Mashima once an interview that he uses some of his characters as actors, whenever you find them make a new series so often either draw to capture the vibe a certain character, reused a character to play with some ideas and shake up what they were previously, or combined character design to make new ones. Mashima successfully succeeded in making his style known. I mean if you show any anime fan anything from his work, they instantly say, “that was made by the fairy tail guy right?” However, I will say that hiros designs are far from lazy. Most of the time it’s its art style that makes it recognizable, but design wise, most of his characters are completely different. But anyway, I really like this video, dude! Have a good day!
He’s not the only one, the guy who made Astro Boy is also known for same thing and Hiro said it was his inspiration. It’s sort of similar to all the Stan Lee appearances in Marvel products. Or Samuel L. Jackson appearing in several Quentin Tarantino films as different characters.
Hiro Mashima treats his Characters like real People if they were Movie Star Actors from a Cinema, it's been like that since the very Beginning of Fiction, so it is like if the Film Director casts Samuel Jackson because of how Amazing his Performance was, he wanted to cast him again in another Film, Even Manga Legends like Osamu Tezuka Reused the same Character Designs as like he was casting real People in his Projects, that's like in every Western Cartoons where Characters always have 4 Fingers instead of 5 Fingers because it pays Tribute to Walter Disney's 1st Mickey Mouse Animation.
@@oriongold395 But yet, has People ever complained or even trash talk to Osamu Tezuka (AKA the God of Manga himself) about reusing the same Character Designs in many of the Manga series he made back in the Day which made him like Trillions of Money. The Human Race truly is full of massive Egotistical Hypocrites.
In manga this is called the "star system", in where the characters are treated like actors interpreting different roles. The term was created by Osamu Tezuka, the god of manga. Other mangakas have used it in the past too
I was under the impression these were multiversal takes on the same characters since he also reused elements of rave master in fairy tail as well. Including like... Straight up Plu.
Yeah, most of the reused designs have paralells to the previous characters with the same/similar designs, I always thought it was so we could kinda get their personality easier
Excellent video. Yeah, I do kind of feel like out of any manga artist of this generation, Hiro Mashima gets the most flack for recycling his character designs. But he's not the first manga artist to do this (and he probably won't be the last). You know who some of the most famous manga artists that also sometimes recycled their character designs were. Osamu Tezuka, Shotaro Ishinomori, and Go Nagai. Arguably the godfathers of shounen manga. And nobody calls them lazy or hacks now do they. So, what I'm basically trying to say is, if Hiro Mashima likes to recycle some of his characters/characters design with each series, I personally don't think it's that big of a deal.
I feel like when comes to these three example you mention is that majority of manga fans are not familiar with these people and there works. Majority of mangas that are mostly talk about are Dragon Ball, Big three (Nauto, One Piece, Bleach) and others that came out during 90s, 2000s and 2010s and whatever is mainstream and popular today.
Hope one day hiro introduces a character that looks like one of his existing characters just for them to be revealed to be that exact character just from another world
This man is not human, he does 2-3 at the same time usually, plays video games for hours, does music, and makes/helps in video games and some how he gets 8-9 hours of sleep(heck the 8-9 hours a sleep every day is a feat in its self with being a weekly manga author, i agree with his editors, he is not human, man is trying to get the world record of the most amount of successful manga) Edit: he does not take a week or more breaks unless he he is force to
It's so dumb, I actually think it's such an AWESOME way to grab fans from rave to fairy tail then to eden zero. It makes the world's of em all as connected. Burn the witch was cool. But .once we all saw SS and WB under it we freaked out because the world got bigger and it connected to bleach. Hiro does that. Plus I'm a musician and once you find your voice it's yours for life. That like saying my band 19 albums are rock n roll where bluegrass jazz album.
An interesting take in pinpointing why this guy reuses his character designs in between Fairy tail and Eden 0. I think you can also do this type of comparison for even dragon ball chrono Trigher, Dragon quest and pretty much anything that was drawn by akira toriyama because even he has a whole bunch of characters that you can't sit there and tell me that these characters don't just feel like that were reusing dragon ball characters but in a different setting and vice versa. But at the end of the day I don't really have that big of a problem with a writer just reusing characters as long as the characters themselves are different. That being said though the thought of Erza being a sexy pirate captain in a sense sounds way too cool to pass up on an idea like that so good analysis Axel!
Osamu Tezuka, the author of Astro boy, used to do this too. He even joked about it and called it his star system of actors. Rumiko Takahahsi also does this. Shampoo is basically Lum from Urusei Yatsura. Ageha from Rin-ne is Kodatchi (they even have the same voice actor), Inuyasha is Ranma (same voice actor too), Hinako Ninomiya and Hitomi Annette Anematsuri from Rin-ne. There’s also Bankotsu and Hakubi from MAO. I’d even say that Ryoga is a male version of Ran, and Sana and her sister are also like Ran.
