times.
Read the abstract if you hate spoilers or long essays like below.
First of all, it is not fair to compare both, because they are targeted at DIFFERENT populations. The anime is targeted (according to its contents) at 12-13 year old boys, while the manga started out so but as the target grows up (Shaman King manga was out in 1998 and is still continuing so the targeted readers are now 16-17), Takei made the content to suit the grown up audience (it was his plan to make a manga that 'grows' content-wise with the audience). The anime was out and ended within half a year.
It is obvious why you just can't compare the two fairly.
The second thing is, comparing the two makes more harm then benefit to anyone.
Both the anime and manga is worth taking your time to take a look, if you know what to expect (especially for the anime, which has been criticized harshly by some).
If you are able to smell out 'the plot is not good nor bad', 'characters are not portraited as well', 'some non-action scenes are poorly drawn', then you are definitely 100% anime fan, in addition to being a 100% Shaman King fan.
The action scenes were very well drawn. Ren's swiftness, Yoh's strength, HAO's horrible air, Ryu's berserks, Team The.REN's scuffles, Anna's unexpected attacks (and... breakdown) are all very well animated. The only thing out of my expectation is the slowness of the angels of X-laws... I had imagined them to be very quick (ok I only watched the second half of the anime, where the anime departs from the manga, i.e. from the appearance of Lyserg. I started out with the manga and had read all of them several times). But in some of the non-action scenes (those with no fighting) you will notice that the characters just look... a little bit different, towards the negative side...
I really love the voice actresses. (The voice actors? uhm, they are okay but they don't 'shine'.) Yoh's voice is just what I had imagined, so is Anna's, Manta's, HAO's and Ren's. Horohoro's voice is a little bit too childish but the 'hot-headed' side was still well done.
And the voice actresses had caught the gists of the characters accurately. Yoh's relaxness and determination, Anna's harshness and coolness, Manta's fidgeting, Ryu's great ups and downs, Ren's rigidity, and Horohoro's lack of 'weight' were very vivid under their interpretation.
The plot is quite different from the Manga for several practical reasons. But in general the Shaman Fights that happened in the Patch Village feel very different from those in the manga for some reasons I have not yet pinpointed. The manga's looked more horrible and the tense-up is more obvious. However I won't compare them as declared above. The length and media are differnt, so why do you expect them to be the same? Simple condensation couldn't do the job. You will understand that if you had tried to change scripts to manga or fictions to drama.
But in my eyes, the most important thing the anime missed is the character of the protagonists. Though Ren in the anime is much the same as the Ren in the manga, it seemed that the director was not to be able to catch Yoh and HAO's characters accurately. That's something many had criticized about, so I will just make a short report here:
In the anime, Yoh is more on the stupid and dumb side rather than the 'wise' image Takei gave him in the manga. Yoh's relaxness was portraited like he was just trying to pretend to be calm (he laughs drily for no reason so often in the anime that you can only explain that he is trying to 'loosen the string'). The famous example was that Yoh trusted people(Shalona) when it was tactically unwise to do so... which is opposed to what Yoh is portraited in the manga.
In the anime, HAO was portraited as a mad superhuman and had a mad love of Yoh's BODY. The wise side and dark side of HAO wasn't portraited as well as in the manga because of the difference in length. But it makes a difference. A sigificant one too.
This is because the main plot is not Shaman Fight, but the problem of HAO's desire, which is to destroy human beings and build a Shaman Kingdom which only has powerful shamans living in it, and the fact that it seemed that HAO was going to obtain what he would need to accomplish it. Shaman Fight is just that sort of 'stage' which is an attempt to make the story interesting by the producers. Therefore why HAO wanted to do so is a main concern for the audience who are not just trying to enjoy watching some flashy fights. We would like to know how HAO felt.
What had made HAO wanted to destroy the human beings? We may be able to understand why he wanted a Shaman Kingdom: people and shamans can't understand each other because most normal people won't believe in spirits and might fear or despite shamans. Personally, I think the difference between shamans (as defined in this story) and normal people is more than the blind and the normal...)
