talking 'hippopotamus' (actually a Reijuu) named Sibuxiang, who remains the most popular character of the series. Ji Chang, the Lord of the West, is a man who is unwittingly destined to found the Zhou dynasty. Imprisoned for trying to stop Daji's evil, he suffers a grievous guilt when his son is murdered and served to him as a meal, causing him to refrain from eating. Escaping from his captors, he returns with an army to overthrow the Yin with the help of Taigong Wang. In the midst of this historical drama, the Immortal High Council (a group of three Immortals seemingly of a higher position than Yuanshi Tianzun) is plotting some form of magical spell that requires the capturing of many souls, which made them deliberately lie about the purpose of the Hoshin Project to Taigong Wang. The anime ends with Daji's death due to the combined efforts of Taigong Wang's group and Shen Gongbao, with the Juunisen making a short appearance near the end and no mention of Nüwa. Media Manga Hoshin Engi, written and illustrated by Ryu Fujisaki, is based on the Japanese translation novel by Tsutomu Ano of the Chinese literary classic Investiture of the Gods, published by Kodansha between November 8, 1988, and January 6, 1989. The manga was serialized in Shueisha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from June 24, 1996, to November 6, 2000. Shueisha collected its 204 individual chapters in twenty-three tankōbon volumes, released from November 1, 1996, to December 22, 2000. The manga has been re-released and re-compiled into fewer larger volumes with new cover art, illustrations and afterwords. An eighteen-volume kanzenban edition was released between July 4, 2005, and April 4, 2006. In North America, Viz Media announced at the New York Comic Con 2007 that they had licensed the manga. The twenty-three volumes were published from June 5, 2007, to June 7, 2011. Fujisaki wrote a short manga series that was serialized in Weekly Young Jump from April 26 to June 14, 2018. A tankōbon volume was released on July 19, 2018. Anime First series (1999) Hoshin Engi was adapted into an anime television series titled Senkaiden Hōshin Engi, produced by Studio Deen and directed by Junji Nishimura. The 26-episodes series was broadcast on TV Tokyo between July 3 and December 25, 1999. In North America, the series was first licensed by ADV Films in 2001 under the name Soul