Members of this wiki gave feedback on a previous version of the above video's script. Any inaccuracies in the new version are not approved of by members of this wiki. Additionally, the above video may be out of date.

“ I'm a thrill-seeker. I want to travel around the world and get wrapped up in as many crazy adventures as I can. And if I help people along the way, then that's even better. It's a win-win, y'know? ”

Yang Xiao Long is one of the protagonists of RWBY. She is a Huntress, having been trained at the now-defunct Beacon Academy. Her weapons of choice are a pair of Dual Ranged Shot Gauntlets, Ember Celica.

She made her first appearance in the "Yellow" Trailer, searching for clues regarding the whereabouts of her mother, Raven Branwen, who left her when she was a child. From Volume 1, Yang became a member of Team RWBY alongside Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna and her younger half-sister Ruby Rose.

Contents show]

Appearance Edit

Yang is a fair-skinned young woman with lilac eyes and bright golden hair that fades to pale gold at the tips with a cowlick sticking out at the top, greatly resembling her mother. When her Semblance is active, her eyes become red[3] and her hair gains a fiery glow.

Original Outfit (Volumes 1–3) Edit

During her attendance at Beacon, she wears a tan jacket that bares her midriff, with golden brown piping and short, puffy sleeves with black cuffs that feature two gold buttons. Underneath this, she wears a low cut yellow crop top with her emblem on the left breast in black.

She also wears a brown belt covered by a pleated brown piece of material reaching from hip to hip around the back of her waist, with her emblem emblazoned on the right-most pleat in gold. Underneath this is a long, white, asymmetrical piece of material reaching to her knee on the right side, as well as a pair of black mini-shorts. She wears a pair of brown, knee-high boots and orange over-the-knee socks, with the right sock pushed down just below the knee. A gray bandanna is tied around her left knee. An orange infinity scarf and black fingerless gloves complete her outfit.

While riding her motorcycle, Bumblebee, she wears yellow goggles and a matching helmet that bears her emblem in black on either side. While outdoors, she sometimes wears a pair of yellow-rimmed aviator sunglasses.

Pajamas Edit

During her time at Beacon, Yang's pajamas consist of an orange tank top with her emblem on the front in red, and black boy shorts.

At her home in Patch, Yang wears another set of pajamas, which consist of a dark-yellow short-sleeved shirt with black shorts.

Alternate Outfit (Hunter) Edit

During the events of "A Minor Hiccup" and "Painting the Town...", Yang wears an alternate outfit code named "Hunter".[4]

This outfit consists of a deep-collared cream vest worn over a low cut black shirt; both are covered by a dark gray shrug with a raised collar, three-quarter sleeves adorned with a single black stripe down the outside of each sleeve, and gold cuffs. A black miniskirt is worn under the cream vest.

A pair of crooked black belts with gold accents are slung around her hip, with a purple piece of fabric attached to the left-rear section of the lower belt. She wears thigh high stockings attached to her miniskirt by garter-belts on the front and back of each thigh, decorated with four golden studs above her knee and her emblem on the outside of each thigh in gold. She also wears black ankle boots with multiple buckles and white ribbons on the back tied in a bow. Around her neck is a purple pendant set in silver.

Dance Edit

During the Beacon Dance, Yang wears a short, white, halter neck dress with a pale gray hem and white pumps.

Beacon Uniform Edit

During her attendance at Beacon, Yang wears the same brown shoes, red tartan skirt, white blouse with maroon trim and thin red bow, a brown vest with gold buttons, and maroon blazer with gold trim as every other girl attending Beacon, alongside with a pair of thigh-high black stockings. She retains her fingerless black gloves, as seen in "Best Day Ever".

Post-Timeskip "DGAS" Outfit (Volume 4) Edit

After the timeskip following the Fall of Beacon, her new outfit consists of a gray jacket over an orange tank top that bares her hips. The jacket is tied at the right sleeve, indicating her missing arm. The jacket's left sleeve bears her father's emblem. Completing her attire are gray-brown cargo pants, which have ribbed knee paneling and show the rim of her dark undergarments. High on the left leg of her pants is a red shield-shaped patch with imagery of three Ursa masks, and her emblem is stitched on her right thigh. She wears white sneakers with purple laces, and her hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail with a purple hair tie.

She has also grown taller, surpassing her mother in height.

The stump of her right arm is covered by a circular, metallic plate.

At the end of "Family", she begins using a silver and white robotic arm prosthesis. In "Taking Control", she paints this arm bright yellow and black.

In her concept art for this outfit, her right arm is simply bandaged, and a bumblebee patch is in the place of her emblem. This same concept art refers to the outfit as her "DGAS" outfit.

