Shaman King (2021) Episode 11 Discussion

Tatsunami said:
Another very well paced episode! Infact I'm certain next week will adapt 4 chapters too! I guess the people who said that the first arc would be rushed and the story will start to slow down were right, this definitely gives me high hopes for the future.

Also, was it just me or were the lines in this episode kind of thick? I really liked it tbh!

Danpmss said:


To be honest I've been rereading the entire thing while comparing side by side with the manga so far, I couldn't find it to be rushed at all, just a tad bit less substantial in some regards (which will be expanded upon even characterization-wise later anyway, so nothing really missing there). All of the essential parts and heart of the source material are in here, as outdated as they may be (not that people ever had that problem with JoJo anyway, it's great fun, first and foremost).

Heck, JoJo had a pacing even more blazing fast than this had at the start tbh, people complaining are probably more used to the slower approach and tone of the first adaptation of this initial portion of the story, which is understandable.

Many people I know disliked both FMAB AND HxH 2011's guts for "ruining" those same regards compared to their original runs and OVAs (in my opinion, what it lost in atmosphere, it gained in entertaining epicness, which the first adaptation lacked for being much more serious and mature in tone). Unfortunately for FMAB, not only that, it kinda caused some major holes here and there, for being a slow burner even in the source material, while the anime tried to adapt text-heavy 27 volumes in 64 eps, but it was otherwise a great experience.

For HxH, fortunately it had numbers, so even if the pacing got faster, it wasn't at all detrimental except in terms of presentation and execution... aaaand they went back to the pacing from the original run when stuff got VERY text-heavy like in the manga counterpart, but it maintained the epic factor, once it reached the Chimera Ants arc in that case (and maybe it arguably went slower than it should, but that's my take anyway).

All in all, as far as full reboots go, this one has a lot of heart, and despite feeling a bit distilled (I'd argue only episode 6 rushed a certain important bit just touched upon that won't come back, but even then, the essentials are still all there), it is doing a great job adapting all the content it's covering, especially in the last 3 eps (and that's considering the first arc had a fair amount of text in the manga, and they still did a competent job adaptating basically 6.5 chapters per ep, and closing them in well established plot point conclusions).

Shaman King is much more action packed than even JoJo later on, so I can see, much like the old anime, them adapting even 8-10 chapters in one go without missing any detail (because that was actually the case even in the first adaptation if memory doesn't fail me, during the . By this point, even the old anime was going for 4-5 chapters, only slowing down during the upcoming arc, which has more talk (and them changing a bunch of stuff and putting fights from later on out of order... which is where I would say it got pretty lackluster instead).

It's just unfortunate that some scenes don't hit as well without the only mentioned details, but hey, for a stated to be pragmatic adaptation, I'm feeling like it's nowhere near that compressed. But it does lose some substance for now, as mentioned before.

But for what they are going here? I don't think you can do any better than this in 4-cours, and that's almost as good as the manga, this one was definitely made by people who really know well and like a lot what they are adapting in such a timeframe.

I'd say that ever since this arc started, this series arguably did a better job with it than the previous, and I liked that one a lot. And all that comes next is a given, since the first one kinda derailed starting from the next one.

This episode is an easy 5/5, and this anime is kinda underappreciated in this site imo, even considering it isn't exactly for everyone.

CrimsonCW said:
Meh, I'm sorry but I'm not really digging this endeavor anymore.

Some new tastes have been acquired between watching this and I realize now how utterly, utterly, utterly bored I am by the standard battle shonen formula like this.

Granted, Shaman King is better in this regard, but it's still more of the same. Ren's motivations were decent enough, but again, friends barging into an evil place to put the evil guy in his place, power of friendship, etc, etc, god, I outgrew this so long ago.

After recently finding some amazing anime that are my current genre (seinen), unique, interesting and some of the most engaging stuff I've ever seen, I want to watch more THAT kind of stuff, not this that I'm simply revisiting that I wouldn't really be into otherwise.

Shonen is almost always bad, with very very few exceptions, and man, I don't have the patience to keep watching this every week anymore. I'm just too bored currently, and my interests lie elsewhere now.

I'm putting this on hold for now. Maybe by the time I go through the stuff I really want to watch, this will be done and then I'll resume it.
I don't hate SK, I'm just so.... ungodly tired of this standard shonen formula.

Took discovering some amazing anime for me to realize how little patience I have for this anymore, let alone on a weekly basis.

3/5 episode and series is now on hold for me. Maybe I'll resume when it's over, but maybe not. We'll see.

nkozic_7 said:

To bad for you, but as you said, you will back very soon, because in 2 episodes real thing begining

SouthRzVa said:


OK episode. Looking forward to seeing Ren finally finding inner peace by committing patricide.

Danpmss said:


To be honest I've been rereading the entire thing while comparing side by side with the manga so far, I couldn't find it to be rushed at all, just a tad bit less substantial in some regards (which will be expanded upon even characterization-wise later anyway, so nothing really missing there). All of the essential parts and heart of the source material are in here, as outdated as they may be (not that people ever had that problem with JoJo anyway, it's great fun, first and foremost).

Heck, JoJo had a pacing even more blazing fast than this had at the start tbh, people complaining are probably more used to the slower approach and tone of the first adaptation of this initial portion of the story, which is understandable.

Many people I know disliked both FMAB AND HxH 2011's guts for "ruining" those same regards compared to their original runs and OVAs (in my opinion, what it lost in atmosphere, it gained in entertaining epicness, which the first adaptation lacked for being much more serious and mature in tone). Unfortunately for FMAB, not only that, it kinda caused some major holes here and there, for being a slow burner even in the source material, while the anime tried to adapt text-heavy 27 volumes in 64 eps, but it was otherwise a great experience.