Feels like Eden Zero is an alternate timeline variation of Fairy Tail, especially even moreso now with your breakdown! But I don't see that as a bad thing 🤔
Great video, as always! This is why I enjoy CLAMP. (i.e., Cardcaptor Sakura -> Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle). Getting a chance to see familiar faces in a completely different setting and on a new journey is quite fun!
He does this for all if not majority of his creations he did this before fairy tail which made me think his manga/anime are just tv shows played by actors
I'll be completely honest - I only watched Eden's Zero because I saw Elsie was basically space-pirate Erza (and that one panel of her and Justice stabbing each other had my inner jerza shipper screaming). Anyways- ended up getting completely immersed in the new world and characters. Yes, the designs and concepts are similar, but the way the characters interact and make decisions is totally different. I loved the familiarity of the characters and magic, yet the excitement over the twists and new spins on those already familiar concepts is what really drove Eden's Zero home for me. I don't think I would have watched it if it wasn't for those reused designs, but now that I have I'm really glad I did! Kudos to Mashima for luring us all in hahaha
Always happy to see your videos, I always learn something new and interesting by the end. I do love seeing and spotting the characters of Hiro Mashima series and seeing how different their journey is from how they were in the last series in a way. I do love the wacky and cool design of the characters and what kind of character has this new setting changed them into. Thanks for this video, I can't wait tell the next one!!
WB, and also, yes! A more current day example can be found with characters like Mickey Mouse and crew, The Loony Toons cast, and on the musical spectrum Miku Hasune and other Vocaloids. These characters are essentially avatars/actors that are able to be utilized in any given story scenario while being representatives of their distinct universe stylings. Literally, the living (animated) signatures of the artists that use them. It's nice to see someone get that. Great video.
Out of all the other Manga Authors, Hiro Mashima has the Cleanest Track Record than any out there, there was no Controversy, no Inappropriate stuff (unlike the Ruruni Kenshin and Toriko Authors) and no Drama in behind the scenes, He is an absolute straight-up Guy, pretty Rare and Amazing for someone like him.
It fully succeeds in making your characters feel like actors and breaks the illusion of the forth wall with a constant visual reminder that this is a show and everything in here is make pretend
Everytime I see topics like this I hope someone talks about Mitsuru Adachi, who isn't as popular, but has been doing this since way back, and I love it because he can show various character dynamics, that may not be possible in an specific set up, like two character archetypes being besties in one series and enemies in another, or having a peaceful life in one and big tragedies in another and seeing both versions on an interesting character is cool to me, I love it, this play on characters and interactions, sometime a story won't allow some characters to interact and I sometimes wish and wonder how two characters may interact if they could.
Mashima did the same thing with his series Rave Master (Before Fairy Tail); Same physical character designs, different names. These include Plu, Natsu (grey hair), Lucy, Gildarts, and Jellal lookalikes.
As an aspiring manga artist who's been working a ton on creating interesting characters lately, There is nothing lazy about Mashima Sensei's designs. Haru, Natsu and Shiki literally have completely distinct personalities and outfits specific to the fashion of the era their stories take place in. People really don't understand how difficult it is to accomplish that. Even though One Piece, My Hero and Black Clover sit above his works on my list, he is in my opinion undefeated when it comes to creating enjoyable protagonists and interesting costume designs that fit so well in the fictional worlds he builds. At best he's a genius at worst he has "Same Face Syndrome".
I think there's also something to be said about it being an intentional choice. This isn't someone who ran out of ideas and so he used old designs. It's someone who actively chose to make similar designs for a few main characters and then built the entire rest of the world with new and imaginative concepts
This feels like Clamp who does the same thing. It’s not even a situation where the characters has similarity with slight changes. Clamp quite literally reuses characters and relationships and it’s why my favorite two Clamp Anime have the exact same characters/protagonists, Sakura and Syaoran and I love them for that. If Tsubasa Chronicles main characters where new characters I probably wouldn’t have gotten as into it as I would have but seeing Sakura drew me towards it and was actually the start of me searching for any lore reasons. Nobody should be shamed for reusing a character, mostly one people have a lot of nostalgia for and help ease people into a new story.
I used to think it was a little lazy reuse character designs, your point about connecting to the characters is spot on. Hoyo the game company does this exact thing and they're praised for it cause the fanbase has mostly stuck around throughout their old and new games, and seeing those old characters lets them relive those feelings of the past characters while introducing something new. Can people's obsession with seeing old characters for nostalgia get a little annoying, yes. But the idea is good when done right.
