RWBY Tuesday #3: World Of RWBY (Volume 5-8)
a.k.a. Gatherer Of Moss
Last RWBY Tuesday, I covered the first four Volumes of RWBY, going more in depth about my initial feelings, plot points and synopses, lore, the content of the "World Of Remnant" shorts, and any foreshadowing or callbacks I noticed on my various re-watches throughout the years. And even though there aren't any more "World Of Remnant" episodes, I'm going to continue my World Of RWBY coverage this week as promised, with Volumes Five through Eight.
And speaking of short content, today's post will be far from short, but still, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave some Semblance of a comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you Scroll, follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you make eye contact with, and to summon that rocket-powered gym locker full of the latest Relics of news, Knowledge, and Creation on my content.
RWBY Volume Five wastes no time getting things moving (not as fast as Volume Six will, but still, there's no time wasted on further journeys after Volume Four's prolonged trek through the wilderness; Qrow, Ruby, Nora, Jaune, and Ren are already in Mistral and a short distance from Haven Academy when the Volume begins) with some of that good, specifically worded dialogue from Qrow as he leads Team RNJR through the mountainside kingdom of Mistral and its beautifully drawn and rendered scenery: "Stay away from the lower levels. The higher you go, the nicer it gets." Keep this in mind for Volume Seven as a point of apt (or ironic) description for Atlas.
The group arrive at Haven to find it eerily deserted (but for Headmaster Leo Lionheart, who is in various forms of remote contact with Dr. Watts and Salem herself, as revealed in the previous Volume's finale), and begin to suspect that Lionheart is compromised. Qrow goes to the local bar for a drink, giving context to the Volume Four post-credits scene where Oscar approaches him and asks for Ozpin's cane.
By the way, if you haven't noticed, all of Ozpin's inner circle are based on Wizard Of Oz characters: Ozpin himself, Glynda, Qrow, Ironwood, and Lionheart. I half expect the headmaster of Shade (that's the academy in Vacuo that Sun and Neptune transferred from) to be a woman named Dorothy with a dog Faunus bodyguard named Toto.
But getting back to the story, it's a parallel narrative like Volume Four, just with fewer threads to follow and a bit more meta-coincidence going on.
After her escape from the Schnee mansion, Weiss is also making her way to Haven aboard a dust smuggling airship when they are attacked by Lancers (wasp-like Grimm with "Get over here!" stingers). The ensuing dogfight amidst a field of gravity-defying islands is fun and epic to watch, but the ship takes too much damage and crashes on the outskirts of Mistral, where Weiss is captured by members of Raven's bandit tribe.
Meanwhile, having left home herself with a sweet motorcycle, a newly-painted cybernetic arm, and a goal in mind (to find her mother and get her to use her Semblance to send Yang to Ruby), Yang also runs afoul of her mother's bandits (this group led by Shay D. Mann--get it?--who is voiced by Mr. "Ya Damned Nerd!" himself from My Hero Academia, Cliff Chapin), whom she stomps in her own cool fight sequence before revealing to Shay that she is Raven's daughter. So much personality to this whole sequence!
I have always thought the fight animation and choreography were amazing, but Volume Four just seems to be on another level with its cinematography, using inventive angles and panning techniques that I don't recall seeing in previous Volumes.
Also, whenever characters meet or reunite in this Volume, it feels so satisfying after the tragedy of Volume Three and the division of Volume Four. Yang reuniting with Weiss after all those months of their respective house arrests (Weiss at her father's hand, and Yang at her own hand--literally, because she only had the one) and standing back-to with Weiss' giant knight as they prepare to fight off Raven and her goons was a squee! moment for me.
But rather than fight, they end up talking with Raven, who reveals the truth about the Maidens and the Relics (because, remember, Yang and Weiss were not present for Qrow's "Two Brothers, Four Maidens" talk in Volume Four), as well as showing them that, yes, she is also a bird-shifter, and magic is real. And (we knew this since she rescued Yang from Neo in Volume Two) her Semblance lets her teleport to specific people she has some kind of connection with, so she cuts a portal for them to go directly to Qrow and Ruby, promising that she won't be so kind to them next time they meet.
