Hiro Mashima

Hiro Mashima (真島 ヒロ) is a Japanese manga artist.

In 1998, Mashima created the one-shot manga Magician while working part-time at an arcade, and entered it into a competition held by Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine.

While waiting for the results, his one-shot Bad Boys Song was published in August 1998.

When Magician was published in 1998's 51st issue of Weekly Shōnen Magazine, it won the Rookie Prize and earned Mashima around $7,000.

He made his official serialization debut the following year with Rave Master in Weekly Shōnen Magazine.

He gained success with his first serial Rave Master, published in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine from 1999 to 2005.

In 2003, he collected some of his one-shot titles into the two volume Hiro Mashima's Playground, which was licensed for a North American release in 2018.

It ran until 2005 and was adapted into an anime titled Groove Adventure Rave from 2001 to 2002.

After completing Rave Master, Mashima serialized Monster Soul in the monthly magazine Comic BomBom from 2005 to 2007.

His best-selling work, Fairy Tail, published in the same magazine from 2006 to 2017, became one of the best-selling manga series with over 72 million copies in print.

Mashima began Fairy Tail in Weekly Shōnen Magazine in 2006 and it went on to become one of the best-selling manga series in history with over 72 million copies in print.

While creating Fairy Tail, Mashima serialized Monster Hunter Orage, an adaptation of the Monster Hunter video games, in Monthly Shōnen Rival from 2008 to 2009.

Also in 2008, he drew a remake of Atsushi Kase's gag manga Chameleon for the 50th anniversary of Weekly Shōnen Magazine.

Fairy Tail won the Kodansha Manga Award for shōnen manga in 2009, and Mashima was given the Harvey Awards International Spotlight award in 2017 and the Fauve Special Award at the 2018 Angoulême International Comics Festival.

Mashima stated that he knew he wanted to be a manga artist for as long as he can recall.

His father was an artist that aspired to turn professional, but died when Mashima was young.

Living in the mountains as a child, his grandfather would bring him discarded manga that he found.

After reading them, Mashima would draw from them.

In middle school, he began to rebel and get into trouble, but still drew everyday.

In high school, he became guitarist in a rock band named Night Meeting, which played a show every two or three months.

Mashima was eventually indefinitely suspended from school due to his delinquency and, after reflecting during this time away, decided he would try to make it as a professional manga artist.

Moving to Tokyo after graduating high school, he entered a school specializing in teaching manga artists, but left without completing the studies.

He stated that while it taught him the basics, he felt it would not help as a professional.

In 2011, Mashima created a crossover manga between Rave Master and Fairy Tail published in the May issue of Weekly Shōnen Magazine.

It was adapted into an original video animation released in August 2013.

A special 2013 issue of Weekly Shōnen Magazine featured a small crossover between Fairy Tail and Nakaba Suzuki's The Seven Deadly Sins, where each artist drew a yonkoma (four-panel comic) of the other's series.

An actual crossover chapter between these two ran in December 2013.

From July 17, 2014, to July 17, 2015, Fairy Tail had its own monthly magazine titled Monthly Fairy Tail Magazine, which included a prequel manga by Mashima himself titled Fairy Tail Zero.

In 2014, three spin-offs were started: Fairy Tail: Ice Trail by Yūsuke Shirato; Fairy Tail Blue Mistral by Rui Watanabe; and Fairy Girls by Boku.

Mashima's Japanese-style epic fantasy one-shot Hoshigami no Satsuki was published in the September 17, 2014 issue of Weekly Shōnen Magazine.

Another spin-off manga titled Fairy Tail Side Stories and created by Kyōta Shibano launched on July 30, 2015, in Kodansha's free Magazine Pocket mobile app.

It spawned a large franchise, including numerous spin-offs and adaptations, before ending in 2017.

Mashima began the currently ongoing Edens Zero in 2018.

On July 25, 2018, Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest began on Magazine Pocket as the official sequel to Fairy Tail.

Mashima provides the original storyboards for the manga that is illustrated by Atsuo Ueda.

At the end of 2021, Mashima approached Kodansha Game Creators Lab to hold a contest looking for video game proposals based on Fairy Tail with the winning work receiving $132,300, $88,200 of which came from Mashima himself.

The games should be created for platforms such as Steam, iOS and Android, and Kodansha will distribute the winner to be decided in April 2022, with the profits shared between Kodansha and the developers.

Mashima began the series Edens Zero in Weekly Shōnen Magazine on June 27, 2018.

From October to December 2019, he created the mini-series Mashima Hero's in Weekly Shōnen Magazine for its 60th anniversary.

It is a crossover between his three series Rave Master, Fairy Tail and Edens Zero.