Shaman King (2021)

The story starts meh, becomes kinda interesting and then gets worse and worse, thats both due to messy pacing and the core of story itself being bad. The story its simple enough and moves fast, which is even more amazing on how it got this bad, it cannot even keep its tone consistent, DEM and lack of any consequences as well. The characters themselves are not that interesting either, a lot of them are annoying as well and there is a lot of them, pointless additions overall but on the bright side the villain is fleshed out well, if not for the tone thing i mentioned whichyou cannot take him seriously despite being OP. Art is on the good side which is a first for Bridge but since its Bridge after all the animation is a slideshow, the music is the only decent part of it. I have not watched the other anime version of it but i can say this series was not worth it.

The story starts really bad, but gets interesting later on. The really unfortunate part is the pacing. They give no time to build any rapport with the characters, there is no understanding of struggles or time to let their pasts or stories sink in. The participants keep getting stronger and their is no effort shown whatsoever so one does not understand what is going on with them. It is terribly told, and I can't tell if the original story was this bad or it's just the adaptation. The only redeeming quality is that you can understand the tournament a bit and some of the charactersare at times cool. Okay for a one time watch but would not recommend if their is anything better out there

I was really excited to watch Shaman King because this was one series which I was sure that I have heard about, but knew next to nothing about. Although this remake was all over the place in terms of pacing , with the first 12 ep being speedrun of the part which the old series adapted from the manga, ep 13-37ish something being nice and slow adaptation of Manga, also containing my FAVOURITE arc Osorezan le Voile and MATAMUNE. And the final stretch of it being just so much cut content, averaging at around 6-7 chapter per episode. One thing you can't complaint about is theTheme Songs, especially the 4 Ending Themes, each better than the previous. And there was no doubt the soundtrack is gonna be epic when you have Hayashi Yuuki on board. All in all this was far from a perfect adaptation, but it did introduce me to this story about Shamans, of which I definitely am gonna read the manga, cause the Manga is just great from what I heard. And do hope that somewhere in the future we still get another proper remake, atleast 75+ episodes, cause the story, atleast for me personally is something that can work even in the future

