Hiroyuki Takei
9The Closing · 72武井 宏之
Born 1972
The creator of Shaman King, who began as an assistant to Nobuhiro Watsuki.
9A 9 by its name: humanitarian & sage, and therefore the closing.
Career
Hiroyuki Takei was born in Aomori Prefecture in 1972. He worked as an assistant to Nobuhiro Watsuki on Rurouni Kenshin before making his own debut in Weekly Shōnen Jump.
The work
Shaman King (1998–2004) made him famous. He later created Ultimo with the American comics writer Stan Lee, and returned to the world of Shaman King in several sequels.
The style
Takei's designs are bold and inventive, drawing on many cultures, religions and fashions, and his characters' spirits and weapons are among the most distinctive in Jump. His fights mix spiritual ideas with spectacular action.
Why he matters
Shaman King is one of the defining Jump series of its era, and its revival in the 2020s introduced it to a new generation.
The name by its numbers
The arithmetic is unremarkable and worth doing anyway: 72 across 2 words, reducing to 9. The weight sits in “Hiroyuki”, which carries 53 on its own and reduces to 8.
What the 9 brings is reckoning. The reference files it as a completion. Whatever else this entry is doing, it is doing it with the 9's sense of a cycle closing and something being released.
Heart's Desire 6, Personality 3: responsibility underneath, expression on the surface. The gap between them is where the subject is most interesting.
Counted another way the answer changes. 人格 core is 11, 総格 total is 22 and born is 1972, a 1. The title says 9; the subject says otherwise, and the subject is the harder evidence.
The 9 asks you to work out what survived the ending. The 9 sentimentalises. An ending is not automatically a meaning, and the reference tries not to pretend otherwise. The other entries that reduce to 9 are collected on The Closing.