RWBY Tuesday #6: RWBY Supercut 2023
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. The Animeister,
a.k.a. The Animeister,
a.k.a. Gatherer Of Moss,
a.k.a. The Blogger Who Fell Through The World,
Thankful to Be Crossing Off Another SCW.
2023 is the year of taking care of my SCWs, which stands for Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda, and is not to be confused with the Pokémon, Sudowoodo, if you haven't read the previous entries in the RWBY Tuesday series. If you haven't done so, the discussion/review content for all of that will be included below in this supercut of the series' content so far.
However, I would still appreciate if you went to the RWBY Tuesday link above and gave the individual posts some more viewership love. And for the last time this year, I would like to remind you through a collage of RWBY-related puns to please Become A Ticketholder to join my Team 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.
And now, to Fall into how we got here....
I originally had very little of a plan of how I would structure the November 21st RWBY Tuesday post, vacillating between starting with a reprint of the original RWBY Anime Spotlight, simply including a link to it before moving on to the V9 and movie content, doing V9 and the movies separately like I did for DanMachi (anime retrospective and Arrow Of the Orion! movie) and Dragon Ball Super (series and Broly movie, Super Hero movie), or revisiting the first eight Volumes in-depth and doing one, big post of everything.
In the end, I decided the answer was yes, and here we are at the latter, which began with the two-part retrospective, World Of RWBY.
The series takes inspiration from steampunk and fairy tales. With its on-the-nose character names, deceptively simplistic animation style (which has caught a lot of criticism despite how fluid and epic it can be), short episode time, frenetic action scenes, slapstick comedy, and somewhat predictable plot mechanics, RWBY seems to be geared toward a younger audience, but is in reality, better, deeper, more complex, sometimes darker in tone, more socially aware, and more badass than it has any right to be.
But before it even started, we were treated to the Color Trailers: A short combat, personality, and talent showcase for each of the four eponymous leads.
The Red Trailer has peppy team leader Ruby Rose (though she has yet to even meet her team during the trailer's events) showing off her Rose Petal Semblance (an attack/teleport that turns her into a collection of rose petals to allow her to bypass enemies and obstacles, rescue allies, and sometimes defy gravity, at high speeds, and is existentially terrifying because she leaves rose petals behind every time she uses it, possibly losing part of herself in the process, though the ramifications of this are never addressed) and the Crescent Rose (a red scythe that transforms into a sniper rifle and can be fired downward to act as a Scrooge McDuck/Shovel Knight/Cranky Kong pogo stick or add cutting force to the scythe) against a horde of Grimm. Character dialogue in Volume One places this before the series.
The White Trailer shows proper ice princess Weiss Schnee (that’s Snow White in German--and yes, she has powers to match) singing a "Mirror, Mirror"-inspired ballad (vocals and songwriting provided by Casey Lee Williams and Jeff Williams, respectively) as accompaniment for her battle with a white knight the size of your average Dark Souls boss. This possibly takes place some time in Volume Four.
Unlike the Red and White Trailers, the Black Trailer features dialogue, and follows Blake and an as-yet-unknown red-headed swordsman as they rob a train. But it's not the Soul Train because gingers aren't allowed to ride the Soul Train.... The trailer mainly keeps the duo's identities and motives vague, but differentiates their perspectives on collateral violence quite well. Later information places this before Volume One.
The Yellow Trailer follows prideful powerhouse Yang Xiaolong, who is also Ruby’s stepsister, as she shakes down a nightclub owner named Junior (established here, and again in Volume Four, to be a stupid name) for information on someone's whereabouts (presumably her mother? or Ruby?), which escalates into an epic bar brawl with some of the best fight choreography and animation in the first Volume. This is also set prior to the series, and will be slightly important in Volume Two.
