How Hiro Mashima Created Fairy Tail.
Around the year 1998, Hiro Mashima had created a 60 page original work called Magician that he took to editors to review. Soon afterward, it won him the amateur manga artists' competition. He made his official serialization debut the following year with Rave Master. Also known as RAVE, the series debuted in 32th issue of Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine in 1999. Rave Master ran until 2005, that is 6 years without pauses between issues, and was adapted into an anime titled Groove Adventure Rave from 2001 to 2002. In 2002, while still producing Rave Master, Mashima began to write a Rave spin-off featuring Plue and titled Plue's Dog Diaries. It was serialized in Kodansha's Comic BomBom. Then, in 2003, Mashima assembled some of his one-shot titles in two volumes, under the title Mashima-En, including his original work Magician, and Fairy Tale, a sort of prototype for his latest work. In 2005, after Rave Master had concluded, he began to serialize the title Monster Soul in Kodansha's Comic BomBom. It was around this time that Mashima drew the prototype for what would become Fairy Tail.