Last week a special edition of the Shaman King manga was printed in Japan titled Shaman King: A Special Combined Book to Commemorate the Anime Adaptation (SHAMAN KING アニメ化記念スペシャル超合本). The concept of the book was to provide a cheap version of the manga that new fans of the series can pick up. Unlike previous printings of the series, this is a single volume book and will not be reprinting the entire series in this format. Additionally, the book is printed under the label of Kodansha Platinum Comics (KPC) which typically are limited-time, single-run reprinting of manga series.
This volume is a really big volume that contains 735 pages! Chapters 1 through 34 are within this book, which are normally printed in volumes 1 through 4 of the series. Volume 4 of the manga series contains chapter 35, so if you are looking to use this volume to kickstart your manga collection, you’ll want to pick up volume 4 as well. The price is also extra cheap at only 660 yen, which is the same price as one volume of the standard manga volumes.
The contents of the limited edition manga are a trimmed down version of the current Kodansha print editions of the Shaman King manga. Just like the Japanese print editions, there are no color pages in this cheap volume. Additionally this volume cuts out all of the extras from the standard volume releases. The paper quality is a bit lower on this cheaper edition than the standard edition as well. The ink balance is a bit darker in the cheaper edition, however that is really only noticeable on the greyscale color pages where some of the tones are a bit more washed out.
When republishing the original manga series under Kodansha, Hiroyuki Takei and the Kodansha staff took the extra effort to as closely mirror the original Shueisha volume designs as possible. They used the exact same logo placement and color for their new editions. The volume size was also kept exactly the same so that it could fit nicely next to the original Shueisha volume releases of the Shaman King manga. This same amount of care and detail carried over to this special edition printing as well. This volume was modelled after the 2nd printing of the Jump Remix edition of the Shaman King manga.
The Jump Remix is similar to the Kodansha Platinum Comics where they would create cheap reprints of popular manga series and sell them for a limited time. Typically the audience in Japan would be for commuters and was sold in convenience stores; not traditional bookstores. In the first printing, Hiroyuki Takei took the extra effort to create brand new extras called the “Remix Tracks” with a name based on the Jump Remix editions they were printed in. These were brand new short manga chapters at the end of each volume and were not included in the previous “Kang Zeng Bang” or “Perfect Editions” of the manga series. With the huge success of this first printing along with the new content, the unusual response for this label was to create a second round of printing for the entire manga series. To make this new printing even more collectable, Hiroyuki Takei drew brand new covers for these volumes and the volumes also included cards featuring the art as well. Just like the first printing, this new edition of the Jump Remix was also extremely popular and each volume was only available for a limited time of 2 weeks (but were often sold out quickly after release).
The first volume of the Jump Remix editions had chapters 1 through 17. Then volume 2 had chapters 18 through 37. The Shaman King: A Special Combined Book to Commemorate the Anime Adaptation only goes up to chapter 34, so it is a few chapters shy from the Jump Remix volume 2. When Kodansha reprinted the Shaman King manga, the Remix Track extras were added throughout the volumes. The Remix Tracks 1 & 2 were included in the 5th volume of the standard Kodansha print edition of Shaman King and are not included in this special volume.
Last month Kodansha USA tested the waters on how big they could make a single Shaman King volume be. They are currently releasing the “Shaman King Omnibus” which combines the first 3 volumes of the English manga into a single binding and are about 600 pages. This new Japanese volume manages to combine 3.889 volumes of the manga (factoring in the missing chapter from volume 4) and is over 700 pages. The English omnibus volume is a bit taller than the Japanese print editions, however the Japanese volume allows for easier reading for content near the binding.
If you manage to snag a copy of this limited-time volume it won’t be around for much longer! You aren’t missing out on any new content, but the cover design is very cool and can still be a great addition to your bookshelf.