However, Raven is soon approached by Cinder, Emerald, Mercury, and Watts, who have learned from Lionheart's cowardly spycraft that Raven is harboring the Spring Maiden, whose magic is the key to retrieving the Relic of Knowledge from Haven Academy.
Re-reunited at last, Ruby, Weiss, Yang, Qrow, Nora, Jaune, and Ren (also now joined by Oscar/Ozpin) get another lore dump, including that, yes, I was right about Ozpin being the shut-in wizard who gave the first Maidens their powers. On top of that, he also gave Raven and Qrow their bird-shifting powers!
As Raven and Cinder plan to infiltrate Haven and steal the Relic, and Teams RWY and JNR train with Ozpin and Qrow (with Oscar developing a crush on Ruby and getting his own training with Ozpin), Blake and her family are on the island of Menagerie, working with Sun to recruit the local population against Adam's hostile takeover of the White Fang, all the while facing opposition from twin brothers (and obvious ironic Klansman references) Corsic and Fennec and a chameleon Faunus named Illia (chameleon and Trojan War references) with conflicted feelings towards Blake. Those feelings, coupled with the twins' brutal, extremist behavior, lead Illia to switch sides in the third fight sequence of the Volume. It's probably the weakest in terms of choreography, as it has more cutaways, edited composition, and focus on basic shootouts over RWBY's usual brand of frenetic melee combat, but in terms of themes and relationships, it does more heavy lifting than Blake's father.
The best fight (or collection thereof) is saved for last, with Ruby, Weiss, Yang, Oscar, Qrow, Jaune, Nora, and Ren battling Cinder, Emerald, Mercury, Lionheart, Raven and her sidekick Vernal (like the vernal equinox that marks the beginning of Spring), and Hazel (he's the other character referenced in the "World Of Remnant: Dust" episode, as his Semblance allows him to ignore the pain of injecting raw Dust into his body) for control of the Relic of Knowledge. As for Watts, he has been sent to Atlas to set up the events of Volume Seven.
The characters are paired off by their personal grudges, leaving Cinder (whom Salem has augmented with Grimm anatomy to replace the arm she lost to Ruby's eyes in the Volume Three finale), Raven, and Vernal free to access the Relic, where the series' first name trope subversion happens (that is, just because someone's name is a season, that doesn't mean they are or will become a Maiden) when it's revealed that Vernal was just a pawn and Raven was the Spring Maiden all along. It's a good twist that, even after you've seen it play out, watching it again only serves to New Game Plus the audience with little hints and Easter Eggs that are the bread and butter of RWBY's writing. Despite Vernal's fate and treatment as a character, the twist reveal also leads into more of that next-level fight composition and choreography as Raven and Cinder go all Dragon Ball Z on each other with giant, elemental swords.
Outside, Adam's forces have set explosives and are adding to the chaos of the fight inside Haven, only to be stopped by the cathartically triumphant arrival of Blake and her family, Sun, Illia, and their volunteer army from Menagerie. Throw in a few dramatic eye contact moments between Blake and Yang, the complete, visible collapse of Adam's authority, Jaune unlocking his Semblance (which lets him Amplify other people's Auras to heal near-fatal wounds and do other cool stuff that will be important in the next Volume), Lionheart getting eaten by one of Salem's flying spaghetti monsters (a callback to the "World Of Remnant: Grimm" episode and Torchwick's death in Volume Three, hinting that Salem has a degree of remote control over the Grimm, and caused them to eat Lionheart and Torchwick when she deemed them no longer useful), and the Teams' victory over the forces of evil, and Volume Five is pure, "my heart can't take this!" in the complete opposite way that Volume Three made me feel. But we're not done yet, Ticketholders!
