I started watching Rave Master a long time ago - it was one of my first ever anime that felt like an anime - before I even knew what anime and manga were. I was kinda lost watching it out of order on TV and then it's abrupt end. A year ago I found the manga and dived right in. By then I already knew the beginning plot and was accustomed to the shounen style; this is typical of the shounen formula.

Story - 7
Rave starts as a light-hearted adventure with three goals - one each distinctly for Haru, Elie, and Musica - a small key cast with a predictable progression scale. But then the story became erratic with an inconsistent pace and every single possible opportunity to add a twist, a new character/group, or deviation is beyond exploited. I actually often forgot the ultimate goals and interesting plots that we had been so excellently drip fed earlier - and I'm certain the characters forgot too!
We were given so many epic goals, big one on one battle climaxes and classic angry shounen hero "I'm going to put this right!" moments, that all turned out to be just another false alarm. These would have been fine in a slower paced arc format such as in One Piece but presented as they are it's too much in too short a time to actually register it all.
The overall story if you can weed out the keys points that actually refer to the Rave is very good and does have that "epic long quest with many sacrifices to win this war against evil to save the world" presented very well with enough originality. Unfortunately it's cluttered.

Character - 7
Our three original heroes are typical and interesting enough through the base story to put off a final design until later through thee coming of age formula. Haru is the typical coming-of-age kid on a mission with the usual shounen outbursts of shouting and rage about morals or showing off his naive confidence - he's a safe bet. Elie is the typical female co-lead personality who's gutsy and cute but generally a burden until her sudden power-up near the end. And Musica is the streetwise slightly older character who is briefly an antagonist before dumping all (why I don't quite get) and joining the gang.
But later after developing the storyline and characters - including the supporting lot - we are suddenly bombarded with antagonists after antagonist and so many allies and new mains that outnumber and shrink the significance of the originals. All of the are brilliantly developed with their own unique abilities and sob stories and very likeable - but there's just too many! Nearly every "bad guy" they defeat suddenly has a revelation and swears to change, thus they are spared or even recruited.
I'd love to give this section a nine for all of the characters are brilliant. Unfortunately from the magnitude of them the story loses focus and evens ends up with the characters fighting for limelight.

Art - 9
I found the art style very nice and easy on the eyes. All the character's designs are distinct despite their number and unlike in many manga I never found my self confusing any key characters. The character's developed over time and changed clothes regularly which is a nice detail. The background does often lack details but there is never a deja-vu recycledness and the actual characters in the background (including the insignificant ones without names) are developed with unique hair/face/clothes. The artist does like to focus a quite a bit on the qualities of women - edging towards ecchi in how often they have skimpy/torn/no clothes but it adds to the humour (and fanservice).

Enjoyment doesn't get a section but it's score is a 9.

Overall I give a 8 because it's very good but not quite great.