Hello everyone, and welcome to the third part of RWBY Reacts to their Manga!
Now this one is interesting because it's much more of a focused character study than the last two were. Which isn't to say that a character wasn't studied last time, but the focus was slightly diluted due to all four main girls being in it. This time, we're exploring one particular character.
And before you ask, I'm including very little if anything from Volume 3 if I can help it; I already made a crack about Team CRDL last time, you see. If anything from Vol. 3 does come up, it won't be any of the major things that have happened in it. (Y'all have NO idea how much I'm holding back from making a tasteless pun about Yang right now!)
Anyway, y'all know the drill: personal feelings will be kept to a minimum it order to give an objective look at the manga
Speaking of, let's return to Team RWBY's life, already in progress.
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The next morning saw Weiss sleeping soundly in her bed, a faint smile on her face. The night had been very restful for her, and now she was in that semi lucid state where her mind was technically awake but the rest of her body wasn't.
Maybe I'll be able to sleep in a little later, she thought as she rolled over, humming contentedly once she found a comfortable spot to lay. Not that she wanted to miss classes or anything, heaven forbid she fall behind in her studies, but it was nice every now and then to just ease awake and
*FWEEEEEEEEEE!* went Ruby's whistle, yanking Weiss from the remnants of her slumber. She failed around for a moment before falling onto the floor.
"Rise and shine!" Ruby cheered, "It's a beautiful morning- Ow!"
Yang had thrown her Zwei pillow at her.
"Ruby," she said, "I love you, but could you tone it down a bit? Not all of us are freakish morning people like you are."
"Remind me why we haven't taken that whistle away from her yet?" Weiss asked as she picked herself up.
"But it's so nice outside," the crimsonette persisted, flinging the curtains open. "See?" she pointed.
"...it's raining," Blake said curtly, squinting out the window.
Ruby turned around and saw that it was indeed raining, quite heavily too. In fact, it was raining so hard that she could only just barely make out the faint green glow on top of Beacon's central tower.
"Oh…."
"You wanted us up for something else," Yang deduced, Ruby's sheepish grimace speaking volumes. "What was it?"
"Well…," she bopped her pointer fingers together, "...I kinda, sorta, maybe reeeaaally wanted to read the next part of our comic book-"
"Graphic novel," Blake interjected.
"-and I wanted to do it together with you guys cause we were having so much fun, you know?"
"I seem to remember all of us having a bunch of problems with it," Weiss pointed out. "And we just read a chapter last night, why don't we wait a while before we tackle the next one?"
"But it's about you!" she insisted. Quick as a flash Ruby dug the tome out of the bookcase and tore through it until she reached the end of the last chapter they read, showing it to her partner, "See?!"
By this point Blake and Yang had both gotten out of bed and were gathering up true uniforms, since there weren't getting back to sleep any time soon.
"I have to admit, I'm curious what Weiss was like before coming to Beacon," Blake mused. "Granted, I'm not expecting much."
"Hah hah hah," Weiss laughed dryly.
"I sorta want to know what happens next, too," Yang said. Then she looked down at herself, "Though, do you think maybe we could get dressed first? Shower too, cause I'm starting to smell a little ripe over here." She sniffed under her arm, reeling back and woofing to herself.
Ruby stared at Weiss expectantly, her eyes sparkling in anticipation.
Weiss sighed, realizing she was outnumbered. "Fine," she relented, "we'll read the next chapter. ...but only after we get ready for the day!"
"Yay!" Ruby squealed and immediately race over to grab her uniform and zip into the bathroom, re-emerging a half second later fully dressed and throwing a damp towel into the communal laundry basket. "Well?" she questioned expectantly, "Hurry up!"
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"Oh yeah, I forgot you could sing!" Ruby exclaimed as they began the next chapter. "How come you don't sing anymore?"
Weiss though for a moment, looking slightly morose. "I guess...I don't really know, I've just never felt the desire."
"'The story before she met her team'," Yang read, "Geez, couldn't they come up with a punchier hook?"
Blake said nothing. She had a lot of thoughts, but she figured Weiss wouldn't appreciate her talking bad about the people she grew up around, even if she might have somehow felt the same.
"Not really much to this first page," Weiss noted, "let's move on."
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Weiss immediately regretted her desire to continue reading.
"You look so cute a little kid!~" Yang squeed.
"Totally!~" agreed Ruby.
Despite her efforts, Blake couldn't help but let a chuckle or two through; Weiss's face was flushed crimson in embarrassment, and she'd suddenly developed a most prominent twitch with her eyebrow.
"It's nothing to be ashamed of," she tried to console the heiress, "everyone likes kids, it's just in our nature; it was actually worse for me because I was a Faunus-"
"J-j-j-just turn the page already!" Weiss shouted, "Y-yes, I was cute as a child, no need to dwell on it!" She hurriedly flipped the page over, suddenly preferring Yang and Ruby's cooing over what she saw now.
"Aaaaand mood kill confirmed," Yang winced.
For a moment all the girls were silent as they read about Weiss's father.
"...you wanna talk about it?" Ruby asked.
"No," she said curtly, "I'd rather not."
"...you sure-"
"Completely!" Weiss snapped quickly. "Let's just move on, OK?"
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The next page…
This must be karmic retribution for my life before coming to Beacon, Weiss reasoned, staring wide eyed at the image on the splash page.