Adam gets away (as do Hazel, Mercury, and Emerald--who projects a giant, screaming Salem illusion to terrify our heroes; it works), and Yang confronts Raven at the Relic Vault. Ashamed at her own veiled cowardice and respectful of her daughter's strength of character, Raven flees, allowing Yang to claim the Relic. Things end with Oscar giving the group a message from Ozpin that they must get the Relic to Atlas, and in a post-credits scene, it's revealed that Raven flew to visit Tai (Yang and Ruby's father) after she fled the Vault.
Lots of resolution and catharsis, some of the best fights of varying scale that the series has ever had, a solid twist, and plenty of setup for future Volumes. Just amazing!
My only gripes about Volume Five are how Vernal was treated, the smaller amount of callback content, and the absence of more character trailers on CrunchyRoll. Ruby got a character trailer prior to Volume Four that I neglected to mention, and the rest of Team RWBY got their own individual trailers showing flashbacks they had while journeying to Mistral, but these are only available on Rooster Teeth, and I'm using CrunchyRoll for my catch-up binge this year to save on subscription costs, so I didn't get to see them. Maybe when I do this again for Volume Ten?
There are a few bits to speculate about here, such as the Relic Vaults seeming to be separate dimensions with different spatial properties than the outside world (relevant in Volume Eight and possibly Nine) and Cinder's comment when she first sees the Knowledge Vault hinting that she tried to get into the Vault at Beacon and was unsuccessful (Ozpin also tells our heroes that he made that Relic significantly harder to access, and that his cane is not a Relic but it has "a few more surprises in store"--we also know that Ozpin does his fair share of fractional truthing, so it's possible based on the spatial properties of the Knowledge Vault that, while Ozpin's cane may not be a Relic, it could be a Relic Vault).
After being dishonored and unseated in the attack on Haven, Adam goes on an off-camera killing spree against the remains of the radicalized faction of the White Fang (conveniently, there is no mention of him attacking Blake's family, and like with the members of Team RWBY in the previous two Volumes, Adam has a Trailer that is not available to view on CrunchyRoll) until he somehow crosses paths with Blake and Yang in the finale and meets his 80s/90s action movie villain end after another stunning, highly stylized fight with the now-official couple. We also learn that his Grimm visor and the bandana he wears in this Volume aren't just for show, but to hide a Schnee Dust Company branding scar over his left eye. Adam wasn't my favorite villain, and this reveal seemed like a last-minute, incongruous effort to make him sympathetic, but I love the stylization the animators gave to his Semblance attacks, and this final battle was a fitting ending for him, and for Blake and Yang's multi-Volume-long recovery and empowerment arc.
The other villain arc of note involves Cinder (who was turned into a Nostalgia Critic/Christopher Lloyd meme by Raven at the end of the last Volume)
On the heroes' side of things, Sun is officially in Blake's friend zone (and out of the next three to four Volumes entirely) as he decides to return to Shade Academy in Vacuo so he and his Team can train to the next level, and Team RWBY and the remains of Team JNPR (accompanied by Oscar, Qrow, and a mysterious old woman named Maria) travel by train to Argus, where they hope to gain passage to Atlas. But because the train is full of people and has visible anti-Grimm weaponry and defensive mechanisms onboard, and Grimm are attracted to negative emotions (also Relics for some reason tied to "The Two Brothers" fable), Team RWBY, Qrow, and Oscar/Ozpin elect to detach the rear cars (with Blake having a Black Trailer flashback as she does so) and kill the Grimm while Jaune helps Ren mask the passengers' emotions and they and Nora make it to Argus offscreen without incident.