The series itself begins with a mysterious narrator giving a Cliff's Notes introduction to the world of Remnant (humans, Faunus--this series' take on demi-humans--the Creatures Of Grimm, Dust--RWBY's steampunk elemental energy source--and the four kingdoms: Vale--where most of the first three Volumes take place--Mistral, Atlas, and Vacuo), and those who are stumbling across the series for the first time, like I was, meet Ruby Rose at the From Dust 'Til Dawn shop (hinting that, if this were a more adult-oriented series, it wouldn't be out of place for one of the characters to be a vampire with a shotgun penis), where she nearly thwarts a robbery by the Clockwork Orange-inspired Roman Torchwick, who is in league with a mysterious pyrokinetic woman. Ruby's escapades draw the attention of Beacon Academy's headmaster, Ozpin (who draws attention to Ruby's silver eyes) and his assistant, Glynda Goodwitch (because Wizard Of Oz references, and her Semblance power lets her rewind the scenery's destruction animations). As such, Ruby gets enrolled at Beacon a year early, and is introduced to her future teammates, as well as comedy-relief Rule 63 Joan Of Arc (Jaune), beautiful celebrity and Volume Three foreshadowing incarnate (Pyrrha Nikos), Rule 63 Thor (Nora Valkyrie), and her childhood friend but definitely don't ship them, Asian Martial Arts Guy (Lie Ren). When they're not slaying Grimm, running afoul of Torchwick's Dust heist schemes, or rocketing around the forests of Vale on their transforming weapons, Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Yang, Jaune, Pyrrha, Nora, and Ren spend the first season dealing with typical high school social problems like boring classes, bullies (Jaune gets bullied and extorted for no less than four episodes), fitting in, making unlikely friends (Ruby, Weiss, and Blake have race and class issues to work through for most of the Volume), and struggling with budding romantic feelings (Jaune has a crush on Weiss--who constantly rejects him--all the while ignoring anime hair color tropes and the gorgeous cereal commercial celebrity and combat prodigy who wants nothing more than to help him be his best self to the extent that she gives Jaune some of her soul to help him activate his own soul energy, which makes Volume Three all the more painful to anticipate and watch). The final two episodes are an almost-out-of-nowhere revelation dump that introduce two new characters (the socially awkward and mysteriously overpowered Penny Polendina, whose weapon of choice is a backpack full of Doctor Octopus swords that she can fling at the opponent or combine to fire her Aura--that's the soul energy I mentioned above--like a railgun; and Sun Wukong, a monkey Faunus with a staff that splits into dual-wielded, semiautomatic flintlock pistols because that's how guns work but it looks cool, but also Journey To the West references). Blake and Weiss explode at each other and Blake runs off after letting slip that (even though I spoiled it last time by referring to her as a "goth, ninja cat-girl") she is secretly a Faunus, and used to be a member of a radical Faunus-rights group called the White Fang (who caused Weiss' family a lot of trouble in the past because her father's company runs a Dust monopoly that uses Faunus as slave labor). So the remains of Team RWBY, along with Penny and Team JNPR, go looking for Blake, who reluctantly teamed up with Sun to infiltrate a White Fang rally where Torchwick is the guest speaker. The group fight off Torchwick and his White Fang associates, but he escapes to meet up with the woman who helped him escape from Glynda and Ruby in the first episode. But now, she has help.
There wasn't much to this first Volume (I had to constantly double-check because my brain wished some of the fights in Volume Two were in Volume One instead), but the team's first big fight against a Nevermore (giant, raven-like Grimm) remains an early highlight of the series. In terms of "this will be important later," Ozpin frequently alludes to being much older than he looks and having "made more mistakes than any man, woman, or child on this planet," and Blake mentions that she is reading a book about a man with two souls, each fighting for control. These will be important in Volumes Four and Six. Also, make note of any time you see any normal-sized black birds.
There are also the "World Of Remnant" shorts that share the same art style and female narrator as the beginning of the series' pilot: one explaining "Dust" (and making allusions to Cinder and another character whom we will meet in Volume Four), one going into more detail about the four "Kingdoms" (and referencing the small towns and tribes of wandering bandits in between; another allusion to Volume Four that will be explored further in Volume Five), one explaining "Grimm" behavior and intelligence, and a DVD/Blu-ray exclusive one that parrots what Pyrrha told Jaune about how "Aura" works.