It is just too incredulously childish to let Yoh and his gang physically fight with HAO and beat HAO finally and thus end the anime... (I'm sorry but I don't consider this as a spoiler... what else do you expect for a kid show whose producers can't even accurately grasp the wisdom Yoh has got... I think Takei's decision of completely withdrew his hands from this anime was a wise one -- may be he realized that the producers were not competent enough to understand his characters while he could do nothing helpful)
One thing the anime is better than the manga is about that 'Dracula' incident. In those episodes, Yoh's stance was very well illustrated. (It seems the only 'fair' thing to compare is this one.)
Another word here before ending up is the tail of the story: the Orcale of Yoh rung again in the last shot...
Recommendation:
If you wanted to get a better experience of the anime, read the manga first before going for the anime. Then the anime won't look so childish because you can automatically fill the gaps in and correct those which are not very well written.
(I will put as little spoilers as I can though)
First, expect it to be a VERY LONG story. If you want to start from volumn one, please imagine yourself as a 12 year-old kid who would like to read a shaman story.
The story started off illustrating the differences between the values held by ASAKURA Yoh, the first shaman we were introduced in the story and therefore the no. 1 main character and that of normal secondary school students (Manta).
Then you would be told about different values shamans could hold on spirits. This was illustrated by TAO Ren & TAO June with Yoh.
And then the (preliminary) Shaman Fight began. We were given a glimpse of what things shamans could do. And it is here we first learn about Yoh's past -- some very gloomy facts darkened by the horror of the shaman fight Yoh was in (with Faust VIII) -- doubling the effect...
After the prelimimary fights, the gang went to China to fight with Ren's past. Ren's family history was so horrible that Yoh is a lucky kid compared to Ren.
After our first meeting with HAO, we will look at the hilarious process with which the group got shifted to America, where they were to find the Patch Village, to enter the next phase of Shaman Fight. So they met more companions on the way and Takei told us about his views on 'companionship' and 'friendship'.
As expected, after a lot of things, through which we get to know Yoh and his friends more (and HAO and his companions got some appearance too, as well as the representative of the 'law-above-all' group: X-laws).
After knowing Yoh and HAO's relationship, the 'main course' of Shaman Fights started. We view spectacular fights of 3-shaman-a-team and got to understand that shaman fights are fights of values, of psychological strength, of the grandness of desire, of knowledge and wisdom.
And then Ren had to confront his crime of killing Chrome. Takei expressed his view (one which is very similar to Watsuki's in Rurouni Kenshin) on the crime of killing and punishment/make-up for the crime. Yoh sacrificed something very important to give Ren a chance to make-up for his crime.
Then we were brought to 5 years ago, when Yoh first met with Anna. A very darling story was told although the rhythm was a bit slow due to Takei's sickness. (Takei was sick when he drew this part.) We also get to know a little bit more about HAO, as well as Yoh's character.
The story of a very long day was then told. So many things and fightings took place on that day that you may have to reread a few times to understand all the incidents in this very long day! All shamans of HAO's side appeared, as well as a very horrible shamanic robot! Takei revealed about what is 'inside' the Great Spirit through Chocolove, who had committed a similar crime as Ren did.
*Yays because of successfully avoided from giving 3 main spoilers when talking about this very long day... or 4?*
And Takei had become an expert in inserting funny details that makes the story unbelievably warm and funny. The team Gandara, the team representing the Buddhist belief system, had participated in the story a lot in this long day. X-laws and HAO and Yoh's dad had their own parts there too.
HAO's love with Yoh (or Yoh's body) was shown here. Very tensed up scene it was. HAO's dark past was revealed a little bit more.
In the next day after this long day, Opacho, the little girl with black curly hair and black skin who is with HAO got some impressive parts. In this part we got a spectacular witty fight by Yoh (and Lyserg) with X-laws, and the founder of X-laws. The fact that Opacho was in HAO's team showed HAO's wisdom.