As for Team RWBY, Oscar, Qrow, and Maria (who was too slow to make the transition to the front of the train because contrived writing--and ageism, if you're toxically hypersensitive about wokeness or the absence thereof in the entertainment industry), they survive the back half of the train crashing, as do the Relic of Knowledge and Yang's motorcycle. Only two episodes in to Volume Six, Oscar makes a power play against Ozpin and his fractionally truthful nature by telling Ruby how to activate the Relic (a lamp that is home to a mostly naked, blue woman named Jinn who can answer almost any three questions every hundred years, and I would obviously take her over Robin Williams or Will Smith any day of the next century), which leads to Jinn narrating a flashback about "The Girl In the Tower." It is revealed that Salem was once a human who fell in love with a hero named Ozma, and was cursed with immortality after "The Two Brothers" refused to revive him for her. This drove her to turn the human race against them, so they wiped out all mortal humanity, started fresh with a magic-less race of humans and the Faunus (multiple versions of humanity is a common theme in creation mythologies, usually defined as four Ages), scattered their power on the Remnant of Earth in the form of the Relics, assigned a reincarnated Ozma to protect the Relics and redeem the mortal population, and left with such speed and force that they blew a chunk out of the moon. Ozma later rediscovers Salem (who had sacrificed herself to the Brother of Darkness' Grimm pools in hopes that their energy would remove her immortality, but was instead turned into the Grimm/human hybrid form she is in the series' present), and they have four daughters (all of whom are dressed in the same colors and have the same hair and eye colors as the "Four Maidens," though a fight between Salem and Ozma shortly after shows that their children do not make it, and are therefore not the Maidens from the story--I have some thoughts on this that I will share later). It's pretty clear from the montage of Ozma/Ozpin's bodies throughout the centuries that the King Of Vale from "World Of Remnant: The Great War" was also one of Ozpin's identities, but not a certainty. Jinn's story concludes with Ozpin learning from her that he cannot kill Salem. What that means is either a worst-case scenario for Remnant, or one hell of a vague language loophole, and I will also give my thoughts on that later.
But because more contrived, highly coincidental writing, the group find themselves in a small, abandoned town that was wiped out by humanoid Grimm called the Apathy, whose screams can sap a person's will to do much of anything, and it's up to Ruby (with some coaching from Maria, who used to be a legendary, silver-eyed Huntress known as the Grimm Reaper before Salem's henchmen mutilated her eyes) to learn how to tap into the power she used at Beacon and turn it on the Apathy to save her friends. Also, like when a speedrunner chokes into a death spiral in the final level of a videogame, it turns out that Argus was conveniently just a screen transition away from the Apathy ghost town!
After the group reunite with Jaune, Nora, and Ren at the home of one of Jaune's seven sisters, and learn that Ozpin has gone radio silent inside Oscar's mind, we come to "Dead End," which I call "that episode" because everyone goes out looking for Oscar, and Jaune finds himself at a memorial statue of Pyrrha, where he is joined by a mysterious woman with red hair and the same voice actress as Pyrrha, and who disappears after leaving a bouquet at the base of the statue, unnoticed by his teammates when they arrive and join him for an in memoriam moment. Again, I'm not crying; you're crying. I need to be alone with my thoughts. Well, more alone with my thoughts than I usually am. Just don't stop reading, and keep doing all that call to action stuff I mentioned at the top.
Okay; now that I'm composed, the group decide that if they can't get passage to Atlas, they'll just steal an airship and fly there themselves, and they pretty much do that, but not in a ruthless way, and not without some complications (like the commanding officer of the Argus base trying to blast them out of the sky with a giant mech, the aforementioned run-in with Adam, and the appearance of a Godzilla/fish-like Grimm called the Leviathan, which forces Ruby into another trial-by-fire scenario to use her eyes to defeat it). Ruby's convictions earn the respect of the Argus commander, who allows them to leave in the stolen ship and fly to Atlas, and in a post-credits scene, the villains watch in horror as Salem creates an army of winged gorilla Grimm so she can begin taking matters into her own hands.
Speculation time!
