Hiro Mashima

""AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER, I WANTED TO BE A MANGA ARTIST""

- Hiro Mashima, when interviewed during San Diego Comic-Con

Hiro Mashima (真島ヒロ Mashima Hiro) was born on May 3, 1977 and is a Japanese manga artist recognized for his fantasy mangas Rave Master and Fairy Tail.

Hiro Mashima was a notable guest at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con.

Early Life
Hiro Mashima grew up in the Nagano prefecture of Japan. When he was young, he aspired to draw manga, so his grandfather would find discarded manga for him to read and trace the pictures.

Two manga series in particular were the main inspiration for him to become a professional manga artist: Dragon Ball, a well known manga produced by Akira Toriyama, and Ultimate Muscle, which is created by Yudetamago. Hiro Mashima especially enjoyed parts featuring the main characters getting into trouble, but somehow always managing to win in the end. He also liked the fierceness depicted in battle scenes.

After high school, he decided to go to an art school because he believed that going to school would help him in learning how to improve his manga drawing ability. However, he ended up detesting the approach and taught himself.

Early Year
Around the year 1998, Hiro Mashima had created a 60 page original work called Magician that he took to editors to review. Soon afterward, it won him the amateur manga artists' competition. After a year, he made an official debut in 1999 with Rave Master.

Rave Master (1999-2005)
Also known as "RAVE", the series debuted in 32nd issue of Xmas Hearts and Fairy Tale, a sort of prototype for his latest work.

Fairy Tail (2006-Current)
During the production of Fairy Tail, Hiro Mashima had also published the manga Monster Soul in 2006, Monster Hunter Orage in 2008, and the one-shot manga Nishikaze to Taiyou in 2010.

Works

 * Groove Adventure Rave (published as Rave Master in America) (1999-2005)
 * Plue's Dog Diaries (2002-2007)
 * Mashima-En Vol 1 & 2 (2003)
 * Monster Soul (2006-2007)
 * Fairy Tail (2006-ongoing)
 * Monster Hunter Orage (2008-2009)
 * Sangokushi Taisen card illustration
 * Respect Gundam contribution
 * Nishikaze to Taiyou (One Shot 02/2010)

Speed
thumb|300px|right|An example of how fast he can draw Hiro Mashima's drawing speed and production of manga is actually quite well known among those within the manga community. A typical workload for a Weekly Shonen Magazine manga artist (him included) may be about 20 pages of completed draft, 20 pages of rough drafts, and maybe a colored page. However, this was also the point in time when he was producing a monthly manga called Monster Soul, for which he had illustrated 43 pages of completed drafts, 69 pages of rough drafts, and 4 full-colored pages in a single week. His record is 65 completed pages (3 of which were colored) within one week.

Current Assistants

 * Sho Nakamura
 * Bobby Osawa
 * Kobayashi Kina
 * Kain

Former Assistants

 * Miki Yoshikawa (Yankee-kun to Megane-chan, Yamada-kun to 7-nin no Majo)
 * Shin Mikuni (Spray King)
 * Ueda Yui

Trivia

 * The main characters in his magazine serializations are named after seasons:
 * Rave (Haru=Spring)
 * Fairy Tail (Natsu=Summer)
 * Monster Soul (Aki=Autumn)
 * Monster Hunter Orage (Shiki=Four Seasons)
 * Hiro Mashima has never served as an artist's assistant.
 * When asked about Gray's habit of stripping, during his visit to San Diego's Comic Con, Hiro said that he used to be like that.
 * Originally, Hiro Mashima planned to finish Fairy Tail around the 10th volume. That, however, changed from both the fans, and his wish to draw even more of Fairy Tail.
 * Mashima's assistants often refer to him as Superman for the following reasons:
 * Even after the assistants had finished working around midnight, he still continued to work on the manga.
 * His level of focus and the sudden transition from video games back to working is second to none.
 * The first thing he does when he wakes up is grab his tools and begin the day's work on the manga.
 * Despite his busy schedule, he still gets at least seven hours of sleep per day. For some reason, most other manga artists envied him in this.
 * Switched from traditional coloring to digital coloring in 2005.