Other things that will be important later include Jaune telling Ren in the finale that they will visit "that village" some other time (Volume Four), the underground train tunnels (referenced again in Volume Seven), and the finale's ending (where the mystery man from the Black Trailer returns, revealing that he is in league with Cinder's group and intends to execute a hostile takeover of the White Fang on their behalf; he will return in Volume Three, and the White Fang takeover will be felt in Volume Four and explored in more depth in Volume Five) and post-credits scene (where Yang confronts her rescuer, who says, "we need to talk"). Dialogue in Volume Three seems to suggest that this scene does not take place between Volumes, but it could just be a rare case of the writers forgetting continuity. Whatever it may be, she will come up in conversation (and in a certain photo) in the next Volume, and play a big part in Volume Five.
As for the content of Volume Three, it is the obligatory Fighting Tournament Arc season, focusing on the matches and associated social dynamics of the previously hinted-at Vytal Festival Fighting Tournament.
The main Teams of note are RWBY (Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang), JNPR (Jaune, Nora, Pyrrha, and Ren), and CMET (Cinder, Mercury, Emerald, and Neopolitan, but I'm going with Team Comet and what Wikipedia says is Neo's birth name--Trivia Vanille--because otherwise they'd be Team Semen😳), with Team CFVY (a Team name that gives me Trump Tweet flashbacks, but it's Coco--the one who fights with a minigun briefcase from the Volume Two finale--Fox, Velvet--a rabbit Faunus who was bullied in Volume One and was shown to have a photography hobby in the "Penny is a battle droid" episode of Volume Two, but her Semblance compels her to photograph people's weapons for reasons that were hinted at in Volume Two's finale and will be awesome in this Volume's big Avengers-type battle--and Yatsuhashi--the Team's Big Guy With Anime Sword) being important in the finale, Sun and Neptune's Team providing comedy relief, and Penny returning for some setup in the Tournament's second round. The Tournament begins with a four-on-four Team Round, followed by a Doubles Round, and finally, a Singles bracket. Participants of the Doubles Round are not required to represent their Teams in the Singles Round, but some do.
Notable moments during the Tournament include Sun and Neptune winning the Team Round despite being at a 2-4 disadvantage and having to deal with Neptune's fear of water, Weiss earning the respect of a young man whose father's shop was driven out of business by the Schnee Dust Monopoly--I mean Company--by eliminating herself to weaken his Aura in the Doubles Round, Yang's fight with Mercury, and Pyrrha's fight with Penny (until it goes horribly wrong).
Outside the arena, we get such incidents as Weiss' father freezing her credit card so she can't buy her team giant bowls of Ramen, a duel between Qrow (Ruby's mentor and "Uncle," and Yang's biological Uncle) and Winter (Weiss' older sister and General Ironwood's second-in-command), and a meeting between Ozpin, Ironwood, Winter, and Qrow, wherein Qrow mentions having seen "the things She's made," and identifies Cinder as the one who hacked into Beacon and as being "responsible for Autumn's condition." This meeting splinters off into Ozpin having a conversation with Pyrrha about her favorite fairy tales (among others, she name drops "The Two Brothers" and "The Girl In the Tower," both of which will be important in Volume Six, though we hear a shorter, more historically integrated version of "The Two Brothers" in Volume Four) as a lead-in to telling her that most fairy tales are based in historical fact (especially "The Four Maidens," this series' origin-type tale for explaining the four seasons, which is interesting because Cinder's last name is Fall and because of Qrow's earlier comment about "Autumn's condition," plus Weiss' sister is named Winter and we find out from this Volume's opening scene that Ruby's mother--presumed dead--is named Summer...but where's Spring?), Winter suggesting that Weiss train her Glyph Semblance (thus far used for gravity, time, and temperature manipulation) for Summoning avatars of fallen Grimm (also that she should call their father if she wants her money back), and Qrow catching up with Ruby and Yang (wherein he flashes a picture of his old Team, in which we see their father, Tai, Qrow himself, a woman who looks like an older version of Ruby--so, it's Summer Rose--and the woman who saved Yang on the train in Volume Two--unmasked as she was in the post-credits scene, but Qrow quickly puts his thumb over her face so dramatic irony and questionable continuity can work their magic on the audience when Yang barely has a reaction to it).
