New Year is all about good vibes and surprises that will await us this year. On Tuesday, the manga creator Hiro Mashima posted a New Year’s greeting art on his official Twitter page. The post reveals that he also preparing for “several surprise announcements” for 2020.
Mashima is notable for creating the popular manga series Fairy Tail. The series made its debut in the Weekly Shonen Magazine on August 2, 2006 and ended on July 26, 2017. It has compiled a total of 63 tankobon volumes in Japan. The manga series was also released in English by Del Rey Manga from March 25, 2008, to September 2010 for twelve volumes. Kodansha USA took over the English release in December 2010. Since February 2017, Fairy Tail reached a print copy sales record of 60 million.
The popularity of the manga series paved way for an anime adaptation which debuted on October 12, 2012. The first anime series ended in March 30, 2013, which was then followed with the second series that premiered on April 5, 2014 and ended on March 26, 2016. The third and final series of the anime aired on October 7, 2018 until September 29, 2019. Aside from the main anime series, nina original video animations were also produced.
Fairy Tail follows the many adventures of Natsu Dragneel, a member of the popular Fairy Tail wizard guild, as he searches the fictional world of Earth-land for the dragon Igneel.
Before Fairy Tail, Mashima already became popular due to his first manga series hit Rave Master which ran in the Weekly Shonen Magazine from July 21, 1999 until July 10, 2005. It was then later compiled into thirty-five tankobon volumes in Japan. It was then released in English by Tokyopop, then later took over by Kodansha as their allowed their contract to expire.
The manga series’ massive popularity paved way for an anime adaptation which premiered on TBS on October 13, 2001 and ran until September 28, 2002. The anime was released in the West and premiered on Cartoon Network on June 5, 2004 in the mentioned channel’s Toonami block. Rebroadcast of the anime was aired on Syfy channel in 2009.
Rave Master series follows Haru Glory, a teenager on a quest to find the five pieces of a sacred stone Rave in order to bring peace to the world by defeating the criminal group Demon Card. The manga was created with the idea of travelling around the world and was dealt with some difficulties in its serialization due to its considerable length.
Fast forward, Mashima latest works were Edens Zero which follows the adventures of Shiki Granbell who is a human Ether Gear user who was adopted and raised by robots on the planet Granbell. He uses his gravity powers to use the Edens Zero starship to search for the fabled cosmic goddess “Mother”. The manga series premiered on June 27, 2018 in Weekly Shonen Magazine and is still ongoing even until this day. The series has so far compiled six tankobon volumes in Japan, while its English release is licensed by Kodansha USA and published digitally on Crunchyroll, Amazon Kindle, and Comixology.
With that said, let’s hope that these upcoming announcements he has teased will be something great especially to his loyal followers in both the manga and anime series of his popular titles.
Source: ANN