I always thought they took place in the same universe anyway,there are alternate dimensions in the fairy tail macrocosm,I was thinking Rave Master takes place in a dimension like Edolas where magic is rare and can often only be used through artifacts while Eden Zero is closer to Earthland or possibly even Elentear with overflowing amounts of magic,so much so that it integrates itself into the very molecular structure of living creatures,resulting in the aether gears,not to mention there is the concept of reincarnation,characters can be reborn into different dimensions and at different points in time across time and space...
I love Mashima Works since Rave and still do like in Edens Zero era 😊 I hope you can make retrospective video about Rave story that unfortunatelly dont have finish story adaptation in Anime version I take Fairy Tail Anime as spiritual successor that Rave can't get in Anime media
I always dont mind Hiro's repeated use of the same design between different characters, it is essential to his art style. Hell, you can argue that Lucy, Rebacca, and Elie shared the same design traits but are vastly different characters.
Another thing that breaks the criticism of "mashima is lazy"/ "mashima plagairized from himself" is the fact that its the same artist working alone. Of course the style is going to be more or less consistent.
Ichigo does that with man kenpachi,byakuya, remji,grimmjow(they ain't friends but he did save him) Power of friendship..is fucking real. I play music and played in various places and when I know I have a friend there or someone...I go FULL THROTTLE. If I know my mom is counting on me getting somthing done ill put everything into it. If ny friends in a problem I'll go and help. Idfk why people ate blind I love hiro
You can tell that people who say it's lazy and all he does is copy have never seen the series or only keep up with it to criticize and complain. He already makes 100+ different unique characters in EACH series. Reusing the same character designs but having to remember the many slight differences between design and even bigger differences between character is quite literally the opposite of lazy when all he had to do was save himself time by making some generic character instead.
I wouldn't call it genius, but its definitely overhated just because its Mashima doing it. he's done it since Rave Master and only with a few templates he likes. Most other characters are completely unique to one another.
Your Elsie and Erza argument is one I also often give, when people are saying that Mashima is just copying his old, liked characters. What always surprises me, is that Mashima seems to be the only Mangaka that gets criticized for that. Akira Toriyama or Eiichiro Oda do it to. Maybe its because of Fairytails mid reception so its okay to criticize?
The closest thing in universe is that they state magic is tied to one’s emotions, but that’s no different from DC’s Emotional Spectrum or how Hulk and his personas also gain power from emotions especially rage.
If people have a problem with reusing characters, clamp does that way more than Mashima by far. I mean they have different stories and are in different dimensions because of clamps distinct style of having most if not all their stories in the same universe.
Hoyoverse does this as well, altho they use the excuse of the Multiverse itself being responsible for recycling characters, even with similar personalities.
Personally I got nothing against reusing characters. Mashima makes awesome characters. It's why I fell in love with Fairy Tail. The characters. The plot though... not so much. Fairy Tail really didn't have much of a plot in the beginning, being more of a series of adventures and I honestly think that he wasted the potential of a lot of his characters, especially the villains. Some of them had great places to explore and they just fell flat. So him reusing his characters in Eden's Zero feels more like he's trying to make up for his mistakes in Fairy Tail as opposed to taking a new angle with beloved characters.
He uses the same characters because he's telling the same story from a slightly different angle. There are a noir Batman, ninja Batman, and futuristic Batman Beyond, just like there are Rave, Fairy Tail, and Edens Zero. Same story, same characters, similar experience.
I'd say he uses the same set pieces rather than the same story, but that's more or less right lol The thing is, I like the story he tells. I'm ok if there is more of it :)
@tysonpalermo8246 more in the range of 100-150, similar to the demon slayer video of the same style. The one piece on passed a million too, so barely hitting 50k over a year is rough. Especially after all the time that went into it
I feel like Mashima gets way too much hate for doing stuff most authors do. He creates solid works and sure he relies alot on tropes but literally all shoneun rely on some trope.
You know that Rumiko Takahashi has not 3, but 4 big hit manga right? She also did other smaller manga series that did okay too. Comparing pure sales per series Fairy Tail has the more sales than Ranma and Inuyasha (Her biggest works) but all 4 of Rumiko Takahashis big manga far out sold Hiros other series and her smaller manga have about as much as Edens Zero too. I have a lot of respect for Hiro Mashimas but Rumiko Takahashi is definitely the more prolific author.
How is Hiro the clear winner for having 3 hit series, when Rumiko Takahashi has 5 hit series with Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2, Urusei Yatsura, Inuyasha, and RINNE? The last one may not be very popular in the west, but I don't know of any non-hit manga that get to 398 chapters.
Idk man, the editor just threw up a mangaka with multiple series lmao How is the dark magician the ultimate wizard in terms of attack and defence when dark magician of chaos has more attack???
