SHAMAN KING

This review is going to be very short and concise, so I suggest anyone wanting to give this a shot should consider reading my review. The rest of my review after the paragraph after this sentence goes a bit more into detail, so whether you choose to read it or not is up to your discretion. Again, I suggest anyone wanting to read this to check out this review.

Imagine a car driving up a hill. The only way up this hill is a very steep and treacherous one way slope. Just when that car is about to climb up to the peak, like literally just when it happens, it stops. That's right, it completely stops functioning. The engine goes off, the headlights stop beaming, and it does a completely nose dive backwards into the ravine and causes a big ass explosion.

That's this manga tbh.

Hao is still the same person he was when he first debuted. He's still that dude who wants to annihalate all the humans who don't believe in shamanism, and he gets little character development at all, even after making peace with his Mom, which was the source of the reason why he was doing what he was doing.

It'd be one thing if he'd change a bit, but nope. He's still the same. It's like Hiroyuki's message was that nothing will ever change. Which it most likely was, and that's why I can't accept it or how it ended. For a manga that wasn't as long as the Big Three (in manga and perhaps animu as well) but still managed to sell more/outclass/rival the Big Three, the way it ended was just all around bad to me.

So yeah, I wouldn't recommend this manga to anyone, but don't take what I'm saying to heart as this is just my opinion.

Shaman King, much like most other shonen manga is a story made to appeal to, of course, children as the primary audience, so I'm going to go out of my way instead of spending time being productive to allocate effort on writing a review on a 20 year old manga not aimed towards me as the primary audience.

I like Shaman King despite its flaws, the first half of the story was fantastic and held up as a shonen worth reading. Things start to get rotten plot-wise when resurrections are introduced to what seemed like a pretty straightforward story.

In Shaman King, if you suffer a near-death experience, you get a higher power level, which is called mana, so you can control your ghost partner and power yourself up with them depending on how you expend your mana.
What's worse than a shonen manga with no sense of risk/reward? Terrorism, but this isn't about that, what I'm complaining about is the countless fake-out deaths the main and supporting cast go through to justify getting powered up.

The battles, character interactions, artwork, and setting had enough of a charm to lull me into a false sense of security, and I only finished this manga before realizing it was too late, with the epiphany that what I've been reading the last 100 or so chapters were a trainwreck. Characters are killed off at first with buildup and drama, not knowing if they're going to make it through their near-death state, but the author kept providing fake-out after fake-out. As a reader you quickly realize this is going to be the norm, where for example, a character named Horohoro is foreshadowed to have a tragic backstory as he keeps quiet about his true name, and a few chapters later Horohoro along with some other main characters are laying face-down in a hot bath drowned to death, killed offscreen. Since there wasn't any closure you can safely assume he'll be back, and hey, shows up he does.

At a certain point the deaths become more common than actual battles, and the characters able to resurrect the dead become less and less rare as more Jesuses pop out along with frequency of death. As you can assume, it becomes hard to track who stays dead and who is resurrected, since there are some characters who have very emotional deaths and have to be hammered into the head of the reader that "THIS CHARACTER IS DEAD AND WILL STAY DEAD FOR THE REST OF THE SERIES", when they can easily be revived, which loses its impact.

OK that's my review. Good art, very good characters, I fairly enjoyed the first half, but overall it's not good.

My review may be biased. Shaman king was one of the first manga I could read.

What I liked deeply in this manga is that the hero doesn't have the typical personality of the main character of Shonen, big-mouthed, stupid, gets angry for the smallest thing and rushes into the heap despite the superiority of the opponent.

No, Yoh is calm, he knows that he is not the most intelligent but this does not prevent him from being very mature. He has a simple dream but he knows that he has responsibilities, that he must take care of them before he can realize this dream.

What differentiates him the most, and what the other characters realize as time goes by, is that he is apathetic, but that doesn't stop him from completing his growth.

I enjoyed this manga quite a bit. Its essentially the typical shonen manga, with little to differentiate it. What i enjoyed was the bizarre undercurrent of evil it seemed to have at times. From an almost necrophillic doctor whos implied to be addicted to Morphine to a boy quite obviously named for a drug ( Lyseig Diethel named for Lysergic Acid Diethylamide respectively)

I also found many moments to be extremely emotional and touching, wihlst the characters were well characterised and varied, each with their own personalities aims and backstories, some of them just tragic (especially that Doctor). The characters come from various countries and ethinicities, which makes a good change from casts inexplicably scattered across the world yet all japanese. Theres English, Chinese, African-American etc. its nice. Best of all, the villain to this piece is a marked change from most villains and a breath of fresh air against the common evil to everything type you get in some manga.

