Fairy Tail Author Hiro Mashima Believes the American Comic Book Industry Has an Upper Hand Over Japanese Mangakas
Hiro Mashima finds an aspect of the American comic book industry interesting and great in comparison to the Japanese manga industry. The world is caught in a superhero frenzy, but it didn’t start recently. Ever since the early 2000s, the world has been obsessed with superheroes and comic books. However, it isn’t just the Western culture that holds a special place for American comic books, these franchises have traveled all the way to Japan, inspiring some legends of the manga industry.
It is not uncommon for mangakas to be inspired by American comic books and many mangakas have praised the American comic book industry. The opposite stands true as well; mangas have inspired some American comic books. Many popular shonen series take inspiration from American superhero comic books, such as My Hero Academia and Naruto.
Hiro Mashima Said That The American Comic Book Industry Had One Great Thing About It
In an interview with Hiro Mashima, the creator of popular series like Fairy Tail, Rave Master, and Edens Zero, revealed that he discovered a great thing about American comics that was different from mangas.
The interviewer commented that in the American comic book industry, it is common for multiple people to work on the same comic, whereas in Japan, one person entirely writes the whole thing. In America, the creators may have died and people still continue with the series. The interviewer then asked Mashima’s views on this, to which he replied:
One of the great things about American comics is that so many people can work at once to turn it into a movies or different types of comic books or media and that carries over overseas. In terms of manga, it usually one person thinks of the story and everything is centered on that one storyline, so, if there is an opportunity to branch off, that’s actually a good thing.
Mashima further said that in terms of Fairy Tail, a lot of people love the world of Fairy Tail, so it is possible to expand the story into a spin-off taken over by another creator, so it is a sort of diversifying the intellectual property.
Hiro Mashima Did Not Worry Much About Continuity In His Story
The interviewer said that in American spin-offs, the creators worry a lot about continuity and questioned Mashima if he worried about that over the 11 years he worked on Fairy Tail. Mashima replied:
I was thinking about it a little bit, but it wasn’t the highest priority. It is more important to me to make the story exciting and really portray the emotions of each character. So if the fans find some flaws in the continuity, I am actually excited to know that people are reading that much into it.
So far, Mashima’s statement stands true as Fairy Tail focused more on fun adventures and delivering exciting stories that always got the fans hyped up. As far as shonen titles go, Fairy Tail was one of the fan favorites despite the overuse of popular shonen tropes and overreliance on the power of friendship.
