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Title: Epilogue IV
Series: Shaman King #23
Author: Hiroyuki Takei
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 200
Format: Digital Copy
| Synopsis: |
Yoh and his friends face off against the Golem and Hao’s gang but Hao is reminded of the one friend he had, Matamune the cat spirit, who taught Yoh a lot of what he now knows. Hao decides to amble off.
Anna and Manta are slowly making their way to the scene and Anna begins to tell Manta a story about Yoh’s past.
The golem revives, fully under the control of the ghost of it’s creator. To replenish its mana it must consume the souls of other shamans, so it begins to attack Yoh’s group. Horohoro and Ren are first in line. With Lyserg’s help they slow the golem down but then everyone is running away on Lyserg’s new angel ally. The golem gives chase and the crew has to figure out how to stop it without killing the little girl inside. Suddenly a stronger than ever Joco shows up and fights off the golem.
Hao reveals to his minions that he can read minds and that he left the golem fight so he didn’t have to fight Yoh yet.
Super-Joco begins beating the ever living daylights out of the golem with new shaman powers and his ghost teacher shows up and starts lecturing the gang (and the audience by extension). The audience then gets a flashback sequence via Ghost Teacher about Joco’s training in the other-world.
Joco and the golem continue their fight but Joco isn’t fighting to defeat the golem but to make it realize its dreams so the ghost will pass on. The fight ends with Joco lying in a pool blood.
| My Thoughts: |
Super New Joco looked super new stupid. I have no idea where the manga-ka gets his ideas for what looks cook, but Joco was a complete fail in this regard.
The manga-ka also can’t seem to help himself from preaching at his audience. It is really getting annoying. If it was consistent or more than skin deep pop psychology I could deal with it better. But it isn’t and it comes across as Dr. Phil-lite. If you don’t know who Dr. Phil is (and good for you if you don’t), he’s a tv personality who hands out self-help advice like gummy vitamins.
How can the manga-ka go on and on about shamans being keepers of peace and not interested in politics and greed and all the other crap he spews while at the exact same time he has not just Hao in complete opposition to that but every single one of Hao’s minions. They are all shamans too. And they’re evil shamans. My running theory is that everyone in the last volume will have a kum-bai-ya moment and suddenly be all fething lovey dovey with every one else.
I hope I’m wrong.
This probably would have gone down to a 2 ½ if it weren’t for the fights. Takei can draw a most excellent fight scene.
★★★☆☆
Goodness, how many epilogues are there?
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That was my thought too! Thankfully, this is the last one 😀
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Manga has been something I’ve just never started reading. Any suggestions for where to start?
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Let me ask you some diagnostic questions and then we’ll see what the “ye olde Bookstooge” machine says 😉
1) Humor or Serious?
2) SFF or Realworld?
3) Male or Female?
4) Long or short?
Let me know the answers to those and we can go from there.
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Haha…well…I could do both in all the categories but for a first read how about serious, SFF, (3 doesn’t matter), and not long or short?
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And one follow up question, have you ever watched any anime? If so, what was it?
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No I haven’t.
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Well, off the top of my head I’d either recommend Deathnote or Akira.
Deathnote is 12 volumes and Akira 6, but both run around the 2500 page mark.
Deathnote is a bit more text heavy, being a sort of supernatural mystery/crime/thriller/thingy while Akira I absolutely loved for the art. Akira is near-future SF.
If you don’t like the first volume of either, you probably won’t like the series 🙂
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Thanks!
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Love how the fight sequences overrule some of the disappointment. Did you ever watch or plan to watch the anime? Although I think I already know that you don’t plan on watching any animated stuff anymore.. Or something along those lines.
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I probably won’t watch the anime.
My anime days are pretty much over. I’ve changed enough that I’m looking for something else. I’ll watch the occasional animated movie but I’ve never really been drawn to them. Heck, I haven’t even watched the Incredibles 2 yet and I loved the first one. Things on a screen are really moving into the background for me.
Amazon had their Prime Day a couple of days ago and I went through most of the movies/tv series they had for sale to watch on Prime video. I couldn’t find a single thing I was willing to spend either the time or money on.
I’m just in a different phase of life I guess than I was even 5 years ago.
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Really not a fan of preachiness in books and it’s really not good that it comes across as Dr Phil-lite.
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I wish that people who are going to preach in books would at least do it well. 3/4’s of my issues seem to be that they don’t even bother to do a half-assed job. A quarter-assed job? Hahahahahaa….
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Yeah I agree. hahaha!
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