Rave Master, Rave, and alternatively, The Groove Adventure Rave in Japan, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hiro Mashima. The series follows Haru Glory, a teenager on a quest to find the five fragments of the sacred stone of light Rave (renamed from “Holy Bring”) in order to bring peace to the world by defeating the criminal group Demon Card. Mashima created this series with the idea of travelling around the world and was presented with difficulties in its serialization due to its considerable length.

The manga was serialized in Kodansha‘s Weekly Shōnen Magazine from July 1999 to July 2005, with its chapters collected in 35 tankōbon volumes. The manga series was licensed for an English release in North America by Tokyopop until Kodansha allowed their contract to expire. It was also adapted into a 51-episode anime television series by Studio Deen, which was broadcast on TBS from October 2001 to September 2002. Tokyopop also licensed the anime adaptation, which was broadcast in the United States on Cartoon Network from June 2004 to July 2005.

By 2020, the manga had 23.5 million copies in circulation.

Plot

In 0015, the world is corrupted by Dark Brings, evil stones that bestow powerful magic with different abilities to their owners. The Dark Brings are used by the Raregroove Kingdom, which is opposed by the Symphonia Kingdom with the five Rave stones. Shiba Roses, the Rave Master, attempts to destroy Sinclaire, the “mother” of all of the Dark Brings, with the Ten Commandments sword. However, the aftermath causes a massive explosion known as Overdrive, destroying one-tenth of the known world. Shiba, protected from the disaster by his special guardian “dog” Plue, holds onto the Rave required to power his sword. Plue and the four remaining Raves, however, get scattered around the world.

Fifty years later, sixteen-year-old Haru Glory lives on the peaceful Garage Island with his older sister, Cattleya. Shortly after Haru accidentally fishes Plue up, Shiba arrives wishing to reclaim Plue, but a group of terrorists from the Demon Card organization appear to kill Shiba. Shiba tells Haru that he is the second Rave Master, entrusting the Ten Commandments, Plue, and his Rave to him. Seeking power to defeat Demon Card, Haru and Plue set off on a journey to find the missing Rave stones. Upon arriving at the mainland, Haru befriends a girl named Elie, who has no recollection of her past. During their journey, Haru encounters enemies from Demon Card who eventually become his allies, including Shuda and Sieg Hart. Haru later meets a diverse group of allies, including Hamrio Musica, grandson of a blacksmith; Let Dahaka and Julia, two who appear human but are in fact of the Dragon Race; Griffon Kato, a strange blue creature and Plue’s friend; Ruby, a penguin and a casino owner; Belnika, a mage; and Niebel, Sieg’s close friend. He also encounters Gale “King” Raregroove, the king of the Raregroove Kingdom and leader of Demon Card. On the Tower of Din, Haru reunites with his absent father Gale Glory to defeat King and end Demon Card. Although they win, Gale sacrifices himself to save his son from Din’s destruction.

Some time later, King’s son, Lucia, appears and revives Demon Card. He wishes to capture Elie to use the magical energy known as Etherion hidden within her body. While facing Lucia and his forces, Haru’s group also learn of the mythical creature known as Endless, which threatens mankind by provoking another Overdrive and can only be destroyed with Etherion. Using all Sinclaires, Lucia absorbs Endless. Lucia’s objective is to destroy the world, which is actually a parallel dimension created by his ancestor with the Star Memory after the original was ruined by a plague and his family was cursed as a result. After Haru finds all of the Raves, Elie uses Etherion to combine them. In order to avoid another Overdrive, Haru and his friends oppose Lucia and his strongest enemies in the Star Memory. Although Haru defeats Lucia, he is absorbed by Endless and convinces Elie to destroy it even if it means taking his life. One year later, Elie has lost her memories of Haru, and she and the others visit his grave. Haru appears alive thanks to the Star Memory’s magic and reunites with Elie, who then remembers him. The warriors go their separate ways, and Haru and Elie return to Garage Island to live together.

Development

Hiro Mashima created Rave Master with the idea of travelling around the world. Composed of thirty-five volumes, Mashima comments that although it was sometimes difficult to think of how to develop the storyline, he still remembers enjoying the making of Rave Master. Additionally, he regards that the series’ end was “a little sentimental, a little sad.” In early chapters Mashima had multiple difficulties with the series’ backgrounds. Nevertheless, across the volumes Mashima realized how the art was evolving resulting in most appealing pages. During publication, Rave Master was supposed to end in its ninth volume with King and Demon Card’s defeat and all of the plot’s mysteries resolved. This was planned since Mashima had the desire to make a new manga. In the end, he decided to continue with Rave Master following King’s arc after finding such an ending too contrived.

In both Rave Master and his other manga Fairy Tail, Mashima wants to make justice prevail but also make readers understand the villains’ reasons to fight the main character in order to make them more complex characters. In some cases, Mashima admitted having writer’s block as he did not plan the abilities of certain characters with some readers referring to the Dark Brings as “too convenient.” The protagonist, Haru, was designed prior to developing the story as he was a male character Mashima always wanted to draw. His sidekick, Plue, was also designed much earlier when he was in high school. Plue was given his own sidestory much to Mashima’s surprise because of the funny looking characters designed for a shonen magazine.

Manga

Written and illustrated by Hiro Mashima, Rave Master was serialized in Kodansha‘s shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Magazine from July 6, 1999, to July 27, 2005. Its 296 chapters were published in thirty-five tankōbon volumes by Kodansha, released from November 17, 1999, to September 16, 2005. The series was later rereleased in eighteen bunkoban volumes between August 10, 2006, and April 12, 2007.