So if your bored and want to read another shonen manga, i would suggest this over most others.

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.

So when I started Shaman King, I didn't have too many expectations, or any really idea of what was going to happen. I was blown away by how much fun I was having. I wasn't this invested in a story since One Piece, and I was having a ridiculous amount of fun. It came to a climax with the rematch that started off the actual Shaman Fight, but I was still having a lot of fun with the plot after that with Hao. But as soon as we got into the actual Shaman Fight, things just got worse and worse. The magic that had made me love Shaman King was gone. Character moments were skipped or ignored, the characters either acted inconsisently or what they set out to do was rendered irrelevant, and many fell to the wayside. This clusterfuck of just awful stuff came to a head in the last stretch of 25 or so chapters, where the final "fight" takes place, where people are nice to the guy who wants to murder their entire race. And then there's some timeskip bullshit where we learn Yoh and Anna are bum parents who abandoned their kid to kumbayah the fuck else, Horo-Horo is a hobo squatting in a field, Joco is in fucking prison for some reason, Ren is married to someone that he's had one interaction with, and the best character in SK in Tamao's errand boy and babysitter. oh and Manta is there. Do not read this manga if you are looking for a satisfying final few chapters. Go read Hitman Reborn if you want something like that.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

This is easily my least favorite shounen of all time. Why? Because it's a clusterfuck. This manga is what happens when you take shounen, try to add deeper, darker themes to it, all the while trolling readers with the ability to revive people. Seriously, everything about it is a mess.

Our protagonist, Yoh, is a dreamy-eyed, high moral values airhead, like a Luffy that is constantly high on some meth, if you will. Typical to shounen, bad guys change their outlook on life immediately after they are beaten by our protagonist, inspired to suddenly be of use to the people, and become a comrade to the protagonist. But in Shaman King's case, the change is INSANITY. Our protagonist's third enemy and later best friend Tao Len, was a sick fuck that wouldn't think twice about murdering innocents. But after he gets beat? He's suddenly one of the "good guys". Same with his sister that used to go around murdering film actors. The only other series that I can think of that pulled such a fast 180 on characters is SAO with Kayaba. Shaman King does this constantly, though. But that's not all. While some of the bad guys that get beat turn into allies, a handful of them got depressed and committed fucking mass suicide. This manga is weird that way.

After the revival concept is introduced, it's honestly hard to know what the fuck is going on. People die at the speed of Shingeki No Kyojin, but they come back at nearly the same speed. There's no telling who's REALLY dead and who's just kinda dead until they're revived. So when you see a bunch of the protagonist's friends brutally murdered, tbh you're kinda left wondering how to feel. "Wait, but they're just gonna come back to life anyways, right?". But sometimes, apparently not. You really can't tell until a couple chapters later.

The ending; I want the phrase "Shaman King ending" to be coined as a way to describe an ending that leaves long-time readers feeling trolled, cheated of their money, and feeling like they got bitch slapped by salmon. After struggling through the clusterfuck, after numerous insane power-ups, after Yoh gains the power of the Gods, after beating all of Hao's followers, after hearing Yoh say "I'll be the next Shaman King" for the millionth time, you would think Yoh would finally beat the evil Hao and become the next Shaman King. Well, sorry to tell ya, he was 10 minutes too late, and Hao becomes the next Shaman King. Yoh? He gets vaporized.

BUT THAT'S NOT EVEN THE WORST PART
After Yoh gets vaporized, for some reason his "spirit" gets to chat with Hao. Yoh talks about how friendship is great, and humanity isn't hopeless, because look at how high as fuck Yoh is. And Hao, after hating humanity for 3000+ years, IS CONVINCED. He's literally like, "Yeah, you're right, I guess I was wrong, I'll be a good Shaman King instead of using this power to destroy humanity, like I was planning to". ASDASDKLADJALK




So at the end, Yoh, failing to be the next Shaman King loses all meaning in life, Hao makes the fastest 180 ever known to mankind, all enemies and allies that died during the whole fight is resurrected, and you feel like you just wasted about 20 hours of your life. You almost expect the author to include a last page: "and then Yoh woke up from his dream".