Meanwhile, Cinder begins to make the hacking incident from the school dance pay off by accessing Ironwood's Scroll (I haven't mentioned these yet, but they're basically the RWBY equivalent of a smartphone or mini-tablet) to learn that Penny is a robot (which, when combined with Mercury and Pyrrha's duel from Volume Two, causes a major revelation to be broadcast to all of Remnant because Volume Three constantly reminds us that the world is watching the Vytal Festival Tournament), and Emerald uses her Hallucination Semblance to make Yang shoot Mercury in the leg on camera after their match (but surprise! it's later revealed that Mercury's shotgun shoes are actually prosthetic legs, and he wasn't really injured!) and to make Pyrrha see Penny using hundreds of her marionette blades so that she overuses her Polarity Semblance to accidentally cut Penny to pieces and reveal her true nature to the world. Also, on top of learning that Penny is an Atlas combat droid, Cinder has been using her hacker Scroll to fix the "random" matchups in the Tournament and control the broadcast, framing Yang as a product of Beacon's "brutal" teaching style and Penny as Atlas' first attempt at some kind of Judgement Day scenario, which causes panic among the arena's spectators and draws hordes of Grimm to attack the city for the second Volume in a row.
Following Yang's match with (and "attack" on) Mercury, we get a flashback episode that shows how Cinder recruited Emerald and Mercury, as well as a pretty spectacular three-on-one with Amber (the aforementioned Autumn), wherein Cinder manages to wound her and steal half of her Maiden powers with a small, spider-like Grimm before Qrow intervenes. We also see how Cinder used her new powers to intimidate the White Fang into working with her group.
In the present, Yang is disqualified from the Tournament for her perceived conduct and has a conversation with Blake (wherein Blake expresses concerns that Yang is going down a dark path like her ex-lover--the red-headed swordsman from the Black Trailer and the Volume Two finale, later revealed to be named Adam Taurus and have bull horns under his White Fang mask, so [insert "evil, horned, soulless ginger" joke here]--but ultimately she believes Yang, possibly hinting at a future yuri relationship in the series?), Ruby talks to Velvet and starts putting together that something shady might be going on with Mercury and the rest of Team CMET, and Pyrrha struggles with her feelings about her match with Penny, her relationship with Jaune, and whether or not she should embrace the destiny Ozpin and Ironwood proposed to her (undergoing a procedure to transfer Amber's Aura and remaining Maiden powers into her, and possibly sacrificing her own soul and identity in the process).
With Grimm invading Vale, Cinder hacking into Ironwood's automated soldiers, and Neopolitan helping Torchwick commandeer Ironwood's flagship, Jaune and Pyrrha rendezvous with Ozpin to start the procedure (with an infuriating amount of stall dialogue along the way that allows Cinder time to arrive, kill Amber, and claim the rest of her powers for reasons that I will explore when I get to my speculations), Ruby uses her rocket-powered gym locker to board the commandeered airship and fight Torchwick (who gloats to an excessively, ironically poetic degree before being eaten by a Grimm--if you've seen the "World Of Remnant: Grimm" short, you'll remember that Grimm choose to eat, but do not need to) and Neo, Blake and Yang team up against Adam (who was there because he brought the White Fang and their wrangled collection of Grimm to the party, reveals himself to be the worst kind of possessive, psycho ex-boyfriend, and cuts off Yang's arm!), Velvet breaks out her awesome trump card (no, this is not a covfefe reference...this time) that Coco was keeping under wraps, and Ironwood (whom we learn here is half-cybernetic, almost like some kind of Tin Wood Man) and the rest of the Vytal contestants and Beacon instructors do an Avengers against the Grimm/robot/White Fang invasion (if you didn't think there was enough of an Avengers influence, the Final Boss is a dragon Grimm that drips other Grimm onto the battlefield like a Chitauri Whale).
But this doesn't mean we're done with the "no one is safe" stakes just yet. Beacon is in ruins, the ensuing carnage is being framed as some kind of globally institutional police brutality scandal mixed with child soldier indoctrination, Penny is dead, Torchwick is dead (not that I care), Amber is dead, Blake is critically injured, and Yang is a global pariah and down an arm.
Watt Ls kud possibliee gau rawng?
