Shaman King Reboot Confirms Returning Star with New Design

Shaman King‘s new anime series has confirmed that one returning character will be getting an updated design! Hiroyuki Takei’s Shaman King series is soon getting a second chance at anime life with a brand new anime taking on the complete version of Takei’s series released years after the original came to its truncated end. While Takei did go back and eventually end the series as intended, there were some other notable updates made with future iterations of the Shaman King franchise that improved on the original work. One of these big improvements was Joco McDonell.

Joco (otherwise known as “Chocolove” from the original release) was originally drawn with a set of protruding outer lips, and in the years since subsequent releases have adjusted this in order to remove the racially insensitive work. It’s an issue the series indeed did have with how it portrayed other cultures early on, but has improved on over the years with makeovers like this. This is the new design coming to the anime series as well:

While Joco will look different in this new anime, he’ll be sounding the same as the version you heard from 20 years ago as Motoko Kumai has been confirmed to return for the role. Kumai is only one of the massive list of returning cast members that include the likes of Katsuyuki Konishi as Amidamaru, Megumi Hayashibara as Anna Kyoyama, Minami Takayama as Hao Asakura, Masahiko Tanaka as Ryunosuke Umemiya, Wataru Takagi as Tokagero, Inuko Inuyama as Manta Oyamada, Romi Park as Tao Ren, Michiko Neya as Tao Jun, Yuji Ueda as Horohoro, Nana Mizuki as Tamao Tamamura, Takehito Koyasu as Faust VII, and Yoko Soumi as Lyserg Diethel.

The new Shaman King anime has yet to confirm an official release date as of this writing, but it is set to make its debut in April as part of the Spring 2021 wave of new releases. But what do you think of Joco’s return for the new Shaman King series? How do you feel about his makeover? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or you can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!