As reported last month, it appears that licensing troubles with the original Shaman King anime has been lifted and has begun to make it’s way onto various Japanese streaming services starting on June 16th, 2018. On all of the services, all 64 episodes are available at the time of the launch and use the same video quality found on the original DVD releases. None of the services have any of the 3 recap OVAs or any of the short specials. There are no subtitles on the video and may have regional restrictions which prevent streaming outside of Japan. Prior to this, there was only a limited time-streaming available in May 2013 on the NicoNico Douga streaming service.
As of June 17th, the following Japanese-only streaming services have it available. Pricing is for the entire streaming service, not just the cost of the episodes unless otherwise specified.
- Animeteleto (TV Tokyo’s paid service – 700yen/month)
- Anime Unlimited (SoftBank’s paid service – 400yen/month, free 30 day trial available)
- Bandai Channel (Bandai’s paid service – 1080yen/month, 216yen per episode, or all episodes for 9525yen for 40 days. 1st episode is free)
- DoCoMo (Mobile Device paid service – 400yen/month, free 31 day trial available)
- D-Anime Store via NicoNico (DoCoMo’s paid NicoNico Douga store – 432yen/month)
- U-NEXT (Usen-Next paid service – 1990yen/month, free 31 day trial available)
- VideoPass (Starting on June 19th – Pricing TBD)
There are also some other interesting notes with these episodes being added online. The first is that the copyright line has been changed to the following: “©武井宏之・講談社／テレビ東京・XEBEC・NAS・Mankin.Project. ” The most important change is directly after Hiroyuki Takei’s name has changed from “Shueisha” to “Kodansha.” With the publisher of the Shaman King manga changing to Kodansha, this may not be much of a surprise. However, typically anime have a complex committee forming them, so it is strange that Shueisha appears to no longer be a part of it unless they were bought out from it.
The next tidbit came with the official announcement on Twitter. It started by specifically mentioning the “2001 anime.” No other Shaman King anime had been produced, so to mention the year is a little strange unless there are plans for a future anime.
The last tidbit is on the U-NEXT page for the anime, it specifies the streaming rights are available until June 30th, 2019 at midnight. It’s possible these dates be extended, but it’s worth noting if there is a new anime series being created it would make sense to limit the distribution of episodes to not overlap with the new series or a potential re-release of the anime on DVD or Blu-Ray. It would been 10 years since the anime has been available for release in Japan by 2019.
When the Shaman King anime was licensed to 4Kids in 2003, internet streaming rights were not available at that time. 4Kids was looking into “direct-to-phone” internet streaming rights due to the growing mobile market with devices such as the iPhone. However, they were unable to acquire those rights before halting the marketing and distribution of the Shaman King anime. With multiple online services in Japan now having the video streaming rights, it appears this is no longer an issue for licencors. Currently the Shaman King anime is unlicensed in all English-speaking countries.