Well, Cinder could murder Ozpin (offscreen, so maybe it didn't happen?), make the dragon knock out the Beacon communications tower and leave the world in an informational void of paranoid speculation and panic, and then burn Pyrrha into a wafting of Snap dust while we and Ruby watch, thus triggering Ruby into a Super-Saiyan moment where her eyes glow white, presumably incinerating Cinder and the dragon.
But when the white fades, the finale cuts to Ruby waking up in a hospital, where Qrow tells her that the dragon is still at the destroyed Beacon tower, petrified and attracting more Grimm, that Cinder escaped, and that Ruby's Silver Eyes are a rare but genetic trait (interestingly, Weiss' Glyph Semblance is also genetic) that she inherited from Summer. Meanwhile, Yang is back home with Tai, dealing with PTSD from the loss of her arm against Adam, as well as resentment over Blake running off in the aftermath of the Fall Of Beacon. Time passes, and Ruby decides to set out on her own to track Cinder to Haven, only to find that Jaune, Nora, and Ren have come to join her.
I already spoiled this in the original RWBY Tuesday, but Volume Three's closing narration (the same voice as the Volume One intro and the Volume Two "World Of Remnant" shorts) is revealed to be the mastermind behind the Fall Of Beacon. In the post-credits scene, the newly formed Team RNJR (because JNRR is a stupid name, and also not a color) continue on their journey (JRRN is also not a color) with Qrow watching from a distance before he leaps off a cliff...and turns into--duh--a crow. Even when I had major hate on for Volume Three, these final reveals made me pop off so much!
Volume Three also has "World Of Remnant" episodes, which are narrated by Ozpin this time: one on the "Vytal Festival Tournament" (explaining how it was created after the Great War--which gets its own episode during the next Volume--as a sharing of cultures and a peaceful display of strength through combat exhibition, with Ozpin saying several times that he hopes this time of peace will continue, inspiring false hope in new viewers and driving a dagger of irony into the hearts of repeat audiences), one on "Huntsmen," Huntresses, and the four Academies (explaining their purpose in the world, their free-agent status in terms of kingdom allegiance and higher combat strength than civil servants and military officers--except for Atlas, who supposedly indoctrinate their students and draft their top scorers into military service--the four-member team mechanic, the existence of RPG-style mission boards, and once again, Ozpin's hopes that Huntsmen and Huntresses will put their skills and powers to philanthropic use, stated in thematic juxtaposition to what is about to happen in the coming episodes), one on the "Cross-Continental Transmit System" (which brings up interesting tidbits about Dust going inactive at great distances from Remnant's surface, thus making steampunk-powered space flight and orbital satellites an impossibility; instead, the CCT system was built as a series of wireless transmission towers--one in each kingdom because this series loves the number four and sticking everything of importance to a kingdom in one place--and intermediary relay dishes in surrounding towns, the latter of which are susceptible to Grimm and bandit attacks, as stated in multiple previous "WOR" installments. Ozpin also notes that if one tower falls, the entire network falls with it, mirroring the need for cooperation and agreement amongst the people themselves if Remnant is to be safe from Grimm and the larger threat that looms in the future), and finally, one on "The Four Maidens" (I like to assume that this is Ozpin telling the story to Pyrrha, and as I said earlier, it is an origin-type fable that anthropomorphizes the four seasons as four sisters, utilizing the old fairy tale mechanic of dialogue and plot repetition in fours as Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter arrive in turn at the home of an old, shut-in wizard--whom I think is Ozpin himself for reasons that become clear in later Volumes--and each teach him about the beauty and value of the outside world as they wait for their remaining sisters to join them. In the end, he grants each of them a portion of his magic so that they may better help those they will encounter later in their travels, and they promise to visit the wizard every year because the seasons have an annual cycle).
Though a darker, more involved entry than the previous one, Volume Three is more focused and its components feel like they belong to it, rather than feeling like better versions that should have been in a different Volume. Also, the animation, lighting, and character models look noticeably better than before, and the fights are the biggest we've seen up to this point.
I'd also like to shout out YouTube content creator I'm Strange for pointing out the similarities between the Fall Of Beacon and a board game that Team RWBY and Team JNPR were playing in Volume Two.
