At 47 years old, Hiro Mashima is one of the most talented and creative manga artists in Japan. Discovered in 1999 with the title Raveit is finally with Fairy Tail (2006-2017) that the artist became known throughout the world, before continuing his career with Edens Zero (2018-2024) et Dead Rock (2023).
But if Hiro Mashima has everything to be happy today, this happiness was not always acquired. On the contrary, it was even his previous problems that allowed him to create his strongest and most powerful manga in his bibliography.
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A manga written with the heart
To do this, we have to go back in time to the early 2000s. While his career was fully launched thanks to Rave – a manga in 35 volumes (published in France by Glénat), Mashima did not experience this success very well. The reason? By working so hard, he isolated himself. However, rather than going out to fight against this situation, the mangaka… preferred to draw on this pain and its demons to give birth to Fairy Tail.
Asked by a fan at Comic Con about his inspiration for this title, “Has your personal life helped you?“, the Japanese artist admitted: “To tell you the truth, I wrote this story because I didn't have any friends“. And to add further: “My loneliness is what you can see in these pages“.
In other words, where this fantastic adventure carried by unique and touching relationships resonates in the hearts of millions of readers, it began above all with the desire of an author to reveal to the world his dreams of friendship. Enough to see the first chapters differently and confirm to us that Fairy Tail unlike any other manga.
Fairy Tail is published by Pika Edition. Its anime adaptation is available on Crunchyroll.
