Ever since I first heard about the anime several years ago, I've been wanting to get into RWBY.  Due to life and all that comes with it, finding this manga was my first opportunity to dive in.   All I can say is that I wish I had found a way to read and/or watch this sooner.

I was drawn into the story right from the beginning.  Stories and manga/graphic novels about monster hunters are one of my favorites, so discovering Ruby Rose wants to be a Huntress was an instant draw for me.  Add to that she's about to attend a hunter/huntress boarding school of sorts and I was 110% sold.  

Fast-paced and action-packed, this manga doesn't slow down at all.  You're rushing and racing alongside the characters from page one until the very end.  My one complaint is that there were too many characters introduced at one time.  It would have been easier for me to remember who they were if their introductions had been spaced out a little bit more.  However, that is fully on me.  I love Ruby Rose and her sister, Yang.  While Yang is a total manga character (right down to glomping her sister repeatedly), she's a good balance to the more serious Ruby.  Weiss was a bit annoying and grumpy in the beginning, but she's starting to thaw a little by the end.  Blake's an interesting character as well and I'll be waiting to learn more about her and the others in the next volume.  

The artwork was the finishing touch on this already enjoyable story.  I loved how the first few pages were in full color and then switching to black and white.  Those color pages really popped and set the tone for the rest of the manga.  Now I need to track down the anime while waiting for the next volume of this manga to release.

While the story itself is great, it doesn't compare to the animation. There was just something missing, that I couldn't put my finger on.

RWBY fans will love this series, especially if you read the original series. It holds true to the original concepts and characters, so this is a winner!

This was a fun introduction to the world and the characters, but there were places where I felt the narrative was a little hard to follow. It tells the story of Ruby Rose, a young prodigy who is accepted into the Beacon school two years early to train as a Huntress. Once there, she must team up with some unlikely partners and fight monsters all to protect the city of Vale. I always enjoy a training school set up where a character learns to use their powers, and this is no exception. Conceptually, I love the ideas at play here. I also really liked that our main characters are all women and while there are conflicts between them, so far there doesn't seem to be the natural antagonism between the girls that we see so often, which I really appreciated. Instead, this seems like a team of women who will support each other no matter what, which is fabulous. With that being said, I did find the story a bit choppy in places, which made the action a bit hard to follow at times. Coupled with this was the art style, which is quite impressionistic and consequently added to the disjointed feeling of the narrative. Overall, I thought this was an entertaining introduction and I think that now all of the characters and set up are in play, the story will get better and better.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This brought back memories of when I originally started watching the show. I loved the designs and revitalization of the characters. I look forward to future copies.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I love RWBY so much and this is an excellent adaptation. Its not a direct translation of the show which actually works in its favor. The art is absolutely stunning!

I found RWBY difficult to follow. I'm not sure if this was due to the artwork layout or the storyline. I know many who are fans of RWBY and was very excited to read the manga and there were elements I liked such as the drawings and basic character structures. Maybe the reader needed some background context in order to get into the manga? I'm not sure,

It pretty much follows the first couple of episodes of the show exactly. Not really anything new here, but will be appreciated by the fans.

It was great to jump into the world of RWBY and in such a beautifully colourful illustration style. For anyone and everyone who loves manga, anime, or even just a good story, I guarantee RWBY is worth starting. It's also a great starting point for people that want to start reading manga but never have before.

3.5 Stars

I have heard of the anime and was curious what the manga would be like. I enjoyed a majority of the story but what brought it down is a battle scene near the end. It was very confusing to follow and dragged out for too long.

