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Title: Epilogue
Series: Shaman King #20
Author: Hiroyuki Takei
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 210
Format: Digital Copy

Synopsis:

Yoh convinces Anna to attend a public New Years Festival with him. Anna is overcome by all the emotions and ends up creating a Giant Demon, one that is intelligent. Matamune knew this was going to happen and prepared himself for the fight of a life. The demon tricks him though and kidnaps Anna to force her to create more spirits it can consume to become even bigger. Matamune has used up most of his power fighting the demon so it is up to Yoh to rescue Anna.

Matamune integrates with Yoh to give him enough power to overcome the demon. In doing so, he gives up all his power which sustained his physical body. Matamune is now a ghost. Anna realizes that there is more than just hate in the world, since Yoh is risking his life and Matamune is sacrificing his, for her. She takes back control of her power and Yoh is able to destroy the demon. Anna realizes she must learn to control her powers at all times and stops hating Yoh.

We jump forward in time back to the Shaman Fight. Yoh realizes he's broken his promise to both Anna and Matamune but Anna reminds him that his real goal has always been to defeat Hao, even though he didn't realize it. Becoming Shaman King was just a way to do that. Now Yoh must accomplish this goal on his own.

Lady Jeanne and the X-Laws are reviving Ren Tao but one of the X-Laws is planning on killing Ren again as soon as Ren show any aggression against them. Manta and Ryu are worried and head over to where the ceremony is taking place.

My Thoughts:

This was a good flashback storyline but it feels incredibly awkward to have it happen while Yoh is bowing out of the Shaman Fight. It's a tossup I guess.

However, I totally saw the whole thing with the X-Laws coming. Lady Jeanne will keep the letter of the law but they want Ren dead so the X-Laws will become the hypocrites we know they are. I have to admit, it really bugs me that the manga-ka is focusing so much on how evil the X-Laws are. It comes across more as “Anyone who claims to want to follow the laws and enforce the laws is automatically a scumbag deep inside and if they had the power they'd just be tyrants”. It is almost like the manga-ka can't figure out how to show how bad Hao is, so he's using another team opposing Hao and saying “See, Hao is even worse than these guys”. The X-Laws should be paragons of Justice and circumventing their own rules on technicalities isn't what Justice is about.

The intro by the manga-ka said there would be 2 more volumes in this “Epilogue” arc, so I'm guessing a lot of setup is going to happen for Yoh somehow opposing Hao outside of the Shaman Fight. But I could be completely wrong. When Yoh resigned from the Shaman Fight to save Ren, that just threw everything out the window as far as my expectations went.

Sometimes that is ok!

★★★☆½ ( )