With the opening of the new “Shaman King 20th Anniversary” website at midnight on January 1st, 2018, there has been some major announcements for the Shaman King series. Some of these announcements came via Natalie news post that was also timed for midnight as well. The site opens with a full image reveal from the original teaser image of Yoh.
- Shaman King is now published by Kodansha
- The Shaman King series will have new chapters in “Shonen Magazine Edge” in Spring 2018, which is currently serializing Hiroyuki Takei’s Nekogahara manga series. No word on which Shaman King series (or if it’s a new series) this will be connected to.
- New reprints of Shaman King manga volumes will be in eBook format with new covers. There will be a total of 35 volumes, with the original series only being 32 volumes, plus the “Kang Zeng Bang” chapters for the additional volumes. No word on yet when there will be physical copies being printed or any additional details on the content or extras of these volumes.
On the website, Hiroyuki Takei also provided the following message (roughly translated into English below):
“Shaman King” celebrates it’s 20th anniversary this year. It is thanks to all of our readers that we can launch various projects at this milestone. This is very encouraging and not sad. Thank you.
So with this work I will continue to do my best to reach the next generation of readers thanks to your support.
The website also features the background music of “恐山ル・ヴォワール” (Osorezan Revoir) as sung by Anna from Shaman King. This song was created during Shaman King Zero‘s run in Jump X (Kai) magazine, and the full song is still available on their Youtube page. Prior to the song being sung by Megumi Hayashibara (who also voices Anna in the Shaman King anime, videogames, and drama CDs), it was originally created as a Vocaloid song sung by Hatsune Miku as produced by Capitaro. The original version is still on Niconico and has over 700,000 views.
The new Shaman King logo was designed by “Smile Studio” who has previously worked with Hiroyuki Takei on various designs, logos, and layouts. Most notably, they assisted with the early Shaman King Flowers and Jumbor. Via twitter, it was mentioned that thanks to the support during the summer Nekogahara signing event held at Animate Shinjuku was what allowed this to be possible.
Hiroyuki Takei hasn’t commented on Twitter yet about the announcement, but his editor did post a short message of (roughly translated into English):
skg20th, everyone’s support, we thank you. Smile.
Shonen Magazine Edge comes out on the 17th of each month, and the next issue is currently scheduled for January 17th, 2018 which may contain additional information about Shaman King.