I had no clue what to expect from this manga when I requested it, but I was lured by its description: huntsmen and huntresses, all highly-skilled warriors, who fight against monsters. Yes, please! I felt like this was a good introduction to a longer plot line. Great character development, and I absolutely love Ruby (who wouldn't?). I loved the tension formed during some of the battles, and, truthfully, I thought the "bad guys" were pretty cool. I only wish this volume covered more of the story, and I wish the watermark was not so large because it made it hard to read in certain cases. Overall, however, I would recommend this to upper middle and high school grade students. Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this eARC. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Rating: 4/5 🌟
Author: Bunta Kinami
Publisher: Viz Media LLC/Shueisa
Release Date: 7/21/2020
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RWBY: The Official Manga , was released on 8/19/2019 in Japan, and was published by Shueisa.
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I want to start by saying thank you to NetGalley and Viz Media, for an advanced copy.
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RWBY: The Official Manga, it’s the graphic novel adaptation of the RWBY TV series by Rooster Teeth. RWBY is one of my all time favorite shows, so when I saw this on NetGalley I just had to request it! This is my first time reviewing a graphic novel, and I hope it’s not the last. The art is gorgeous! It complements the characters so well!! Seeing RWBY brought to life in a whole new way made me fall even more in love, with the series/characters. Ruby is just as sassy in the manga as the show, Weiss is stuck up but love able, Yang is badass as ever, and Blake is just as calm/cool. I recommend this beauty to fans of the show , and graphic novels in general. I am looking forward to seeing/reading the rest of the manga series.

When I saw RWBY The Official Manga volume 1 appear on NetGalley I thought it’d be the perfect chance to get into something I’d seen listed on Netflix. I imagine I’m not the only one to presume that this franchise had followed the “normal” route of being a manga series in Japan first before being made into an anime and then being translated for a Western audience, how wrong I was, in fact, it’s gone completely the opposite direction, being created as an “anime-inspired” web-series in America, shown on Crunchyroll and Netflix and now being made into a Manga series, though a glance at the Fandom Wiki suggests this manga tells a different story featuring the same characters? Maybe I should add the show onto my Watchlist (and never get round to watching it like with 99% of my Netflix Watchlist).

So, honestly, I didn’t know what to expect, I didn’t know anything about it other than it having a strange spelling and not knowing how to pronounce it, it’s “Ruby” if you didn’t already know and is actually the name of a team of four trainee Huntresses (made up of their initials: Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang) who are new attendees at the Beacon Academy. In this volume, we get to meet each of the girls, plus a few others, see them take on a Grimm (big monsters that roam the land, its the Hunterman and Huntresses jobs to vanquish them) and be assigned their team, whilst learning a little of the background of the world they inhabit, some of their histories and a glimpse at their unique abilities. Its kind of like a Harry Potter meets Monster Hunter affair and there’s some scope there for it to be quite fun.

However, it’s still very early and this first volume, comprising of the first five chapters don’t provide us with a huge amount of content considering it is around 180 pages in length. Instead, the art is tasked with doing a lot of the heavy lifting, which, in my opinion, leads to a bit of confusion in the tone.

Now manga and anime are pretty well known for being able to rapidly shift through the gears tonally, the medium makes use of over the top emotions and action sequences to entertain the reader/viewer and here the artist tries to play with the medium in the same way. It’s easy to say I’m being prejudiced because this is an American license, but the manga adaptation is being helmed by Bunta Kinami who’s artwork is mostly excellent, it doesn’t quite hit its landings (much like Ruby in the book, haha) as the tone and focus of the pages and panels jumps around a little too erratically. I’m used to things being erratic, I read One-Punch Man, and I can’t quite put my finger on why I don’t feel it quite works here, but it was something that niggled at me as I worked my way through this volume.

Which is a shame, there’s enough here to keep me interested, and I think the rest is available on the Shonen Jump app (which I subscribe to), so I can jump in and carry on when the mood takes me (if only they had an app on the Kindle store, instead I’ll have to stick to reading Viz Media’s output on my Huawei P20) because when the art does work with the story, it works incredibly well, there’s some wonderful, moody full-page spreads and the panel work knows when to ramp things up a bit and create exciting set pieces, but the shift in moods of the characters is sometimes a little at odds with whats going on in the story.

