I’ve been at Comic Con for the last few days and the highlight for me was not Tite Kubo, who was the big anime/manga related guest this year, but instead being able to meet Hiro Mashima.
Mashima’s previous manga was Rave (released in English as Rave Master) and he is currently working on Fairy Tail which appears in Weekly Shounen Magazine. He’s also doing a series published in Monthly Shounen Rival called Monster Hunter Orage based on the Capcom Monster Hunter video games.
Mashima’s panel was probably one of the most fun panels I’ve been to, second only to Shoko Nakagawa’s panel at AX because unlike Shokotan he didn’t cosplay, sing or do a Bruce Lee impersonation. However he made up for these faults by being funny and seeming to genuinely enjoy himself.
The energy in the room was palpable and the questions asked of him ranged from the serious to the trivial and just plain bizarre (where do you shop?/where do you hang out? was prime stalker material… at least for the stalker willing to purchase a ticket to Japan and try to find one guy in all of Shibuya). I didn’t plan on blogging the panel so unfortunately I didn’t take any notes but luckily someone who was better prepared did.
Mashima also gave a drawing demonstration of Natsu, one of the main characters in Fairy Tail. It took him but a few minutes to finish and then one lucky girl with a winning wristband which had been handed out earlier got to take it home.
After that I attended the signing. The top says “to Alex-san”.
If you can’t tell by now I do like Mashima’s work, in particular Fairy Tail which is about a fire wizard named Natsu, a female “celestial wizard” named Lucy and the other members of a magic guild called Fairy Tail. It’s fast paced, funny, has an immediately recognizable art style (yes, it looks a bit like One Piece) and since it’s shounen of course there are plenty of battles and people getting punched in the face by Natsu’s flaming fist.
All in all Fairy Tail is just a lot of fun and although it does use a number of shounen cliches it nevertheless stays entertaining. Mashima’s balance of humor and creativity alone is enough to keep me interested, such as one of the spirits Lucy calls on – the snarky but beautiful mermaid Aquarias. Of course if you were ever a teenager who wanted to go adventuring through a fantasy world, where there’s danger but nothing you and your friends can’t handle if you’re all in it together, it will probably appeal to you even more. Fairy Tail is licensed by Del Ray and currently there are three published volumes with the next one coming out in September.
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In my defense, I know a lot of my readers are really interested in Japanese fashion, hence the shopping question. The who do you hang out with thing was just because I thought he left an opening when he mentioned he hangs with other artists a lot, so I thought there might be something interesting there
Gia: Ah, I was just joking about those questions seeming stalkerish. I liked that people were asking him odd questions, it made it more entertaining. Definitely a different atmosphere than I normally see at creator panels.