Fairy Tail character popularity poll results (and a little clarification)

These are the best pictures of the results I managed to find so far, for those who want a nicer version of it.

It actually turns out that the poll was carried out in Weekly Shonen Magazine after all. It’s in issue 26, released on 11 June this year. This is the issue containing chapter 385 of Fairy Tail, the one that has the Spirit King facing off with Mard Geer.

However, not a lot of people knew about this poll until the results were released, and this is why:

There is no mention about the poll at all on the cover page, and nothing about it in the contents page either. I remember looking through this very issue of the magazine, and even translating a small part of Kakihara Tetsuya’s interview at the end of it, but I clearly don’t remember reading anything about the poll. Upon reading that the poll was carried out in issue 26 of WSM, I looked through the issue again and finally found it with some effort.

Turns out that it’s in this obscure corner of the questionnaire page at the back of the magazine. It’s the scan that’s in grayscale, and I’ve boxed out the poll question. It states that there’s a plan to give out twitter icons of the Fairy Tail characters in Magazine Special No.8, and to pick your 3 favorite characters from the 45 listed there.

Here’s what I have to say about the poll:

1. It is an official poll carried out by Kodansha, and the poll was done in Weekly Shonen Magazine while clearly stating that the results were to be released in Magazine Special.
2. It is true that most people weren’t aware of the poll. There was no clear mention of it, and most readers wouldn’t look at the questionnaire page (which appears in every issue) unless they really want to give feedback and/or want to try to win one of the presents from the draw.
3. Even though the poll is carried out officially, the results might not reflect the true preferences of the fandom. Most people didn’t know about the poll, and those who did vote could choose 3 characters (you are not asked to rank them). This does affect the results to some extent, compared to a case where you can only pick your favorite.
   For example, Gray might be some people’s favorite character, while others don’t care for him at all and he’s not in their top 3. On the other hand, a sizable portion of people have Happy as one of their top 3 characters, even if he might not be most people’s favorite. This could lead to a situation where Happy gets more votes in total as compared to Gray. The poll was also conducted while Lucy’s mini-arc in the manga was going on, which might have some influence on her ranking.
4. I don’t know if there were people who voted more than once, but readers are asked to write down their personal details (name, address and phone number) on the questionnaire form. I don’t know if the publisher checks for duplicate forms, and I think it’s unlikely that people would write down false info since the main point of the questionnaire is not the character poll. The “poll” is just 1 question in the whole questionnaire, and lucky readers who participate stand to win prizes. If you write down false info and are picked to win something, then you’re not going to get your prize.

Whatever it is, don’t get too worked up over the results or take it too seriously! It’s just for fun. :)