Fairy Tale Volume 1 by Hiro Mashima

Coming off the success of his semi-modern tale Rave Master, Hiro Mashima brings us Fairy Tale, a more fantasy-esque story about a group of magicians who are gathered into a guild called Fairy Tail. They are the pre-eminent magic guild, and the one guild that Celestial Magician and cute girl Lucy wishes to join.

So when a magician named Igneel shows up in her town, all the women go crazy over him because of his good looks. Lucy is caught, too, for a while, until she is jostled by a young man named Natsu. Natsu is looking for a Mage who is actually a Dragon, and thought that Igneel was that mage, but he turns away, disappointed, and Lucy realizes that the mage is no longer as interesting as she thought he was... until he approaches her and tells her he is a member of Fairy Tail, and that he can get her a trial to enter the guild.

She is thrilled, and agrees to meet Igneel at a party he is throwing on his yacht. At first, she wondered why a wizard as powerful as Igneel needed to use charm spells on his female admirers, but the fact that he's a member of Fairy Tail makes her throw caution to the wind and meet with him.

But as the yacht pulls away from the dock, Igneel reveals that he lied to Lucy. He's a mage, yes, but not a member of Fairy Tail. No, instead, he's a slaver, and he's going to sell all the beautiful women aboard the Yacht into slavery, for which he will make a lot of money. He wanted Lucy to come along because she was also pretty and he wanted her as a slave most of all. Lucy attempts to escape, and is helped by Natsu, and his flying magical cat, Happy. Natsu, a fire mage, eats the magical flames that Igneel is able to throw, and between the two of them, Lucy and Natsu end up capturing Igneel and his men and grounding his boat.

At the end of that story, he asks her why she went with Igneel, and she tells him. But he says to her that he really *is* a member of Fairy Tail, and that he thinks she'd make an asset to the guild. But will Lucy still want to join after she meets the members, some of who are VERY STRANGE?

Fairy Tail is an interesting story, but Hiro Mashima's style really hasn't changed much since Rave Master. This wouldn't be a bad thing, normally, but the two main characters look almost exactly the same as the main characters from Rave Master. And I mean, almost exactly the same. Even the secondary characters bear a strong resemblance to those from the earlier manga!

Now I have a very hard time thinking of this as a good thing, but the story saves the manga from being a retread. Natsu isn't a typical hero: he gets motion sickness, and eats like a pig... very different from Rave Master. But in sidekicks, Happy is much like Plue from the earlier manga, save he's able to talk (and fly, occasionally).

For a first book, this isn't bad. And if I hadn't already read Rave Master, I'd have enjoyed it a good bit. But I do want to see where the story is leading. Though if more character designs from Rave Master show up, I am going to have to wonder at Hiro Mashima's ability to do character designs different from his earlier manga. It would be a terrible shame if his creativity was limited by his drawing ability.