Hiroyuki Takei’s Shaman King began in Weekly Shonen Jump on 30 June 1998 and ended on 30 August 2004 at chapter 288, collected in 32 volumes. A shaman here borrows power by channelling the spirit of a dead person into their own body or into an object, and the winner of the Shaman Fight, held once every five hundred years, gains the standing to remake the world.
Yoh Asakura wants that position so that he can take it easy afterwards. His partner is Amidamaru, a samurai who died six hundred years ago, and his fiancée Anna Kyoyama runs his training. The tournament format keeps swapping opponents, and which tradition a shaman draws on doubles as their character design: a Daoist from China, a shaman of Ainu descent, a fighter from a Native American lineage, all working inside the same rules.
Takei’s page layouts and costume design stood out at the time and are still cited. Thirty-two volumes, complete, later followed by a revised edition, sequels and several animated adaptations.
