Why does Jaune Arc exist?
I like Jaune as a person, Miles does a great job voicing him, and the writing of his scenes has greatly improved. Great scenes; some powerful stuff.
But in terms of him as a character in the story of RWBY, I kind of hate Jaune Arc.
His background makes no logical sense within the setting. I’ve tried to explain it, but my efforts are nothing but theories I should never have had to formulate in the first place. It makes so little sense that Rooster Teeth really should have explained where he really comes from by now.
Worse, the very contradiction of his place within the story versus his unsuitability to even be in the story is the major reason why he gets so much screen-time. Unlike everyone else, Jaune hasn’t developed the skills and self-confidence that would allow him to be a hero like everyone else, so the story has to spend time developing him to the point where he can begin to keep up.
It’s very much like a shounen manga where Jaune is the protagonist who serves as the adolescent male reader’s vehicle for living the dream of starting at zero or even behind everyone else and yet somehow beginning a meteoric rise from the bottom to surpass all opponents and become the champion.
Which would be perfectly fine if Jaune were billed as the main character, but the title is RWBY. If Jaune Arc didn’t exist, RWBY could actually focus on the stories of characters who do already have the skills and self-confidence to be heroes, and thus explore the ways in which they are still lacking.
Two episodes into Volume 4, both of which feature important scenes for Jaune Arc, but Blake and Yang have yet to appear. Why is Jaune’s personal drama more important than theirs? Rooster Teeth has never really explained why I should even believe in his handicap, so I can’t really sympathize with it like they probably want me to.
Further, Jaune has nothing to do with anything.
Ruby is a Silver-Eyed Warrior and thus is apparently the bane of all evil, and Yang is the biological daughter of a woman who can probably magically turn into a bird and who is probably wrapped up in the secret plots of the world; both Ruby and Yang are also the nieces of Qrow Branwen, who is definitely wrapped up in conspiracies regarding the fate of the world. This isn’t even counting the possibility that the villains might have murdered the girls’ mother, Summer Rose.
Blake was a former member of the White Fang and is a faunus, which makes her very relevant to the plot regarding the White Fang and the divisions between humans and faunus. Weiss is also important to these plots, as she is the heir to the Schnee Dust Company which is practically at war with the White Fang, and that’s not even considering the SDC’s importance to the rest of the world and its politics.
But why does the character of Jaune Arc exist?
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