Snippet 245

Clear the Air - Yang

Genre: Meta

Note: Personal opinions, a bit of analysis. A bit rambley.

Tags: Airing Grievances

[Cues: LAKEY INSPIRED – Golden Hour]

It has certainly been a while since I have done commentary. Funny how this anthology can print content with ease compared to my others. Ah well, that's not the focus. RWBY. We can all admit it has some serious problems. So welcome to Clear the Air, where I air out my grievances with the characters, inspired by my friends in r/RWBYcritics and r/RWBY sudreddit.

But Mirai? Why start with Yang? Because Yang, out of the main four, might be the most problematic and maladjusted out of the group. How? Let's start from concept.

Have you noticed that her initial design…isn't as well put together compared to her teammates? Ruby, Weiss, and Blake all looked for more planned out compared to her. Monty had Ruby, Weiss, and Blake, but Yang as I'll quote 'Twiins Ink' on this 'has always been an afterthought.' Design-wise, most of designs for Yang (counting only the in-show models) were pretty bad, save for only one (which isn't even her first one, it's her V2 Hunter outfit).

She's so much of an afterthought that Volume 1 had no focus on Yang, no they put that time on the others…and Jaune. They had Jaune planned before one of their main leads…not that it mattered.

~Yang's Not Exactly a Good Person~

Let us jump back to the Yellow Trailer. It was flashy. It was stylish, but…the substance was lacking. The animation, the music, and the fights? Decent to really good. But if you take the plot of it into account is where it starts to fall apart.

Think about it. Your main character is introduced bringing into a club she's not supposed to be in, tries to order alcohol she's not supposed to have, then flirts with the owner to get some information, then when he can't provide it…sexually assaults him before trashing the place and injuring him and his staff leaving with no repercussions. Our hero, everyone! If the genders were reserved, people would have been demonizing the character.

This whole trailer reeks of the Protagonist-Centered Morality trope, a trope that actually plagues RWBY to this day. Most people think this trope reared its head in the later volumes, but…no, it's been there since the beginning.

Yang faced no consequences for trashing the club. No lawsuits, no arrests, no nothing. What makes this worse is the writers trying to justify that Junior deserves it for being a criminal. This reminds me of My Hero Academia. Remember the Stain Arc? Despite a lot more justification to break rules than Yang, they faced consequences for it.

And that's something RWBY doesn't do for their characters, have them face no consequences for any actions at all. The casualties in V2? Never brought up and ignored…but getting ahead of ourselves.

In Volume 1, Yang was practically shoved to the background to which I say is a big mistake and only really serves to show how much of an afterthought Yang is. No one came to RWBY to see Jaune get focus, but the main leads. Volume 1 is supposed to your introduction to the main leads, and they deliberated ignored Yang.

Onwards to V2, Yang gets some more screentime and focus. All leading to her opening up about Summer Rose, and somehow people saw a moment of Yang opening up about her mother to Blake as justification for Blake and Yang to be shipped. I never got that…and considering the reasons why I'm not a fan (and pretty against) Bumblebee. V2 introduces Raven only for that to gutted thanks to Miles and Kerry.

Yang is then promptly used as a punching bag for Volume 3. Most people go on about Monty being gone and how RWBY went downhill for the characters, but…Yang did have much a hill to stand on compared to the others. Her plotline (in V1-V3) kept getting sidelined because RT did not know what to do with her. The events of her trailer. Brought up for a glorified cameo in V2 and it's opening that lied about it being important.

That's the thing that the Black Trailer has over the Yellow Trailer, the characters in it mattered and were important to the plot. The Red Trailer has the excuse of not being canon, and the White Trailer was more of a showcase of Weiss's abilities and a 'supposed' origin for her scar. Junior? The Malachite Twins? You'd think they'd appear again and are maybe important to the point, like Adam? No, like Yang…they are afterthoughts.

Volume 4 finally brought Yang more to the forefront, but by now…her personality was changing for the worse. I can blame the whole PTSD arc for causing people to crap on Taiyang, but those were mostly crazy Raven stans. So Yang has a metal arm that was custom built and sent to her by Ironwood…remember that for later.

Volume 5 introduces us to Raven, the way Miles and Kerry wanted. This is the character Yang has been seeking all this time, and it's completely disappointed. We never learn why Raven left Yang behind despite that being the whole point of Yang seeking her out. Yang (and Weiss) just sit to listen to Raven ramble on about stuff we already know. Then we get to the reunion and the finale.

I'm going to skipping over that save for stating this simple fact: Yang is aware Raven is the Spring Maiden.

Now to Volume 6. Yang states to Ozpin that she wants no more lies…no more half-truths. Remember Raven? She hasn't told anyone Raven was the real Spring Maiden! This is one of the key issues with Yang Xiao Long, she's grown hypocrite with a dose of self-righteousness and anger issues.

I suppose I should bring up the whole Adam thing, but that serves more as the sloppy 'conclusion' to Blake's arc. But it does raise a question? Why are they so quick to kill Adam…but not so quick on the draw to kill Cinder or any of her cronies? But I digress.

She's essentially became Naru Narusegawa from Love Hina with more powers. In another dose of her flagrant hypocrisy, she calls out Ruby for lying to Ironwood because still hiding the truth about the Spring Maiden and still went along with Ruby's lies. She and Blake proceed to trust a known criminal with state secrets to which I'm sure would have gotten them arrested for treason.

I could go on, but I rather not to close this off with bringing up the matter of her being glued to Blake's hip all the time in V6-V8. It was a cost saving method for not having to write the team interacting with each other and tease the fans with ships instead of actually developing good characters. To think Yang used to be one of my favorites. Oy vey.

(A/N: It felt really good to get it all out. I won't be doing this too often, and next time may be a bit shorter. I do have several characters on my list to talk about it, but we got content to produce.)