#bunta kinami

AMAZING~!

It's so good, I just gotta AAAAAAAAAARGH! THIS is how RWBY should've started! RGH! Erm... No offense, of course, to the late and great Monty Oum and the staff of CRWBY. But still, there was so much I loved about this, mostly how the characters interact with each other and the epic fights all around!

But... there's also a couple things that seem off to me, though it's mostly with what happens at the end. See, the manga starts from Episode 1 ands at V2 finale. At the end, Blake fights White Fang Lieutenant Banesaw while Yang goes against Neopolitan. These fights are fine, but the interaction between Roman and Neopolitan is... I'll be honest, it's the one part I absolutely do not like about the manga. They're not friends or partners or anything; at most, they're coworkers with Neo working for Cinder. Roman even threatens to kill her if she gets in the way of his fight.

Oho, but I will say that this is my favorite iteration of Torchwick! Dude is acting as the perfectly villainous foil to Ruby, bantering with her and challenging her views with his own. Then, his friggin switch suddenly flips from "Look Pimpin" to "So Cold" and he starts getting in Ruby's face!

Bunta Kinami, you have gone above and beyond your tasking. Bravo~!

i loved the bunta kinami manga, even if i think that trimming it down so much that we lost the “burning the candle” talk between blake & yang was to it’s detriment. that moment in the show proper was really the start of a character definition for yang. before that, she was kind of just there with no motivation, barely any characterization & she genuinely didn’t seem that much closer to blake, who was meant to be her partner, more than anyone else in the friend group.

Advance Review: Enter The Faunus In ‘RWBY: The Official Manga – Volume 2’

The world of RWBY continues in the next volume of the manga based on the Rooster Teeth series from Monty Oum. As the new students of Beacon Academy get settled into their group and surroundings, they encounter a beings that are part animal called Faunus. They’ll have to use their considerable skills to keep these creatures at bay while still learning how to work together as a team. RWBY is still…

Back in November of 2018, it was announced by Viz Media that Rooster Teeth’s hit show, RWBY, would be getting a manga adaptation published by Shueisha.

This sounded like great news at the time. I mean, a manga adaptation of RWBY being published by Shueisha, creators of Shonen classics such as Dragon Ball, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece and Hunter x Hunter? What part of that does not sound awesome?!

Now this isn’t the first time that RWBY had manga series, mind you. There was of course the manga written and illustrated by Shirow Miwa that was released in 2015 and the Manga Anthology collection in 2017.

But this manga was different from the others. Instead of being a spin off or a side story, it was an adaptation of RWBY itself, taking the story of the show and retelling it as a manga. Aside from anime, manga and comics are my favourite mediums of entertainment, so naturally this was something that I was very much looking forward to, even if I was pretty new to RWBY at the time.

The series was written and illustrated by Bunta Kinami and had a monthly release schedule, concluding in June of this year at 19 chapters total. Instead of reviewing this volume by volume, I’m going to be reviewing the whole thing. Without further ado, let’s get right into it. Here is my review of RWBY: The Official Manga.

Plot

Similar to the show, the manga opens up with notorious criminal, Roman Torchwick, robbing a Dust Shop in the middle of the night. It’s with the timely intervention of aspiring Huntress, Ruby Rose, that he’s thwarted. After an interrogation from the Professors of Beacon Academy, Ozpin and Glynda Goodwitch, Ruby finds herself being admitted to the Huntsman Academy, much to her surprise. Together with her half-sister Yang Xiao Long, heiress Weiss Schnee and the mysterious Blake Belladonna, they form the Huntress group Team RWBY!

For the most part, it is a straight adaptation and retailing of the RWBY anime. It follows very similar story beats, such as the entrance exam, Blake’s revelation as a Faunus, meeting Sun and Penny, the revelation that Roman was working with Cinder, the infiltration of the school dance and the breach of Vale. With this new retelling, there was also the possibility of expanding on the source material and putting a cool new spin on a beloved series. Surely the writer would take advantage of that, right?

Well, no. He doesn’t. Not only is there very little in adding anything new to the story, but there’s a lot of things that have been either heavily condensed or flat out removed entirely. It’s almost as if Bunta goes out of his way to cut content. These aren’t just little moments either, a lot of what’s gone are plot points that are essential to the overarching story, making this adaptation feel hollow. It isn’t just the story that suffers, but so do the characters.

Characters

Team RWBY

Team RWBY come across as bizarro versions compared to their anime counterparts. For example, Ruby isn’t the cheery, optimistic aspiring hero that she is canon. Instead, she comes across more serious and sullen, but without any of the charm. Weiss is portrayed as nicer compared to canon. While this might seem like a good thing, I actually think it hurts her character development, where she starts out as fairly unlikeable but gradually becomes a better person, throwing away her shameful old prejudices. Blake seems less of a character here, having a lot of her endearing quirks completely removed. My least favourite, however, is what happened to Yang. Much of her personality is downplayed, to the point where I can’t even call her same character anymore. She doesn’t have that loveable “party girl” vibe alongside being the cool big sister. If that wasn’t bad enough, her backstory and motivation are also downplayed, which was essential in not only establishing and developing her and Blake’s friendship, but it also removes a key plot point for the Mistral Arc, which was the revelation of who Raven was and what she was doing all this time.

