Editorial Note: The following is based on some database searches from book distributors. This could just be some weirdness from their databases, but the amount discrepancies made this post have some merit. The Shaman King manga has not been officially announced as re-licensed in English as of this posting.
Back in June, it was officially announced that the Shaman King and Ultimo manga series were no longer being published by Viz Media in English. With this announcement, it effectively put both of those series “out-of-print” in the book publishing world. However the 32 volumes of Shaman King, and 12 volumes of Ultimo didn’t suddenly disappear from the internet.
Viz Media’s book distributor is “Simon & Schuster.” All of their physical print books were previously listed on the Simon & Schuster American distribution website. However within the last couple of days all of the volumes of Shaman King have been removed from the site along with the series page. The series page was still active as of June 19th, 2018 from Google’s cache of the page. While not completely purged from some other international Simon & Schuster websites, a majority, if not all, of the Shaman King volumes have be removed. What remains on the Simon & Schuster website however, is still all of the Ultimo volumes.
Edelweiss Plus is centralized database for a majority of the English book publishers in the United States of America. This database is populated directly from the publishers, which includes Simon & Schuster and Penguin-Random House, the book distributor for Kodansha Comics USA and Vertical. Both Kodansha Comics and Vertical have said they had interest in licensing the Shaman King manga series now that it has changed publishers to Kodansha in Japan. Around the same time that Shaman King was removed from the Simon & Schuster website, Edelweiss Plus was also updated. All 32 volumes of Shaman King were removed, however, a single volume was returned, which was Shaman King volume 1. Instead of the book distributor being “Simon & Schuster”, like the Ultimo volumes, it instead lists it as “Viz Media.” Unlike the Ultimo volumes which are still active in the database, the Shaman King volume 1 is listed as “Out of Print.” Within the related content there is also a reference to an unknown ISBN of “9781421567952.” This mysterious ISBN is also listed in the related content of Ultimo volume 1. As far as we can tell, this ISBN has never been used previously.
While not the most dependable or consistent website for information, the Amazon.com page for Shaman King volume 1 also has a couple notable changes. The description of the manga volume now ends with the word “Original.” The volume 2 description also does the same. The first volume of Shaman King also lists the publisher as “VIZ Media LLC; 1 edition.” Other volumes, such as volume 5, lists the publisher as “VIZ Media LLC; Original edition.”
If we were to take each one of these changes and add them together, this would likely be the steps required to start a new publication of the Shaman King manga in English. It looks like the Ultimo series is currently being left alone, but taking new ownership of existing ISBNs and help set the stage for new editions would be likely. In Japan, the new Kodansha releases of the Shaman King manga are only available as digital eBooks and not as print releases at this time. Having English volumes that match something similar to those eBooks in print before Japan may be unlikely so it could be a while before any new editions hit stores worldwide. At last weekend’s Anime Expo convention both Kodansha Comics and Vertical had a joint-industry panel where their announced print titles went into February 2019. Any Shaman King print volume releases before 2019 would be highly unlikely and booksellers, like Barnes & Noble, tend to need a 6 month advance notice of any new releases. If the Shaman King manga were to only be published digitally, an ISBN isn’t required and this “clean-up” on the print databases wouldn’t have been necessary.
Patch Café will continue to monitor the changes in these databases for potential hints at any new Hiroyuki Takei releases in English and around the world.