"Woo!" Yang whistled appreciatively, "Work it, girl!"
"Sh-shut up!" Weiss stammered, "This picture is inaccurate and the artist should be drug out into the street and shot for character defamation!"
Yang threw her hands up, "Whoa, I was just teasing; chill out, Ice Queen!" She chuckled at her lame joke.
"This doesn't fit with how we've been portrayed before now," Blake noted.
Weiss was flabbergasted. "Really? That's what you think is wrong with this: character continuity? Not that someone apparently thinks I act like some overly sassy, provocative floozy?"
"Yeah," Ruby nodded sagely, "Weiss doesn't have nearly as much junk in the trunk in real life."
"Don't you start too!" She stared at Ruby, shocked. "And my 'trunk' is none of your business!"
"And where'd you learn a phrase like 'junk in the trunk' anyway?" Yang asked.
"Uh, from you," the young team leader answered as though it were obvious. "You're kinda loud when you talk on your Scroll."
"Well, what are you doing eavesdropping when I talk with my friends?"
"Could we just turn the page already?" Weiss pleaded, "I'd rather just be done with this if the rest is going to be like this."
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The next page…
"Wow, is there even any room for the art?" Yang wondered, scanning the abundance of text bubbles. "And what's with that woman's face? Did the artist not care again?"
Weiss grimaced. "Do you always have to be so negative?" she asked, "You always find something to complain about."
"Says the girl who was just complaining about character defamation a minute ago?"
Weiss remained silent, her grimace morphing into a scowl.
"This looks like mostly exposition," Blake noted, actually reading the text. "That woman is quite the flatterer."
"You get a lot of that when you're rich," Weiss explained, "eventual it just goes in one ear and out the other."
"Is she looking for a promotion or something?" Ruby asked.
Weiss shrugged. "I don't recognize her, so this is probably an artist's interpretation of what happened."
"Um…?"
"I don't know, OK? She's fictional."
Blake raised an eyebrow when the book explained Myrtenaster. "Is it really that hard to learn?"
"Not at all," Weiss said immediately. "It's about as difficult as any other one handed weapon." She thought for a moment, "Actually, I was criticized about my footwork more than anything else by my instructor."
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The next page…
"So why did you decide to come to Beacon instead of Atlas?" Yang asked as they continued reading. "Was it just to spite your dad?"
"No, nothing so petty." Weiss's face softened, "Although, I will admit it felt good to actually to finally decide something for myself…"
"That lady is really snide," Ruby noted.
"So you wanted to come to Beacon," Blake asked as they turned the page, "to save face for your family?"
Weiss shook her head. "I only said that to get my father to stop pestering me about my decision. Honestly, I might have ended up going to Atlas Academy if it wasn't all anyone ever talked about.
"'Witless puppet'?" Yang chuckled. "Dang, Weiss, you are really bad making one-liners!"
"At least I don't rely on puns as the basis of my humor!" the heiress shot back.
"It probably wasn't a good idea to insult the woman in control of the area you're in," Blake cautioned, "That's absolutely going to come back to bite you."
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The next page…
"If anyone says 'I told you so'...!" Weiss growled.
"OK then," Yang said, "we won't. ...still gonna think it, though!"
They she turned the page.
"Whoa!" Ruby marveled, "That's a big sword! That's bigger than Yatsuhashi's!"
"That's nothing; you should see what's holding it." Eagerly, Ruby turned the page to find out what Weiss was talking about.
Yang raised an eyebrow, "Isn't that one of the those giant armor thingies they have in museums?"
"Wait, there's Grimm like that?!" Ruby exclaimed. She looked worriedly at Weiss, "There aren't actually any grimm like that...right?"
"Of course not! It says here it was created in a lab."
"And this," Blake tapped the page, "is why people don't like your family."
"How droll…," Weiss deadpanned.
"Seriously," Ruby said, "that woman is such a b- ...witch! And so is your dad!"
"Well, it looks like Ice Queen is about to show her what for," Yang assured her sister, patting her on the shoulder, "She'll put her in her place!"
"Hey!" Weiss shrieked.
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Four pages later…
"Is this going to be like the first chapter again," Weiss wondered, turning the pages back and forth, "lots of action and no dialogue?"
"I don't think so," Blake pointed out, "that's the end of the chapter."
"What?" Weiss briefly skipped to the end, Ruby and Yang peeking over her shoulder. "Oh my god, it is; it's even shorter than the last one!"
"Aw! I want to know how it ends!" Ruby whined.
"We know how it ends," Weiss reminded her, "I win! I probably wouldn't be here if I didn't."
"At least we won't have to worry about being late for class," Yang said, checking the time on her Scroll, "It's only- Holy crap, it's almost 9 o'clock!"
"How did it get so late?" Weiss immediately closed the book and raced out the door. "Well? Come on already!"
"But what about-?"
"We can read it later!" she said, interrupting Ruby. "Now let's go!"
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And the rest will have to wait until chapter four comes out.
So Volume 3 is done now and...well, to quote George Takei, "Oh MY…!" Just to reiterate, I'm not going to include many (if any) developments from Volume 3 because...let's just say that I need some time to process certain things that happened in the second half. If you're curious about what, go watch it for yourself. (Lord know I'm not going to be the only one with raging emotion about it!)
And before you ask, I don't know how any of that will impact how the manga turns out; that we'll all have to discover together.
So, until next time!