If you want to see what One Piece would be like crossed with Shingeki no Kyojin with a 4chan troll controlling the plot, this manga is for you.

Warning contains spoiler read at your own risk

it started out really great, the characters are interesting and lively, they have their own personal ambitions and dreams. sometimes there is a flashback on character like lyserg but the author tells it in an interesting way and it doesn't conflict with the main story. Yoh's laid back persona is also kinda cool and keep the sometimes fast paced tempo in balance.
But it gets uninteresting with the start of the shaman king tounament arc, first theere are island inhabitants who attacked the contestants and proved to be much stronger than the contestants, it is confusing, they are so powerful so why they don't just choose the shaman king from their own people?
Then what's the point of fighting in a tournament, if the cotestants keep killing each other outside the ring, worst what's the point of having them killed if they can be easily revived..
The characters who used to be interesting becomes dull because they are busy telling each other how fearful and strong Hao is. They also give up their dreams

This is my opinion on Shaman King, with the new ending, not the "it was a dream" ending from when the Manga was cut.

Shaman King is one of my favourites. The premise is unique, the characters are very well developed, and I really dig the mangaka's art. The story sets an atmosphere very well, and easily pulls you in.

Additionally, I appreciate the balanced development of the characters strengths. It is often suspenseful, and the outcome was never predictable. Overall, I enjoyed this 10/10.

Story 9/10: Like previously mentioned, it has a unique premise that lends itself to a good story. Each moment flows together well. It is smart, where I rarely found any "manufactured" conflicts or "plot armor" devices. Fights are written well also.

Art 9/10: The beginning may be a bit dated, but its still great looking. Definitely cleans up near the middle. I've heard some people being critical of Takei's art, but you can decide for yourself.

Character 8/10: While there may be some shonen character tropes, I found that the characters were strong. the motivations and back-stories were enticing, and some of the histories provided are amazing.

Overall 9/10

Shaman King
4.5/10
Summary
Shaman King is about a young shaman named Yoh who is participating in the upcoming Shaman Fight. The winner of the Shaman fight will obtain the all-powerful Great Spirit as their ally and will subsequently become omnipotent.
Yoh and many of the other participating shamans are working hard not only to increase the chances of themselves winning but also so they can defeat Hao, the very powerful shaman who has vowed to use the Great Spirit to rid the world of all humans if he wins.
Upsides
Character design is probably the biggest upside to this manga. Seeing the shamans train and battle is also an interesting dynamic.
Downsides
The writing in Shaman King is disinteresting at times the fact that the story drags on for way too long does in no way help put a bandage on the mediocre writing. After such a long manga one would expect to have a very entertaining ending but that is definitely not the case. The ending is as anticlimactic an ending as you will ever see.
The art is very unorthodox at times can be irritating, but for the most part it doesn’t interfere with the story.
The story also lacks seriousness in the way that pretty much every enemy Yoh faces ends up becoming good and joining Yoh’s team.

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.

Shaman king is essentially one of the best supernatural Manga to ever come out.I have major respect for the creator, Hiroyuki Takei, for the amazing chacharacters he creates and his super stylish art style. The series revolves around shaman warriors who all aim to become the shaman king, pretty much be a capital G God. It follows the typical tournament arc premise found in many shonen Manga but the character interactions is what makes the story so enjoyable. The cast is very diverse : yoh asakura is laid back and kind hearted, tao Ren is short tempered and serious and so on. The main characters all have well written and sad back stories but still manage to be upbeat.Almost all the characters are perfectly fleshed out so im sure you'll find an character that hits home with you.The only characters i really dislikes were Anna and hao but I'll go iinto detail about the latter later on. Anna is pretty much a cold hearted tsundere who's back story is the only liklikaeable part of her.

