Shaman King

After a surviving a massive dip in ratings and even a cancellation, Shaman King has finally ended at 300 chapters. It was a long ride, but now that it's finally over, we can take a look at the series as a whole.

If you aren't familiar with the story, here's a synopsis from Anime News Network:

"Asakura Yoh is a shaman, a person who communicates with ghosts. He enters the Shaman Fight, for whoever wins the tournament gets to commune with the Great Spirit, God . . . that and his fiance Anna wants to be the wife of the Shaman King. Helping him are his friends Manta, Horo Horo, Ryu, and his samurai ghost partner, Amidamaru."

For those of you that wish to get into Shaman King that haven't already, you should know what you're getting into. Shaman King is a prime example of a fun little shonen series that becomes way too convoluted for it's own good. What starts out as a nice story of a lazy boy and a middle schooler complete with goofy interactions and cool fights quickly descends into the depths of dark drama and philosophical nonsense.

In the beginning, there are many awesome battles that utilize the shamans' unique way of fighting. Everyone is having fun as many enemies become friends and genuinely hilarious scenes take place. Things take a turn for the worse when the shaman tournament begins and several new and existing plot points are shoddily integrated into the story amongst all the fighting. This leads to a total negligence of the tournament while the same damn villains appear numerous times to put a stop to the protagonists' progress or outright try to kill them. Why they couldn't wait for their match in the tournament is beyond me. The whole structure of the manga pretty much collapses while stuff no one cares about ends up taking precedence over what should've been a truly badass tournament. With many fights lasting less than a chapter and a few genuinely interesting teams dropping out of the tournament, Takei has succesfully blue balled the reader out of what might've been the most interesting tournaments in Shonen.

The post-tournament is even more of a mess than the tournament itself. After the two main teams drop out, Hao's team wins the tournament, making him the next shaman king. Of course this was seemingly a well thought plan made by the protagonists so they could stop Hao while he's asleep before he becomes part of the Great Spirit. This leads to the introductions of the plants, which is a cool concept but is horribly executed. As the series got cancelled right around that part, Takei had to rush through the plant battles, limiting all of them to about a chapter. The creative battles that the series once boasted were no more as each fight was simply the characters uing their powers without any twists or unexpected techniques at all.

Ironically, I really enjoyed the final battle with Hao. It was actually extremely epic and desrving of a shonen series finale. Earth vs. the universe is an awesome idea even if it just was a metaphor. Unfortunately, the "power of love" winning the battle completely killed the mood, though it was nice to see every single character that appeared in the story make a return, even the dead ones.

So would I reccomend Shaman King? If Takei didn't wrap things up recently, I would say no, but it definitely deserves a read now that it's ended. It may not be on par with many popluar Shonen Jump series and it is an example of lost potential, but there are definitely good parts and a nice week read if you have the time.