@@AxelBeats I mean, I would have probably said the same thing regardless of whether your editor had included her or not. Why does Hiro get crowned the winner for having 3 hit series when other mangaka have more hits than that? And you clearly intend for this video to be informative in nature, and part of that is pushing people to want to learn more and ask questions, is it not?
Firstly, it does not have shanks. It has a character who - in the anime - resembles shanks to pay homage and respect to one of the series which inspired fairy tail.
The Elsie design is definitely questionable like come that one is justcioy paste erza byt bedsides her i like the way the mangaca did his designs between eden zero and fairy tail like lucy and Rebecca have a similar feel but are very different as wel in design
Why this is a problem? Clamp do this a lot and its not a problem 😅 well not the design similar character part but make their other character their cameo Tsubasa reservoir, Xxx Holic, and Kobato use a lot of cameo from their other manga series
but there is consequence in his series for eg zerefs entire charecter is off the consequences of trying to bring a loved one back . laxus tries to take over fairy tail because of a consequence of natsus actions . and there are many more examples .
@AxelBeats the reason why I say that is because Mashina can do a variety of designs but everyone is still proportion like a human. Oda seems to have different designs that don't match each other.
I always hear this and I genuinely have no idea what people are talking about. If we are talking about the Fairy Sphere containing the dragon form by using energy from all over Magnolia - that is literally the spirit bomb and i've never heard ANYONE say the spirit bomb was power of friendship. If you mean the dragonslayers combining their energy into natsu for one final attack - it has been established for HUNDREDS of episodes at that point that the dragon slayers can take in other magics to manipulate their own power - let alone that it was just Wendy enchanting and focusing that power onto Natsu. On top of all of that, all the dragon slayers coming together to defeat the last dragon just makes sense? idk fam, it seemed totally fine to me
@@AxelBeats did you also miss the part where acnologia said it himself that he was a magic dragon slayer and devours magic?????? And he is a magic dragon slayer ??? Acnologia loosing to magic is the same thing as saying Natsu would loose to fire Dragon slayer magic is still magic and he proved this But his words and the results did not match up If that's not the power of friendship how else would you explain his loss? Even if you combine all the energy in the end it's still magic energy And you can't even make the excuse that the combined energy of all dragonslayers was just stronger because acnologia was able to devour the space between time and even gained time magic which supposedly is the same power that zeref wanted to wield to change the faith of the world
at best that is bad writing in the sense of building up a villain which the conditions of the story do not allow to be defeated - same thing we saw with madara. However to call it the Power of Friendship isn't accurate at all and reeks of regurgitating twitter and youtuber opinions. I can understand saying that it doesn't make sense, however saying it's the power of friendship makes even less sense.
@@AxelBeatsok then what is the power of friendship if not that Or make a video on what the power of friendship is and why it doesn't apply to fairytail fights just a thought
Fam I don't think someone who has SO many interesting side characters suddenly lost inspiration when it came to the main cast. Obviously it is intentional.
It’s not laziness in design, it’s simply like Easter eggs, like how you see Stan Lee in all the Marvel stuff. He creates a hundred characters for each series, any one of them could’ve been used instead of reusing designs.
@@matthewlugo2417 He’s designed a bunch of mascot characters especially for games and in the concept stage, he could’ve used any of them. He did the work but openly chose a classic just as an Easter egg. Two games he worked on character design revolve around a ton of fantasy creatures, so it’s definitely not laziness if he can do that much.
@ghostspider2056 say what u want but it laziness considering other creators can diversify their character design making every character unique instead of carbon copies of eachother. Hell just look at yugioh every protag and side characters look unique in every yugioh series
@@matthewlugo2417That contradicts what laziness means, it’s when one can’t be bothered to try or attempt. Mashima makes countless of original designs, he could use any of them but still choose 2 or 3 prior ones like a type of branding. The creator of Astro Boy does the same thing. Yu-Gi-Oh has one of the most overly exaggerated designs, especially in hair styles. Even then there are certain characters that have similar features, Rei Shadows from Zexal looks almost related to Jack Atlas from 5Ds. Various manga artists have made a few characters with similarities with slight alterations. Like Hiyori from Bleach is kind of similar to Ninny from Burn The Witch.
Axl beats you must not read his other work Dead Rock. There is I think only 13 chapters but give it a read as well if you please........ I clearly see you know of Dead Rock, I had to type this before looking at the full video
Still doesn't excuse power of friendship and deus ex machina to conclude battles & stories. I think Eden's Zero is just as bad as Fairy Tail in this regard. However Dead Rock is looking pretty fresh and has the potential to surpass all of Mashima's previous series.
@@Axecon1 Nah,edens zero is way better than ft, and none of those are better than his first work, rave master.If I had to rate them, I would say ft: 6/10, ez: 7/10, and rm: 8/10.Dead rock is still to soon to tell
