Comic Review: RWBY The Official Manga Volume 2

Just when we thought we might finally run out of RWBY comics to talk about, we keep finding out about new ones popping up. Hot off the end of its eight full season, RWBY continues branching out into print in new ways. 2021 brings us four more to add to the collection, among them another fan anthology, a crossover with the Justice League (or at least versions of Justice League characters), and the remaining two volumes of the Official Manga that retells the first two seasons of the series. The first book of this particular adaptation came out half a year ago, so it’s understandable if you don’t remember it coming out, but to sum up my thoughts there, it was basically a much more streamlined and polished version of the first half of the first season, with the original version really only aging worse as time goes on. That’s not to say this version doesn’t have its own problems. In fact some of the choices as to what to cover or not were major dealbreakers for some fans of the material, but those are pretty much localized in the final volume, which isn’t out for a couple more months. We’ll get to those when that volume is out, don’t you worry.

In the meantime, this middle book roughly adapts the last two episodes of the first season and the first four of the second, skipping a big swath of the first season. If I had to guess why this skip was done, it would be that those six episodes include two very unpopular plots that don’t end up adding anything of substance and only raise more questions. Another possible reason is that one of those plots being the one about Jaune cheating his way into Beacon and Japan being incredibly against showing stories that view academic cheating favorably, which that story ends up doing even if it might be unintentional. And speaking as someone who watched the first season as it was airing, that story arc was probably the most grueling period to wait through. This was when they were releasing most episodes as five minute chunks and I have never been so exhausted in just five minutes before or since.

But as for what they chose to KEEP: the collection of these particular episodes ends up making Blake Belladona the protagonist of this section of the story, as it dives into her involvement with the White Fang terrorist group and has the major conflicts focus on fighting their members and Roman Torchwick, who is supplying them with fuel and weaponry. Sadly, it can’t get away from some of the clear structural problems with those parts of the story, such as inserting characters like Penny, Sun, and Neptune into the mix. Don’t get me wrong, these two went on to be fan favorite characters in their own right, but looking back, their presence at these moments would really be better served with more character growth between the main four. This adaptation tries to fill in the blanks by giving more dialogue to push Blake towards a major step forward in her development, but it can only do so much. Also of note is giving Sun and Neptune an extended fight scene near the end, which is certainly an improvement over having them just being tossed aside in terms of the action, but if I had to choose between that and character development, I would choose the latter.

Once again, it is difficult to pin down who exactly to recommend this book too. If you’re not a fan of the show, this may be a better way of being introduced to it, but fans seem to be pretty divided on how well a job it does adapting things, not to mention the inherent disadvantages static imagery has compared to colorful animation (even janky and poorly aged animation like the early seasons had). I would still say that these first two books really cut out the fat of Volume 1 and polish what’s left to something pretty well made, but then there’s the last book and its choices that may be a make or break. Luckily, we won’t have to wait long to touch on that and finally wrap up our look at RWBY: The Official Manga.