Interest
Shōnen Magazine Edge Reveals Shaman King Character Ranking — From #1-376
posted on by Lynzee Loveridge
At the beginning of the year, the official website for Shaman King's 20th anniversary gave fans a chance to pick their top character from Hiroyuki Takei, even including costume variations. The result was over 350 characters to choose from, 16 of them were different versions of Yoh Asakura.
Site visitors could vote once per day until January 31 and a total of 63,120 votes were cast. Despite the overwhelming number of options, readers stuck with the tried and true picks.
First place went to protagonist Yoh Asakura in his school uniform, the first choice in the line-up on the website.
Second place went to Hao, the series' primary antagonist and the current Shaman King. Fan's picked Hao's poncho version.
Third place went to Anna Kyōyama, Yoh's primary love interest and a shaman in her own right. Fans picked Anna in her Shaman attire to round out the top three. The magazine lists all 376 choices in order.
The poll winners will be considered for appearing in the new comic and novels. Hiroyuki Takei's Shaman King manga began in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 1998. The series abruptly ended in 2004, although a reprinting of the manga revealed a "true ending" in 2009. Takei drew a series of short stories titled Shaman King 0 in Shueisha's Jump X magazine starting in November 2011, and published a sequel series titled Shaman King Flowers in the same magazine from 2012 to 2014.
Viz Media published the manga in English in the past, and it describes how the story began:
When he takes a shortcut through a cemetery, Manta Oyamada meets a strange kid with headphones — surrounded by ghosts. The kid is the teenage shaman Yoh Asakura. Tapping the supernatural swordfighting powers of samurai ghost Admidamaru, Yoh fights Bokuto no Ryu, a sword-wielding gang member. But an even more dangerous opponent is stalking Yoh and Manta — a Chinese shaman who wants to possess Amidamaru.
The manga's new arc will begin serializing in Kodansha's Shonen Magazine Edge with a prologue in the May issue shipping on April 17. The main manga will then launch in the June issue on May 17. The magazine's April issue, which shipped on Saturday, published the original manga's final chapter, "Saishūkai: the Last Words" (Final Round: the Last Words).
