While searching the site....

I noticed that the page for the Shaman King manga lists the following-

[img]http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/732/7092252926.png[/img]
http://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=17

But the page for the Shaman King Kanzenban manga lists the following-

[img]http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/732/9718927063.png[/img]
http://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=41592

I suppose the English publisher N/A part makes sense if the English publisher has only released/published the regular Shaman King manga (not the Kanzenban). But does licensing the series not give the rights to both the regular Shaman King manga and the Shaman King Kanzenban manga? Is there a mistake in one (or both) of those pages?

Are there actually separate licenses for the regular Shaman King manga and the Shaman King Kanzenban manga? And if so, is it a special case for Shaman King or does the same apply to other mangas that have a Kanzenban edition such Dragon Ball and Saint Seiya (Meaning, say, Viz actually needs to have/purchase another license in order to have rights to and publish/release the Kanzenban edition of a manga)?

I don't know the specifics in the case of Shaman King, but it's not all that uncommon for license agreements to place specific limits on the publishing format. In particular, digital and print rights seem to be negotiated separately - for example, Kansai Club mentions here that acquiring digital rights to The Crater is too expensive, which is why they're only offering a print release.

(I'm pretty sure the Kansai Club also stated that they need approval for any changes in the book's format from Tezuka Productions, but I can't seem to find where they said that right now... At any rate, it seems that DMP has the digital rights to most Tezuka series for now, and may even get those rights for series printed by other companies.)

Now, Viz is actually owned by Japanese publishers, so you wouldn't think its licenses would be too strict... Or at the very least, they should be able to renegotiate their deals without much of a hassle. If they haven't licensed the kanzenban version of a series when they've published its tanks, presumably they've decided it wouldn't be profitable to do so.

Quote from Mackk

But does licensing the series not give the rights to both the regular Shaman King manga and the Shaman King Kanzenban manga?

It seems to me that you're misunderstanding the term "series".
I'm not exactly sure how to explain it on manga, so let's talk about book series instead.

"A book series is a sequence of books having certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group. Book series can be organized in different ways, such as written by the same author, or marketed as a group by their publisher." (Wikipedia)

There can be several series set in the same world/universe. Let's take R.A. Salvatore's series as an example:
He started out with "The Icewind Dale Trilogy" and followed with a prequel series called "The Dark Elf Trilogy". After that he started an unrelated (though set in the same world) pentalogy called "The Cleric Quintet", books of which he released alternately with a sequel (to the original series) tetralogy's called "Legacy of the Drow". And so on...
Even though three of the series follow the story of same main character and two of them the same group of characters, they are all separate series. They all get licensed separately.

Manga is the same - if the author of the original series (or someone else) created a sequel (or prequel) to it, then the new series would have to be licensed separately.

You can PM me if you need a temporary (freelance) cleaner/redrawer for some project. Especially if it's something with nice art.
Being the lazy person that I am, I'm not likely to accept anything long-term though.
[img]http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm252/Gradonil_Ral/Bulsajo/sig2small.png[/img]

Mackk: Shaman King is unusual in that the kanzenban contains a significant amount of new material (main story, not just bonus features), which is why the kanzenban is given its own entry in the database. The mangaka wrote more chapters where the original Shaman King left off, but instead of resuming under the original Shaman King name or publishing the new chapters as a separate sequel series, the new chapters were packaged together with the old ones and released together in Shaman King Kanzenban. Normally, info about special editions is just listed in the status in country of origin field of the original manga (for example, as in Getter Robo, because a special edition is just a re-release of the same story), but as you can see, Shaman King Kanzenban isn't a real kanzenban... it's more like a sequel-special edition hybrid... thing.

Anyway, so the original Shaman King series was published in English, but Shaman King Kanzenban was not (at least, I can't find any evidence of it), so, in the vein of what Gradonil Ral was saying, most likely Viz does not have the rights to the new chapters included in Shaman King Kanzenban. So as far as I can tell, the licensing status for both is correct.

Manga Cover Database

Ahh, I see.

Thanks a lot for the replies/info! 🙂