rieriebee:

Bonus small video included. 🙂

Hi! I’d like to tell a story.

A few months ago, a group of talented people came together and created a Fairy Tail fanzine. These are well known, wonderful artists in the fandom that truly love drawing. Mashima was a big inspiration for them, and they wanted to show him that, along with their gratitude. The book contains art and messages from these fans who live all over the world.

Mashima does not know English well (or really at all, I know from my own experience of meeting him last year), so with the help of two friends who are native speakers, I translated the messages into Japanese (paraphrased). They were able to proofread and make sure everything was correct. We wanted to make sure we conveyed their feelings properly.

Because I can’t draw (lol) this was my contribution. Now the question was “How will we get this to Mashima?”

At first I handed it over in person to my friend who works for Kodansha USA, as this is the company who publishes Fairy Tail. They send mail and fan letters to mangaka (Kodansha Japan) quite often. Mashima would definitely receive the fanzine, but unfortunately with this route we would not see his reaction. At that point, we did not have any other options.

Then… a better opportunity arose. My friend, one of the people who helped proofread my Japanese, was selected for his autograph session in Tokyo. I asked her if she could give the fanzine to Mashima, and she said that would be an honor. I also thought this worked out perfectly, because my friend and her sister technically helped with this zine. They would get the chance to not only present it to him, but look at it in person before giving it away (I had showed them a video of the book before but it’s not the same haha). And so I mailed the fanzine to my friend in Japan, who gave it to him in person at his autograph session today. ^^

I didn’t tell anyone about this plan because I thought a surprise would be nice, and because I wanted to make sure it was actually happening first before getting anyone’s hopes up. International mail is terribly annoying, I had a fear it would get stuck in customs. Luckily that didn’t happen and she got the zine literally the day before she went to Tokyo… xD;

Anyway this turned out long, so here is what happened when my friend gave him the zine. She wrote it and asked me to help her with English, then posted it along with a picture on her twitter:

Today at Mashima-sensei’s autograph session, I gave him a fanzine created by overseas artists who love FT.
He was very happy with the fanzine. And there are lots of beautiful arts.
The reason why I post this is because I want to tell those involved with the fanzine about what happened there.

My friend Marie @miggyxmarie sent me this fanzine to give to Mashima-sensei. My sis and I were also involved, since we helped translate messages into Japanese with Marie for this fanzine.

In particular, there was an extra art of Gruvia with their son. Mashima-sensei had a happy expression when saw this art. He said “This is very lovely!”  (*Note: she is talking about this art)

He saw a variety of pictures and said “Ah, I kinda know who he/she is. I feel like I’ve seen his/hers art on Twitter.”
 
So he really know his fans well lol.

Well, my point is he loved it. Thank you to all artists, and people who were involved with the creation of this fanzine!!

Participating artists:

@giushia, @ayumichi-me, @arya-aiedail, @shadoouge, @chengggg, @ccrispy, @zippi44, @karokitten-chan, @tea-lief, @oink8, @chibi-brielle, @kagomenesan, @arikafd, @chatora, @enul-lim, @claudiadragneel

It’s been quite a ride, and I’m sure many of you can add more to this! Especially the process of actually creating the zine. But I wanted to share my own experience. 😀 It’s been a pleasure working with you all. Keep doing your best! ♡