All of these have to do with Jinn's origin story for Salem, beginning with how I think Dust is the crashed fragments of the broken moon that were charged with the Brothers' departing energy. Then there's the messed-up implications of the Faunus having animal characteristics similar to the Brothers' appearance, such as the Faunus potentially being mortal avatars of the Brothers and their treatment and population serving as a future yardstick for humanity's Judgement, or humanity's xenophobia being remnants of the previous Age's ultimate hatred of the gods. Next come my thoughts that, because Ozma and Salem's daughters inherited their magic, they might have also inherited their father's reincarnation ability, and that the first Maidens were his daughters, in a way. And finally, that whole, "Ozpin cannot kill Salem" business. We know from Salem's origin that the God of Light was the one to curse her with immortality. Maria tells Ruby that the power of the silver eyes is derived from his energy. Silver eyes petrify Grimm. Salem is part Grimm. Also, we know from Volume Four that Salem wanted Tyrian to capture Ruby alive. Also, there's Jinn's wording (more of the Rooster Teeth team's "could be important later," specifically written dialogue?) that says Ozpin cannot kill Salem. This doesn't mean Salem can't be killed at all, or even that killing her is the only or ideal option. So, why all the centuries of having her underlings kill and mutilate silver-eyed warriors, and only now wanting Ruby alive? Well, I think that when the story is all over, it will come down to Ruby against Salem, and she will have found a way to use her eyes to purify Salem and restore her mortality, if not straight-up petrify her, and I think that Salem realized this possibility some time after Maria was attacked, and deep down, somewhere beneath the Destructive impulses that have corrupted her, she wants to be stopped, saved, or both.
Watching this Volume critically, it isn't the strongest of the bunch, trying too hard to return to the old, jokey days of the series while keeping the more mature stakes of post-Volume Three RWBY intact, and being clearly over-reliant on coincidence and contrivance for plot progression: Everyone happened to survive, Yang's bike happens to still be in one piece, Maria happens to have silver eyes, Adam happens to show up, the group happens to have a magical artifact that can spend an entire episode telling the audience what the characters need to know, Sun happens to not be important to the story anymore, the other villains happen to be too preoccupied with their own problems to interfere with the McGuffin escort mission,... And aside from Salem's backstory, a few small but personal and creative fights (Blake and Yang vs Adam, Team RWBY vs. Cordovan, Cinder vs. Neo) and that Pyrrha tribute episode, Volume Six doesn't offer much. Let's see if anything improves in Volume Seven.
But where are my tissues?
No, I need them because you're crying again, you pervert!
Anyway, now that you've composed yourselves, I barely have time to dry this clear, salty liquid that got on my face somehow before our heroes are arrested and taken to see Ironwood and Winter (the latter of whom always has awkwardly wholesome interactions with Weiss when they reunite, and I'm here for it--but not entirely ignorant of what a micro-managed hellhole Mantle is because of her and Ironwood's fear-based militarization tactics; "gets better the higher you go," my ass!). Againyway, Teams RWBY and JNR get complete redesigns to reflect their maturity as characters, upgraded weapons, and Huntsman licenses, and are formally introduced to the team that apprehended them. These are the Ace Ops (name inspired by Aesop's Fables), a by-the-book military squad that serve as mentors and shaky allies to our titular team, but are so obviously set up to be rivals when circumstances inevitably go full-on Volume Three dark once again. The Ace Ops (Harriet, who can run fast and has cybernetic arm gauntlets, Vine, who is robotically stoic and has stretchy limb Aura constructs, Marrow, a dog-tailed Faunus who can ironically halt movement with the "Stay" command, and Elm, a strongwoman with a rocket-launcher hammer--so of course Nora wants to be her best friend immediately--who can literally root her feet to the ground) are led by Clover, whose Semblance is the direct opposite luck polarity to Qrow's, and who becomes something of a tragic love interest for our resident bad-luck bird-man. While the Teams train with the Ace Ops and go on missions (like fighting a Geist in the abandoned Dust mine where Ilia's parents died, or Jaune becoming a reluctant ladies' man when he's put on crossing guard duty in a school zone--there's that weird tonal mix again!), Watts and Tyrian work from the shadows to frame Ironwood and Penny for murder, install Weiss' asshole father as a Kingdom Council puppet (whom I forgot to mention is voiced by Beerus from Dragon Ball Super, Jason Douglas), and turn the screws on Ironwood's mounting paranoia (though the latter has more to do with Cinder and Neo's infiltration of the Schnee mansion and Team RWBY repeating Ozpin's mistakes than anything else).
