Rave (Rave Master) | Manga - MyAnimeList.net

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Synonyms: Rave: The Groove Adventure

Japanese: RAVE

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Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 35

Chapters: 298

Status: Finished

Published: Jul 7, 1999 to Jul 27, 2005

Genres: Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy

Demographic: Shounen

Serialization: Shounen Magazine (Weekly)

Authors: Mashima, Hiro (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 7.85¹ (scored by 24,544 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1277²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #363

Members: 53,191

Favorites: 2,134

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Kodansha USA

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7.85

Ranked #1277Popularity #363Members 53,191

MangaShounen Magazine (Weekly)Mashima, Hiro (Story & Art)

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Volumes: /35

Chapters: /298

Rave Master

Volume 1
$10.99

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Synopsis

Fifty years ago, the wielders of the sacred Rave stones fought against an onslaught caused by demon stones called Dark Bring. This war resulted in an explosion known as "Overdrive"—a blast so powerful that it sent the Dark Bring into a deep slumber and scattered the pieces of Rave across the world.

In the present, Haru Glory lives a peaceful life on Garage Island until one day, he catches the creature Plue while fishing. Plue is later recognized by Shiba Roses, an old man who happens to be the original Rave Master. Shiba explains that the Dark Bring has resurfaced, and that to stop it, assembling the scattered parts of Rave is of utmost urgency. However, before Shiba can leave on this mission, he is attacked by a soldier from the evil organization Demon Card, forcing him to transfer the power of Rave to Haru. With the fate of humankind resting on his shoulders, the new Rave Master begins his quest to find the scattered Rave fragments.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Rave was published in English by Tokyopop as Rave Master for 32 volumes from February 11, 2003 to February 10, 2009, until their license with Kodansha expired. Del Rey later gained the license and published the final three volumes in a single omnibus on May 24, 2011. Kodansha Comics USA digitally published the entire series in single volumes on October 3, 2017. It was also published in Spanish by Norma Editorial from February 2004 to February 2010.

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Glory, Haru

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Kato, Griffon

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Ruby

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The Starfish, Bony

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Belnika

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Reviews

Jun 26, 2009

VK11

Recommended

When people hear the name Hiro Mashima today, they instantly think of his most recent work, Fairy Tail, which is steadily growing in popularity since its debut in 2006. However, its clearly easy to see where Fairy Tail's roots come from when one decides to undertake his previous, massive shounen story, Groove Adventure Rave. The anime adaptation of Groove Adventure Rave, named Rave Master, suffered considerably because of character designs that were not consistent with the manga counterpart, and because the anime adaptation covered only the first 90 chapters or so, leaving many unanswered questions and open plot holes. Groove Adventure Rave ... is a story that is unbelievably shounen, through and through. However, despite obvious plot twists and predictable characters, it still does not take away on what turns out to be a highly enjoyable read about a teenager's coming of age journey to save the world.

Haru Glory, Rave's shounen hero, is a young teenager living away from civilization with his sister on Garage Island. One day, an old man happens to pass through the Island and Haru eventually learns the identity of this old man is none other than the Rave Master, a hero that is destined to save the world from the atrocious organization, Demon Card, who plan on ruling the world. The old man, in poor health, eventually passes on his title and sword to Haru, entrusting him to find the Rave Stones to stop Demon Card. And thus Haru, becomes the 2nd Rave Master. Early on in his journey, Haru meets a young girl, Elie, who has amnesia and is seeking the truth about her past. This fateful meeting will eventually trigger events that become the foundation that eventually shakes the world.

From this synopsis, any reader familiar with shounen stories can get a sense of what kind of adventures, pitfalls, powers, themes, etc., Haru and Elie will encounter in their journey, and without fail, Mashima utilizes all of them. The sudden power ups, the talk about dreams overpowering thirst for power, friendship overcoming critical death status, so on and so forth. Groove Adventure Rave has all these shounen plot elements and in today's standards, the story starts to get pretty predictable as to what will occur. Fortunately, there are a few plot twists that occur deep in the story which some readers will be surprised to learn about, and it are those saving graces which help keep the reader entertained.

Readers familiar with and fans of the art in Fairy Tail will easily come to love the art Mashima utilizes in Rave because its the same exact style. While not as refined in the early chapters, Mashima designs his character rather attractively, the men with defined muscles and distinct faces; the women with heavenly chests and attractively looking figures. The battles are rather easy to follow, however, there are some instances where things tend to get a bit cluttered. The only critique I do have with his art is that Mashima does sacrifice detail in the background. This is especially apparent during battles, where the background will either be plain white or black. But again, this isn't too bad, as it does make the battles easier to follow.

