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Shaman King
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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Exotica, Funbari no Uta, The Poem of Funbari, The Song of Funbari

Japanese: シャーマンキング

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 32

Chapters: 288

Status: Finished

Published: Jun 30, 1998 to Aug 30, 2004

Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Supernatural

Theme: Super Power

Demographic: Shounen

Serialization: Shounen Jump (Weekly)

Authors: Takei, Hiroyuki (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 7.77¹ (scored by 37,045 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1393²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #211

Members: 75,752

Favorites: 3,359

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Reviews

Filtered Results: 16 / 17

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Jul 7, 2009

StaminaRose

Recommended

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, ...

Jan 21, 2015

Izaya

Not Recommended

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 ...

Jan 27, 2012

rondoblend

Mixed Feelings

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 ...

Mar 17, 2018

FAKEANIMEGIRL

Mixed Feelings

https://noahsb1c7c15d6d.wordpress.com/

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.

Dec 23, 2018

gundham

Not Recommended

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 ...

Jun 30, 2015

AnimeandMangaHQ

Mixed Feelings

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 ...

Dec 18, 2018

PapaAeon

Mixed Feelings

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 ...

Dec 26, 2015

Berserker1993

Mixed Feelings

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 ...

Oct 20, 2020

baked_orange

Recommended

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 ...

Aug 2, 2016

lazyking88

Recommended

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.

Apr 25, 2017

tempest1352

Recommended

Preliminary (285/288 chp)

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. ...

Nov 3, 2019

StupidUserNames

Recommended

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 ...

Mar 23, 2021

MacSence

Recommended

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 ...

Mar 13, 2021

RobotSpaceCowboy

Recommended

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 ...

Nov 5, 2020

CobraLibidinosa

Recommended

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 ...

Apr 9, 2022

dyl0104

Recommended

This will be a combined Review of the original Shaman king manga and the Kazenban ending.
SPOILERS--

Introduction--

Reading this series for the first time is probably the best time i've ever had reading. The Characters, the comedy, and just thinking about the series and analyzing each little detail was amazing experience to me.

Side Characters--

Each important side character could've had their own show. One of my personal Favorites is Horohoro or Usui Horokeu. At around 3/4 into the series its reveal that he was hiding things to everyone else. He wasn't showing his true self. This thing he was hiding was the he killed his girl. His Selfish ... acts caused her death. He had been carrying the burden of that for his whole life since is occurred. It's like a Nightmare but the nightmare doesn't end. because you cant just simply not feel such a guilty burden.

Yoh Asakura--

Yoh Asakura or the main character of the Shaman King Franchise. My Personal #1 Mc OAT. Yoh Asakura from the get-go was put with a burden of defeating Hao Asakura ( The main villain, more on him later). Yoh and Hao are twin brothers btw. Yoh's parents and grandparents Knew Hao was going to reincarnate as a Asakura. So the decision The parents and grandparents had to make was if they were willing to kill both of the twins right after they we're born. just to eliminate the chances of Hao coming back. The thing was that they were Identical Twins, so you couldn't tell them apart as baby's. Once Hao was born the grandfather hesitated and hao got away with his spirit. Yoh being left as the only hope for the Asakura Family. That what makes Yoh's Life so important is the fact that if they didnt hesitate to kill the twins Yoh wouldn't ever exist. This whole story of Hao and Yoh wouldn't exist. But Since they didn't kill the twins. eventually at the end of the series Hao did up becoming the Shaman king, not meaning Yoh failed. They made up or rather, they showed Hao the truth. Yoh ending up being a dad and Hao as the shaman king, more fitting roles imo.

Hao Asakura--

Hao Asakura or the main villian of the Shaman King Franchise is Yoh's Twin Brother (mc). I freaking love this dude, he is such a cool and interesting character. Why i think that just listen to this: He is the Twin brother of Yoh, but since he can reincarnate. So hes also his approximately Yoh great, great , great, great, great, great, great , great, great grandfather as well. because his first life was 100 years ago before he was in his third life during the series. being able to reincarnate every 500 years.
Getting more into his Character.
All good villains Usually have a reason or goal for doing the things they did. Hao commiting genocide and wanting to wipe humanity, his reasoning was somewhat acceptable. In His first life, His mother was killed because back then shamans were portrayed as demons. But in Actuality Demons and Humans in The world of Shaman king and in Haos eyes, Humans and Demons are definitions rather than races. Humans or rather Mankind, is the cause of The world being so wicked. Demons being Created from Mankind's cruelty. The reason Hao's mother was killed was because she could she ghost, and she was portrayed (by the public) a demon.
SO haos reasoning to commit genocide and destroy mankind and to make a world of only demons was because his Mother, the only one who even cared about was killed for something she couldn't control. It's not like this isnt happening in real life ( to a extent).If you look at the youth, even a middle school. Kids are being bullied because of a medical condition, "being ugly", or uncontrollably obese. These kids at such a young age have to go through that just because some kids think they're above other people. It is a bit different from haos perspective tho, Hao's perspective is a perspective from one who is suffering the most from this type of conflict, even more than his mother. Thats because Hao cared so much for his mother he would do anything to revenge her. Hao wanting to have revenge is what makes him a human, a type of human he hates. He is making other people suffer greatly because of his own actions, just like the people who kill his mother. Making him the biggest Hypocrite lmao.

Make sure to read shaman king if you havent already.

Discord: zero.#3063

A youtuber who inspired me to read shaman king and someone who makes great videos and a better interpretation of Hao Asakura.

https://www.youtube.com/rashplays