The Unfortunate Downfall of Shaman King - PART 2
With that being said, the discussion of WHY Shaman King was unsuccessful is very interesting when you talk with the fans. That's the great part of the MANGA CAFE! We get to have discussions on these various topics together. Let's see what other's said about this particular topic.
7 SEVEN REASONS WHY SHAMAN KING STRUGGLED - written by: @abtpqr (reddit)
there are some things that should be talked about
1- shaman king (just like others works by Takei) isn't a very common Shonen story. It has the basic ideas, but it has some unique characteristics that I don't know if many people like
2 - Yoh is just a relaxed dude, he's not a warrior neither he has a big objective
3 - this one is more subtle, but it's a buddhist/japanese religious based story, it's "buddhist propaganda", I don't know if that's too popular other than to be used for visual references
4 - the middle part of it is kinda boring, being really honest, when they get closer to the shaman king tournament area up until Hao's fight with the x-laws, I, personally, think it gets kinda whatever. Yoh isn't as fun as he was, and since the fights aren't the main thing of shaman king, it's not that good to read just a bunch of fights
5 - as I said, shaman king fights are very basic, they don't have much action, mostly because of the oversouls becoming weapons that shoot projectiles. You read a shaman king fights because of the characters, not because you are going to get some Naruto level choreography
6 - it was released during the boom of Naruto, One Piece and Bleach
7 - maybe people just expected something different
THE AUTHOR SIGNED HIS DESTRUCTION - written by @wirococha420 (reddit)
I would add to this that Takei was a bad salesman. He allowed the animation house of the first anime to destroy the story, which is the main selling point of any manga. Then, he ignore a proposal from non other than MADHOUSE to reanimate the series cause he was working in a project with Stan Lee that ended up having 0 recognition. Finally, he had to settle with the 2021 adaptation on a way smaller and budget cut team that, even in their best efforts, ended up being mediocre at best.
So while many of these points, and others, are all manga focused, another factor to consider is the relationship that an anime adaptation has with the success of a manga and THAT is where Shaman King truly struggled.