In addition to the Ace Ops and Dr. Pietro, the new characters include Rule 63 Robin Hood (who lost the rigged election against Weiss' father and has a lie detector handshake) and her "Happy Huntresses."
As it turns out, the reason Ironwood increased military presence in Mantle and Atlas, closed the kingdom's borders, and imposed a Dust embargo is because he requisitioned Amity Colosseum (the mobile stadium where the Vytal Tournament took place) and needs an insane amount of Gravity Dust and other resources to repurpose it as the first ever orbital communications satellite in Remnant's history (somewhat negating that whole, "Dust loses its effectiveness outside Remnant's atmosphere" statement from the "World Of Remnant: CCT" episode) so he can tell the world about Salem, and for awhile, things seem to be going smoothly. Weiss' father is unseated and arrested, Clover and Qrow are connecting, Ironwood and Oscar are talking, Winter and Penny are bonding, the Ace Ops, RWBY, and JNR are working with Robin's group to evacuate Mantle's citizens up to Atlas and quell a Grimm attack, and Ironwood even baits Watts into an amazing gunfight in the Colosseum with fluctuating gravity and shifting perspectives (which he wins like a stone-cold badass). But then Ironwood finds a glass chess piece in his office (left there by Cinder as a reference to her break-in during the dance in Volume Two), and starts stupidly questioning every logical decision he made in the last twenty minutes of screentime. The Ace Ops don't question orders, Qrow teams up with Tyrian against Clover after the kids are marked as traitors (leading to Tyrian framing Qrow for Clover's murder by killing him with Qrow's weapon), and it's bad decisions all around.
Well, except for Penny.
See, there's this sub-plot wherein Cinder learns that Ironwood has the current Winter Maiden under medical observation, and has been imprinting Winter on her in hopes of avoiding another name trope subversion like we had in Volume Five. Also, as part of going back on his word to harbor the Mantle refugees and raise Amity into the sky, Ironwood needs a Winter Maiden of sound mind to access the Vault Of Creation so he can take Atlas into space where it will be safe from Grimm attacks and Salem's other forces. But Cinder attacks, the Winter Maiden goes berserk, and the only one capable of surviving the freezing winds of her rampage is Penny. So, Penny is the new Winter Maiden, and she easily drives away Cinder with Winter's help.
Also, Oscar gets shot point-blank by Ironwood (saved only by his Aura being active), forcing Ozpin to re-emerge, trigger Oscar's Semblance, and use one of his cane's "few surprises" to teleport Oscar to unknown safety.
There is no post-credits scene this Volume (instead, we get another tribute to Monty Oum, who still has overall story-writing credit, showing that this is all part of one, contiguous vision), but the finale ends with Salem arriving in Mantle aboard a giant, flying whale.
So, stupid decisions and over-reactions made things really bad, and several plot points are up in the air. I wasn't the biggest fan of this Volume, either, aside from the new characters and character designs, the atmosphere, the few moments of hope, the fights (even though most of them are a bit samey--this Volume loves 2v1 fights to a fault), Cinder and Neo's partnership, and Penny's return. Oh, and the prehistoric/Ice Age-inspired Grimm designs were something new and appreciated.
But Ironwood's sudden flip to insanity in the penultimate episode and Qrow teaming up with Tyrian instead of Clover were just bad, stupid-by-necessity writing that tarnished the experience for me, even though I understood what the writers were trying to evoke.
