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Title: Cornerstone
Series: Shaman King #25
Author: Hiroyuki Takei
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 192
Format: Digital Copy

Synopsis:

Yoh steps in between Marco and Luchist. Yoh sets himself in opposition and yet another battle begins. Just as the fallen angel Lucifer is about to destroy's Amidamaru, “Lady Jeanne” appears and captures Yoh. It's all a deception though, as this “Jeanne” is a creation by Lyserg and a part of a plan by Yoh. Only it is a double trap because they know Luchist will see through it. The real Lady Jeanne appears and destroys Lucifer, causing Luchist to faint.

Turns out Jeanne was being used by the X-Laws while Marco was the real leader. And the angels were just sports cars imbued with spirit energy. Marco starts blabbing it all out and then prepares to blow his brains out in despair. Lady Jeanne tells him to keep on fighting and stay alive and she tells Yoh they'll face each other in an official shaman fight to determine who will get to take Hao down.

Then everyone, Luchist, the X-Laws and Yoh's gang all have breakfast together and hijinks ensue. The X-Laws are “x”ing all over the place and the little minion of Hao's that's hanging out with Yoh starts copying them.

Yoh reveals that Hao's winning the tournament is inevitable but that at some point the winner must undergo a purification ritual where he is helpless. Then he can be attacked a new Shaman King declared. But the ritual is protected by the 10 most powerful Patch Warriors.

The next day Team Ren faces off against the Wisdom Kings, a sub-group of the Gandala gang that helped Joco. They can negate mana and oversouls, so Ren has to figure out how to take them down. He exposes their weakness and then we get a flashback to Super Joco training Ren and Horohoro to make them stronger.

The volume ends with Ren defeating his opponent and the next Wisdom King stepping up to fight.

My Thoughts:

There is a small character named Opacho, one of Hao's minions, who's been sent to spy on Yoh and his friends. He's only 5 years old and he is funny as all get out. Thankfully, the manga-ka makes full use of him in this volume to provide a lot of comic relief, if you're looking for it. Opacho is in a lot of the panels but off to the side or something and usually doing something funny. Made me laugh several times and definitely brought the “humor” back into the series.

The revelation by Yoh about their ultimate plan makes a lot of sense AND neatly solves most of the issues the manga-ka created by backing everyone into their corners. How it works out though, well, I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

It is also a lot of fun to see how Yoh makes friends of everyone he comes into contact with, even those opposed to him and allied with Hao. After the battle with Luchist and Lucifer, you see everyone sitting down at a breakfast table the next morning and Anna complaining about yet even more people hanging out. Very light hearted and brought the focus back on Yoh and his ethos for becoming Shaman King.

As a side note, I also started using the Adobe Reader program instead of the CdisplayEx program and every page rendered correctly. Made for a much more enjoyable read. Really weird why CD wouldn't properly display the last couple of pages though. Eh, whatever, I've got it working now with Reader.

★★★☆½ ( )

Like a shell game making sure the player can't follow the ball, Shaman King continues along the plot with one event after another, so quickly that the reader wouldn't think too much about the plot or the plot holes. But as long as you're entertained in the end, it's all good. ( )