'Fairy Tail:' New Spinoff

On April 5, 2018, Hiro Mashima, author of Fairy Tail manga, announced to his fans that he will do a spinoff of the original series. The series that started it all began August 2, 2006, until July 26, 2017, via Weekly Shonen Magazine.

For those who do not know of the Fairy Tail guild, it centers around a wizard guild by the name of Fairytail located in the Kingdom of Fiore, Magnolia. The main characters are Lucy Heartfilia, Natsu Dragneel, Gray Fullbuster, Erza Scarlet. Together these powerful wizards encounter adventure, mysterious magical forces, and also save the world from ancient dragons, evil wizards, and still manage to have some good laughs along the way. The series managed to sell in 2015, roughly 3 million copies worldwide and is still going strong today as one of the most liked Shonen manga. However, the manga ended July 26, 2017, and the last season of Fairy Tail is to air this fall 2018.

Fans are anxiously waiting for the last arc, Alvarez Arc, to air this year. However, due to the manga ending back in 2017, many fans felt disappointed due to the abrupt ending, as well as the lack of confirmed relationships among the characters. The unconfirmed relationships between characters, such as Natsu and Lucy, Erza and Jellal, and Gray and Juvia, left many fans heartbroken. This also caused an uproar among fans via YouTube and Twitter, hinting to Mashima to bring these characters together.

Fans were in for a surprise on October 2017, where Mashima presented to his fans what the child of Natsu and Lucy, as well as Gray and Juvia, would look like at the New York Comic Con. The question lies whether the children of these paired characters will appear in the new spinoff series or were they just sketches to satisfy the fans. As far as Mashima announcing any official detail on the storyline of the new manga spinoff goes, there has been no news release yet of the storyline. The only news that has been announced is the different type of graphic design that will be incorporated into the spinoff. Mashima has announced to his fans to expect a more attractive graphic design than any of the previous ones. However, fans seem more interested in knowing if the spinoff will be about the new generation of Fairy Tail wizards and what happened after 100-year quest Natsu and his friends ventured on the last arc. This remains a mystery to fans and excitement for the upcoming project.

Fairy Tail is well-known for its focus on friendship, Nakama, and inner strength. The series produced a sense of love among friends, strong bonds, and unwavering courage to face off evil. There was a very small quantity of romance implied in the series, it mostly consists of mild and implied flirting, but no actual confirmed romance (with the exception of very few pairs). The author did confirm via Twitter that the upcoming spinoff will focus more on love rather than friendship. Does this mean the upcoming series will contain more romantic fillers or will it focus on different types of love?

Along with the Fairy Tail spinoff, a new manga series created by Mashima will be released this summer, June 27, 2018. The new manga will be a different form of adventure and fantasy mix unlike his previous works, Rave Master and Fairy Tail. For those fans who simply adore the celestial spirit, Plue, he will appear in the new series. The author has been known to take a liking to the character and has made an appearance on his previous projects as a strange looking dog (he looks more like a shaky snowman) with a sweet appearance. Regardless of what comes ahead of this summer, Mashima is working hard despite taking a short amount of time off after Fairy Tail ended and is now ready for this new upcoming project. Hopefully, the upcoming project will not end like his previous work in 2014, Satsuki Starbiter, that was left off and did not receive much acclamation and was quickly disregarded. To make a long story short, Mashima is full of surprises this year and ready to indulge his fans with new adventures.