Even though I don't care much for anna, the back story osorezen revoir arc she shared with yoh was amazingly written. she's still a cold hearted grinch but at least she had an interesting past. The biggest reason to read shaman king is how spiritual it is. there are even shamans who clearly follow buddhism who appear later on !This Manga is very big on themes of forgiveness and redemption. Tao Ren and chocolove have killed in the passed but deeply regret and will accept any form of punishment that comes their way. Main character yoh asakura believes no shaman can be truly evil and tries his best to make friends with previous enemies. He was practically the anime messiah before makoto naegi and madoka came along. Since the whole premise of the Manga revolves around spirits, the spirits of multiple mythological figures are present everywhere. Anyone who loves series with religious undertones or references to mythology will love shaman king.
I've talked about the good now I have to get to the two problems of this work. For the most part, shama king has a very cartoony artstyle and doesn't really get good until more than halfway through. It's great that Hiroyuki takei has vastly improved his art and became one of my favorite artists. The 2nd problem is the ending. I'm referring to the ending in the kang zeng bang not the rushed original one. I won't list any spoilers but the main villain pretty much gets treated as a "sympathetic " character even though he's killed countless people and he uses his back back story for justification, but the main cast all went through worst than he did. Despite that, shaman king is still one of the best Manga to grace shonen jump.

NOTE: The original Shaman King manga does not have an ending!!

It was cancelled before a true ending could be completed so it has an abrupt stop, which (if you are like me) could be off-putting.

IMPORTANT: If you are thinking about reading Shaman King I would recommend to read Shaman King Kanzenban (it's the exact same except includes more chapters that were left out originally and of course has the true ending)! Or if that is not possible, after reading the original manga read chapter 265, 266, and then 287 until the end at 300 (yeah it sounds weird but these are the chapters missing from the original run).

The original Shaman King with the abrupt end (again since it was cancelled before it could be finished) would be a 7 because there is no ending. But with the Kanzenban true ending I would give it an 8. I enjoyed the ending and thought it was quite good.


Review: Imagine One Piece mixed with Digimon and that is what Shaman King feels like. I admire that the method Yoh enacts to settle conflicts is more peaceful and relaxed than most shonen protagonists who evoke the usual "might makes right" mentality. The reason why it's not a 10 for me is because I feel like it has pacing issues and some plot holes.

The pacing issues are that characters seem to drastically power-up in a short amount of time without really showing the viewer HOW they develop those techniques. It felt as I was reading that the author was either impatiently trying to get to "the good stuff" at the end or that he had a strict time limit and thus had to keep the story as concise as possible within 32 volumes. Considering that the series was cancelled that might have literally been the case and so I don't blame him. This is a flaw for me, but based on other reviews I read, some people enjoy that the pacing is so quick because it removes any fluff or filler.

All in all I enjoyed it! If you had to choose between reading the manga and watching the anime I would recommend watching the new 2021 anime coming up instead. Not often is the anime better than the manga, but in this case I feel like the 2021 anime of Shaman King would resolve my qualms with the manga.

I bought the whole Shaman King series for a cheap price. I watched the anime in the past and enjoyed it, so I decided to read the manga + kanzenban. (SPOILERS)

Story: 5
The first volumes til the background story of Yoh and Anna were pretty good. Typical shounen story of a young boy who wants to become the best "Shaman King". Finding some loyal friends, gettin stronger, some ridiculous power-ups. A good beginning... but it becomes worse than better, story became a mess... killing people and reviving them again and again,some random fights and shortly afterwards a relaxing scene, fighting one boss after another (Patcheen), the whole plot got so complex and boring in the last volumes. And wtf was that ending...seriously...Hao gets a slap in the face from his mother and decides not to kill the humanity and gives Yoh and the others the chance to rescue the earth...that ending was horrible... NO COMMENT!

Art: 5
The Art is solid, you can see that Hiroyuki Takei gets better in the later volumes. The expression and some body parts of the characters are sometimes out of the place but in particular okay.

Characters: 7
The characters are probably the best part of this manga, I really loved Yoh and Annas scenes as well the scenes between Ren and HoroHoro. That were some really delightful parts of the manga.
The growth of some characters were noticeable, Ren, Ryu... The only problem was Manta, he didn´t really got anymore scenes in the last volumes and became more a minor character.

Enjoyment/Overall: 5
It is a enjoyable manga, nothing outstanding. It has a good beginning but disappointed me towards the end. I never had goosebumps or strong emotional moments in the whole series. The probably best part of the manga was the background story of Yoh and Anna, I really liked it. But the rest of it was mediocre...