1. I am an actual Shaman. 2. I have never seen the original Shaman king. With that in mind, this review may be biased. I loved this anime. Absolutely loved it. I've never even seen an anime about Shamans before. I've seen anime about Onmyoji, which are Japanese mystics, but I've never seen an anime that covered the entire global Shaman diaspora before. I loved how they really did a great job going all over the world and giving representation to everything from the Druids of Europe to the Shamans of North America. Granted, it's not like it's a compendium of knowledge for trueShamanism, but it's nice to see that whoever made this film really has a knowledge of various Shamanic cultures, histories and ideologies. They also have an even greater depth of knowledge about New Thought. (The Afterlife concepts found in the Great Spirit portions of the anime.). I wouldn't be surprised if the creators of this anime were practitioners of New Thought. I, personally, loved the characters as well. In seeing other reviews, it would appear that the character personalities are different from how they were in the original. Because I never saw it, I'm not jaded by the nostalgia of how they used to be. I only appreciated who they were. I loved Yoh's relaxed attitude mixed with a little cockiness, he might be a favorite MC for me. I also really loved Anna, who was my favorite character. Either her or Hao were my favorites. And yes, Hao, is the villain, but his completely untouchable attitude and demeanor, I really liked it. It was different. (MILD SPOILER): I've never seen an Antagonist so confident that he'll jump into the bath with his enemies buck naked, knowing no one is nuts enough to attack him. And then go to sleep in their home, while unwelcomed. That was a flex so strong it could pop a vein. But, with all that being said, as much as I loved this anime for how its resonated with me, it has a LOT of flaws. If I was not biased as a practitioner of Shamanism myself, I would probably have scored this much lower because of the many, MANY mistakes they make in this anime. (SPOILERS AHEAD!) The biggest mistake BY FAR is their penchant for spoiling their own show with the OP and mid-show credits. I know OPs can be spoilerish, but their openers were INSANELY filled with spoilers. They showed all of the first season's enemies hanging out with Yoh episode 1. Why would you do that? Showing Ryu, Ren, Faust and Lyserg standing shoulder to shoulder fighting Hao in episode 1 totally destroys any suspense when they show up as enemies in the anime. You automatically know that they're going to lose, and end up turning good, so nothing they do as a villain really matters. (Still, what Faust did to Manta when they met was pretty shocking. I didn't see that coming.) In addition to that, they would have the commercial break slides spoiling evolved forms before they actually ever used the forms in the show, thus spoiling the forms. But, as bad as that was, nothing was worse than the second opener. They literally showed Hao with the Great Spirit, and the Five Warriors with the Elemental Spirits. I mean...what the hell? You basically gave away that Hao becomes Shaman King 20 episodes before it happens. And then it sucks out the suspense at the end when Hao does the (admittedly awesome) awakening. As much as I liked that, do you know how much more I would've loved it, if I didn't see it coming? I would've really thought, especially being at the end of the anime, that it was one of those ultimate swerves where the heroes actually lose. Just horrible spoilage. Beyond that, there were tons of mistakes in the story itself. Such as Yoh expressing zero knowledge of Furyoku to Silva when they meet, and then later providing the Matamune flashback showing that the Spirit taught him how to Spirit Integrate and attack to defeat an opponent in the exact same way he passed Silva's test. So, he should already know all about Furyoku. How could he even grow up as an Asakara and NOT know about Furyoku? He was trained by his grandad, and his wife was Anna the Itako, how would they not tell him once? How could he not even see Anna's Furyoku when everyone else was seeing it and freaked out about it? The show was filled with little holes like this. Another critique of the show is the pacing. Man, the pacing was atrocious. It's like they spent so much time on fights that didn't even matter, that they ran out of time and had to rush through the ones that did. I was so disappointed when the final fight of the first round that pit Yoh, Ryu and Faust against Ren, Horohoro and Chocolove, was rushed and done in like 2 minutes without even a conclusion. And then it was just Ren vs. Yoh pt. 3, in those 2 minutes. But, the pacing issues became really bad when it was time to go through the 10 chambers to try and reach Hao before he awoke. His guardians were the strongest fighters in the anime. So strong they were dropping the heroes like flies through the first three chambers. But, then it was like: "Oh no, we've only got the budget for 4 more episodes, we better hurry up and finish." And so the later more important fights were done in a couple of moves. Silva vs. Yoh should've gone MUCH longer. And it would've been nice to see them fight Goldva. My final critique is against the logic of the show at times. The characters just fail to use logic. A great example of this, is that they know that they only have 15 hours to reach Hao. And then they actually decide to go to stop at one of the levels to replenish their mana. I get it, you're low. But, you stop and eat, hang out and talk, go to sleep ALL NIGHT, get up and have breakfast, when you have 15 hours to save the world...What an absolute shocker that you ran out of time and Hao had to come find you. Which is fine, I guess, since Hao coming to them was one of my favorite parts. But the logic was all over the place. You're fighting for the fate of every life on Earth. There's 9 of you, and you're entering rooms where only one guy is there to defend. So...let's hang back and let one or two guys fight, instead of jumping every single one of these dudes 9 on 1 from the start. They should've jumped Luchist and then did the same to the Patch. Man, the more I write about this anime, the lower the score in my head is going... I'm going to stop, because I really, really enjoyed this anime a lot. It's just got a lot of holes that makes it clear why its score is a high 6 instead of an 8. I would definitely recommend this anime. But, not to people who have seen the original Shaman King. From what I can see, you're probably going to hate it a lot. Again, this review is biased, because this is more than likely an anime that deserves the score it has, but it resonated with me personally, so my score is reflecting that.