Now for the speculations. When explaining the transfer process to Pyrrha, Ironwood mentions that it is the result of experimentation. We'll find out later that Penny is also a product of Aura transfer research, but I suspect we'll see some of the failures rear their ugly heads in future Volumes. The writers rarely have specifically-worded dialogue that isn't referenced at a later point, no matter how obscure. Also, I think there are multiple bird-shifters besides Qrow and another character we've seen before and will show up in Volume Four, because there is one scene very early in the series where multiple blackbirds are flying in formation, and it's clear from context that they are not Nevermore. But the biggest speculation I have this Volume has to do with the way Maiden powers are typically transferred. The power usually goes to whoever was in the person's final thoughts, whether it be their killer or a loved one (unless it's a male; then the next Maiden is chosen at random). This is interesting, considering the rules established for team formation in the fourth episode of RWBY: whoever a student makes eye contact with first upon landing for their entrance exam will be their partner for the next four years, and those duos are combined based on which "relics" (just ordinary objects like chess pieces that have duplicates) they grab upon surviving the trek through the forest. So, ignoring meta reasons, the process is totally random, but the eye contact rule and the Team system pretty much ensures that, if a team is cohesive enough and one of them happens to be a Maiden, the academies can all but control and track who the next Maiden will be. Cool? Terrifying? Both? You decide.
I said in the last RWBY Tuesday that "after heavy losses in Volume Three, Volume Four shifts character dynamics and focuses heavily on recovery, coping, and journeys both physical and metaphorical, but otherwise doesn’t really resolve anything. It feels necessary, but ends too soon with too much unexplained, and is just there as a bridge from Volume Three to Volume Five." That still mostly holds true, but there is a lot going on here that unfolds in parallel narrative form.
Forced to return home to Atlas, Weiss has a solid self-discovery and empowerment arc as she deals with the selfish cluelessness of high society, the ruthless and controlling antics of her Schnee-in-name-only father, and training her Summoning ability when she is put on house arrest.
Blake (with Sun stowing away to join her) takes a ship home to Menagerie (essentially an island Faunus reservation that's shaped like a fish) to make amends with her family, ultimately deciding to help her father reclaim control of the White Fang and restore it to its former, pre-radicalized glory.
Yang (with the help of her father, the two eccentric Beacon instructors who also served as the Vytal Tournament's announcers last Volume, and a shiny, new prosthetic arm) learns to overcome--or go around, in her father's words--her Adam PTSD, accept her disability, not rely on her Ultra Ego-style Semblance, and find direction in her previously "go with the flow" life.
The bland farmboy I mentioned earlier is revealed through the course of Volume Four to be Oscar (a reference to the Wizard Of Oz's real name, Oscar Z. D.I.R.T.B.A.G.), who seems to share a body with Ozpin. So there's Blake's "Man With Two Souls" book from Volume One! He leaves home, eventually crossing paths with Hazel at a train station on his own journey to Haven, and runs into Qrow in Volume Four's season finale post-credits scene.
The meat of Volume Four rests with Team RNJR and Qrow. Ruby, Jaune, Nora, and Ren also have new character designs, as do Weiss, Blake, and Yang, with Jaune getting new armor and weapons trimmed with gold from Pyrrha's tiara (I'm not crying; you're crying!) and Nora and Ren getting more subtle costume changes, while the scattered members of Team RWBY get entirely new outfits.
