Yang Xiao Long

"“I'm sorry, I just... I don't think you know what it's like to be left. You have a giant family, recitals to perform at, dinners to attend. I didn't have any of that. My mom left me. Ruby's mom left too. Tai was always busy with school and Ruby couldn't even talk yet. I had to pick up the pieces. I had to keep things together. Alone.“""—Yang to Weiss in Alone Together."

Yang Xiao Long is one of the protagonists of RWBY. She is a Huntress, having been trained at the now-defunct Beacon Academy.

Why She Rocks

 * 1) She's got a simple personality, feisty, cheerful, competitive, and fierce, although, as implied in Armed and Ready, her long, painful convalescence after the fall of Beacon gave her the strength to come roaring back to life, ready to punish the one responsible for her state.
 * 2) She has a great Semblance, Burn, which allows her absorb kinetic energy from every blow she takes in battle and use it to make herself more powerful, a great ability to have.
 * 3) Despite being the bruiser of Team RWBY, she's also one of the most perky and optimistic members who loves making jokes and (while unintentionally crushing her in the process) giving her little half-sister tight hugs.
 * 4) She's strong enough to send Junior across the room before activating her gauntlets, and carry an amp probably four times her size on her shoulder.
 * 5) Character Development: Her time at Beacon allows her to realize being a Huntress isn't a thrilling adventure where recklessly charging into battle is acceptable. When she laments her aimlessness and lack of altruism, she begins to accept that helping people is more important than her own desires. And following the tournament, and the Fall of Beacon, Taiyang resumes her training; including calling her out on the way she uses her Semblance, forcing her to begin to acknowledge she needs to fight smarter, not harder. She eventually lets go of her selfish motives for becoming a Huntress, prioritizing defending innocent people, and later calls out Raven for only being interested in her own safety, takes the relic of Knowledge, despite not wanting the target that it paints on her back.
 * 6) Her Semblance, on top of being a handy tool in battle (when used properly), or her temper, it causes her hair to burst into flames, which has an epic effect.
 * 7) While she can come off as somewhat smothering or nosey, she's overall a supportive and caring big sister to Ruby. And it's later revealed that after Summer's death, Taiyang "shut down" and wasn't able to spend much time woth his daughters due to his job at Signal Academy, leaving Yang as Ruby's mother figure.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) During Volume 3, Yang ends up being framed for acting like a complete monster by Emerald and Mercury on global television, is effectively told that her mother cares very little for her, sees her best friend get stabbed, gets her own arm cut off, and then the person whose life she tried to save simply ran away with no explanation, leaving her in depression.
 * 2) Speaking of her depression, while she's in the midst of it, she acts quite cold and distant to Ruby and more or less starts to view Blake as a traitor. After Ruby and Weiss unintentionally anger her in Volume 5, Yang accuses Weiss of not knowing what it's like to suffer from domestic abuse or neglect despite being told many times beforehand how bad of a childhood Weiss actually had. Thankfully, she does change this behavior, but develops a tendency to blame others for her actions.
 * 3) Volume 7 has her hide the truth about Salem and the Relic of Knowledge from Ironwood along with the others, although, to their credit, they weren't completely trustful of him.
 * 4) Her impulsiveness and temper often get the better of her, and eventually leads to her arm getting severed by Adam.
 * 5) She got flanderized and out of character in RWBY Ice Queendom.

Trivia

 * 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".
 * 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. They said that the reason Yang's hair glows is because "it's basically charging up her energy."
 * She has a motorcycle called Bumblebee.
 * The Japanese dub has her shout ORAORAORA!!!!! when she fights.