Fairy Tail Creator Reveals One Purr-fect Gray Sketch

Hiro Mashima’s Fairy Tail may have already ended its initial run and is well underway with its sequel series, but the anime is keeping Gray front and center of fans’ minds as the final season continues. Gray has seen all sorts of new challenges its final season, and maybe he would not have been struggling so much had Gray had his own Exceed partner like Natsu does.

Mashima was thinking along these lines and shared a sketch of Gray’s potential Exceed partner to Twitter, and this idea will surely be a big hit with fans of the Gray and Juvia pairing. Check it out below!

Mashima’s newest sketch sees a confused Gray holding Juvia, who has transformed herself into an Exceed (much like Happy) and is incredibly comfortable in Gray’s arms. Fans would definitely not mind seeing this scenario play out in the series officially someday as Gray and Juvia are one of the strongest pairings in the entire series while still being incredibly awkward around one another.

There’s a good example in the final season of the anime in which the two are forced to fight to death. It’s here that Gray realized just how much Juvia means to him, and after she sacrifices her life for him the two get far more closer than they ever had before. As Mashima often shares fan-service laden sketches highlighting the series’ couples, it might not be long before Mashima shares more of the “Gruvia” pairing again.

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 the third season serves as the final one. If you’re itching for more Fairy Tail right now, Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest is an official manga sequel to the original series featuring original storyboards provided by Hiro Mashima and illustrated by Atsuo Ueda. The series picks up right where the original manga ends as Natsu, Lucy, and the others embark on the “100 Years Quest” that no mage has ever completed before.