Post-Timeskip Battle Outfit (Volumes 4–7) Edit

In "No Safe Haven", Yang begins wearing a new outfit with a tan jacket with orange lining and gold edging, unzipped halfway to show an orange crop top. The coat has darker brown short sleeves, a thick collar that completely encircles her neck, and two long gold-trimmed rectangular tails which are shown to be detachable in "Lighting the Fire". She also wears fitted black pants, and her hair has been let down again like her original outfit.

Around her hips and over the tails of her coat is a brown belt, which has two pieces of dark brown material trimmed in gold attached to it. The first covers from her left hip to the back of the belt and is folded over the belt, and the second is attached from the right hip and almost around to the other piece of material. She wears knee high brown boots with gold caps on the heel and toe, with the heel cap attaching to a gold strap across the front of her ankle, and a gold zipper on the upper half of the front of the boots. A single small buckled strap is on the upper outside of her boots, and a purple bandanna tied around her left knee. A pair of black fingerless gloves with long brown cuffs reaching to mid-forearm complete the outfit.

While riding Bumblebee, Yang no longer wears her helmet or goggles and instead dons a pair of yellow-rimmed aviator sunglasses. Before battle, Yang removes her coattails and cuffs, and she puts Ember Celica onto her left arm.

In the promotional material for Volume 4, Yang is shown wearing the same coat and pants shown in the series. A gold metal plate covers her missing right arm, which matches the accessories on the heels and toes of her boots.

In promotional material for Volume 5, her outfit includes her new robotic arm.

Atlas Outfit (Volume 7-Current) Edit

After arriving in Atlas and meeting with James Ironwood, Yang obtains an entirely new outfit primarily consisting of khaki overalls, the gold zipper of which is unzipped just below the breast to reveal a white low-cut cropped tube top. Around the thighs of the overalls is a gold zipper and buckled strap that allows for the pants leg to be detached. The right leg is unzipped but still strapped to the overalls but the lower part is partially folded over. Over top the coveralls, she wears a baggy, dark brown crop aviator styled jacket with fur trim around the neck and black-and-orange straps along the sleeves. Around her waist is a black-and-orange belt with black-and-yellow folded fabric on the sides, which runs behind her with a pouch attached to it and a golden buckle of her emblem. She wears dark brown knee-high boots with black laces and top trim. For accessories, she has resumed wearing her orange scarf around her neck and her purple scarf around her right leg, like she did with her original battle outfit. She also has a black/brown strap with golden trim and a pouch wrapped around her left thigh. Yang wears yellow and black socks with her emblem on as shown by the concept art. She is also seen wearing orange sunglasses in Ace Operatives.

Image Gallery Edit

Personality Edit

Yang's voice actress, Barbara Dunkelman, has said that when Yang's character was described to her, she was described as "the kind of person who would teach someone how to swim by pushing them in the water".[5] This speaks volumes about how Yang approaches most things in life. She is very straightforward and confident.

Yang is also described as being a cheerful, energetic and bright young lady. She is arguably the most flippant, carefree and adventurous member of her team, frequently making sarcastic comments and jokes even in the heat of battle and often taking combat and hostile situations lightly. Yang is very sociable and extroverted, even in unfamiliar situations. Yang's love of adventure is the main reason that she decided to become a Huntress. Blake considers Yang the personification of the word "strength". According to Ruby, she snores loudly.[6]

However, Yang's "brawler" fighting style is evocative of her personality. Her anger, one of her main assets in battle, can lead her to act predictably. Yang is also quite protective of her hair and sharing a flaw with her mother: thinking Strength is all that matters in a fight. When her hair is cut during battle, her resulting anger leads her to attack with straight, blunt force. Additionally, a battle against Neopolitan led to frustration on Yang's part, which quickly cost her the battle and almost her life had it not been for the arrival of Raven. Her thoughtless anger led to the quick loss of her right arm in a short encounter with Adam Taurus.

Yang's short temper and berserker tendencies repeatedly put her in danger. She was easily frustrated when she couldn't land a hit on Neo and could not attack precisely because of it, leading to her getting knocked unconscious and almost killed. Adam Taurus deliberately exploited it by injuring Blake, sending Yang into a rage. Yang attacks fist-first, which allows Adam to easily cut off her arm. While she's recovering from her injuries, her father lectures her about this weakness and guides her in what she needs to do to start overcoming it along with her flaw that she shares with her mother.

