Manga Review: Fairy Tail
Everyone wants to join Fairy Tail!
Don’t you wish you could too?
Fairy Tail is a new shounen manga series being written by Hiro Mashima after he finally ended his popular Jump manga “RAVE” in 2005. It is set in a steampunkish world of adventure, magic, mages and guilds, where mages are the main adventurers in this series.
These mages are often members of Mage Guilds which provides access to information and quests but there is one particularly infamous Mage Guild that is a thorn in the side of the Mage Council because of the trouble that its members create – the Mage Guild called “Fairy Tail”
The story starts off with a young girl called Lucy who arrives in the town of Harujon who wants to be a proper mage and join Fairy Tail. While in Harujon, Lucy meets a boy called Natsu who has a serious case of motion sickness and a cat named Happy. Together, they unravel the mystery of the charismatic travelling mage who claims that he is the famous Salamander from Fairy Tail.
So far this story has been a pretty engrossing read and Hiro Mashima brings a new twist to the weak mages of the typical fantasy stories. Here in the world of Fairy Tail, the mages are the ones who fight villains and go on crazy adventures.
I would say that the characterisation and emotional style resembles that of One Piece while the world and fighting system resembles that of HunterxHunter, although I’d say that it is not as complicated and indepth as HxH. So if you like the usual shounen adventure and fighting fare, you can give Fairy Tail a try because it is pretty decent stuff.
Some pics of the manga:
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thats the one you sent me!
i gotta start reading.
hiaks. ;D
i would like fairy tail a lot more if the character designs were better…
Hi~ Black-Chan from CY desu~ Wow. Fairy tale really looks like One Piece.
oops. I mean Fairytail.
Jooo: Get cracking!
Black-Chan: Yeah Fairy Tail does look a lot like the early One Piece. And RAVE also looks a lot like One Piece, so I wonder if Hiro Mashima worked for Oda before or they had the same sensei.
I dunno it looks exactly like a mix of Rave and one of his earlier manga short stories in Mashimaen (I coulda sworn he had one called Fairy TAIL in that one too. Or maybe it was fairy TALE.)
I dont like how Mashima Hiro’s art style molded into the One Piece one. His art style like between Rave volumes 5-12 was really good then as the manga went on it went back into that annoying One Piece style.
I also love how he named his main character “Summer” (Natsu) while in Rave we had “spring” (Haru). I dunno it just doesn’t strike me as anything different from Rave, girl guy + goofy looking sidekick and I don’t need to spend another X amount of dollars on another 36 volume series. I got my hands full with Naruto.
Yeah his art is really similar to Oda but it still retains a tiny bit of distinctiveness I guess, in the bad way because I think the current art of One Piece is more refined and detailed.
I’ve read 16 chapters of Fairy Tail and I can’t really say that it is any way similar to RAVE. The story is different, the world is different, the fighting is different, the way the characters act are different.
The only thing in common at the moment is Plue who is the exact same Plue from RAVE surprisingly. Well and I guess the artwork is the same of RAVE but that’s to be expected when a mangaka does a sequel.
Interesting fact: Both Shaman King’s author (whose name I forgot) and Oda worked for Kenshin’s author (whose name I also forgot).
I initially thought that RAVE’s artwork looked a lot like One Piece, but the current OP style is very distinctive and nothing like Mashima’s. I like both, but it’s easy to say that OP’s is far superior.
I’ve been following Fairytail, and so far it’s prettty interesting. I’d like to see how Mashima handle the major nemeses of this series, since RAVE kinda fudged those.
Shaman King’s author: Takei Hiroyuki
Kenshin’s author: Watsuki Nobuhiro
Yeah the art of the current OP is definitely better than RAVE and Fairy Tail. I would say that Mashima’s art for those 2 mangas seems to be like the early OP art, between the starting to Arlong Park.
It’s also interesting how fast you meet all the important members of the Fairy Tail guild in the first few chapters instead of usual shounen practice of gathering team-mates as the series goes on.
the caracter and story are so awesome
can someone tell me,what the website fairy tals manga if u want 2 know lot that thing.
scar: you can try this site http://www.fairytailworld.com/ or this site http://community.livejournal.com/fearii_teiru/
Yeh it looks alot like one piece and also some of the fairy tail members look alot like characters from other mangas. Natsu looks like luffy, Gray looks like Sasuke, Loki looks like Ichigo and the other guy looks like Franky.
You guys do know that Hiro Mashima was a Student of Oda, right?
@Neo-jplaya: Yes
@Neo-jplaya: No, that’s a false rumor. At the beginning of Rave, the art style didn’t look like One Piece at all. He changes his style alot during Rave and it wasn’t until tha last part that it started to look like One Piece.
Personally I think Fairy Tail is doing great. I think Mashima is generally better at drawing stuff, while Oda is superior with design and original ideas.
They(Oda(One Piece) & Mashima(Rave)) both studied under Watsuki Nobuhiro(Rurouni Kenshin/Samurai X).
I think fairy tail is a good thing even though it copies one piece anyone who hates fairy tail for copying one piece and is a one piece fan is raging for nothing. (didnt read all of the stuff here so im just mentioning in-general)
If there are 2 similar mangas they will try to compete just like if u have 2 kinds of telephone companies ofc they would lower the cost of their telephones or make the telephones better to beat the other telephone company. So I believe that One piece will get better
I also think that (unlike in most mangas) One piece was worse in the beginning, and better in later volumes. I also like it that you can enjoy the spoilers in anime too since u dont have to think of ‘omg luffy must get powerful soon’ which spoils the actual fun. Just like if you play some leveling games. One piece would be enjoying the game and getting levels at the same time while doing adventures and Bleach, naruto etc would be enjoying leveling up by killing boars for 6 hours a day.
I never gave Rave more than a glimpse at the bookstore, so I am commenting as a person who is completely unbiased in terms of comparing the mangaka’s Fairy Tail work to his earlier one.
Some random observations/opinions:
*The art work is so obviously similar to One Piece, if I were Oda, I’d be peeved – not flattered.
*The story and characters come across like a mesh of popular characters from other, more popular manga like bleach, naruto, one piece.
*anyone else notice an element of harry potter as well?
*Oda at least admitted to being heavily influenced by A.T and even paid hommage to the famous mangaka by creating a joint project together. I guess my point here is: if you’re going to rip off other mangaka, give some credit.
*The characters just come across like a collage of nami, naruto, and luffy being taken from their respective mangas and being forced to act under different names in this manga called Fairy Tail.
Overall conclusion (IMHO):
An enjoyable series NOT to be taken seriously…something I’d read (and probably forget) to kill 14-16 hours if I were to fly over to Asia from North America.