Shaman King is my most loved memory from my earliest childhood, so I’ve decided to write this review for I finally finished reading the manga, I'm very found of the series but letting the affective memory aside the manga is good, though not worth of my affection as it is. The story is nearly bland, it is about a tournament as its tittle already give away, but there is low to none dynamic at some point; the characters are the strong point of the manga as they normally are meant to be in tournament mangas, but sadly their potential were wasted in Shaman King. The major problem of the characters is the spirits, as the story proceeds the spirits become only weapons with bland personality, though I admired the flashiness of the weapons as a kid I'd rather watch the early episodes when the spirits and the their partners were bound together as friends. My favourite parts of Shaman King are when the characters are simply being with their partners, battling and then, between act and act, simply being... The relationship of Ana and Yoh, Manta and Yoh going to school, Ryu and his group trying to find their best place, but this unfortunately do not last long, and then the characters find themselves doing and bind to a nonstop tournament that gets boring and boring, sometimes get better and then boring again, and this unending ups and downs are, what I believe, the reason the manga got cancelled.
Shaman King is not bad but isn't great either, and that's what I found sad about it since I liked so much as child.