What I find odd is that in Rave, he had his own style going (though the main heroine still looked a whole lot like One Piece's Nami) but in Fairy Tail his work has evolved to be almost shamelessly Oda-like.
Fairy Tail gets a lot better in a few volumes, can't wait for the anime version.
It does get better in future volumes although the current story arc in Japan is a bit ho-hum. There hasn't been an anime announcement for this series...yet.
The guys over at Arlong Park beg to differ. They even say it's been proven that Mashima did do work for Oda back in the early days of the One Piece manga.
The fights are trading in coolness rather than tension for now, and Hiro Mashima—a self-proclaimed punk—certainly has an eye for cool poses and slow-motion fight choreography.
I don't know why he has to feel the need to call Mashima a punk, especially a self-proclaimed one. Unless Mashima enjoys the punkish lifestyle, this form of name calling goes a little too far in my opinion and comes off as portraying Carl as a person who has a personal axe to grind against the author.
As always Del Rey presents a solid book, with clear art and useful translator's notes. Extras are scant—some explanations by Mashima about various aspects of his world—and there's no next-volume preview, but few will miss them. Sometimes the dialogue makes no sense whatsoever, but it's hard to tell if fault lies with the translation or with Mashima's random writing.
No next volume preview? Other reviewers have stated that Del Rey did put a few pages of the next volume in each individual volume with the original kanji as a preview. Did Del Rey send you a bad copy, Carl?
That said, as someone who has read Fairy Tail, even with the typical Shonen cliches, I still found the manga very fun to read and puts me in the mood for the next chapter. Fairy Tail won't break the mold in terms of Shonen presentation, but it manages to keep me glued and provide a fun, fancy world to oggle at as well as providing a colourful cast of characters that can do different magic. Not to mention that the missions that the guild members do is pretty addictive to see.
The next couple of volumes will help flesh out the guild a bit more. The first volume's purpose basically is to introduce the cast and nothing more.
You think calling somebody who spends a lot of time listening to punk rock a punk is "name calling"? Seriously?
Speaking as a man who many, many years ago (in my enjoyably misspent youth - God, how I miss the '80s...) had a rather impressive foot-tall neon green mohawk, I beg to differ.
It's still kind of rude if you ask me.
You know, I had a question running on the forum about dragon related anime/manga. Someone told me something about a dragon in this one.
Mashima's own publisher says otherwise. I couldn't find the post you might be referring to so I'm going to take them at their word, since they would have actually communicated with the guy.
I'll see if I can search for that post but maybe the guys over at Arlong Park are just being biased...I dunno.
It just seemed that from Carl's review, it sounded like to me that he's referring to Mashima as a "punk" in the "screw you delinquent" kind of way. No offense to real punk rockers, of course.
Well, "self-proclaimed" means that Mashima proclaimed himself to be a punk, so unless Carl just made that part up, I don't see how it's even remotely an insult.
That said, as someone who has read Fairy Tail, even with the typical Shonen cliches, I still found the manga very fun to read and puts me in the mood for the next chapter.
Same here. Since the first two volumes shipped at the same time, I'm kind of surprised Carl didn't review the two together. The first volume is pretty cliched (though that's kind of par for the course for this type of series) but I found by the end of the second volume I was pretty well sold on the premise. As long as it doesn't drag on for eons and eons, I'm excited to see where this series is going.
I find that Fairy Tail is a fun, qick, action packed, and easy to read. It's great if you don't want a deep or complicated story. Not something to buy but pick up at the library.