Things start off looking bad for everyone, with Qrow and Robin in custody (framed for Clover's murder and supposed conspiracy and treason, respectively) next to Jaques Schnee and Dr. Watts, Ironwood shooting the Stan Lee of the Atlas Council in the face while Winter and the Ace Ops stand watch, Salem's giant whale Grimm turning Mantle into the setting for one of those horde survival mobile games while she sends a new, more intelligent Grimm called the Hound (which bears a resemblance to the Brother of Darnkess' beast form) to capture Oscar and force him to activate the Lamp for her, and Teams RWBY and JNR divided over priorities (they re-form into temporary teams that I am calling RWBN--basically Team RWBY with Nora replacing Yang--and ORYJ--Oscar, Ren, Yang, and Jaune, who are also accompanied by Penny; accom-Penny'd?). Penny and Team ORYJ sneak into Amity to help Pietro finish the global communications plan, and Team RWBN work with the Happy Huntresses to fight off Grimm and expedite the Mantle evacuation.
There is so much going on in Volume Eight (like, enough for Volumes Two and Three to say it's pushing itself too hard), what with Oscar getting kidnapped and tortured, Watts giving Penny a "get to the Creation Vault and self-terminate" virus, Ironwood getting even more "shoot and nuke everyone to keep them safe" paranoid than he was last time (including incinerating Weiss' father with a laser bazooka, threatening Mantle with a nuclear bomb, and almost shooting Marrow in the face), Nora and Penny getting injured, the Schnee family reuniting on good terms, Klein the butler returning, Ren's Semblance evolving to a kind of emotional ki-sense as he finally accepts his feelings for Nora, Hazel and Emerald switching sides, Robin and Qrow going 2v1 on Ironwood, the Ace Ops learning that teammates and friends don't have to be mutually exclusive and some missions are wrong, Penny getting a human body from the Spirit of Creation before she fucking dies again! to make Winter the Winter Maiden so she can subdue Ironwood and Cinder, the reveal of the Hound's true nature, and the final handful of episodes playing like the third act of a convoluted heist movie (think the end of Volume Six, but with two more "how we got here" flashbacks and at least three more concurrent plot threads), I would suggest you just watch the series or read the Wikipedia entry on RWBY episodes because I could copy and paste every episode summary here and still not cover everything. It's better as a watch.
Just know that by the end of it all, the civilians of Atlas and Mantle are evacuated to Vacuo--in the middle of a Grimm-filled sandstorm, so planning wasn't anyone's strong suit--with Winter coming to their aid, Cinder manages to claim two Relics for Salem (capped off by Cinder giving Ironwood a "this is Checkmate" middle finger, which I loved), Vine sacrifices himself to contain the bomb's detonation, and Cinder's attack on the evacuation Gateway Space causes Team RWBY to fall to their apparent deaths. But a brief post-credits scene shows Ruby's scythe embedded in the sands of a strange and colorful beach, ending this collection of bleak outcomes on a spark of hope.
On to the opinions and speculations!
Cinder is something of a focus character this Volume, getting a Cinderella-inspired origin (with some great, "Cinderelly"-influenced theme music by the Williams') that does a much better job of making her sympathetic (despite murdering her step-family and Hunting mentor for her freedom) than the half-assed facial brand they slapped onto Adam before he was killed. It fits into her hunger for power and freedom and paradoxical attraction to servitude quite well. Granted, she is getting a bit one-note by this point, with her dialogue and motivations for the past four Volumes boiling down to, "must kill Ruby for revenge" and "must get the power of the Maidens." But the fact that Salem hasn't had her eaten yet despite her selfishness and many failures speaks to how much the creators and fans like her. And I am no different.
With the exception of three fights (Penny & Maria vs. Cinder & Neo--with the highlight being Maria going all Prequel Yoda on Neo--Hazel, Emerald, and Team ORYJ vs. Salem, and Winter vs. Ironwood), the choreography and cinematography are quite unremarkable. Even the finale fight sequence (a double-dose of Maiden vs. Maiden in the Gateway Space, which sounds like it would be epic, and by its players, setting, and precedents, should have been epic) gave me a bad case of boredom and burnout that I haven't felt since I binge-watched Dragon Ball over a decade ago.
