User blog comment:Miskos3/Final Chapter in Official Color + Hiro Mashima's interview/@comment-200.8.22.175-20170728103827/@comment-200.8.22.175-20170728122008

Most of the best-selling manga are provided with staff that helps A LOT with the workload, though I don't know if he uses them, I'll admit that much.

The thing is that the only reason why he didn't have breaks is because he didn't want to have them (and thankfully because he managed to avoid the disease plague that tend to follow mos mangaka). When a mangaka's series reaches a certain level of sales, they get much more sway that people think. Oda can take breaks if he feels the need to because once he comes back, his numbers will still be off the hook; Araki (JJBA's Author) was able to change demographics, publication time and magazines after part 6 because his numbers let him, Katsura Hoshino (D.gray man's author) went from weekly to monthly for the same reason (and for health issues too). While all af this cases are from Shueisha and not Kodansha, it's all the same, even with Fairy Tail's continuous and steady popularity loss, it can still move over 1 million copies by half the year, if Hiro asked for a break, he could have gotten it.

Is it impressive the he didn't do it? Yes. Is his artwork crisp, clean and neat looking? Yes. The fact that most characters look almost exactly the same, even height-wise, is a factor to this? Very likely. Was the writing behind the style as good? Hell no.

He clearly loves drawing, his Twitter account and the fact that he had the final chapter ready like 3 weeks in advance show that, but his storytelling was not good in FT, which sucks, because he did a damn good job with Rave Master.