Shaman King

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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

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 Yu-Go-Oh instead.

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.