Patch Café is news and information website about the entire Shaman King franchise and other works from Hiroyuki Takei! While our website is in English we cover news and information from Japan and around the world. We are a fan-run website and we are not affiliated with Hiroyuki Takei, Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakugan, or other similar companies.
Pillars of Our Content
Our goal is to provide a comprehensive and deep knowledge surrounding all aspects of the Shaman King series. In 2021, having a “fan site” based around a single series is not as common as it was 10 or 20 years ago. The Shaman King series has a long and interesting history and we hope to catalog and inform both fans of new and old about its history. Most anime/manga fan-sites do not aim for the level of detail and continued-accuracy so we hope we can provide a model for other fan-run websites in the future for other series.
To reach this goal, our content provided on this website and social media platforms can be broken down into four pillars.
Breaking News
With our Twitter account (@ShamanKingNews) we keep you updated with the latest news from around the globe! Almost daily bite-size news about Shaman King comes out that can be easily missed. We try to capture all of the news, quickly and efficiently as possible for an English-speaking audience.
Expansive Articles
While general anime/manga news sites may cover big news stories, we also dig into smaller news stories and help expand them into the context of the larger Shaman King history. This can includes rough translations of interviews and other news sources. Article can also cover weekly summaries of news and deep dives into unique stories about the creation and development of the series.
Historical Archives of Information
With the series expanded around the world and a storied history over 20 years, there is a ton of information about the series. Within our archives, referred to as the “Mankin Historia” we have hand-collected data captured from throughout the years about the Shaman King series. This includes history of magazine releases, a catalog of products, licensing information, and more.
Video Content
Our newest expansion into video content helps combine our expansive articles with our historical knowledge of the series in a new format. We are striving for covering unique topics in a bite-sized format without filler or extras.
Ads, Referral Codes, and Financials
Patch Café does not include any advertisements on our website. We do not include any referral codes and do not receive any income from products or services listed on our site or social media. All information is provided for free and aims to strive to help further expansion of the knowledge of Shaman King without financial restrictions.
Our intention is to continue to pay for all server and website fees out-of-pocket for as long as possible, and have done so since the creation of this website. We do not accept donations or other outside funding at this time.
History of Patch Café
The website officially launched on November 4th, 2011 as a side-project to the previous website “Shaman King Nation.” Shaman King Nation was a fan-run website formed on February 28th, 2004 and last updated on February 18th, 2012. The initial focus of Patch Café was aimed to be more of a blog-like website once the Shaman King: Zero and Shaman King: Flowers series had begun its serialization. However as the series was gaining it’s rebirth with these new sequels, the website began focusing more on news after the closure of Shaman King Nation. So while this website has only been around for 9 years, there is an additional history that spans back an additional 8 years prior to that. The new legacy built by Patch Café is focused on providing news and information and casts off the nature of fan-sites from the mid-to-late 2000s.
In May 2018, we started our Twitter feed for @ShamanKingNews to help provide an outlet for smaller news stories that were not being covered in greater detail on the main website.
In early 2021, we received our first major website redesign since the website’s creation. Along with this new redesign we expanded into our 4th pillar for video content with our YouTube page.
Our Social Media
Our website can be found at either patch-cafe.net or patch.cafe.
Our Twitter is @ShamanKingNews and our YouTube page can be found here. Our DMs are open on our Twitter for additional contact and e-mail contact can be made per-request.