Episode 96 - Shaman King by Hiroyuki Takei

**Mat** (0:15)
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Manga Tak, the weekly podcast where we read and flight on the finest Swiss volumes you can buy so you can find your next favorite manga. As always, I'm your host, Mat, and I'm happy to be once again joined by designer and illustrator, Bastian Najdek. How you doing, buddy? You all right?

**Bastian Najdek** (0:30)
Yep. I couldn't wait to get into this manga with you. I mean, I thought you would be talking with someone else about it. I was hoping to listen to the episode, but I'm glad to be a part of it.

**Mat** (0:40)
Well, I mean, you've talked to me about the possibility of me covering Shaman King on this podcast for a while. I strongly expect that in the poll for episode 100, you were the person going, Shaman King! And I was like, okay, I'll just get Bastian on to talk about this. This is easier. Because since you and I have talked back and forth, I know that this is a big inspiration on you. I know that you really love this book. And I was like, okay, as a British person, Shaman King was definitely around. But it just felt like the people who were around me, who were throwing copies of Bleach and Naruto at me, weren't reading Shaman King. So I was like, okay, maybe this is a thing. Because I don't know necessarily how big it was in Poland, but I definitely get the vibe from you that it was a lot bigger than it was in the UK, or at least amongst my circles, right?

**Bastian Najdek** (1:33)
Might be. I don't know about the UK, but it for sure made its impact in Poland.

**Mat** (1:38)
Okay. Because you sent me a sticker book that you had, and I was like, we didn't have sticker books of Shaman King. We barely had that for Dragon Ball. So I'm like, okay, I think this is a much bigger deal in Poland than it was in the UK.

**Bastian Najdek** (1:53)
Yeah, I would say so. I don't know if you want to get into it right now, or you want to get back to it.

**Mat** (1:58)
Sure. You are more than welcome. Tell me how you discovered this book in the first place.

**Bastian Najdek** (2:02)
So I discovered it through a manga magazine from Germany called Banzai. It was like equivalent of Shonen Jab in there. I got it from my cousins from Germany. And like browsing through it, I was probably, I don't know, like 10, 11 back then. I checked because I wanted to find this volume online and it was from 2004 So it would be like that. And it was chapter 53 and 54, like two chapters in there, I think. And I didn't know what's going on, but I sure liked the character designs. And then there was this like really, really gory bloody scene and some characters that seem to be early teenagers having tattoos on their backs and stuff like that. It was just so edgy. I was like, hell yeah.

**Mat** (2:51)
I mean, I can see how at that age you're like, oof, weirdly, I've talked about it a little bit on this podcast. Like that for me was Gunsmith Cats, because I read that book way too young, because it was just in discount bins. I was like, oh my god, there's boobs and guns and cars. What is this crazy thing? And yeah, that is just how manga grabs you, right? You find something you shouldn't be reading at that young an age, and you're like, more of this, please.

**Bastian Najdek** (3:16)
Funnily enough, in the same magazine, I discovered Naruto, and there was one of the chapters with the first gara introductions or one of the first appearances. And it also made an impression on me, like he was so like creepy, kind of looking, and it was also very cool. And also Hikaru No Go was also in this magazine, I think.

**Mat** (3:37)
Oh, cool.

**Bastian Najdek** (3:38)
Yeah, so pretty fun times. And I think around a year later, the Shaman King anime started airing in Poland, and it became huge, at least from my perspective, because everyone around me, even people who usually didn't watch anime, everyone was watching it, everyone knew the opening song and singing it at school and stuff, and everyone was hyped. It was kind of similar with Yu-Gi-Oh in Poland, because Yu-Gi-Oh, I feel like it was way, way bigger in other countries because the card game popped off a lot, but it didn't click as much in Poland, I think.

**Mat** (4:14)
Interesting.

**Bastian Najdek** (4:15)