The Hound can speak (giving eagle-eyed fans, like the previously mentioned I'm Strange and their viewers, a nod back to Volume One when Yang told a Beowulf Grimm, "you could've said 'no'.") because, as is revealed when Ruby uses her eyes on it, Salem created it by using the same process that gave Cinder her arm on a Faunus with silver eyes. This retroactively explains why Salem no longer seeks to kill or blind silver-eyed warriors, and Ruby and Yang reveal that their mother, Summer, was Salem's first test subject.
Furthermore, I previously mentioned that I think Salem might be subconsciously fatalistic as an explanation for why she wants Ruby alive, and while the reveals of the Hound and Summer's fate contradict my reasoning, Ozpin and Oscar's pleas to Salem's henchmen suggest that the speculation itself is sound. But I have a new wrinkle to my thoughts (and not just because that's how brains look). According to Oscar/Ozpin, Salem wants to collect the Relics because she believes the Brothers will return and destroy humanity and herself along with it. What she isn't considering is that the Brothers have cursed her before, and may choose to curse her again by keeping her alive and alone in a truly empty world. So, yeah; when this series eventually decides to end on a happy note, it will be because of Ruby's eyes.
Moving on to the Relic Vaults: in the final few episodes, Ruby and Weiss propose a space "like the Vaults," describing them as dimensions separate from Remnant's plane of existence, which the Spirit Of Creation corroborates, meaning I was right about them before, and I could still be right about Ozpin's cane being a Vault (Oscar describes the energy outputs from the cane that he used to teleport and to destroy the whale Grimm as centuries of stored kinetic energy, but Ozpin lies and omits, and that explanation does not preclude his physics magic--with which he has claimed multiple times to have created the Vaults--from doing double-duty).
Speaking of creation, it's stated that the Spirit Of Creation can only make one thing at a time, and once he makes it, the previous thing he made disappears. The Spirit himself says he made a flying city (Atlas), which is a completely different thing from making a city fly (i.e.: creating a city with flight built in, versus making a flight mechanism for an existing city, where the latter appears to be the case with Atlas because the city itself does not disappear). This is a glaring fault in the writing team's usually phrasing-focused dialogue. On top of that, why do Human Penny and her infected robot body continue to exist simultaneously after the Gateway Space is Created? It's probably something super-simple, like the Spirit Of Creation separated her Aura (which made it's own flesh body?) from the robotic body without actually making anything, but still, if the separation process counts as a Creation, it should have reversed once the Gateway Space came into existence. And on a larger scale, if the Spirit Of Creation is part of what makes humanity and the Faunus what they are and lets them create things on their own, how have humanity, the Faunus, and their technology and buildings survived any prior uses of the Staff Of Creation? Things that it's better to not overthink? Things that it's better to not overthink.
However, in light of this Volume being so packed with plots, the few writing deficiencies, the requisite escalation of a darker tone from the previous Volume's deficient late-game writing, and the mostly lackluster fights, I still appreciate it for its strong character moments.
I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention that Volume Eight's production was interrupted (as many things were in 2020) by the height of the COVID pandemic, and those current events are reflected in a bit of commentary dialogue from Oscar: "Why can't people learn to cooperate?" Free will is an amazing thing, but it can also be one hell of a she-Hound when things get Grimm....
Next week, the RWBY Tuesday that I actually planned and scheduled to release (covering Volume Nine) is coming, as is the Justice League crossover review that Friday, and everything will get supercut together the following week.
Until then, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave some Semblance of a comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you Scroll, follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you make eye contact with, and to summon that rocket-powered gym locker full of the latest Relics of news, Knowledge, and Creation on my content.
Ticketmaster,
The Blogger Who Fell Through the World,
Still Gathering Moss,
Out.
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