User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail 537: The Power of Life, Review/@comment-25324252-20170526171355/@comment-7418318-20170528084828

I wouldn't be too sure about it.

With Kubo that shit at the end was brewing behind the scenes for a long long time and only came to the light in the last few weeks. Just because we haven't heard anything does not necessarily mean there is nothing going on between Mashima and the magazine.

Not that I suspect that even IF there is anything, it's anywhere near the level of ass-ery that Kubo's publishers regularely inflict on their contracted authors... but we've heard of at least some chapters that Mashima had to redo from scratch because they were refused by the editors and that Hiro had to fight for getting all 12 Spriggans into the manga (yeah... not a great thing in hindsight, but who knows what the alternative would have been like) so he certainly doesn't have full freedom.

With seeing at how wrong I was about Kubo being completely at fault I wouldn't want to take any bets on who the majority of the blame belongs to between Mashima and his publishers.