Dear all,

Thanks to Viz’s bundle sale on digital manga, I bought all 32 volumes of the original Shaman King manga series.  It took me a while to read it, but oh my god I’m so glad I waited until now to read it.

For one thing, I am much more culturally/spiritually aware so I can appreciate the detail of everyone’s oversouls and whatnot when before it was just weapons.  I actually know what the angels are that make up the spirits of the X-Laws for one thing.

Anyway, Shaman King is an odd series for me. I read oodles of fanfiction for it back in the day, back in the day referring to when I was 14 – 16.  However, I had only read what was put out in Viz’s Monthly Shonen Jump and what aired of 4Kids’s dub of the anime.  Neither really lasted long enough for me to learn much of anything.

I did know that I loved Anna though.  Time has passed and I adore her now.  While before she was just tough and tortured everyone, now I see her as a very strong woman who is more powerful than almost everyone but with enough mental strength to support the man she loves instead of taking any titles for herself.

It was like, “whoooaaaa” when I realized at the end that she’d been pregnant during most of the series too. It explains a lot about her growing compassion for others outside of Yoh.  By far she is now my favorite character in the series and is maybe one of my favorite characters of all time.

Shaman King ended horrifically though.  I know the series got a lot of backlash with its original ending, but my God, it’s terrible.  I’m used to axed endings at the end of an arc like in Mx0 where I’m like, “Uhh, this is not an ending” but at least there’s like this open ended something.  In many cases it’s better than the ones that get real endings since Japanese people seem to love horrible endings.  In this case though, everyone is getting ready to go to the final battle.  The End.

And I did not understand the epilogue at all.  Why is Tamao pretending to be Anna?  Is she actually pretending to be Anna or did she just actually idolize Anna so much that she became like her  What the heck does enka music have to do with anything?  Why is Joco/Chocolove in jail?  I was so confused.  I had to go read the Shaman King Wikia summary of the events which only vaguely helped.

I need to go read the new ending man.  Why didn’t Viz get the rights to that and at least release the last volume or two?  I mean, this ending is so disatisfying.  It’s so al;sk;djfa;sdkl;fjas;dl;kfjl