Manga Notes: RWBY Anthology 5
Sep. 6th, 2021 04:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerThe abrupt conclusion of the RWBY manga I’d been reading wasn’t quite the end of the spinoffs I was taking note of from the computer-animated series. A fifth volume of the “Official Manga Anthology” had shown up, moving on from the four main characters of the series to four of the supporting characters. However, for all that looking back shows the reactions I set down here improved a bit over the course of the anthologies, having ordered a copy of the fifth volume did leave me with nagging thoughts of “operating on inertia and not leaving well enough alone.”
The first short pieces didn’t seem that bad in either art or story, though, and the ones that followed didn’t quite give an impression of “putting the strongest stuff first” either. I did wonder if having four characters to work with, including the out-of-his-depth yet sympathy-inducing (to me anyway, as ever) Jaune, the powerful and casual Nora, the competent and upright Pyrrha, and the enigmatic yet capable Lie Ren, made things more livelier and varied among than “having to focus on one person for the length of a volume.” (The four main characters of the title did show up in a few pieces, too.) There’s also the matter of the series winding up what now seems not that far into its run with only three of the four characters; this volume, at least, made “calling back to the lighter-hearted days that had been” a bit more impactful, but could also “deal with the enduring reactions of those left,” sometimes using the latest character designs.
Along with all of that, however, I also started wondering if “Team JNPR” containing two boys and two girls made it a little easier for the pieces to suggest romantic entanglements in such a way that I don’t just shrug and suppose “other fans demand things stories don’t or can’t make clear; I’ll just take in what seems there for me and not frustrate myself.” Feeling disconnected from others that way can get to be double-edged. Still, the volume as a whole turning out well for me (and that before I took another look at the enigmatic pen names and saw one person going by “Keith”; they drew better than I can, anyway) made for a better leaving-off point even if there might be the possibility of yet another anthology about the villains, which wouldn’t offer the same things this one could.
The first short pieces didn’t seem that bad in either art or story, though, and the ones that followed didn’t quite give an impression of “putting the strongest stuff first” either. I did wonder if having four characters to work with, including the out-of-his-depth yet sympathy-inducing (to me anyway, as ever) Jaune, the powerful and casual Nora, the competent and upright Pyrrha, and the enigmatic yet capable Lie Ren, made things more livelier and varied among than “having to focus on one person for the length of a volume.” (The four main characters of the title did show up in a few pieces, too.) There’s also the matter of the series winding up what now seems not that far into its run with only three of the four characters; this volume, at least, made “calling back to the lighter-hearted days that had been” a bit more impactful, but could also “deal with the enduring reactions of those left,” sometimes using the latest character designs.
Along with all of that, however, I also started wondering if “Team JNPR” containing two boys and two girls made it a little easier for the pieces to suggest romantic entanglements in such a way that I don’t just shrug and suppose “other fans demand things stories don’t or can’t make clear; I’ll just take in what seems there for me and not frustrate myself.” Feeling disconnected from others that way can get to be double-edged. Still, the volume as a whole turning out well for me (and that before I took another look at the enigmatic pen names and saw one person going by “Keith”; they drew better than I can, anyway) made for a better leaving-off point even if there might be the possibility of yet another anthology about the villains, which wouldn’t offer the same things this one could.