New ‘Fairy Tail’ Artist Wows With Natsu, Happy Sketch

Fairy Tail is back with a sequel, and fans are loving the series so far. While Hiro Mashima is overseeing its story, the creator brought in a brand-new artist to bring the magical guild back to life. And, over on Twitter, fans are buzzing over Atsuo Ueda’s latest sketch.

Taking to social media, the artist posted a colored sketch he did of Natsu with Happy.

“Thanks for the reviews this week [and] please retweet! Because it is still hot, please take care of your body,” the artist captioned the photo.

As you can see above, the drawing has a young Natsu treating himself to a tasty slice of watermelon. Dressed in a shortened navy yukata, Natsu can be seen spitting watermelon seeds as if they were bullets, and his rosy cheeks make his intimidating expression all the more cute. Next to him, a younger Happy can be seen enjoying his own watermelon, but the Exceed tried to eat the whole slice in one go.

Right now, Ueda is hard at work on Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest as its currently being published under Kodnasha. The weekly magazine has printed five chapters thus far, and it has Natsu’s gang going on a lengthy mission that no mage has ever completed before. Tasked with sealing the five God Dragons, Natsu’s crew has plenty of work to do, but things are heating up back at the guild now that a new member named Touya has raised the suspicions of Gajeel and Juvia.

What do you make of this artist’s take on Natsu? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!

Fairy Tail was originally created by Hiro Mashima for Kodansha’s Weekly Shonen Magazine, running from 2006 to 2017 and selling over 60 million copies. The series is set in a fantasy world full of magic following Natsu Dragneel, a fire breathing wizard with the powers of a dragon who is in search of his missing foster father, the dragon Igneel. As he and his wizarding guild Fairy Tail get into adventures, Natsu always tries to find a way to succeed. The series was later adapted into an anime by A-1 Pictures, Dentsu Inc., and Satelight in 2009 and ended its first run in 2013. A second season ran from 2014 to 2016, and a third season is launching this October.

Although the manga officially ended last year, Mashima has a ton of projects in the works. There is a currently running Fairy Tail sequel series as well as many spin-offs such as Fairy Tail: City Hero, putting Fairy Tail’s characters in another world, Fairy Tail: Happy’s Grand Adventure, which focuses on Happy, and Fairy Tail: Lightning Gods, which focuses on Laxus.