Shaman King (US)

Shaman King is both an anime series and a manga series by Hiroyuki Takei. The manga has ended in Japan with 32 volumes.

The Shaman King manga started in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in Japan, and in the same country it aired on TV Tokyo. In North America, the manga is currently being printed in Viz's Shonen Jump, with edits to a few chapters. The Shaman King anime in 2003 was licensed by 4Kids Entertainment for American television broadcasting and finished its run on 4Kids TV, formerly the Fox Box, in 2005. It's also on YTV in Canada. Shaman King is aired on JETIX (formerly Fox Kids) in the United Kingdom and Brazil(in Brazil it is currently being printed by Editora JBC). Shaman King is printed in simplified chinese in Singapore with the name of 'Tong Ling Tong Zhi' by Chuang Yi [1] with the total of 32 volumes. Shaman King also play in Ntv7 in Malaysia Television since February 2006.

A shaman is a link between this world and the next, and teams up with ghosts and spirits to achieve their goals. Many a shaman's greatest dream is to become Shaman King, and be able to contact the Great Spirit in order to be the savior of the world. This series is religious in a sense, but not religious at all, in a way that could be only described as how Japanese see the often explosive topic of religion, foreign and otherwise. Various magical and religious terms are spread through out the story but they merge into something explainable by the time the main plot arrives.

The process of the spirit ally merging with the shaman is known as "hyoi gattai" in the Japanese manga and anime, "integration" in the English manga, and "spirit unity" in the English anime.

The series spans 285 manga chapters, and ended with a small short "extra story", known as the Funbari no Uta. Many fans of the series abbreviate its name to "Mankin". The Shaman King trading card game is available in Japan and North America.