Reading an ARC from Netgalley so there isn’t full color and the watermark interrupts a little of the illustrations on each page but otherwise I was all in for the action and intensity of the interpersonal relationships between the kids arriving at Beacon Academy vying for spots to become huntsmen and huntresses. Their ability to complete the tasks in this one will put them on teams.

I thought the action sequences were epic and engaging and I was all about how all the girls were drawn- especially the darker characters. Super entertaining, I would totally read the others in this arc.

Thank you to NetGalley and VIZ Media for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was my first introduction to RWBY and what a way to get it going! I love any twist on fairy tales, so the potential that Ruby could be a version of Little Red Riding Hood drew me in initially, and the beautiful cover art of course. (I had never heard of the anime!)

I then I fell in love with the story. Ruby is an early admission, skipped a grade even, to join a special school in the hopes of becoming a huntress. I love so much that Grimm are bad guys! Eek, fun! The characters she meets, the monsters they face and the action-packed adventure they have are all intriguing enough to make me want more. This story introduces this fearsome foursome of dangerous girls and I can't wait to see what adventures they will have next.

Ruby Rose is one of the youngest students to join The Beacon Academy on her way to becoming a Huntress. We see her as she starts at the academy and becomes team RWBY with her sister Yang Xiao Long, rival Weiss Schnee and newfound friend Blake Belladonna.
I enjoyed the story to RWBY but I was not very impressed with the art work. It could be confusing and unclear at times and hard to follow. This was my first reading of a Manga novel however so it could be that I am not used to the layout.
I think I will look to watching the series as I struggled to keep up with the story from the artwork.
Recommended for Manga lovers and those who have watched the show previously.
Thanks to NetGalley for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is based on the popular anime, which I’ve never seen, so I came into this not knowing anything about the series. We are following Ruby, who enters the elite school for hunters early. We are introduced to the main characters and the set up in this book and it gives a good base to the world and sets up the rest of the series. I was highly entertained by the Grimm, the beasts that the hunters seek out and destroy and loved the interaction between the characters and how they worked together. The artwork is visually stunning, making me want to go check out the anime. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series. Beautiful

I really enjoy the RWBY anime, so I picked up this book for that reason. I wasn't disappointed. The storyline in the manga stuck pretty closely to what I expected it to be like, and the artwork was really good. (Although, to be fair, the characters were a little skinnier than I remembered, but that is neither here nor there.) I'm interested to know whether or not the actual publication of this manga will be 100% in full color or if it will just have the first few pages done in color like the ARC. I think it would look amazing done in full color, but I understand for inking purposes, that may not be possible. Those first few pages, though, were beautiful.

When it comes to the artwork, I was especially fond of Jaune Arc. I think he was drawn incredibly well. In terms of the story, each of the characters was really well-developed, and I enjoyed exploring different aspects of their characterizations.

The plot of this manga was excellent. The timing was good. I never found it dragging, nor did I feel like it was rushed anywhere. It was perfectly paced. It kept me interested from page one all the way to the end. In fact, once I started it, I devoured it in just about two hours. It was excellent. (To be fair, I am a quick reader, so it might take a little more time for someone else to read.) After I finished it, though, I did enjoy going back and looking at some of the art again. It was REALLY GOOD ART.

I feel like this manga was the perfect addition to the RWBY I already know and love. Sometimes, when you watch something first and then go to read about it, you're disappointed because it doesn't fit with the overall story. (This happened to me with many of the Buffy comics and books printed after the series.) That was not at all the case with this manga.

Overall, I really, really enjoyed it.

This manga had some intriguing storylines. However, it felt a bit disjointed from the start with the combination of stories. The characters were interesting but I feel like they could have been better developed.

Fans of the hit anime RWBY will love this manga adaptation. The character and storyline stick almost perfectly to it's anime counterpart. Though, the art does leave a bit to be desired this manga is still a fun, light read.