This article is spoiler free!
(Some images include Japanese text, but should also remain spoiler free)
Earlier today, Kodansha Comics announced that they have officially licensed the entire original Shaman King manga series and it will make it’s digital debut as a Comixology Original starting on Tuesday, July 28th. They plan to announce some more information about their plans for Shaman King during their upcoming Comic-Con@Home panel this Thursday.
But what if you want to learn a bit more about what makes this 35-volume edition of Shaman King different? Let’s dive into some of the changes from the original 32 volumes for the Japanese versions!
(The upcoming English versions may have some other differences, a new article will be posted next week to highlight those changes. Links will point to the Japanese editions of the manga.)
More Chapters and the True Ending
The biggest selling point is that this will be the first time the “True Ending” will be available officially in English for the original manga. First published in the “Kang Zeng Bang” editions, Hiroyuki Takei added 16 new chapters to the series. These are:
- Chapters 265 & 266
- Chapters 287 through 300
You might have noticed that he added two new chapters in the middle! As such, the chapters that come after those have their numbers modified. A bit confusing, but it’s close to the end, so it really only impacts about 20 chapters. These chapters are at the end of volume 30 in the new 35-volume edition.
When reading through the manga, you’ll also notice that the original “chapter 285”, previously the original final chapter is gone. Instead Hiroyuki Takei added some more story in between and portions of that chapter get remixed into a later chapter in the story.
If you are just looking for these new chapters, here’s the volumes you’ll want to read:
New Extras – Remix Tracks
While a majority of the volumes mirror closely to the original releases from Shueisha, these new volumes have some additional extras added in.
In Japan there was two limited edition runs of the manga under the “Jump Remix” brand. These volumes were only printed for 2 weeks and could only be purchased at convenience stores and similar establishments. They were designed as a cheap, disposable, way of getting long running series into the hands of fans who hadn’t purchased the more expensive “Kang Zeng Bang” edition of the manga and was also in a smaller total number of volumes (16, instead of 32 or 27). With these editions a new extra was included which was referred to as the “Remix Tracks.” They are a collection of multi-page extra chapters to see what happens behind the scenes.
With these Remix Tracks, there is a total of 18 different ones which are spread across the 35-volume edition of the manga. Here’s where to find them all:
- Volume 5
- Volume 6
- Volume 9
- Volume 13
- Volume 17
- Volume 20
- Volume 24
- Volume 26
- Volume 27
- Volume 28
- Volume 34
- Volume 35
Even more Extras!
Not stopping with just the Remix Tracks, there are a bunch of other extra chapters added throughout the volumes as well. The original extras (often called “Funbari Stories”) are still included, but here’s the highlights of the new ones:
| Extra Chapter | 35-Volume Edition | Previously Released |
|---|---|---|
| Kokkuri Angel Cupid Tamao | Volume 8 | Man.Ji.En Character Book (Shaman King) |
| Itako No Anna | Volume 27 | Butsu Zone Volume 3 |
| Mappa Douji | Volume 27 | Shaman King Fanbook |
| Death Zero | Volume 33 | Butsu Zone Volume 2 |
| Relax | Volume 34 | Shaman King Fanbook |
| Shaman King Flowers – Hana’s Epoch | Volume 35 | Shaman King Mentalite |
There is one notable subtraction from the 35-volume edition of the series. Hiroyuki Takei’s manga oneshot “Exotica” and his self-biographical manga “Story of Exotica” were not included.
Color Pages and Art Improvements
When creating the original “Kang Zeng Bang” edition of the manga Hiroyuki Takei took the extra effort to go back through the entire manga and redraw portions that were not up to his liking. The goal was to help standardize some of the panels that were a bit “off-model” or didn’t have the exact feel he was looking for.
With the series of Shaman King Exhibition events held in Japan, fans were able to get a better idea how extreme Hiroyuki Takei took to make these improvements. For many of these redraws, he went back to the original manga pages and applied whiteout and physically modified the paper pages. As such, this is truly the final version and there is no going back!
While most of the big changes happen in the earlier volumes, as the series progressed there are fewer changes to the art.
With this being released initially in a digital format, all of the original color pages have been restored in the 35-volume edition of the manga. It’s important to note that while the print editions contain all of the same features, the Japanese print editions of these do NOT contain these color pages. Instead they are the greyscale versions like previous print editions. The French print edition is the same as the Japanese, however the German print edition does keep the color pages.
Also, if you hadn’t noticed all of the covers were redrawn as well for these new editions.
Chapter Titles Renamed
A small change that may have easy to over look is that some of the chapter titles have changed. Originally there was a series of “Epilogue” chapters that occurred in the middle of the story. Now with a “true ending”, having those be called “Epilogue” no longer made sense and were renamed starting with the “Kang Zeng Bang” edition of the manga and in future editions.
Even some of the chapters which did not get renamed, Hiroyuki Takei took some extra time to turn the text into a fancy design. For example, this one is setup like Marco’s glasses for Chapter 266:
For the die-hard Shaman King fans, there is a bunch of new stuff to really enjoy in this 35-volume edition of the manga. If you want to compare the various editions of the manga, you can check out our guide we posted previously. We also recently did a comparisons of the new Japanese print editions to a variety of older editions. And be sure to check out Kodansha Comic USA’s panel this Thursday for more information about the upcoming English release!
