Fairy Tail

Title:  Fairy Tail
Mangaka:  Hiro Mashima
Length:  31 Volumes (Ongoing)
English Translation?  Yes, 18 volumes so far by Kodansha USA.
Demo/Genre:  Shounen/Fantasy/Action/Comedy

I keep getting caught up in reading and not posting!  I'm sorry!  I have some major catching up to do!  Good thing I don't have any regular readers, eh? ;)

How did I stumble into Fairy Tail?  Its popularity on mangareader led me to try it.

17-year-old Lucy Heartfilia is a fledgling Celestial Wizard (basically, a summoner for you RPGers out there).  In the land of Fiore, you're not a fully-fledged wizard (I preferred the scanlations' translation as "mage" instead of "wizard") until you join a magic guild, and Lucy has her sights set on Fairy Tail.  Through a series of coincidences, she meets well-known fire wizard Natsu Dragneel a.k.a. Salamander, and her adventures as an FT wizard begin.

Take every shounen character stereotype and throw them all into one manga.  Sounds like crap, right?  Oddly enough though, it works here.  Fairy Tail doesn't set out to be groundbreaking in its genre.  This may turn away those who want something more from their manga.  For me though, I can overlook stereotypes and cliches if they're handled well, and I was satisfied here.  Mashima-sensei has a great sense of humor, and I found that the series only became funnier as I read on, one moment in the current arc even landing itself in the "Top-3-Scenes-That-Have-Made-Me-Laugh-the-Hardest-in-a-Manga."  Like that title?  I just made it up.  :P

When I began this series, I thought it was only "okay."  The characters were decent, but I really wished for more character development.  The guild is filled with interesting characters, and Mashima-sensei fills his chapter pages with detailed character bios that offer unique insight into that character's personality quirks, which proves that he gave them a lot of thought, so why not utilize this cast?  Sometimes a new character would be introduced, then that character would be absent from the next arc, and I would think, "Gee, that had a lot of promise.  Too bad we don't get to see more of that character."  However, I would always get my wish answered.  Sure, there were still some characters in the guild that never found the spotlight, but many of them eventually received the treatment they deserved.  And all those new characters that seemed strangely absent?  I just had to sit tight.  Maybe they wouldn't appear in the next arc, but they would come back, and I'd get the time with them that I had wished for.  I hope that's not really a spoiler.

FT lacks the epic scale of Naruto or Bleach, but it makes up for that by just being pure fun.  While it doesn't enter into any new territory that has not been explored by other shounen titles, it manages to be greater than the sum of its parts.