YMMV / Shaman King: Flowers

• Arc Fatigue: The Death Zero arc. The arc is a huge Secret Test of Character from Hao to Hana, in order to teach him that being strong is more than reckless strength, fighting must be done with a purpose and to get him a brand new spirit partner. The whole arc happens inside the Great Spirits, most precisely, Hell; but people are getting tired of the slow progress and really want to know what the living members of Team Hao are doing right now.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Hana. He is liked because he is a mesh of all the traits of Yoh and Anna and a more assertive protagonist, but there's also the portion of the fanbase who dislike his bratty attitude and short temper.
  • Allumi. While she acts as a foil for Hana and keeps him grounded like Anna had Yoh from not doing anything, many vocal fans dislike her for many reasons. The ones who disliked Anna in the original series see her as her clone (not helped that she was initially called "Anna The III"). The others feel like she is too perfect — she's the daughter of Silva, who was never established to have a family or a significant other, and for some reason decided to raise his daughter to be an Anna clone, and that she always seems to be ahead of everything and knows what to do at every time. And there's also her lack of chemistry with Hana or a justification for their engagement, as she is as abusive as Anna, but without her backstory with Yoh, which was properly developed in the original series.
• Designated Hero: Hao. While he's criticized by previous Shaman Kings for his actions, he's still meant to come off as the Big Good of the series and the protagonists are fighting to let him keep his position as Shaman King despite him being completely unrepentant for his actions in the original series. That being said, the main cast isn't exactly respectful of him.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Yohanne after his Heel–Face Turn, as he is revealed to be an Adorkable Nice Guy who is very naïve with mundane things due to his sheltered childhood.
  • Tamao became this when Funbari no Uta was released, as she stopped being a Shrinking Violet and turned into a certified badass — She had to be Surrogate Parent for Hanna at age 14, became a school delinquent and at age 17 she and Ryuu whipped out all the gangs of the region. Many fans wanted to see her progression instead of Hana's.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Because this manga takes place after the controversial ending to the original manga and tries to portray Hao as sympathetic and, at worst, the Lesser of Two Evils, while the heroes fight to keep him in power, those who dislike the manga ending tend to also disregard Flowers.
• Fridge Brilliance: Hana has more power than his father Yoh had at his age. Considering that Hana died as a baby, dying is the best way to increase furyoku (spiritual power) and we don't know how much time passed before Hao revived him, is understandable.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • YVS for starters The guy's got a whole cult devoted to him, and they're capable of playing with souls however they please, ranging from altering them to downright destroying them with no effort whatsoever. He's also the previous Shaman King, and he wants Hao dead for fear of Hao destroying the world that he worked so hard to perfect and create.
  • Hana's Dark Oni is utterly terrifying, being a massive conglomerate of darkness and bones that kills anything it touches.
  • The circumstances of Jeanne's death in Red Crimson can hit a more subdued note. After all, you're just cleaning around the house, then the delivery-man comes in...only to turn out to be The Dragon of the Big Bad and his associates, who have come to kill you and turn you into a crazy girl's Oversoul.
• Rooting for the Empire: YVS is a Knight Templar and cult leader who wants to overthrow and kill Hao for being a potential threat to the world he worked so hard to create. Except YVS is completely correct about Hao being an unrepentant genocidal madman who is now simply waiting for humanity to destroy itself; naturally, detractors of the series tied to side with him in spite of his atrocities, which seem to only be committed to make him the villain in comparison to Hao.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Many fans of the original series wanted to see how the lives of the original cast (except for Tamao and Ryuu, who are supporting characters) went, like Yoh and Anna's mission around the world, how did Ren and Jeanne got together and had Men, or Lyserg's life at Scotland Yard, or Horo Horo doing more things outside of having a brief cameo.
  • That being said, the new spin-off, ''Red Crimson'' seems to be answering some of these questions since Horo-Horo is part of the main cast for one, along with Ren's sister Jun. And it does in fact, give a glimpse into what Ren and Jeanne's home-life was like before YVS' underlings killed her. In fact, it even shows the entire event played out!
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Rather than having any kind of sympathetic Freudian Excuse, Yosuke Kamogawa and YVS are pretty much just assholes. In fact, the former not being a "real" shaman is often seen as a lazy cheat to make him flatly evil for the sake of making the unrepentant Hao look better in comparison, since the original manga frequently stressed that all shamans are good people deep down; some have just lost their way. There is the Yahabe one-shot that reveals Yosuke's background as a social outcast who Used to Be a Sweet Kid however, albeit it's a heavy case of All There in the Manual.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Hao is more-or-less the same genocidal jerk he was last time, just more patient about waiting for humanity to destroy themselves. And while the various previous Shaman Kings have put forth a voice of no confidence in his leadership and started a new tournament to pick a different Shaman King, the audience is still, unfortunately, supposed to find Hao the most sympathetic option, and the author has turned the previous Shaman King into an amoral monster to both make Hao look better by comparison and extend the work's long-time anti-capitalist Green Aesop.