Team JNPR

Oh god, no characters have suffered more than Team JNPR. Their roles are severely downplayed, to the point where I’m questioning why they were even added to the manga in the first place. Ruby and Jaune’s friendship is almost non-existent, Ren and Nora’s fin shenanigans are gone and Pyrrha isn’t treated as a big celebrity athlete. Instead, she’s just another student. Such a waste.

Penny, Sun and Neptune

Penny doesn’t have any of the fun, cute quirks that she has in canon. Instead, she’s more desperate to be accepted and pushy wanting friends. As for Sun and Neptune? For the most part, they’re kept intact and there are few extended bits of dialogue they have, but that’s about it.

Roman Torchwick

All of the wit and humour from the canon is gone from this version of Roman Torchwick and he’s instead a cold, callous and sometimes downright psychotic. While that would normally sound right up my alley, there was nothing wrong with how Torchwick originally was! He was a fan favourite because of his wit and humour and that didn’t make him any less of a credible threat. Here, he acts more like Cinder, which is weird considering she is in this manga! Just... why?

Artwork

I’ll be blunt here, I don’t like the artwork here at all. A lot of it looks like it’s unfinished, especially the backgrounds and a lot of the characters look dangerously thin. I don’t know what kind of style Kinami was trying to go for, but it just doesn’t work. It doesn’t feel vibrant or colourful, it feels like a ghost, a shell of its former self.

Verdict

Overall, this is a very, VERY poor adaptation of RWBY. All of the charm, fun, heart and soul that made me fall in love with the original is nowhere to be found in this manga. Most of the cast have great personality shifts or have many of their signature characteristics downplayed, essential plot points that develop both the story and characters have been cut, the artwork is half-baked and there’s a real lack of effort put into this project. From what it looks like, it seems that Miles and Kerry had little to no involvement with this and gave Bunta free reign. With all that power, he decided to strip RWBY of its core and reduce it to something barebones and soulless. Some of you might be wondering if there is anything good in here and I will admit that there are two moments that I liked; Weiss actually apologising to Blake and Sun and Neptune taking a more active role in the fight against the Paladin. Other than that, there are absolutely no redeeming qualities to this adaptation. If you want RWBY manga, stick to either Shirow Miwa’s version or the anthologies.

You may think "oh but Roman's a villain, you're not supposed to like him." Which you're right, but at the same time, the manga is going against his character. For example, in the show, while he's laughed while causing chaos, his overall attitude for the most part is just trying to get his job done and move on to the next crime job (which we can see in his fights with the heroes many times) In the manga, he pretty much goes on and on about how he loves causing misery and chaos and seeing everyone bleeding, suffering and/or dead on the ground which... Jesus I know he's a violent person but he's not morbid... Christ.... And when he went close to that territory, it was cuz he was angry at Ruby for throwing Neo off the airship, sending her into a sky full of Grimm where for all he knew, Neo was already Grimm food.

Speaking of Neo, let's not forget that in the latest chapter, she saved his life and you know what he says?:

He threatens to kill her for "interfering." And notice how she's in focus the whole time Roman's talking. So it wasn't just the WF Lt., he was also threatening her too. Which is COMPLETELY out of character for him! Like, Roman in the show wouldn't threaten to kill her! He'd be grateful!!! Like in the show when she hopped in to save her from Yang's dust blast, he smiled and cheerfully says, "LADIES! Ice Queen! Always a pleasure! Neo, if you would?"

And don't forget that Amity Arena pic of their Legendary card cuz he looks so proud of her there:

Like... A lot of people who watch RWBY, even the people who work on the show know how much those two mean to each other, and to see this shitty manga bastardize Roman into a total hatesink to the point that he's so cold towards Neo??? His partner in crime??? Someone he's implied to have saved???? He literally died b/c he was so worried about her flying in the sky surrounded by Grimm who might eat her???

And this "official" manga decides to spit all of that in the face by having Roman straight up threaten to kill Neo just because she "interfered" to save his life because if she left his ungrateful ass alone, he would have been bisected by Ruby's scythe, dead.

And he's not the only one that this manga's bastardized. Blake's arc in V2 has been cut altogether. Yang's talk with Blake that explains her backstory about how her search for Raven when Yang and Ruby were kids almost got them killed in order to snap Blake out of her obsession towards the WF that's costing her wellbeing. Oobleck is more rude and condescending than he was in the show instead of caring of the girls. Even the scene where WBY discusses their motivations of being huntresses, gone (and a lot of fans love that scene so much. One of the best scenes in the show)

Bunta Kinami has the audacity to call it the "official" RWBY manga when in reality, this "official RWBY manga" has bastardized the characters into lifeless soulless caricatures. I remembered that this manga promised to adapt the story like never before where we get more interactions. This made me hopeful that we might see more of the girls talking, more JNPR interactions, more Roman and Neo interactions, more Cinder, Emerald, and Mercury, more SSSN, CFVY! More world building!! The manga added additional scenes like Sun and Neptune being included in the paladin fight so why couldn't it add more interactions???

Mr. Bunta Kinami, you apparently had all of the time in the world to add more content in the manga and also change the characters and motives of Yang, Blake, Sun, Oobleck, and Roman. You could have done so much more and you ended up making it worse.