*avoids putting main spoilers here by avoiding talking about why Yoh had to fight with X-laws and the founder and talking about who the founder was*
In the ending of this part, the Iron Maiden showed her wisdom by showing that she fully understood the situation she was in, and through her, Takei expressed some of his views on 'the executor of law'.
Here, anyone would notice that the manga is much more elaborate then the anime, and that Takei had put many personal opinions on important real-life issues into the story, which is what made Shaman King a little deeper than other SHOUNEN MANGA.
We were then brought to the fact that HAO was in fact too strong for any shamans to beat down, and were told that Yoh managed to collect representatives from several main groups of the Shaman Fight, including HAO's, and talked about his plan of attacking HAO when he finally obtains and 'merges' with the Great Spirit, and had to faint for some time.
After this (chaotic) 'peak' meeting, we were brought to THE.REN's fight with the most violent group of the teams of Gandara. The.Ren dealt with the special ability of the Gandara group, which is making all desires and concepts/values to become 'nothingness', by using 'natural forces' like lightning (Ren) and ice (Horohoro). Obviously Takei thought that desires and values are natural things and therefore cannot be really eliminated, BUT there is also nothing unusual about eliminating desires and values to nothingness *carefully avoids a mild spoiler*.
Our attention is then brought to the 'real' Horohoro in this fight. Not only Horohoro got spotlights on him, but Ren and Chocolove did something to let us (and them) see the 'real' Horohoro.
And what is that '5 warriors' Gandara is talking about?! I don't want another '5 Star story'!!!
Without being told what the '5 warriors' are supposed to do, our attention was turned to the berserking members of HAO's group, who kiled their oppenents violently. X-laws was broken down because Malcom's true identity as well as Maiden Jeanne's true identity was revealed -- and the memebrs who turned away and decided to act on their own against HAO and found their demise. Meanwhile, more fights of 'an eye for an eye' occured and we were treated to scenes of fighting. Takei, without answering the questions he had already thrown into the manga, thrown out more mysteries into the manga --
**Spoilers warning again**
Princess Sati, the leader of the Gandara team, suddenly appeared before Yoh and hit Yoh to hell just when Yoh announced that he and his team had invented new oversouls. Then Yoh met Matamune in hell. What would happen? It is obvious that Yoh would get some training, as well as understanding to HAO's situatoin, and become more powerful abd come back... And some time in between, when HAO was left alone while his followers did their killings, HAO cried and mumbled 'Mum..."...
Just when Jeanned showed signs that she had had some deep thoughts about giving death penalty to people and showed that she wouldn't do those cruel and meaningless punishments again, she and Malcom were attacked for the exact reason she was confessing... and we saw Tamao and Manta, who was with them, in peril.
So let me make some educated guess here... the story is now near to the end. Yoh, gaining more power from 'hell' so that he would be able to protect what he would like to protect, gains understanding to the real desires of HAO and managed to sort out some way to satisfy HAO without having people killed. HAO's desire might be as simple as what was guessed in AKIDA's fanfiction "Last Episode of Shaman King" -- he just wanted to live a life without being discriminated for his power, and have friends who accept who and what he is. From his sensational comments on Horohoro's real name meaing the 'child of wolf', I would guess that Haou was one of those who was called so also and was discriminated for that reason, and he strived to be powerful so that he might be respected, which turned out that people just discriminate him more than ever... and Tamao and Manta would manage to save at least Jeanne from the attacks... possibly by Manta making some weirdo oversoul like in the manga at the end... after Tamao and Lyserg had done their best but is unable to get the group out of their dangerous situation...
As the manga is to be continued, this page will get updated once 2 months(approximately).
As the target audience grow, the story grows in depth and let us hope that Takie will be able to give all of us a mature end for this good story!
p.s. in the manga, what is in that 'super book on divination, tactics and decisions' was not yet known. We only hear some techniques used in that book but Takei didn't told us excatly what happened when the characters had learnt the book (for Yoh's team specifically). We were told that 3 of THE.REN learnt it through fighting with Yoh's father.
Mail me at z262501@hotmail.com if you found any mistakes above. Thank you for your help.
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