Shaman king is a manga discovered one day look for some action and dam was i pleased. Shaman king is a really unique shonen in my opinion the way the power system is and how the character act is super unique for the shonen genre.

Story 8/10: The story starts off cool and fun but it takes a a little bit to get into high gear. It really has a beginning that draw you in with the character but no real solid plot until the shaman fights are introduced. It then become are tournament focused plot but even with the idea of a tournament is some how still makes it unique with adding interesting characters and the evolving plot.

Characters 10/10: The character in shaman king are amazing it all starts with one of the best shonen main characters Yoh. Yoh is a chill guy who has a goal(which is to become the shaman king) but ends up leaving his goal for other things which would sound like a bad character but its not the way he evolves into thinking of his new goal(to stop hao). He is a lovable mc who keeps the story fresh as is in other shonen mc can hurt the story sometimes. The character as a whole keep a story going in the parts where it takes a dip. You really get connected to the characters through the story and it feels like you are right there beside them.

Art 10/10: The art style is not for everyone, it has a cartoonish feel which makes me love it. The way the character unique designs look really make it enjoyable experience for me.

Power system 10/10: the power is best described as dumbed down stands but it has it things that me it better. The power system lets you have new characters in the story but also provide unique ways people fight in the story.

overall 10/10: Shaman king is one of my favorite mangas ever because the characters, the fights and the story make in and enjoyable experience . If you have some free time one day pick this manga up and read it, you could love it.

STORY - 10
The story is a basic tournament, but what makes it interesting are the little developments along the way, the twists and turns and the way the characters react to everything. The story also flows really well, keeps with the original theme, knows how to create tense moments as well as use comic relief at the right times.

ART - 8
It's beautifully done and unique to the artist.

CHARACTER - 10
The characters are so well done, they develop really well and you find yourself almost routing for them all. You see their friendships all become something real.

Anna -Anna is Yoh's fiancé's and wow she is amazing, she is one of the few female characters that actually shows so much confidence and strength. Personally I think she's an icon, she overcomes adversity, has immense courage, is intelligent and fearless. As she develops we get to see more of her soft side and her backstory.

Hao - His character becomes so loveable, its well rounded and you end up wanting to see his friendship with the gang develop more. Basically he's a bit tsundere princess.

Yoh - Probably the best shounen character (in my opinion) Yoh is carefree, outgoing, fun, courageous and kind. He is so unique for a main character but it is done beautifully.

ENJOYMENT - 10
OVERALL - 10

I, like many others, first encountered Shaman King in the western version of the manga magazine Shonen Jump. The series had the prestigious honor of being one of the first titles to premier in the anthology. While not in the very first issue, Shaman King started publication in the magazine's first year alongside established heavyweights such as Dragon Ball Z and Naruto. Quite an honor to be one of the first Japanese-only shonen series Viz was willing to take a chance on. It ended up being one of my more well-liked titles, and evidently this sentiment was matched by enough others to ensure all 32 volumes of the original series received an official publication. Shaman King had a charisma fitting to this warm reception with an unusually lackadaisical post-Gen X main character, a distinct graffiti-influenced art style, and focus on super powers in the form of hovering "spirit allies" (which would ironically be America's first widespread taste of its origin concept, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure's "Stands").

When I eventually stopped following Shonen Jump monthly I made a note to myself to one day get back into Shaman King. What I thought would be a pleasant task ended up taking almost exactly an entire year to get through, a result of frustration at its length and missed potential only saved by goodwill towards that aforementioned initial charisma. To say Shaman King is inconsistent is both an understatement on its own and also the most accurate single word you could choose to describe it. To be more accurate, it’s even inconsistently inconsistent. The manga’s overall quality, focus, tone, and style jumps around like a child with ADD. Or probably more precise, an author who’s trying to shovel the next cliffhanger out the door in order to make the next paycheck. I sympathize with the pressure of weekly serializations, I truly do, and I bear no ill will towards author Hiroyuki Takei for my perceived failure to deliver or giving a neglectful performance, but it just ceased to be enjoyable for me at a certain point. That’s a fact, and I suspect it’s also a fact that not all of that decrease in quality was out of Takei’s hands.