Despite this, Yang is deceptively mature. She is extremely nurturing, particularly toward her younger sister, Ruby. Yang pushes her into being outgoing and also worries a great deal about her sister across the many battles they fight in. This protective and encouraging nature extends to Blake and Weiss as well. Yang is worried about Blake on several occasions, such as when she runs from her team and when she suffers from sleep and appetite problems, opening Yang to discussing her stubborn past. What Yang does not reveal is that she suffers from abandonment issues, blaming herself for her mother not sticking around.[7]

Yang is also quite guile as she was able to teach Weiss on how to play Remnant: The Game by explaining to her how to use her cards in the game only to better trick Weiss into wasting her armies, she used a laser to attract Blake so they would be able to talk and tricked a bandit into revealing the location of Raven's camp. She is also perspicacious as she saw through her mother's facade and attempt to manipulate her into staying with the tribe during their first meeting, recognized her in her corvid form at Haven and quickly deduced that her mother was the Spring Maiden and had killed the former maiden.

However, after the deaths of Pyrrha Nikos and Penny Polendina, the losses of her right arm and her partner, Blake, Yang sinks into a reclusive depression. The mention of her missing partner agitates her and she gives Ruby the cold shoulder and even outright ignores her sister when she says, "I love you". Over months, Yang rebounds from this reclusive nature. Though she suffers from PTSD, she tries to keep moving forward, partially for her father's sake when feeling she holds him back. After overhearing her father and Bartholomew Oobleck talking about Ruby outside her window, she accepts the wisdom of her father, Oobleck, and Professor Peter Port and dons her new robotic arm.

Yang is extremely sensitive about being abandoned and her "simmering anger" stems from these abandonment issues.[8] For the better part of nearly two decades, Yang spent her life searching for her mother, trying to understand her reasons for leaving. Their first reunion in "Lighting the Fire" also demonstrated how low her opinion was of Raven, reacting with anger after Raven said that Yang finally decided to visit her, making it sound like Yang was the one responsible for her mother not being a part of her life, and ignoring her attempts at lightening the mood and become hostile upon her father, uncle and Team RWBY being insulted in "Known by its Song". After Blake ran away at the end of Volume 3, Yang became guarded and even after the team's reunion at "Haven's Fate", kept some distance from her, stating in "Argus Limited" that their relationship would need time to heal. However, after a rematch against Adam in "Seeing Red", Yang fully accepted her partner's apologies, understanding that Blake was not like her mother.

When training with her new limb, she learns how to balance her driven and positive nature without overconfidence or agitation. She paints her arm to match her style, changes to a new outfit, and heads to Mistral although Taiyang Xiao Long believes she has not overcome the personality flaws that cost her arm. Fortunately, she has shown to not be as quick to blind anger in combat anymore, and now fights displaying good strategy and intelligence, as seen with her rematch against Adam and when she fought the Ace Ops. While traveling Mistral to reunite with Ruby, she continues to struggle with her PTSD which manifests in her left arm shaking when she encounters stress.

Despite all of Yang's good qualities, she has shown to be something of a hypocrite, as Yang is rather vocal about Ozpin keeping secrets from everyone, questioning him on several occasions all while not telling anyone that her mother is the true Spring Maiden. She was also willing to lie to everyone along with Blake about letting Robyn Hill escape after telling her about Amity Tower. This ultimately ended detrimentally, as it shatters Ironwood's trust in Ruby's Group. However unlike Ozpin, she was willing to admit what she did regardless of the consequences.

Powers and Abilities Edit

Yang's fighting style is much more aggressive than that of her teammates. She uses a barehanded fist-fighting style and her weapons; Ember Celica. She is quite agile, able to dodge an onslaught of Ursai and gunfire with ease. Since gaining her prosthetic arm, Yang has taken to using its armored surface defensively, shielding herself from firearms, and staving off attacks to gain greater ground on her opponents, incorporating its advantages into her improved fighting style following further instruction from her father, Tai.

She is also the physically strongest of the group. Her strength is displayed on numerous occasions, such as when her punch sent a fully grown man several feet into the air and through a glass pillar without the enhancement of her weapon, and in "Players and Pieces", where she was able to keep the mouth of a Nevermore open with one arm long enough to deliver multiple shots down its throat.

Like all Huntsmen and Huntresses, Yang has had her Aura unlocked, coating her body with a shield powered by her soul, which helps protect her, especially when her aggressiveness gets her into bad situations. Even with her Aura unlocked, her durability is also noticeably high, as showcased in her doubles match with Weiss against Flynt Coal and Neon Katt during the Vytal Tournament, where she withstands numerous hits from Neon during the bout's opening stages and powers through the effects of Flynt's weapon, knocking him out and securing victory for her side shortly after. Due to the nature of her Semblance and the high durability, Yang would typically absorb enough hits through her Aura to empower herself and then finish the fights with her Semblance, which her father criticizes due to her over-reliance in "Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back".

