personally i liked the anime better then the manga even though the anime had a horrible ending...

Rave is a journey of Haru Glory, the 2nd generation of Rave Master. Rave in itself is something like a holy bringer to dark bringer, magical item that gives various power to their owners but corrupting them at the same time.

First, I have to say that Mashima is great at drawing character (fan service is one of his specialty after all) and secondly, I have always admired how he designed worlds after worlds in his story. Both of these point has been true in Rave also, but then I have to concede that the plot is standard shonen. As Haru move from one place to another, he met people, some of whom would join him in his journey, and then fought, move to another place, meet people, fought. Rinse and repeat.

Even so, I had enjoyed Rave. Reading it is akin to hop into an RPG game. You get to follow Haru's adventure from one place to another, feel his joy and sorrow, and feel it to the end. This story is for all of us who yearns to go on adventure after all. You just need to remind yourself that it is not exactly One Piece and that you are reading one of Mashima's works to appreciate it.

It was good cliche but good worth reading non the less. But what really did it for me was that very last rave 00077 I was like ..........((((!!!O.O!!!)))) had to quickly go back and read them all again so don't skip any of them!

If this would've been one of my first experiences of manga, then surely I would've enjoyed it a lot more. But I'm used to all the tropes, clichés and mundane stories by now, and this is definately one of them.

There are only two scenes in the entire manga that I felt was up to par (certainly not with the great ones, but at least a good one), and both of those were deaths, so there's bound to be a little more feeling in them.

The story is bland, the characters are forgettable, the humor... the humor is borderline great at times, but it's not a treasure trove. It's a sack filled with coal and a few of them happen to be diamonds.

The art is similar to Fairy Tail (duh.) and One Piece. Nothing too intricate, but I'm definately not a fan of the current artstyle-craze (that's in bloody EVERYTHING), so I'd say that's a plus.

If you're in it for the fights, steer clear. They're among the worst. Some enemies have pretty cool powers, but it all comes down to Haru and his will, so no matter what power they have, they lose anyway. Without any real reason, other than that he's the Rave Master. Because when I say comes down to Haru, I REALLY mean it. The others have their few moments, but in general, it's Haru Haru Haru Haru, Raaaaaa~ve Maaaaaaaaa~stah! and he always manages to defeat EnemyX because he gets angry, or learn a new skill for his sword, or because of willpower. Snore. Snore. Snore. Snore.

Oh, and the characters' personalities are asinine. Complete tropes without ANY depth.

The five is for while all of its faults, it didn't bore me. ...Not saying that I enjoyed it either, though.

If you care about depth, intelligence and quality in a Shounen-manga, this isn't something for you. If you just want something mindless that's just like everything else out there, by all means.

However it's not bad. At all. It's just that everything, from characters to the plot and counting the ending, is a huge cliché. You only need to take it as the best you can do with such limitations.
The characters are not bad, some of them are even good, except the main who is uninteresting (I could write his lines one chapter before he said them, only by thinking "what is the most obvious thing that can be said in such a situation ?")
The art is pretty good and improves as the manga goes on, and the battles are well depicted and don't last for like 10 chapters. However every battle follows the same script except for one

: the good guy gets powned, but thanks to his willpower he stands up, then the bad guy says "how is it possible" and in the end the good guy wins thanks to friendship/willpower/resolve/(insert other shounen proposition)

So in the end if you like totally mainstream shounen, you can't go wrong with this one. If you want one that surprises you at every page, go somewhere else.

...and cliched shounen mangas i ever read. Seriously, every cliche that's known is in this manga, you know, the rinse, wash and repeat cylce, reuse of plot device, sometimes using action just to overshadow the real plot and just plain old being typical and being very predictable.

But why was it popular? Well, if you factor out that kids and teens would take a more liking to this, Rave can capture an audience with its charm and just wrap you up in the story with its use of great timing sequences, good action, great characters and awesome appeal. However, any shounen manga can be popular with the same devices i just described, look at Naruto and Bleach for instance.