It’s not necessarily a shame that Shaman King is structurally derivative. That is, despite its unique framework in its subject matter of shamans, it’s still by-and-large a typical battle shonen format. For various reasons, main character Yoh Asakura and allies are constantly being pushed towards the next one-on-one fight. You have the typical tournament arc, power ups, friends becoming allies, ki, the whole shebang. But just when it seems the manga has enough of its own voice to overcome its tropes, it falls apart by committing the same genre “sins” so many shonen works do with such reckless abandon that it has to be assumed Takei was merely considering getting readers to the next chapter rather than setting up and delivering cohesive concepts and stories. Evidently, even your average reader can pick up on what seems like cynicism and lack of author interest – Shaman King was cancelled right before its apparent conclusion after a devastating last third of failing to grip the reader despite every desperate attempt to do so.

The broad strokes of why Shaman King ended up being a flop are obvious and combine to imply that Takei’s writing just caused the bulk of his audience to lose faith in the story. The drama of the story falls completely flat over time because of amateurish mistakes and shortcuts in crafting a story. These errors are countless and not unique to Shaman King, but combined and in such frequency are incredibly disappointing. For starters, Shaman King is fairly quick to make death of characters a complete triviality. Several characters eventually get the power to resurrect the dead for virtually no cost. The cast even make a joke of this later on, claiming that they can kill anyone they want because they can just be resurrected afterwards. When a major character dies at the end of a chapter and is almost immediately resuscitated it’s a cheap shot at drama only mitigated by relief at the popular character’s return, but Takei fully indulges in this lame tactic of page-turning to get readers asking for what happens next with little thought or effort. After dozens of chapters ending in deaths and the story asking for us to feel a reaction about it, the idea that nothing really matters starts to sink in. You don’t need to see what happens in that next chapter – you already know. There will be no consequences. Sure, you might assume in a typical hero story that they’ll always make it out alive, but when even the “why” starts to be insignificant empathizing with the characters’ plight becomes extraordinarily difficult.

This problem goes deeper than just being lazy, predictable writing. The idea of the series treating death so frivolously makes an absolute joke out of the central Taoist-esque themes of pacifism and respecting all life. The series’ tendency to turn enemies into allies so quickly is often sudden and not really believable, but Yoh Asakura’s sacrifices to maintain his no-death policy eventually end up not mattering and he rightfully gives up not batting an eyelash when any of his friends kill someone right in front of him.

The results of the fights could be forgiven if the methodology of getting there were interesting, but Takei finds similar ways to defuse the promise of any interesting battle. There gets to be a point where the bulk of conflicts aren’t in the details of their action, but in everything surrounding them. It becomes all set up with no payoff. An early mistake Takei makes is quantifying mana, the power levels of the characters. This is a common trope since Dragon Ball Z’s energy scouters, and Takei quickly writes himself into a corner after quantifying the main villain’s power as hundreds of thousands of times greater than the heroes’. This immediately means that the main characters will eventually have to get sudden boosts in power rather than gradually growing over time in order for them to stand a believable chance against the opposing threat. Takei, instead of simply showing us the difference of power in characters by their actions or skills prefers to have characters stand around rattling off numbers. “You can’t possibly win because X is a greater number than Y!” is a favorite paraphrased line of Takei’s. This cold, mathematical view of spirit energy is also in direct conflict with the central theme of spirituality. In Shaman King’s universe, it is said countless times that a character’s mana is the strength of their spirit. This implies that personal character growth is tied to power, a fine concept, but one that’s not compatible with the number crunching necessary to push the characters forward against stronger opponents. Quantifying a power that’s supposedly tied to mentality makes no sense and is a nihilistic philosophy tied to a spiritual one. This contradiction always cheapens the other element, with characters going through sudden huge boosts of power that are tied to basic character development. It’s a lot of repetition over the same themes of strength of will and maturity, and when you start trying to tie both together to each character’s power with how they’re portrayed mentally it constantly doesn’t match up. A more confident, righteous character is weaker than one with hesitation because the story demands it, and vice-versa. The number system is a lazy way to establish the threat of conflict and its connection to the personal themes of the series with its character development cheapens the outcome of those conflicts as well.
While you start off with decent action scenes, the bulk of the series ends up hyping up big battles that rarely ever deliver. The formula usually consists of characters standing, facing each other while rattling off numbers until one has some spiritual epiphany and decides everything in a huge never-before-seen attack that compromises the direction of future action scenes. A particularly bad example of what I’m talking about is Yoh’s team facing the Ice Men team in the tournament arc. The Ice Men have a synergy among their Nordic powers of nature that sound potentially interesting and a capable threat to Yoh. End chapter. The fight begins, and the Ice Men’s assault is effortlessly shot down by one of the most embarrassing cases of “special snowflake” shonen main character grandstanding I’ve seen in a while. For whatever poorly explained reason, Yoh’s team is now capable of summoning absolutely enormous versions of their spirit allies. The following material is his team rattling off how inexperienced the Ice Men are compared to Yoh and friends, and how their goals are worthless compared to their own loft ambitions while showing off their huge dick spirits used for multi-page spreads and impressive looking stills that are used for extremely little narratively. The chapter ends after each character summons their giant spirit, basically stand still, and intimidate the Ice Men.