Rave Master was licensed for an English release in North America by Tokyopop, which released 32 volumes of the series. On August 31, 2009, Tokyopop announced that they would not be completing the series as their licenses with Kodansha expired and Kodansha required that they immediately stop publication of all previously licensed series, including Rave Master. The next month, it was announced that Del Rey Manga had acquired the license and would begin publishing the remaining volumes in 2010. The last three volumes were published in a single omnibus volume. Del Rey never released the earlier volumes before their license expired. In 2017 Kodansha USA licensed the series for release in digital format, and released all volumes on October 3, 2017. The volumes are available on digital platforms such as Amazon Kindle and Apple Books.

The series is licensed for regional language releases in French by Glenat, in Spanish by Norma Editorial, and in Italian by Editions Star Comics. Egmont Manga & Anime licensed Rave Master for a German release, including serializing it in their monthly anthology Manga Power [de]. Rave Master was also one of the first manga series released in Spanish in North America by Public Square Books.

In 2011, Mashima authored a crossover one-shot between Rave Master and Fairy Tail. It was published in Kodansha’s Magazine Special May issue.

Anime

The series was adapted into a fifty-one episode anime series, entitled Groove Adventure Rave, by Studio Deen. It was directed by Takashi Watanabe and the music was composed by Kenji Kawai. The anime premiered on TBS on October 13, 2001 and ran until September 28, 2002. The anime series is based on the first twelve volumes of the manga series. The series was also collected in a total of seventeen DVD volumes between February 6, 2002 and June 4, 2003.

Tokyopop licensed the series for release and broadcast in North America. As with the manga, Tokyopop released the series under the name Rave Master. Rita Majkut produced the English-language version, which edited the series for its content and length and given an alternate musical score composed by Glenn Scott Lacey. The dub was recorded at Bill & Ted’s Recording Studio in Burbank. The ADR writer was Bob Buchholz, and Marc Handler was the voice director for all of the episodes. The dub aired on Cartoon Network in the United States, premiering in June 2004 as part of the Toonami programming block. The series’ second half began airing on January 22, 2005. It was also on the MiGUZi weekday afternoon after-school action block and its Sunday Morning daytime lineup of Summer 2005. Syfy would begun airing the series on March 16, 2009 as part of its “Ani-Monday” programming block, where it ran until its conclusion on September 21, 2009. Tokyopop released three DVD volumes of the series and in 2010 it collected the entire series.

The one-shot crossover between Rave Master and Fairy Tail was adapted into an original video animation with Mashima himself acting as supervisor to the project and had expanded the original chapter to include more characters from Rave Master. It was released on August 16, 2013 alongside the thirty-ninth volume of Fairy Tail.

CDs

The Japanese audio by Kenji Kawai was released in a total of four CD soundtracks by King Records. Geneon also published a CD based on the Japanese soundtrack for English release under the title of Rave Master: Music Side.

Video games

There are six video games based on Rave Master published by Konami. Three games were released for the PlayStation including the role-playing games Groove Adventure Rave and its sequel Groove Adventure Rave: Mikan no Hiseki (GROOVE ADVENTURE RAVE ～未完の秘石～), and platforming game Plue no Daibouken from Groove Adventure Rave.

For Nintendo‘s consoles Konami released both Groove Adventure Rave and Rave Master: Special Attack Force! (Groove Adventure Rave: Hikari to Yami no Daikessen 2), two fighting games for the Game Boy Advance, and Rave Master, which was released on the GameCube.

Reception

The Rave Master manga has been well received with its Western release appearing in Diamond Comic Distributors‘s graphic novels charts. The manga and anime series also received positive impressions from Jason Thompson‘s book Manga: The Complete Guide, giving the series a positive review of 3 out of 4 stars. Chris Beveridge from Mania Entertainment also enjoyed the series recommending people to buy multiple volumes rather than one to enjoy the connected story arcs. He praised the series’ fight scenes coupled with the emotional content that makes the series worth reading. UK Anime Network writer Rory Carlyle shared similar comments as he viewed the series to be “pretty good” despite having common standards seen in multiple shōnen manga. Carlyle was surprised by the multiple character designs that included humanoid and superdeformed characters besides common ones like Haru. The artwork was also praised by Anime News Network‘s Allen Divers who referred to the series as “a try before you buy” based on the simple storyline.

The anime series was praised by Anime News Network and DVDTalk for its animation, although its fight scenes received a negative response. In addition, Tokyopop’s English dub for the series garnered significant criticism for its script rewrites, voice acting, and soundtrack. Both reviewers found that the series was better suited towards a young audience but expected an uncut version of the anime to attract older fans.

By 2020, the manga had 23.5 million copies in circulation.

Notes

Rave Master
Cover of the first North American volume, featuring Haru Glory (right) and Plue (left)
Genre	Adventure, fantasy
Manga
Written by	Hiro Mashima
Published by	Kodansha
English publisher	NA:  Tokyopop (former) Del Rey Manga (former) Kodansha Comics (digital)
Imprint	Shōnen Magazine Comics
Magazine	Weekly Shōnen Magazine
Demographic	Shōnen
Original run	July 6, 1999 – July 27, 2005
Volumes	35 (List of volumes)
Anime television series
Directed by	Takashi Watanabe
Music by	Kenji Kawai
Studio	Studio Deen
Licensed by	NA: Tokyopop
Original network	TBS
English network	SEA: AXN UK: Toonami UK US: Cartoon Network (Toonami), Syfy
Original run	October 13, 2001 – September 28, 2002
Episodes	51 (List of episodes)
Game
Developer	Konami
Publisher	Konami
Genre	Action, fighting
Platform	GameCube
Released	JP: March 20, 2002 NA: March 8, 2005
Game
Special Attack Force
Developer	KCEJ
Publisher	Konami
Genre	Action, fighting
Platform	Game Boy Advance
Released	JP: September 29, 2002 NA: March 8, 2005