A Shaman's Journey revisited!

And the shaman being referred to is..... Asakura Yoh! Yeah, for those who recognise the name, I am actually going to talk about Shaman King ("SK")(manga version). Granted, SK started its serialisation more than 10 years ago and ended its run in 2004. Hence, 2014 is exactly a decade after it ended. Well, since I recently completed reading the manga (I would say more like.. marathoned it, rather than reading), I figured a dissection or just some thoughts of it would be just fine. Lol.

Initially, I thought SK had the usual shounen plot. Main character meet other characters, started off as either allies and rivals, and eventually all became allies because of a greater cause. Anyway, if you want a summary, wikipedia article can help you much better. For me, I think the driving force of SK is actually the characters' individual development and how well the plot twist can occur ie completely defeats my expectations. For example, like how "Bokuto no Ryu" became a shaman and eventually a comrade of Yoh's during the Shaman Fight(or Tournament) when in the first few chapters, he was portrayed as a 'normal delinquent' and could also be considered as an enemy of sorts.

If there is one thing that I really applaud SK for, it would be the fact that the mangaka (Hiroyuki Takei) uses actual birth dates and year for each significant character. So, it is quite fun, really. Sometimes I make little calculations on each character and give them a definite age at certain point in time. I mean, it is common for mangaka to give birthdays for characters but specific years are definitely not a common practice.

Lastly, the best part about SK is really the ENDING. Nah, not because I want the manga to end! But because the mangaka really wrapped up the story, with some fast-forwarding to the future of showing how the significant characters became and so on.

Well, I know I didn't really go into details and specifics because I was sort of trying to make you read it, rather than me spoiling the whole story for you. And as I have said at the beginning, this is just some of my thoughts and insights regarding SK manga. I didn't make a comparison with the anime because it just doesn't seem fair to compare those two.