Since the end of Volume 3 and her mental recovery at the end of Volume 4, Yang's fighting skills had improved immensely after training again. Notably, she has incorporated more kicking and dodging. Her new robotic arm also gives her a higher degree of strength, able to send full-grown men flying from the intensity of her blows. During her rematch against Adam, she defeats him despite his superior speed by adapting her combat technique and avoiding attacking him until he uses up the energy from his Semblance so that she can disarm him, showing her improved intelligence in combat.

Her fight against Elm and Vine with Blake further showcases her more pragmatic approach to battles. She coordinated her attacks with Blake and refrained from using her Semblance until the last moment to destroy the ground Elm had anchored herself to and deliver the finishing blow. Since Volume three, her use of her Semblance overall in battle has gone down, as she tends to activate it only as a last resort.

Weapon Edit

Main article: Ember Celica

Yang's weapon is radically different compared to those used by her teammates. Yang's primary weapon is a pair of gauntlets known as Ember Celica, which can retract into bracelets. Yang's fighting style involves combining her punches with explosive shots from Ember Celica for moderate or short-ranged attacks.

Ember Celica has powerful recoil, which Yang can use to augment the force of her punch and accelerate her movements. The force is powerful enough to launch her high in the air. The recoil also reloads and prepares the gauntlets for the next shot.[8]

She can also use her Ember Celica as a form of armor when defending against attacks in unarmed combat. After the events of "Heroes and Monsters", Yang only has one Ember Celica, due to her lost arm.

Semblance Edit

As Ruby states during the events of "Painting the Town...", Yang's Semblance, Burn[8], lets her absorb kinetic energy from every blow she takes and use it to make herself more powerful; this is a form of kinetic energy absorption, with Yang subsequently redirecting said energy against her opponent.

As a side-effect of her Semblance, Yang's eyes turn red[3] and her hair sometimes begins glowing and even becomes covered in flames.

Yang's Semblance does not make her angry, but anger has led her to want to use it.

Prior to the Fall of Beacon, Yang often uses her Semblance to finish a fight, after absorbing enough damage from blows and overpowering her opponent. However, after the Fall of Beacon, she begins to use it far less often and more as a final attack due to her improved training in fighting smarter rather than harder with Taiyang. This is demonstrated during her fights against the bandits and the Grimm between Haven and Argus where she doesn't use her Semblance to fight. At the end of her second and last fight with Adam Taurus, she uses it to disarm and overpower him with a very powerful punch, finally breaking his Aura.

Robotic Arm Edit

After losing her arm in the Battle of Beacon to Adam Taurus she was given a new robotic arm by James Ironwood. She initially refused it due to depression, but she got over it and chose to use it after spray painting it gold to match her remaining Ember Celica.

Created by Pietro Polendina, Yang's cybernetic limb possesses great strength. Its power is shown in "Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back", where a single blow sent her father, a fully trained Huntsman, skidding back several feet, even though Tai blocked the attack. It is also outfitted with most of Ember Celica's features, including a shotgun.[8] As seen in "Rest and Resolutions", the arm can detach from her bicep, and can even be fired like a projectile.

In Volume 7, Yang's arm is modified. It is now larger with more mass and more gold plates around. It more resembles the design of Ember Celica

Weaknesses Edit

Although Yang gets stronger from taking damage, her frustration can be exploited by skilled opponents. This weakness is perhaps best expressed in her very brief first confrontation with Adam, her anger causing her to recklessly charge him and lose her right arm in the process.

However, this drawback is more or less under control after her father, Tai, told her to focus on using her opponent's force against them.

Aside from that, knocking her unconscious before she can reach her final stage completely negates her Semblance. Yang is also noted to be weak against kick-based fighting styles, seen when she struggles against Neo, Melanie, and Mercury Black.[9]

As time progresses, however, she gains more control over her anger and has adapted to kick fighters.

As seen in her fight with Neo, fighters well-versed in dodging attacks can frustrate Yang, making her attacks predictable and easily avoided, rendering the added power with her Semblance useless.

Her anger also causes her to unintentionally activate her Semblance, even if she is not in a battle. Examples of this include her frustrated outburst in "Players and Pieces", her moment of anger toward Blake in "Burning the Candle" and two times in her doubles round tournament fight in "Never Miss a Beat".

Taiyang somewhat jokingly defines her Semblance as "basically a temper tantrum" and a liability against stronger and more experienced opponents; if they can evade or outlast the duration of her onslaught, she is left weak and tired and vulnerable to a counterattack.

For this reason due to her improved fighting style in "Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back", Taiyang tells Yang it's best left as a last resort, rather than a crutch like she uses it in the Vytal Festival and due to her over-reliance of using it to win every fight before.

Trivia Edit

Yang alludes to Goldilocks[10] from Goldilocks and the Three Bears. For more information on this allusion, as well as other choices the creators made for this character, see Yang Xiao Long/Behind the Scenes.