Immediately any promise of an interesting fight is betrayed by establishing who can only be the possible victors, and Takei has lazily set up a way where he can make a battle seem epic without it actually being one. Before, you may have expected dynamic action scenes, characters moving around a lot, exchanging blows, that sort of thing. But it takes a lot of effort to choreograph that, and it’s far easier to just draw a bunch of stills and find reasons the fight ends quickly and painlessly. This ends up characterizing the vast majority of Shaman King’s fights. Characters talk about numbers, summon gigantic page-filling spirits, and then the bigger one wins. That’s not a fight, it’s the equivalent of a Looney Tunes skit where each character keeps bringing out a bigger cannon until the comically large one wins. The fact that Takei has now set up our main characters’ abilities as being enormous will now also kill any interest he has in having to draw those monstrosities multiple times in the case of a long fight. More assurance that such a thing will never happen.

It's an efficient way to move through the plot. After all, what if readers lose interest during the middle of a long fight? If that was Takei’s concern rather than just taking the easy way out, then that issue is solved as well. Finishing fights quickly lets you hype and set up the next cliffhanger you won’t deliver on and (hopefully) keeps readers buying those magazines. Oh no! The chapter ends with our hero up against the entire enemy army! What will happen!? Nothing, the fight won’t happen because there’s no contrivable way it could be made a fair fight. This entire scene only happened to draw imposing stills to get people to read the next chapter. It’s almost like a scam. This never-ending betrayal of expectations and taking the easiest way out of any situation in the plot is the precise reason why Shaman King failed. You can’t endlessly set-up cliffhangers without payoff. That trick only works a few times in succession, but Takei rides on it all the way to the end. Once you lose faith in what’s going to happen, the set-up hardly matters anymore, doesn’t it?

Shaman King is marred by additional issues that suggest its inconsistency is the result of pure indulgence by the author. It’s very evident multiple times throughout the manga that Takei is just absolutely sick of writing it and is wishing he could be doing anything else. So in addition to rushing through the plot while also insuring it never ends, he throws in any concept he wants regardless of consideration of the reader’s own interest. In one spot of the manga it becomes painfully obvious Takei has cars on the brain. Another conflict instantly ends as Takei suddenly decides he wants to draw cars. The fighting spirits are revealed to actually be transformable cars and what follows are multiple detailed shots of real cars and their engines. Later in the same volume is an unrelated one-shot manga about street racing. Instead of entertaining the reader, Takei shoved that thought away and used his manga for practice drawing cars. After all, you already bought that month’s issue, and surely you’ll buy the next one when the final page reveals a new villain is just about to enter the scene (certainly to have no permanent effect on anything).

Shaman King quickly devolves into endless running around circles with conflicts made as uninteresting as possible and having absolutely no consequences. Additional characters are piled on instead of using established ones well, and people randomly disappear and reappear volumes apart. It’s a ton of large, seemingly impressive cardboard stands with nothing behind the flat, hollow drama. Even the presentation, the basic rendering of those big pages and empty promises isn’t enough to imply substance where the story fails. Takei’s initial stylized artwork takes a big hit around the same time the rest of the manga does, and the heavily stylized graffiti look barely exists any longer. Shaman King ended with a whimper after a pathetic cancellation, and although this may seem like the final nail in the coffin, it’s a blessing that we were saved further disappointment.