For HxH, fortunately it had numbers, so even if the pacing got faster, it wasn't at all detrimental except in terms of presentation and execution... aaaand they went back to the pacing from the original run when stuff got VERY text-heavy like in the manga counterpart, but it maintained the epic factor, once it reached the Chimera Ants arc in that case (and maybe it arguably went slower than it should, but that's my take anyway).

All in all, as far as full reboots go, this one has a lot of heart, and despite feeling a bit distilled (I'd argue only episode 6 rushed a certain important bit just touched upon that won't come back, but even then, the essentials are still all there), it is doing a great job adapting all the content it's covering, especially in the last 3 eps (and that's considering the first arc had a fair amount of text in the manga, and they still did a competent job adaptating basically 6.5 chapters per ep, and closing them in well established plot point conclusions).

Shaman King is much more action packed than even JoJo later on, so I can see, much like the old anime, them adapting even 8-10 chapters in one go without missing any detail (because that was actually the case even in the first adaptation if memory doesn't fail me, during the . By this point, even the old anime was going for 4-5 chapters, only slowing down during the upcoming arc, which has more talk (and them changing a bunch of stuff and putting fights from later on out of order... which is where I would say it got pretty lackluster instead).

It's just unfortunate that some scenes don't hit as well without the only mentioned details, but hey, for a stated to be pragmatic adaptation, I'm feeling like it's nowhere near that compressed. But it does lose some substance for now, as mentioned before.

But for what they are going here? I don't think you can do any better than this in 4-cours, and that's almost as good as the manga, this one was definitely made by people who really know well and like a lot what they are adapting in such a timeframe.

I'd say that ever since this arc started, this series arguably did a better job with it than the previous, and I liked that one a lot. And all that comes next is a given, since the first one kinda derailed starting from the next one.

This episode is an easy 5/5, and this anime is kinda underappreciated in this site imo, even considering it isn't exactly for everyone.

Manga18 said:
So the strongest corpses ever can be one-shotted by some mediocre shamans?

Also the relashionship between Ren an Yoh evolved too fast to allow me to be hooked by it.
Aftet the fight they were eneimes, then friends, now super friends ("This is how Ren is"), also I'm not attached to Ren thanks to the speed of the anime and so the beginnign brings 0 emotional weight

Manga18 said:
So the strongest corpses ever can be one-shotted by some mediocre shamans?

Also the relashionship between Ren an Yoh evolved too fast to allow me to be hooked by it.
Aftet the fight they were eneimes, then friends, now super friends ("This is how Ren is"), also I'm not attached to Ren thanks to the speed of the anime and so the beginnign brings 0 emotional weight



This only means that the manga is rushed also, take any other shonen and compare the pace.
This is so fast it hurts, as an example look at Ren-Yoh relationship as I said

Danpmss said:

TL;DR
It's not really rushed in any regard, that's a false equivalent in terms of writing and storytelling, even because the story *went* out of its way to show "Hey, after his character conflict was resolved and he gained admiration/relatability towards me he joined our side, that's just how he is". One thing is you personally not feeling invested in such chemistry, and that's totally fine. But another completely different is to say it wasn't developed the right way, there is no right way and there are adults that have a far weirder human interaction with the people they walk with than this.

And in fact, for it being a product of its time, if anything, it at least do it in a more acceptable way, since children their age do have some friendships suddenly start out of a rivalry/antagonism just like that in the very other day, happened to me twice back in my days of Pokemon TCG anyway, and we would take blood from each other fighting in school lol

horhecoolz08 said:
I mean, what use is friendship if ur just gonna go at it alone, knowing that ur chance of victory is very slim..

TakafumiNaito said:


Ren is the hair of the Tao family. Therefore, he can be fairly confident that his father will NOT be trying to kill him. On the other hand he knows for a fact that should they lose this fight En WILL kill Yoh.

Shaman King has the theme of friendship, ESPECIALLY when it comes to Ren, it's literally his main theme, but it does not do the POWER of friendship.

Time and time again the show is hitting the watchers over the head that the only thing that matters is concentration / peace of mind (and time and time again people choose to ignore those lines).
Emotions, ANY emotions make a shaman weaker, be it hate, fear, happiness, love - you MUST kill your heart to use 100% of your powers. But it does not matter at all what is the source of your calm. IF you find your friends being there reassuring you will benefit from that, but you just as well can find comfort in yourself, your goal, or even gravity existing - it does not matter what motivates you as long as it helps you put 100% of your focus on maintaining your over soul.

The other half of the battle is of course breaking your opponent's peace of mind, because as long as both are perfectly calm, the higher power level always wins - so the only reliable way to win, is to make your enemies defeat themselves.

The best example of the power system we got was actually in episode 1 (in this adaptation). Hao who has just been born defeats two extremely powerful shamans but if you look at the spirit of fire in episode 1 and compare to episode 10 it is clear he was very weak at that point in time. He effortlessly destroyed the shikigami, but then Mikihisa only got mild burns from the same attack (power levels do not affect the amount of damage you take when being hit)

Yohnmei was defeated because he didn't know which one of the twins he was attacking the hesitation was the reason why Hao lived. And Mikihisa lost because of fear and concern, "how could have a new born baby defeat a Shaman as powerful as my father?"

MegamiRem said:
En is too strong, I wonder how Ren and Yoh will beat him.