Index: Fairy Tail ~ Hiro Mashima

[barbapapa]

Author: Hiro Mashima
Serialized in: Weekly Shonen Magazine, 5 volumes released, 47 chapters.

Story: Welcome to a world filled with magic spells, flying cats, and exhibitionist ice mages! We travel to the land of Fiore, where we stumble upon Fairy Tail; a mage guild with the most outrageous and interesting people you can find. This particular tale begins with a very atypical "boy meets girl". A young lass named Lucy -aspiring to be a member of said guild- and Natsu -a flame mage looking for his foster parent Igneel (who turns out to be a Dragon!)- bump heads in the port town of Harujion...

Yeah, it might seem a lot like One Piece; but please don't compare the two too much. It'll suck all the fun you can experience out of it.
Definitely the best new shounen manga I've personally read in years. A lot better than RAVE too, mind you. It's still somewhat in the developing stages, but expect it to burst loose any moment now. I'm all for a slow approach at first, so you don't run out of steam after 20-ish volumes. Cause, well, it's incredibly obvious this won't just be random missions forever (though even those have been more fun than they're supposed to be).

Downloads available at KEFI and here.

[Largo]

Yeah, it might seem a lot like One Piece; but please don't compare the two too much. It'll suck all the fun you can experience out of it.

Is that meant in a bad way? becaus OP is one of the best shounen I've read.
Oh well, I'll try reading some 20 chapters and see what its like.

[barbapapa]

I agree, OP is one of the best shounen series in the world.
So that's why if you're constantly gonna compare, Fairy Tail might fall short. It should just be looked at as Fairy Tail, not OP-clone. Just a small precaution ;p

[MountainLionLink]

The series is actually really excellent in terms of character development. The reader actually gets be hide the characters early on in my opinion.

My old belief is that every shonen series can be compared to another, since they're always about fighting and trying to achieve something that seems impossible. However after saying that, you shouldn't compare any series to another unless the series itself was produced by the same individual, even then each series has it's own interesting things that make itself good.

[barbapapa]

Definitely agree on the char development. When I was reading RAVE, I just couldn't connect to any of the characters at all. But Fairy Tail already has such a great cast lined up with Natsu, Gray, Lucy, Happy, Erza and Makarov who is such an awesome guild master!
It just shows how well prepared this series is. And as such, sticking with this manga will not go unrewarded if my gut feeling is right.

[Loginus]

Yeah mostly there is an guy who eats much(OP,SR,Zetman,DB....),or an guy who sticks to every girl(DB,OP,SR...), an serious guy who always falls asleep(OP,DB,SR....) and so on....
But the most thing rewarded is the plot,drawing,character development and everything of these are in Fairy Tail.

[Gariam]

i also like fairy tail... i think that the idea of a boy being raised by a dragon as dragon slayer is fun, and just the erza character, who all are afraid of and nasu who cant handle transpotation, and that every one in the guild has some very funny short coming

[Sevrus]

Natsu is awesome but some people say he looks like haru from but i see no resemblence.

[trebay57]

Natsu is awesome but some people say he looks like haru from but i see no resemblence.

Some of the faces he makes somehow makes him resemble Hitsugaya in my brain. Dunno why though.

[Rashou]

I heard about this awhile ago, but I decided to try and finish RAVE Master before taking a stab at Fairy Tail. And, actually, I don't see much similarity between One Piece and this series by the descrpition, beside both of them being shonen.