Shaman King

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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.

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 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.