Shirow Miwa

As a companion to the webseries, this was awesome - charming to see all these great characters in a new light, with refreshers on their backstories and narrative added to their character trailers (which were essentially just flashy music video fight scenes). And holy wow, the ART!!! The action poses were so dynamic and beautiful! AND IT'S ILLEGAL TO DRAW GIANT SNAKES THAT WELL.

Buuuut, as a manga for those unfamiliar with the show? Erm, no. Don't bother. Its way of explaining things was really just a sparknotes recap to brush up your memory. Wasn't long enough to make us appreciate anything about the plot or characters besides their cool style. It's just a little prologue, and the teasing of a larger plot seems especially mean-spirited since there is no other manga to follow it up! May as well put a link to the webseries on the last page of the manga, and you know what, fair enough!… (altro)

Over the past few months, I've been trying to read more manga to have a better idea of what a great one would be to nominate for the Mav list, so after some searching, begging and comic-book store and library scouring, I present to you-the first manga I've ever read -RWBY by Shirow Mawa.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*
The story is simple, four kids attend Beacon academy, where they train to be hunters and huntresses of Grim-monsters that live on Earth and harm humans. The first letter of each team member's name make the team name RWBY for Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang. There is a backstory to each member of team RWBY, but the drawings made it difficult to differentiate between flashback and the actual story.

The illustrations are solely in black and white and there are many KCHA and SNG sound effects that don't seem to make sense unless you read them out loud. The team goes out to hunt (don't know how or why that happened but it did and we later find out that this was a training simulation put on by the "educators" at Beacon) and find a group of four Grim-snakes with impenetrable armor who morph into one super-Grim. Team RWBY must work together (despite their leader who only seems to be concerned with weapons and making up names for combat moves) to save the community from this monster.

Overall, I don't think that I would read this again or continue the series because I was lost in illustrations, but I'm just a manga NOOB.… (altro)

2.5 out of 5 stars

I cannot describe how excited I was when the RWBY manga appeared at my door. I love the anime and I wanted to see how the story was handled within the anime. Unfortunately, RWBY by Shirow Miwa ignored much of the animated versions strengths to the manga’s detriment.

RWBY is the manga version of the animation (lets just call it an anime for simplicity’s sake). Like many other manga-second franchises, the manga does not quite hold up to the original anime. The story follows the original four trailers of the anime, short features which introduced the characters – Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang – as well as their abilities, and what our protagonists are fighting against. Original, manga only content is also sprinkled throughout the volume, most notably at the beginning and the end with whole chapters of new content.

Those who have watched RWBY will get the most out of this manga. The story jumps around quite a bit, sometimes showing content from before the start of the series and sometimes showing content quite a bit into storyline. This means that the overarching narrative is a bit difficult to follow, doubly so for those who aren’t familiar with the franchise at all. Those who haven’t seen RWBY will definitely be at a disadvantage. A lot of characters are introduced quickly and some (but not all) pertinent information about the world dropped within a handful of pages before the story jumps about sporadically.

Character’s are differently styled, something that isn’t an issue in its own right. This does happen, sometimes, and I can appreciate a creator rendering a story within their own style. However, some of the characters looked so very different from their original renditions that they were completely unrecognizable. Many characters are slimmer, sometimes in body, sometimes in face. Ruby certainly suffers from this, her face being much less rounded than usual. Ren, an already slim character, looked downright bony. But the character’s whose appearance changed the most was Juane Arc. I was honestly unsure of who the character was the first time he appeared in the manga. The fairly tall boy with round cheeks who fell on the bulkier side of things was suddenly a completely generic looking, slimmed down character with nothing visually in common with his animated counterpart.

Besides having very memorable character, RWBY also boasted some of the more entertaining fight scenes a person could find, especially in seasons 1-3. The environment is used to great effect during battles. And, unlike many battle anime and shonen in particular, the characters all fight together. Their strengths are played off of, and grand plans concocted that are always highly entertaining. However, none of this can be fully utilized in the manga for one important reason. The majority of backgrounds are completely blank. Character’s largely exist in white space with no floor, walls, or scenery to speak of. Nor is there any of the generic background filled such as flowers or bubbles that can be found in genres like shojo. The only backgrounds found normally occur at the beginning of a chapter. After a few pages, the setting is ignored completely.

Firstly, this is quite boring to look at. There is simply nothing on the page, sometimes with a entire cells blank with some text, or, even more confusingly, simply not filled at all.

Secondly, this does fight scenes, of which there are many, a great disservice. The majority of fights take place in a big, blank space. Discerning features of the environment are completely lacking. Besides being boring, this makes the fighting lack sense. Can the characters use the environment to their advantage? Do their enemies have the advantage of location, perhaps blending into their environment? We never get a good sense of what makes the Grimm so deadly, so frightening. It is nearly impossible to tell who is winning at any given moment. And, more disappointingly, it is difficult to tell what exactly each character’s special abilities are.

I was pleasantly surprised by some of the original content. Commentary was added within the chapters based off of the original four trailers for the anime. This added a lot to these scenes, providing context and backstory to sections which, originally, mostly just very excellent fight scenes. Weiss in particular had a lot backstory added to the section focused on her.
However, it’s a bit confusing having the manga jump between the main character’s time at the academy and from the time before they met. The most problematic of the original content comes in Blake’s section, when Ruby, Weiss, and Yang reassure her that they don’t mind her ears or the fact that she is a fauna. Not only does this break major plot points within the story, but it breaks characterization, too.

In all, I couldn’t help but feel that RWBY was made without the heart and dedication of the show. It was sloppily made, and wound up not living up to the potential it held. I wanted to adore this manga. I wanted to love it. Sadly, it simply cannot. Perhaps another rendition will come out in the future. If you’re a fan of RWBY, you may want to pick up the manga just to complete your collection, but do be aware that might disappoint.

This review and more can be found at Looking Glass Reads.… (altro)

Dogs is the only manga series that currently inspires me to run out to the bookstore the day it's released. Dynamic art, loveable characters, and a slowly unfolding storyline make this series incredibly enjoyable. Shirow Miwa is one of those manga artists who can play both roles as illustrator-author without dropping the ball on either end.

On the author side, he's taking his sweet time shedding light on the plot, the world, and each character's back-story. A bookstore cashier once asked me what Dogs was about, and I could barely answer him: "Um...it's set in the future. I think. It's a sci-fi, and there are these levels in the city....? Some of the characters are genetically modified. They all have shadowy pasts, but now they're kind of like guns-for-hire..?" Despite this -- or maybe because of it -- I'm completely absorbed with the story and have read each volume a dozen times. On the illustrator end, the Shirow is equally as stellar -- his mastery of light, angles, and human forms borders on showing off.… (altro)