RWBY: The Official Manga #1-8

RWBY: The Official Manga #1-8

Originally released in 2018

Written by Bunta Kinami

Art by Bunta Kinami

My original intention for today was to cover Assassination Classroom, a manga about an octopus-like alien who is teaching a class where the goal is to kill him before he destroys the world, but I found the opening image (where a bunch of students pull out guns and shoot at the teacher) to be more than a little unsettling. Instead, I chose something of an odd duck among the Shonen Jump manga - a manga adaptation of a western online animated series.

RWBY is about four young women (weapon-obsessed Ruby Rose, ice queen Weiss Schnee, calm and aloof Blake Belladonna, and Ruby's energetic older sister Yang Xiao Long) as they attend Beacon Academy and learn to become Huntresses in order to defend the world from the monstrous Grimm.  It seems to take some inspiration from Naruto and Bleach, with the Grimm resembling Bleach's Hollows and the four person teams resembling Naruto's teams, though it does a much better job with handling women.

I've only seen the first volume of RWBY, so I was curious about how it would translate into manga form. My first thought is that the backgrounds are kind of sparse. There are some good landscape shots, but it feels like a lot of panels that focus on characters take place in a mostly white void.

The manga does a good job at displaying the mutual annoyance between Ruby and Weiss, with Weiss disliking Ruby's lack of knowledge about the wider world and Ruby being annoyed by Weiss's stuck-up nature.

Yang and Blake get along better despite their contrasting personalities, though Blake isn't fond of Weiss's prejudices.  As a result, their team mostly gets off to a rocky start, with Yang being the main exception since she gets along well with most people.

Ruby may be the youngest member of the team, having skipped several grades, but it's made clear why she's the leader. She's adept at coming up with plans on the fly, using what little she's seen of her teammates abilities to figure out a strategy to defeat a massive flying Grimm known as a Nevermore.

In addition to Team RWBY, we meet a few other supporting characters. The main ones are Team JNPR, which consists of Jaune Arc (who seems completely unprepared for Beacon Academy), Pyrrha Nikos (a celebrity and skilled Huntress), Nora Valkyrie, and Lie Ren (who get considerably less focus compared to their teammates).

Meanwhile, the second story arc introduces a Faunus (a humanoid with animal traits) named Sun Wukong, along with an unusual woman named Penny Poledina who's extremely eager to have friends.

The team is divided as a result of terrorist attacks that are supposedly being carried out by a Faunus group called the White Fang. Weiss hates the White Fang because her family's company is a major target, while Blake sympathizes with the White Fang because she's a former member of the group and a Faunus herself.

Not helping matters is that Roman Torchwick, master thief, is on the loose and scheming something. These first eight chapters cover the entire first season, so it's quite efficient as an adaptation.

The manga doesn't cover the whole series, which is still ongoing (the manga ends on chapter 19, so it seems like it might reach the end of season 2), though it works well as an introduction to the characters. Funnily enough, after Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter was shut down by Warner Bros., Viz (the publishers of Shonen Jump) bought RWBY as a franchise, so I'm interested to see how the animated series will continue under their watch.