Shaman King Creator Celebrates 20th Anniversary with New Art

Shaman King was one of the standout action series of the late 90s and early '00s, and soon the [...]

By Nick Valdez

Shaman King was one of the standout action series of the late 90s and early '00s, and soon the series will be celebrated its landmark 20th Anniversary with a special art exhibition in Japan. This new exhibition will feature original art from the manga, various other drawings from series creator Hiroyuki Takei, and even a look into the inspiration behind Amidamaru's sword, Harusame. As one extra bit of goodness for the special celebration, Takei released a new illustrated visual for the event hyping up what's to come.

The new visual for the exhibit features characters like Yoh, Anna, Tao, Ryserg, Manta, Jeanne, and much more. It's been a while since fans have been able to see these characters in a new way, so this visual is exciting for several neat reasons!

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.

Fans in attendance will each receive special goods at random ranging from cool art pieces or other merchandise, but the main draw is seeing some of the original inspirations Takei used for Shaman King. Although this series is long over, it's memory still lives on. Even though most fans in the United States remember it for its initially truncated manga ending and anime series on the now-defunct 4KIDS TV programming block on the FOX channel, it's still one of the bigger series to debut around that time even 20 years later.

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. 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.

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