Coming out on March 23rd, the Shaman King English Omnibus print volume #1 will finally reach the hands of English fans after the series being out of print for years. The volume is currently being shipped to stores, so you may be able to pick it up a bit early from your local bookstore. This omnibus volume will contain the volumes 1, 2, & 3 from the digital English volumes from Kodansha Comics.
We were able to get our hands on the volume from a local Barnes & Noble store. The store we went to only had one volume on the shelf, so you may want to pre-order or ask for your volume to be put on hold in order to secure your copy at release date.
What’s new to the Print Omnibus (from the digital volumes)
- New chapter title pages lettering – Now more consistent and easier to read (“Reincarnation” has now been replaced with “chapter”)
- Updated bubble lettering – Correcting some formatting issues from the digital release and overall improvements
- Updated Sound Effect lettering – More closely matches the Japanese sound effects (which are still included)
- 4 pages of translation notes at the end of the omnibus volume – Brand new to this release
- All of the extras and pages included in the digital volume releases, including the table of contents for each volume
- New binding art design
What’s not in the Print Omnibus (compared to other international releases)
- Does not have the color pages – they are presented in greyscale (like the Japanese print release does)
- Does not have Hiroyuki Takei’s new author comments that were in the Japanese print edition
- Has only a single cover – no alternate covers or artwork
- A few linear translation notes have been removed from the English digital release
As the gallery of images shown throughout this overview, it’s a very big volume. The unfortunate part of a volume this large is that it can be a bit hard to read the content in the middle of the pages near the binding. If you are a person who doesn’t bend the book open very wide this may be a bit more of an issue. Due to the weight of the volume the cover can be a bit more warped/damaged after reading. It’s made of the similar quality to other Kodansha USA releases, but more weight/pressure may be applied to the cover and that something to be on the lookout for with heavy-handed readers.
One of the biggest highlights for the volume is the amount of extra care and rework was done for the lettering for this volume. About 80% of the sound effects were re-lettered to more seamlessly blend in with the artwork. A good number of the speech bubbles have also been retouched including resizing, different fonts, and better spacing. With the all of the cover pages also getting updated lettering it really brings together a very polished release. For those looking for translation changes, it appears that it largely remains the same from the English digital Kodansha release. The name inconsistencies did not occur until later volumes, so hopefully those will be corrected.
Another cool thing about this volume is the cover design provided by Phil Balsman. The green bar with the manga panels on the binding wraps around to the back of the manga. It’s a very striking design and it will be cool to see which panels are selected in future volumes. Phil Balsman also designed the English Nekogahara: Stray Cat Samurai logo and volume cover designs for Kodansha as well. The one thing to watch out for is that Kodansha Comics has recently rebranded as Kodansha USA. So there is a chance they will be updating their logos for future releases and this release does have their “Kodansha Comics” logo.
The binding art also is similar to the design on some of the international releases. It will feature a variety of Shaman King characters across the volumes. However it does not appear that Anna is next, and is potentially Amidamaru on the second omnibus volume binding design.
The amount of staff working on this omnibus volume has expanded greatly from the digital release. The new names have been highlighted in bold below, but all deserve credit for this release.
Translation: Lillian Olsen, Erin Procter
Lettering: Jan Lan Ivan Concepcion
Retouching: Jan Lan Ivan Concepcion, Kai Kyou
Additional Letting: Nicole Roderick
English Adaptation: Lance Caselman
Editing: Tiff Joshua TJ Ferentini, Jason Thompson
Kodansha Comics edition cover design by Phil Balsman
Various international editions of the Shaman King manga 
Various “volume 1” editions of the Shaman King manga 
Comparison of the bindings for Shaman King volume 1 
Comparison of the paper for Shaman King volume 1 
Comparison next to Nekogahara volume 1 
Sample of the color page that was greyscaled for the print edition
If you haven’t picked up the digital versions, which are currently available on Comixology and Kindle for the original Shaman King manga, grabbing this omnibus is a great purchase. Just like with Hiroyuki Takei, each new release of the Shaman King manga has it’s own set of new improvements and this omnibus edition is no different.
The release date for Shaman King Omnibus #2 has been shifted to June 8th, 2021. They likely needed more time to continue with these improvements for the print editions. Omnibus #3 is also schedule for June 1st, 2021 but this will likely have a revised release date in the future.
