the bad guys. But here it makes some sense. To see ghosts you have to possess a good heart. And to get along with all those spirits of terrible people you need some open mindedness. Also in the case of Hao they have no other choice. They cannot defeat him so they have to persuade him.

It does not play a huge role but they even handle sexuality in a mature way. The protagonist of the most succesful shounen is asexual (Ruffy). When sexuality occurs it is either for fanservice or for jokes. Anna actually sleeps with Yo before he goes to battle. But it is not used for the arousal of the watcher or giggles.

Now coming to it's big strength: the bad guy is victorious!
The MC has no grand goal, he merely has the duty to fight for family honor and he already knows that he cannot win. So he lacks the delusional determinaton of say a Naruto. The MC actually does not reach his goal. The villain wins and abandons his evil plan. That sounds terrible but it was quite plausible. Before ascending, the future Shaman King falls asleep. It is like a psychodelic trip. Then he gets the Great Spirit with all it's knowledge and power. Of course such an experience would change him. It was said the whole time that Hao was so powerful that trying to beat him would be futile. And it was. Even power of friendship and not giving up could not overpower him. Refreshing to see that.