When the disc is put into a DVD player, it goes straight into the main menu. The menu only has two options: one for playing all of the episodes, and one for choosing which episode you want to watch. Since this is a dub only DVD, there is no need for language options. There are also no bonus features on the set, and there are no trailers of any kind included. Tokyopop definitely put this disc together as a "bare bones" set, and seemed to only put a very minimal effort into the content of the disc.When it comes to the episodes themselves, there are no chapter marks included on the set. If you try to skip ahead, you'll be taken straight to the beginning of the next episode of the disc. However, I do have to give Tokyopop some credit for including the episode previews at the end of each episode.
When I'm watching this series, I can see that there is some potential in what would have been the original Japanese version. Unfortunately, when the series was brought over and dubbed into English, the writer decided to try to throw in a lot of corny jokes; a lot of the times, the jokes came across as either being forced or feeling rather inappropriate for the scenes they were being used for.
There were also obvious edits made to the dialogue to cover up various situations that would be deemed "inappropriate" for the young viewers this dub was being produced for when Rave Master aired on Cartoon Network. Unfortunately, I have not seen any evidence that the original Japanese version of Rave Master is available for sale anywhere in the United States.
The DVDs that Tokyopop released for Rave Master are now out of print, although used copies can still be found and purchased. In March of 2010, Tokyopop had made the entire series available "on demand" as DVD-Rs through CreateSpace; however, it appears this only lasted for a short time, because six months later, the CreateSpace listing was gone. So, Rave Master fans who want to legally own any episodes of the series on DVD have to track down the three DVDs released by Tokyopop that contain the first 12 episodes.
While I wouldn’t normally recommend such a "bare bones" and incomplete release to my readers, this is a case where I have to, since this is the only way that any episodes of Rave Master can be obtained legally.
I wrote this review after watching a copy of this DVD that I was given as a gift.
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