Manga Review: Rave

Title: Rave
Author: Hiro Mashima
Release: Weekly
Status: Complete
Genre: Shonen, Fantasy, Comedy, Adventure, Romance
Art: C
Originality: A
Story: B
Characters: A
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: Hiro Mashima’s previous long-running series had anime adaptation I truly enjoyed. I thought it pretty well-paced, had a great story and loads and loads of creativity thrown into it. And though I was disappointed that it had to be cut short at what I thought was the halfway point of the series I still thought it was an amazing series. Unfortunately, I was wrong about it being the halfway point and was thoroughly disappointed with the arcs that followed after the point where the anime stopped. Apparently the author decided to stretch things out as much as possible with subplots that really didn’t need to be there and recycle the same old set of clichés for EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN battle that I just couldn’t believe how bad the series got after that. Power levels didn’t make sense anymore, character focus was all over the place and the lacking art style didn’t help. Somehow it did all get better once the art style improved and the story shifted its focus back on the Raves and how the characters tie into the whole scheme of the universe but not after spending half of its publication on pointless subplots and characters. I would have given the story an A rating if the middle chapters were condensed and handled better but there was too much crap in between the great starting and ending arcs. Seriously, Rave would have made an overall amazing shonen series had it not been for the middle. Good thing he’s gotten better with tying plotlines together in Fairy Tail.