Anyway, as long as you don't feel bored with the same thing over and over again, Rave can be a great read, and it really pulled of the comedy well and just gave a great vibe (even though i say this the ending was kinda lame). I enjoyed it sometimes and other times it just irrated me to the point of just giving up on it, but a ok read overrall.

... Last updated on July 25th, 2009, 1:35pm

I finished this series today so I figured I'd comment on it. If you're a shounen fan looking for something to read then this is a good choice(their are better choices out there though) this series has a lot of good points but the problem is that it also has a lot of bad points. Although it's entertaining the series doesn't actually become captivating until around the 5 or 6th volume when orihalcon six are introduced; the series has a lot of compelling and likable villains a lot of whom(especially those from Demon Card) switch to being good guys in the end, similarly a lot of the protaganists are also very likable and intruiging; however at the same time a lot off the supporting cast are really just annoying and for the most part useless. Although they were funny at times, characters like Griff and Ruby were not needed in this story, characters who are useless except for one or two occasions really annoy me. Julia is simply an awful character, and she shows the author's lack of creativity, she is so similar to Let(her boyfriend) having the same back ground and abilities, she is an annoying bitch who is complaining almost all the times and she hits characters whenever she is annoyed, watching fight right after Let fought annoyed and made some of the fights uninteresting. Another character who is a bundle of wasted potential is Belinka, what made her interesting to begin with was the fact that she possessed Etheron, and when it's revealed that she didn't possess it she became very boring and as such she never should have joined the main party. Furthermore I'm really annoyed at how underused Lezenby was, he was one of the most amiable characters on the team and yet he never contributed significantly to any fight, WTF? They had Julia(the Let clone) fight and not this guy. I find it really annoying when interesting characters are underused and boring characters are overused. People reading this shouldn't be too dishearted though, in the main cast Shuda, Seighart, Let, Musica among other are all really great characters who get significant story time. I feel as if I must speak about the Blue Guardians arc. While for the most part this manga has great antagonists and a solid plot, that all fell apart during the this Arc. That arc contained a lot of poor writing(it reminds me a lot of Naruto's Hidan and Kakuzu arc); the arc had some really pretty lame villians and the chief villain was just lame. He had no great powers(I'm trying not to spoil too much), just a simple trick and his ambition was pretty pathetic. It was also really lazy of the manga to not feature his general(who was shown to be insanely powerful) in an actual fight. And this arc introduced Belinka who has as I said before was just bunch of wasted potential(her not possessing Etheron makes sense in the end though) the saving grace of that arc was the freedom fighters who unfortunately didn't really possess any impressive or intriguing characters. Also although they are some really good fight scenes in this manga this is one of those series where characters suddenly become a lot stronger and suddenly win fights(even though they are weaker or severely injured) simply though sheer determination, I find stuff like that to be poorly crafted. And lastly this manga is a bit too light hearted with them often refusing to kill characters and them ignoring reason to make sure everything turns out in the end. However despite all these flaws for some reason the manga remains very entertaining and appealing to read, it has some very good dialogue even though towards the end the translations become very bad. I recommend this series to Shounen fans.

I give it 8.4 out of 10

similar to a previous comment, i have to say i prefer the anime to the manga (i generally prefer anime to manga version of same story). but still, the story is interesting, the idea is somewhat old - a person finding out about their mysterious past and a guy looking for his father fighting an evil organisation on the way.

art is ok, plot is interesting and character are great. PLUE IS DA MAN!!!!

I started to read this serie short after starting Fairy Tail, and the only thought that kept me reading was "it's his very first work, have patience, soon it get's better". Not that I can't understand why people like it, but I really am asking myself why this manga got serialized so long and got this popular in the first place.

The plot is okay ( mainstream but at least it has some coherence and a red line in the whole story) and it's really humorous, but the art is childish and primitive (with some obvious perspective mistakes) and the figures are...extraordinary strange - a mix between a snowman and a dog as mascot, some jelly with a face and arms to grope girls, a penguin with a wizard hat... It's fantastic and original, but pointless (though less pointless than your actual Fairy Tail).

You can say whatever you want, I won't change my point of view, mostly because I have too high expectations and maybe also because I'm too old (18 years?) to understand the point in reading it.