Review: Rave Master Vol. 5


Rave Master Vol. 5Rave Master Vol. 5 by Hiro Mashima
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story has kicked into manga overdrive. Lots of mysteries all over the place. Hints that Haru Glory’s dad is maybe in Demon Card. Finally some clues about who Elie might be. The former is more likely to be a red herring, the latter seems to pretty strongly be true. This volume is dominated by a fight scene that’s been coming since the first volume. But Mashima also gave the side characters (both protagonist and antagonist) their own battle while the main one was raging on. All of the Demon Card enemies have special powers and one of the goons can shoot glue out of an eyeball-looking thing on his head. Which led to this…



Yeah…..

Now, lots of manga-ka start off by doing Hentai Fan Fiction and often end up doing fan service-y poses from those days in their more respectable work, so maybe that explains that.

Of course, like any good manga/anime, there’s the beach chapter/episode. Rave Master is no exception.



The Japanese have way more onomatopoeia than we do. While American comics have the stereo-typical “wham”, “bam” and “kapow!” – manga is littered with onomatopoeia all over the place. Sometimes it’s translated (like when Tokyo Pop was translating Sailor Moon and translated the sound of typing as “katcha katcha”), but most of the time it’s left in Japanese. Here’s an example:



The main panel on the right has the onomatopoeia for his sword being slammed down (or maybe it’s the whooshing sound of a fast-moving sword?) and the top panel has what I’m guessing is a “gasp”, but it might be some other surprise onomatopoeia.

I don’t often get many comments on my reviews, but if anyone out there knows Japanese, maybe they can solve this absurd riddle. What the eff is the onomatopoeia for breasts?



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