Yang Xiao Long

Yang Xiao Long is a former student at Beacon Academy and one of the main protagonists of RWBY. 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 very young. At Beacon, Yang becomes a member of Team RWBY alongside her younger half-sister Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee and Blake Belladonna.

Appearance
Yang is a fair-skinned young woman with lilac eyes and bright golden hair worn loose 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 and her hair gains a fiery glow.

Original (Volumes 1–3)


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
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, consisting of a dark-yellow short-sleeved shirt with black shorts.

Alternate Outfit (Hunter)


During the events of "A Minor Hiccup" and "Painting the Town...", Yang wears an alternate outfit codenamed "Hunter".

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

Uniform
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)


After the timeskip following the Fall of Beacon, her new design 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 show the rim of her dark undergarments and ribbed knee paneling. 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.

The stump of her right arm is covered by a circular, metallic plate. She wears white sneakers with blue laces, and her hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail.

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

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

Post-Timeskip Battle Outfit (Volume 4–Current)


In "No Safe Haven", Yang is shown wearing 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.

Personality
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". 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 she decided to become a Huntress. Blake considers Yang the personification of the word "strength".

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. 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.

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.

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 Port and dons her new robotic arm.

Yang is extremely sensitive about being abandoned due to her abandonment issues: 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, 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, though Taiyang Xiao Long believes she has not overcome the personality flaws that cost her arm. 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. Yang is also rather vocal about Ozpin's secrets, questioning him on several occasions.

Powers and Abilities
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.

Weapon


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 can be utilized to augment the force of her punch and accelerate her movements, the force being able to launch her high in the air. 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


As Ruby states during the events of "Painting the Town...", Yang's Semblance lets her take the energy from every blow she takes and use it to make herself more powerful, showcased when Yang completely shatters the Atlesian Paladin-290 in a few hits after being battered by it; this seems to be a form of kinetic energy absorption, with Yang subsequently redirecting said energy against her opponent.

Upon taking high levels of damage, she can unleash bursts of fire via her hair and her eyes turn red. However, due to the nature of powering herself up requiring damage, Yang has a limited time that she can use her Semblance, as seen with her rematch with Adam Taurus, in which her Aura level was so low, she was only able to sustain her Semblance long enough for a single charged punch.

After a sparring match with his daughter in "Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back", Taiyang states that the amount of energy Yang's Semblance grants her is equal to twice the strength she is hit with. However, she does still take the full force of the attack, meaning that quickly inflicting large amounts of damage is the key to taking her down.

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

In typical combat, Yang uses her Semblance to finish a fight, after absorbing enough damage from blows and overpowering her opponent.

However, after the Fall of Beacon, she has used it far less often and more as a final attack due to her improved training in fighting smarter rather than harder with Tai. This is demonstrated during her fights against the bandits, Mercury at Haven and the Grimm between Haven and Argus where she doesn't use her Semblance to fight. Yang only start using her Semblance again at the end of her second and last fight with Adam Taurus where she uses it to disarm and overpower the former leader of the White Fang with a very powerful punch, putting his aura down.

Robotic Arm
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 a shotgun similar to Ember Celica's. In "Rest and Resolutions", it shows the arm can detach from her bicep, and can even be fired like a projectile.

Weaknesses
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 him or her.

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 Neopolitan, Melanie Malachite and Mercury Black.

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

As seen in her fight with Neopolitan, 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

 * Yang alludes to Goldilocks 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.




 * Yang's name in Chinese is Yáng Xiǎo Lóng (Simplified: 阳小龙; Traditional: 陽小龍), which can be roughly translated to "Little Light Dragon" or "Small Dragon of the Sunshine".
 * In "Family", Taiyang calls Yang his "sunny little dragon".
 * Yang's name may be a reference to Bruce Lee, whose given name is also Xiao Long (小龙).
 * Despite having a Chinese name, Yang's given name and surname are inverted. "Yang" would be the surname and her given name would be "Xiao Long". Furthermore, Chinese surnames are usually only one character. This can be explained by Remnant not following real-world customs.
 * Despite Yang's name being Chinese, it is not pronounced in typical Chinese. This is due to the fact that since there is no China in Remnant, the proper Chinese pronunciation does not apply.
 * The characters 阳小龙 appear on an official T-shirt released by Rooster Teeth parodying Akira.
 * According to Lindsay Jones, a little bit of the power for Yang's Semblance comes from her hair, similar to the story of Samson and Delilah. She says that the reason Yang's hair glows is because "it's basically charging up her energy."
 * Yang was a contender in the 54th episode of ScrewAttack's web series, Death Battle, and she fought against Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy VII. Her Aura granted the ability to endure Tifa's strongest attacks long enough for her to activate her Semblance, granting her the victory.
 * After the fight ends, Yang dons a pair of custom, pixel-shades from the "Deal With It" Meme. Barbara Dunkleman, Yang's VA, owns the same pair of glasses in real life.
 * The opening of the fight is similar to the "Yellow" Trailer in RWBY. Yang enters a bar looking for someone and orders a strawberry sunrise with no ice.
 * At the RTX Australia 2016 RWBY Panel, Yang's Skype username was Fireballin17.
 * Yang has so far appeared in two Rooster Teeth Animated Adventures episodes. First in "Racial Super Texas" where she can be seen in a bar, with her missing right arm and again in "Spooky Scary Ghost Stories", where a doll of her and her missing arm can be seen on the bedroom floor.
 * Yang Xiao Long is a free playable DLC character in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle..
 * Yang is the only member of Team RWBY whose timeskip outfit does not include her Emblem.