Last year I had a post for the 2016 News Headline Predictions…. Let’s see how I did!
- New Shaman King Toys/Figures via a cross-promotion campaign – Didn’t happen
- Jumbor concludes… in light novel form – Didn’t happen
- Hiroyuki Takei creates new Gundam manga series – Didn’t happen
Oops, struck out! None of those happened! Well, it was 2016 was a less eventful year for Takei’s older series. He was more focused on Hyper Dash! Yonkuro and Nekogahara than Shaman King. But at least we got some good news with that he’s working on the next plotline for Flowers and that more will be in the works for the 20th anniversary. Even if my predictions for 2016 didn’t happen, all of them could very well happen this year!
So now that 2017 has started, let’s make some more bold predictions on what could happen in 2017!
Note: These are just guesses. They are not real news stories. (unless reported here later)
New Shaman King Remix chapters posted online!
So at the end of 2016, Hiroyuki Takei started posting some high quality images from the Shaman Files. These Shaman Files were originally printed in the Shaman King Kang Zeng Bang editions of the manga. They were never officially printed/released anywhere else. So continuing that line of thought… next Hiroyuki Takei will start putting up the “Remix Chapters” that he did as bonus non-canon extras for the print Remix editions of Shaman King. Unless you bought those volumes as they came out bi-weekly directly from your local store, you would have never have read them. But! Hiroyuki Takei isn’t going to stop there with just putting those extras online. He’s going to start drawing a couple more new ones! The content will probably be short (a page or two), but he may venture into Remix chapters for Shaman King Zero or Shaman King Flowers! It might not be the full scale new series arc we’re looking for, but something is better than nothing!
Nekogahara will have a TV anime series in Fall 2017/Winter 2018
Hiroyuki Takei has had a “missed the mark” with adapting his mangas into anime. Yes, the Shaman King anime did come out at the right time for making products and money. But, when it was being created, the series was aiming towards a conclusion, which caused the end of the anime at 64 episodes. We didn’t expect Takei to write one of his best story arcs during that time. If the ‘Osorezan Revoir’ arc was animated, that might have been enough to keep the anime on the air longer.
Next with Jumbor, Takei was having success with his second take at the story. But the story progressed too slowly and he missed the mark. Similarly with Ultimo, but here they even had a small production committee setup! But Ultimo just didn’t catch on as much as they liked, and nothing came of the anime.
Finally with Shaman King Flowers, Takei was having enough success with the manga that an anime adaptation could have been possible if the magazine continued. But that burden of connecting the plotlines left open from the original Shaman King series… made that anime adaptation much more trickier.
So with all of that from above… This is the year to strike down and get the Nekogahara anime while the series is still “hot.” With it’s meandering plot line, it doesn’t have to take too long to get to a conclusion. With it’s current direction, it”s looking to be about a 6 to 8 volume series. It’s already a year old, and in the Fall 2017 it would become 2 years old, which would be a perfect time to launch the anime series! It will have enough manga to adapt into a 12 episode series, and a prime time to launch a couple product lines. The stars could align and the anime and manga could even have a similar end, or it could be left open. I’m also leaning towards this it could be a Winter 2018 anime, but with the announcement (and trailer) launching in 2017.
There is also a possibility that it could get a single OVA episode pack-in with a special edition manga for volume 4 during the summer. However, I think it’s going to go straight to TV anime, and save the OVA-pack-ins for 2018. Even more so, if the anime is left open ended and the manga continues to a more 8 or 10 volumes.
Nekogahara gets monthly simulpubs for chapters
Let’s say that there is that hit new Nekogahara anime coming out in the Fall. Great! The manga is being printed in English by Kodansha Comics and is less than 100 days from the Japanese volume releases. Excellent! But with an anime happening… you might only get one volume release out while the anime is airing in Japan. With simulcasts and simuldubs being the normal for anime in English now… and no real marketable products for the series… it needs something else to keep it going.
Luckily Kodansha Comics has been laying the groundwork for this over the last two years. Take a look at Crunchyroll’s simulpubs list of manga (all of which comes from Kodansha Comics) and you’ll see a bunch of series that also had or will have anime series. It’s the way to keep fans involved with a manga on a monthly basis. Plus these simulpubs will also available from Comixology and Bookwalker (in 2017), so there is plenty of revenue streams where this makes alot of sense. And getting the manga, faster? Love it!
I don’t know exactly when this will happen. Maybe closer towards summer, as it takes some time to “shift” the production cycle for the manga. But if you see the English simulpub happen before an anime announcement… then that only gives more reason to say that an anime is on it’s way!
So with two Nekogahara predictions, does that make 2017 the “Year of Nekogahara?” It could be! But hey, I was wrong with 2016, so who knows! I think it will still make 2017 a busy year, but one that I’m looking forward too. So I hope you have a Happy New Year, and enjoy on what’s to come in 2017 here at Patch Cafe!
