Shaman King Announces 20th Anniversary Celebration Plans

Hiroyuki Takei’s Shaman King was one of the most popular action manga and anime series back in the early 2000s, but it will probably always be remembered for its truncated and abrupt ending. Although the series eventually came back and Takei revealed the “true” ending to the series, it didn’t quite match the impact of that initial release. It’s been 20 years since the manga first was published in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump, and the series will be celebrating this monumental anniversary in Japan with a special museum exhibit. This exhibit will be moving throughout Japan from the end of the year to early 2020.

First opening at the Space 634 in the Tokyo Solamachi retail complex in Oshiage, Tokyo on November 23rd to December 4th. From there the 20th Anniversary exhibit will open at the Abeno Harukas Kintetsu store inside the Abeno Harukas skyscraper in Osaka sometime in January next year, and will cap things off with a showing at the Tooku Nippo Shinmachi Building in Shinmachi, Aomori.

Shaman King was originally created by Hiroyuki Takei for Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump in 1998, and has been collected into 32 volumes. The manga was licensed for an English language release by Viz Media, and was adapted into an anime series by Xebec. This is most likely the form of the series that most fans will recognize as the English language broadcast of the anime became one of the main pillars of 4Kids Entertainment.

Running for 64 episodes in total, the story follows Yoh Asakura, a shaman who is a medium between the worlds of the living and the dead. He enters into the Shaman Fight, a tournament between shamans held every 500 years, in order to become to contact the Great Spirit and become the Shaman King, one who is able to reshape the world in any way they wish.

The series was recently revived with the special manga release, Shaman King The Super Star, but not much is known about the new manga entry since it has yet to officially release outside of Japan. Takei had reportedly ended the manga’s original run due to a mix of fatigue and feeling like his story fell into shonen traps, but later released a “Perfect Edition” for the story with an ending to the series he initially envisioned. But the ending to the story most likely fell to the wayside for many fans as it didn’t arrive until five years after the original abrupt ending.

via Comic Natalie