For Shonen anime, the tournament arc has become a common theme. There is hardly any anime in this category that doesn’t use tournaments to exhilarate their fans. It offers an excellent opportunity for the creators to put characters up against one another to depict their struggles as they fight-off their inner conflicts to show their skills. It also helps the fans to delve deeper in the psychology of their favorite characters while their fundamental identities are drawn out by constant pressure of the competition. The most memorable fights from the Shonen anime often comes from their tournament arc, but none of the tournament arcs has been as gruesome as the one in Shaman King.
In Shaman King, a tournament is hosted every 500 years by the Patch Tribe. It pits the spirit wielding shamans up against one another for the opportunity of merging with the Great Spirit. One of the exciting things about it is the fact that the manga lists Muhammad, Jesus and Buddha as one of the previous winners of the tournament. Most Shonen anime have a tournament arc, but it seems that Shaman King is a tournament arc in itself. The winner has the chance to become a messiah and change the world as he sees fit.
The characters on the show are, in a way, literally competing against each other to become God. It is no surprise that even the protagonist too has ambition like every other character on the show, which seems to be an unrealistic goal. The tournament is made even more brutal by the fact that ghosts have haunted most of the participants throughout their lives and the society detest them, with some even considering them insane for their ambitions. So, already faced with a lot of stigmas and lack of compassion, the participants make the perfect recipe for disaster.
Take one of the characters on the show named Faust VIII. He wields the soul of his wife using which he can compile thousands of skeletons to make one gigantic skeleton that can crush his enemies in a mountain of bones. While fighting the protagonist Yoh Asakura he replaces the bones of his wife with his own leg bones. Or Ren who opted to kill the tournament official and laugh at his dead body. What is intriguing about both of them is the fact that they end up joining the protagonist’s team and are looked as heroes even though they have done twisted things in the past. But all of this seems like minor inconveniences when we compare them to the things done by the antagonist Hao/Zeke Asakura.
Interestingly, Hao is the twin brother of Yoh. Irrespective of how he might appear, he is a 1500-year-old shaman who can choose to reincarnate as he wishes. He is determined to become the Shaman King because he wants to eradicate all human life. His fixation on killing human beings is sort of an act of revenge for his mother. He is entirely devoid of moral considerations and kills without any remorse, which makes him terrifying. Even the cruellest antagonists pale in comparison in the viciousness that he can inflict. During the tournament, he casually immolates three people with a smile on his face, as he was leaving the battle arena, which is just a glimpse into his twisted mind.
But things take an even more depressing turn when he finally wins the Shaman tournament and becomes God. He kills off the entire Patch tribe before he proceeds to slaughter the population of a whole continent when Yoh and his friends try to stop him he creates a supernova to kill them. But he accidentally creates a black hole that annihilates everything except for the Great Spirit and him. But just a moment before everything is obliterated, he changes his mind after communicating with the spirits of the people that he has killed and his dead mother.
The stakes are usually not that high in the tournament arcs because they occur at the beginning of the show. But it is not the same with Shaman King, no tournament arc is nearly as brutal and even though the ending might seem rushed, the show overall is a great watch. No matter what you think about the show, there is no doubt that you will agree that Shaman King has the most savage and ruthless tournament arc ever.
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SOURCE: Shaman King Has the Most Ruthless Tournament Arc
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