Its rare to find a series as intricately crafted and well made as shaman king but shamanking manges to do so much with a simple concept it it goes to show HiroYuki's genius, I read this series dozens of times back in the early 00s and few manage to leave a mark like shaman king. I could go more indepth but honestly with an open mind even a slight bit Of IQ you to can understand the absolute master craft piece of fiction shaman king is

One of the best manga I've read when I was a kid. Until one day, the art style is changing. What makes me irritated is the art style. It was OK before, need some improvement, but still OK. But as Takei-sensei draws more and more, the art style is changing, just like many of other mangakas. Some mangaka improved into better art style, but not with Takei-sensei. His art style is better indeed, but for God's sake, so some shading. The drawing is confusing just like his story in this series. It's all good before the tournament, but all those 32 volumes of manga wasted mostly in the tournaments. Nothing is moving on except sword, gun, or whatever weapon you wield fighting scene. You can have a fighting, but story is still the most essential thing for a manga.

Now as the story progress, it becomes messier. It was all good and humorous in the beginning, but as more characters introduces, the mangaka himself seems lost in the direction. Like: "how I'm supposed to make them interact and become Yoh's BFF even though they are enemies just to defeat Hao?"

And maybe, just maybe, the mangaka was tangled by his own thought and ideas and gave us a BS ending, just like many many many many many many MANY once famous shounen mangas. Honestly, I don't mind if the mangaka took an hiatus to think about his direction, just like Berserk, I mean I know why Berserk took a long of hiatus, the mangaka (Miura-sensei) don't want to give us disappointing experience. It's fine, I can wait, but just do it for too long, or else I'll die of old age. I know being a mangaka is one of a hellish job: the editor will call you every single damn time, those deadlines, those stress, but as I read many shounen manga, it tends to be SUPER COOL in the beginning, everybody can interact with them, can feel the pain of the MC, and after that the story goes downhill just like that.

I don't give Shaman King a low rate because at least the downhill part are because of the messy-confusing-too-long-going-nowhere story and BS ending. At least they stick into how to defeat Hao. But in the end, it feels rushed and I don't even know if Hao got defeated or not. It's so confusing really, then Takei-sensei started to make the new Shaman King, which is more confusing....

Like a lot of people have said, the series gets messy and confusing (<-- at least for me) at the end. I've read the alternate ending which did make me feel a little less disappointed. I liked the concept of how Hao was "defeated" but I wish the author had spent more time on this part. On the other hand, the parts before that with the ten plants was TOO long.

Other things I think could have been improved/didn't like were...
1) Some concepts were random and not integrated early enough/the story didn't flow/wasn't smooth at times
2) Anna and Yoh were teen parents ;;; I mean, I can understand why this happened but still...
3) Some of the character designs...
4) More time spent on Horohoro's backstory

Well now that I've got that off my chest, I want to remember this series for all of it's good points.
1) I absolutely love Yoh and Anna. Their romance story is so sweet and I'm glad to have finally found a strong female character in a shounen manga. It's so cute that Yoh fell in love at first sight with Anna. I think the arc with their backstory was done very well.
2) Hao made a good villian because the author didn't make this story black and white, good vs evil. Hao has a good backstory too.
3) The symbolism/small hints dropped throughout the series made it really deep. I know I said that the author introduced random things sometimes but when he DID integrate things, it would just totally blow your mind away.
4) It's soooo better than the animated version. I watched the anime first because I was lazy and didn't want to read 300 chapters at the time but I'm so glad I finally got around to the manga. Although I still hate Lyserg, he was endurable at least. I also liked the darker tones of the books, I mean come on -- we're dealing with dead spirits, here.

Anyway, overall, I thought this was a good series because I really did enjoy reading it, despite its flaws. The shaman concept was original and the themes were quite touching -- a classic in my book.

I had high expectations for this manga since I watched the anime as a child, and enjoyed it. I really liked Yoh's character: easy going, strong but not cocky.You come across many characters through the story and for me, it was somewhat difficult to keep track of all of them? That being said, I liked many of their personalities; Anna and Ryu especially (but I did not like Hao's [the antagonist] character that much). The mangaka is very thorough as the historical context and random tidbits of culture were researched (which I find very respectable).

The initial story was engaging but as it progressed, I got more and more bored. Of course it was still funny and nice throughout but rolling downhill. I felt that it was rushed at parts but too slow at others. To be honest, the ending was somewhat confusing for me (granted, I did skim much of the last few chapters)

Definitely read Shaman King Kanzenban to get a more complete ending. The original was very abrupt and left me frustrated actually.
The ending message was nice but for me not satisfying. It is a good read; just not spectacular.

... Last updated on August 8th, 2012, 11:33am

It started off pretty good,and i enjoyed reading it. But then it started falling apart near the end, the last couple volumes seemed really messy, and it caused me to stop caring about the characters. Could've been good but felt messy and rushed at the end.

this is the only manga with actual open ended ending and i think this manga deserves a lot more than it's getting right now, and for haters, i'm pretty sure u haven't read the real ending , so stop hating

I have mixed feelings towards Shaman King. When I first started reading manga, it was one of the first I started reading and following intently, though, for one reason or another, I got distracted about halfway through the series and had to put off reading it. I finally went back to it and finished, and I have to say it left something to be desired. I'm not really going to comment further, I feel about the same as everyone else who was let down by it, but it is pretty solid overall.

The first arc was pretty good. Although it had the common cliches, it was enjoyable. I actually liked the female lead too, Anna; She wasn't a weakly girl like Kyoko from KHR or Orihime from Bleach. Anyways, we see Yoh getting a lot of enemies/rivals on this arc like Ren or Faust.

And then, seriously... In the second arc, all of those enemies/rivals become Yoh's allies. For example, the dangerous Faust that was about to kill Manta in the first arc, in the second is a silly guy doing stupid things. And so Ren, he is most likely like a tsundere. And all of Yoh's friends are acting all stupid, so I could not take the manga seriously anymore. Besides Anna, all the other characters were ruined.

The manga was good at the beginning but drags towards the end. Also I'm quite dissapointed about how the main character foryuko was lower than some of his other teamates

When this manga finally got into its plot it seemed to have the potential to be a great manga. There were some good characters like Bokutou no Ryu and Hao whose mystery was always enticing. However, the further it got dragged out the more ends were left untied and the new ending was rushed and lax. Shaman King is a manga that talked but never delivered.