While the characters look attractive, their personalities are rather predictable. Meaning, Haru is your typical shounen male lead; Elie is your typical female co-lead, and the same with all of the other characters Mashima introduces. They are nothing you haven't seen before, both good and evil. On the other hand, Mashima is able to adequately tell the history's of each of his characters without taking up too many pages or chapters, which is a nice change of pace from other stories where character past's are either too long or too short. Though character personalities really don't undergo a drastic overhaul from start to finish, all of the main heroes do evolve in a sense where you'll be able to pinpoint the difference from when a character was first introduced and where that character is during the last chapters.

Despite Groove Adventure Rave being the poster child for all things shounen, there is something about the story and the way Mashima goes about storytelling that makes it all seem enjoyable. You actually start caring for what happens to Haru and Elie, and watch in awe as their relationship develops from acquaintances to love throughout the plot. Mashima introduces a plethora of different characters that help shape all of the different arcs, and despite the length of the story, with the exception of a few gag chapters inserted in between, you never get the sense that Mashima doesn't know where he's going with the story. Although the story does go from point A to point B without much deviation, it's still an enjoyable read.

One of the big knocks I do have is the fact that almost every evil character, after being defeated, will undergo an instantaneous change from evil to good, which gets to be really old, really quick.

After reading Groove Adventure Rave, its easy to see where many of the ideas, character and guild names arise in Fairy Tail. All in all, if you're looking for a lengthy shounen, "coming of age" journey of a young man, with a nice side of romance, Groove Adventure Rave is something you'll definitely want to check out.

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Jul 12, 2021

Reinys

Mixed Feelings

For a decade I find many people have said that "Rave Master" is the ้hidden gem and a better story written from Mashima compared to "Fairy tail" which kinda intrigued me lately with the pandemic situation , so I decided to read it eventually.

Honestly, I wish I liked the series more than I do. Aspects of it, and a few entire arcs, are great enough that I want the whole thing to be a masterpiece. But as it stands, there's just too many things I dislike about the series for me to pursue it any further.

The story is the definition of "cliché" , except ...

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Apr 29, 2022

CataOrShane

Not Recommended

This was Mashima's first long manga and... it's bad. This review will have spoilers but I'll warn you beforehand. Without spoilers I won't be able to justify how bad this manga is.

Visuals:

1) the art style is very simplistic but some panels are confusing to understand in my opinion. However they became better later on.

Story and characters:
1) MINOR SPOILER: For the storyline where Haru gets told by an old lady that Elie will die regardless, it would've been much better to have the lady show him that he'll stab her with the rave sword. It would've kept the mystery for way longer and the ... reader would keep guessing for a longer time
2) sexism is NOT amusing, interesting or entertaining
3) corny as fuck all the time
4) the mangaka sets a bunch of rules and then breaks them just to help the main character whenever he can't think of anything clever, which is often. One of the examples of this is in chapter 115. ***********SPOILER************There's this character that can shatter anything he touches. This character has been shown to be CLEARLY touching the floor and nothing happens. Eventually the main character pushes him against a wall... And because this character touches the wall, it breaks and he falls, making the main character victorious.
5) too predictable to be enjoyable
6) *********SPOILER****** Chapter 161: after being shown that there's a full blown war going on with people killing defenseless victims and laughing at them, Haru is the only one bothered by it and wants to stop the war immediately. Elie then tells him to smile because if they smile, the other people (the ones being slaughtered) can smile, too! Haru agrees with her and both smile like nothing's happening. I can't even.
7) *******SPOILER******* Chapter 206: there's a plothole regarding who can use the Etherion. This chapter exists after Elie and her allies being aware that she's the only one capable of controling Etherion. BG had already tried to kill her, even after obtaining the magic staff. However, in this chapter it's revealed that they aren't sure if they can find someone else capable of controling Etherion. The leader of BG decideds to kill their best candidate and once that fails, that's the moment they realize that they don't need Elie afterall, which proves that they wouldn't try to kill Elie before as they wouldn't be sure that they could use someone else besides her. On chapter 216 it's revealed that Belnika actually tricked Hardner into believing that she could indeed use the staff. It's just a mess of a plotline, honestly.

Look, I can summarize this manga like this: there's 296 chapters + 2 extra stories. Out of these 298 chapters, I only enjoyed 22 of them. This means that I only enjoyed reading 7% of the whole manga and that's way too low for me to recommend this to anyone.

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Some help here… Matthappy - Jun 14	2 replies	by Alexioos95 »» Jun 14, 10:44 PM
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