Leading up to the December 8th release of the Japanese Shaman King: Funbari Chronicle mobile game, some new information about the story, characters, as well as the original inspiration for the game has been announced.
New Characters
The following are the new characters created exclusively for the Shaman King: Funbari Chronicle game. As the game has not been released yet, there is limited information about them and a rough English unofficial translation has been included below with some of those details. The voice actors for the characters also provided a short comment about joining the videogame voice cast. Some of Hiroyuki Takei’s original sketches were also released.
A new trailer previews these characters as well:
Koel
Koel (コエル) is a classmate at Shinra Private Academy whose fate changes when he meets Yoh, a shaman you can see spirits. This character represents the player in the story. He is voiced by Mikako Komatsu (小松未可子).
Mirishira
Mirishira (ミリシラ) is another shaman that appears before Koel. Her spirit partner is Rock. She is dedicated to her mission, but her lack of athletic ability holds her back. She teaches Koel about the upcoming Shaman Fight, but appears to have an ulterior motive. She is voiced by Kana Ichinose (市ノ瀬加那).
Rock
Rock (ロック) is the spirit partner for Mirishira. His medium is a Kanachi doll. He acts like a big brother to Mirishira, but is otherwise solitary. It appears that Rock has is own agenda in this fight. He is voiced by Nobuyuki Hiyama (檜山修之) who previously voiced Zen in the 2001 Shaman King anime.
Io
Io (イオ) is a young man who calls himself the Tenth Officiant for the Patch Tribe running the Shaman Fight in Tokyo. His true motives are hidden along with his face behind a mask. He is voiced by Shunsuke Takeuchi (武内駿輔).
Natalie Interview
As part of a new Japanese interview on Natalie, the panel Yoko Hikasa (Yoh’s Voice Actress), Moriyoshi Yoshida (Shonen Magazine Edge Editor-in-Chief), and Sota Usui (Studio Z Director) talked about the Shaman King anime as well as the Funbari Chronicle game. The interview, which is in Japanese, was done by Takahiro Saito and portions of it is roughly translated into English below.
Natalie (Saito): When did you start planning the game?
Yoshida: After we decided on the anime, we thought about what we needed to do to make the Shaman King series even more exciting and landed on making a mobile app game. When I was reaching out to developers, Studio Z had a high level of enthusiasm and wanted to make a game with a clear direction, so that’s how they were selected.
Natalie: When did Takei-sensei’s involvement with the game begin?
Yoshida: It started at the very beginning when I told Takei-sensei “It will be a social game, and Studio Z will develop it.” After that, he came to several of our planning meetings. It wouldn’t be interesting to just create the same story as the manga or anime and Takei-sensei insisted that “We can’t compromise on the fact that the story is about defeating Hao.” Using that direction, we made some changes to the story, but I shouldn’t go into that yet.
Usui: We can say that it does follow the portions of the original manga, such as the game starts off by punishing Ryu-san by Yoh using his shaman powers. The main character of this story, which represents the player, is an original character. So for anyone who doesn’t know the Shaman King story can follow along with this original character and see this story from a different view.
Yoshida: All of these story ideas and designs for the new characters were based on the drafts by Takei-sensei. They then expanded upon those in the game’s development.
Natalie: Are there any new characters or story elements that you also created?
Yoshida: We did get a proposal [from the Studio Z developers] for a story about a character who happened to be a child of another certain character in the series. That type of decision could never have been made by the [Shonen Magazine Edge] Editorial Department and Studio Z alone. (laughs) Takei-sensei did more than just draft ideas; he also later supervised the 3D model designs too.
Usui: Takei-sensei likes plastic models and robots. I think 3D models are really similar to plastic models, so he had an instant connection. When I think back on our first 3D models we made, they didn’t look right at all. But after Takei-sensei did a redline*, it became a beautiful model and I thought that was amazing. As he is an artist, I knew that he could draw cool 2D illustrations, but… I think the characters are always moving in 3D in Takei-sensei’s mind.
[When an artist does a “redline” they would draw over art with red ink with corrections]
Natalie: Were there any points that you struggled with, or had difficulty completing in the game development?
Usui: I think all of the staff felt the pressure of creating an original story and illustration because of our combined love of Takei-sensei’s Shaman King series. So we had no choice to but create this with love and respecting the source material in Shaman King. When discussing with Editor-in-Chief Yoshida, we always kept in mind “How will fans interact with Yoh-kun if they were in the world of Shaman King?”
Natalie: That’s the challenge of being a fan. But since you were fans, did it allow you to do things others may not have?
Usui: One example, that we were very particular about, and very difficult to implement, was allowing for Ryu-san’s 3D model to have a mechanic where we could split his pompadour in half. When developing the game, we often thought “This is impossible.” Or “This is interesting, but it would take too many man-hours to implement.” I think there were many elements we could implement because we knew the series and characters so well and push forward.
Natalie: As a fan myself, I’m glad to see the game is filled with smaller side stories. Are there any elements you were fond of?
Usui: The best element is the “Mangatic” style of storytelling. It’s not uncommon to see stories told in a “picture book” style, by combing background images with static characters. But for Shaman King: Funbari Chronicle we use panels and speech balloons to create a new immersive experience you won’t find anywhere else.
Natalie: On the story side, the original stories of the “Friendship Episodes” where you can raise your friendship level also adds new elements.
Usui: For all of the “Friendship Episodes” I particularly enjoyed the one with Chocolove and has a Rakugo style. Rakugo is an interesting form of storytelling which highlights the flaws and troubles people face in a funny way. That method of storytelling connects well with Chocolove’s “Winds of Laughter”, and having him be more than just a gag character.
Natalie: How did you decide on what illustrations to draw?
Usui: We developed them as a team. In the beginning I asked our illustration team to come up with designs I had, but since I am a young boy at heart… they all ended up being just straightforwardly cool. Like the ones you normally see with Yoh and Ren in battle. We changed gears and then tried to draw more of the character’s daily lives and how they interact with each other. That’s how we settled on our current direction, and worked on creating scenes we wouldn’t normally see, like Pirica’s training for Horohoro.
Yoshida: There was a lot of work creating all of those illustrations, but Kodansha wanted to provide fans this glimpse into those character’s daily lives.
Hikasa: The girls’ everyday clothing was really cute. There was also a version where they wore traditional Chinese dress too? Oh, and then there was Maiden in her special outfit!
Usui: Yes. In future events we are planning to add limited-time outfits for characters such as the Hanagumi, and we’ve designed a game where we can focus on this “uniqueness.”
Natalie: Were there designs born from your production teams enthusiasm as well?
Usui: Everyone had their own unique style, but I made sure to give them all a final check. Often I would give them the “OK”, but sometimes I had to tell the illustration team that is was “No good.” For example, “This doesn’t look like something Horohoro would do” and “Is this Jun-neesan a bit too sexy?”
Hikasa: I didn’t think that was possible.
Usui: Even if I overlooked something, the staff was always there to make it better.
