The anime tries to have it two ways. It wants to put as much of the manga into its story as possible but then is forced to cut little sections out to make it work, which robs what is there of its impact. This is where the original 2001 Shaman King anime has the new one beat.
Despite its filler content, that series wisely knew these fights were important and devoted time to them. The Faust fight, which takes up only one episode in the new series, took two in the original. The same with the initial Ren fight, the fight against Jun, the possession of Ryu, and so on. Sure these episodes sprinkled in some new content but they were still mostly accurate representations of the manga but instead of adapting seven or more chapters per episode it was more a comfortable three.
To make a larger comparison, the amount of story used to cover roughly the first nine volumes of the manga takes 13 episodes in the new anime and 25 in the original. Now to be fair, the original anime had around 3 to 4 episodes worth of filler content in there but that’s still about 9 episodes worth of extra breathing room to tell the story.
So why is the show like this? If they have the whole manga already why not take their time when they need to? That would be because of the already approved episode count. According to the official website of the new Shaman King anime, as reported by Anime News Network, the series is set to run 52 episodes to fit into four Blu-ray box sets of 13 episodes each. This explains why the show feels so rushed. They want to adapt the entire manga but have a limited timeframe to do so.
To illustrate why this is such a problem, let’s take a look at the Fullmetal Alchemist series. That was originally a manga that got an anime adaption that wasn’t a perfect match to the manga’s story (they even went in their own direction midway through.) Later, however, it got a more faithful and beloved adaptation, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. That anime lasted 64 episodes compared to the 27 volumes of the manga it was adapting. What makes this relevant is when you realize that the 2021 Shaman King series has 52 episodes to adapt 35 volumes of manga.
That means that every episode of the new anime is forced to adapt, at minimum, six or so chapters of the manga if they’re trying to adapt all 300 chapters in 52 episodes. It’s a near impossible task and robs Shaman King of what makes it so great: The philosophy of Yoh.
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