RWBY Manga - Review - Sakura Anime News

Author: Christina Kane Published: May 26th, 2018

Chapters: 15 | Type: Manga | Language Available: Japanese & English

The super popular online series gets a manga version. For those who don’t know; four young women are students at Beacon Academy, in training to hunt monsters called Grimm. This volume features short stories that take place before and during the first season of the series.

Story

Most of the stories in this volume feature the backgrounds of the main quartet and what circumstances lead them to Beacon Academy. Ruby wants to be normal. Yang is searching for someone/something and is the brawler of the group. Weiss is a rich girl who wishes to stay out of her father’s shadow and rise up on her own. Blake wishes to escape the group of outlaws after one final railroad attack. Then there’s some adventures at school with TEAM JNPR and a school bully and a glimpse at the villain from the first season. This is a great addition to fans of the series and those looking for a quick action fix (this time with a bonus of cute girls) but anyone who’s looking for something a little more substantial to dig into will be disappointed… Though maybe this will prompt people to check the series out online at either Youtube, Crunchyroll or Rooster Teeth’s own site.

Characters

For those not familiar with the series:

Ruby is the main character for whom the series is named after. She has a scythe/gun named Crescent Rose. Her design reminds one of Red Riding Hood

Yang is Ruby’s half-sister and is the resident brawler of the group.

Weiss is a rich girl who’s looking to prove to others that she’s more than just the daughter of an industrialist.

Blake is the token catgirl. Her ribbon hides her ears, which is another story in this volume. There’s also Jaune, the dorky leader of Team JNPR, and his own group.

Themes

File this one under shounen/action-adventure or even fantasy adventure. Also a good series for someone looking for strong female main characters. For younger fans, other than a few battle scenes and a scene or two at the beginning, it’s very tame violence. There’s a reason why Viz gave this a T (teen) rating.

Art/Writing

Shirow Miwa, of Dogs: Bullets and Carnage fame gets the honor of drawing the first RWBY manga. It’s more stylish and gives this an edge over most shonen series. The writing itself is typical shonen standard fare (“You’re our leader, aren’t you?” one character cries out during a tense moment). At least there’s no printing mistakes here.

Quality/Conclusion

Rank: 6 (For diehard fans of this series or die hard action fans only)

Viz put out a nice edition here. There’s some color pages at the beginning, leading into the first chapter. The binding is pretty strong overall and not too easy to tear apart. And the pages are pretty thick as well which makes it easy to turn.

Overall, I liked RWBY the first two seasons but I lost interest after that. Most American-made so-called anime is nothing more than deviantart rejects (Neo Yokio..I’m looking at you) but the late, great Monty Oum gets IT… and Shirow Miwa does a good job with putting his own spin on this franchise. If any American made franchise was born for Japan, other than the millions of takes on superheroes, RWBY is it. There’s another volume as of this writing, an anthology of RWBY stories that I haven’t checked out yet, but if you’re a super groupie of Rooster Teeth and the girls, go for it.

Source: Article Image: RWBY Wikia