On their journey to Haven, Team RNJR encounter a number of destroyed and abandoned villages, each marked by a massive hoof-print, and are attacked by Tyrian (who manages to sting Qrow in a personal but creatively choreographed and well-animated fight, but loses his tail and fails his mission in the process, to which Salem comments: "the last eye is blinded; you disappoint me." I thought this was weird, but again, specifically worded dialogue will almost always mean something later, so Stay Tuned for Volume Six?). After the fight, Qrow tells the Team about his bad luck Semblance, the Maidens, and the story of "The Two Brothers" (RWBY's take on "The Lord's Animals and The Devil's Animals," serving as an orgin-type fable for the concepts of juxtaposing forces and polar morality, as well as humanity--the only joint creation of the Good/Creative/Light brother and the Evil/Destructive/Dark brother, who was also the original creator of the Grimm), revealing that the concepts of Creation, Destruction, Knowledge, and Choice that make humanity what it is are also physical McGuffins, each stored at one of the four academies because something something eggs and baskets and the number four. We also see in an earlier scene that Qrow meets up with the mystery woman from his photo, who is revealed to be Raven, Yang's biological mother and Qrow's biological sister. Huh; Raven and Qrow...I wonder if she's one of the other bird-shifters? Anyway, this was after we saw Salem and before we knew her name was Salem, so now we know that when Raven asks Qrow, "Does She have It?" she means, "Does Salem have one of the Relics?" (and I don't mean the cheap, little chess pieces from the entrance exam).
With Qrow's condition getting so bad that he's coughing up blood the color of bad anime cooking, Team RNJR splits up to find help, with Nora and Ren making their way to a mountain cave while Ruby and Jaune carry Qrow through Kuroyuri ("that village" from Volume Two, which was attacked by Grimm when Nora and Ren were children, Ren first activated his Apathy Semblance, and where a particular Grimm--the owner of that massive hoofprint--killed their parents, so there's an air of highly convenient writing to proceedings, but the closure is nice). Ren and Nora regroup with their friends in Kuroyuri, where they work together to defeat the massive Nucklavee (a demonic-looking, centaur-like Grimm with drooping, extendable limbs, an unsettlingly jittery and double-jointed style of movement, and a spine-melting scream), whose destruction creates so much smoke that some conveniently passing Mistral airships see it and land to rescue them.
We also learn in the finale's last scene that Watts' contact in Mistral is Haven headmaster, Leo Lionheart.
The fights in Volume Four are a massive step down in scale from Volume Three, but they all feel more personal with regard to stakes and the choreography is as good as ever, if not better than before. Lots of foreshadowing payoff, strong character writing, and lore to delve into. This includes the final "season" of "World Of Remnant," now narrated by Qrow (whose voice actor, Vic Mignona, would later be fired for sexual misconduct). There are episodes on each of the four kingdoms that are not available on CrunchyRoll, as well as episodes on the land "Between Kingdoms" (reiterating the Grimm and bandits stuff and referencing failed settlements like Kuroyuri and Mountain Glenn), one on "Faunus" treatment, physiology, and genetics, one on the "Schnee Dust Company" that mentions how Weiss' father came to power, and one on "The Great War" between the Mistral/Mantle and Vale/Vacuo factions (which gave me the impression at one point that the king of Vale might have been one of Ozpin's previous bodies) that ended with the peace accord discussed in the "Vytal Festival Tournament" episode.
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 Five 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....
The "Blogger Who Fell Through the World" part of this post's a.k.a. (from way up at the top) is a reference to an in-universe fairy tale that Ruby and Yang mention prior to the big, multifaceted, multi-episode finale of RWBY Volume Eight.
They talk about "The Girl Who Fell Through The World" being rescued by a knight, changing the world for the worse, and not being the same girl she was when she came out the other side.
At the time, I believed this to be another version of Salem's origin (she was rescued from the Tower by Ozma--making her a bit of a Rapunzel reference as well as the Wicked Witch--and when the Brother Of Light cursed her with immortality, the accompanying visual was like she was falling through the world; furthermore, Salem turned humanity against the Brothers after this, leading to its Destruction, and when she once again fell--this time, into the Destruction Pool--she emerged as something completely different).
But then the Volume Eight finale hit, and we got not one, but at least four girls (and one dude) falling through the world when Cinder and Neo attacked the Gateway Space and sent Team RWBY into the void that the Spirit Of Creation warned them about ("A final warning about that Space: Don't. Fall."). Because the series was probably trying to capitalize on Infinity War and Endgame hype at the time, the Volume Eight finale brought back that Volume Three, "no one is safe" feeling, but even more intensely because now, the main characters were expendable...until the post-credits scene (and months later, the Volume Nine trailer).
When she awakens, Ruby is in the jungle by the beach from the previous post-credits scene, her scythe is missing, the scenery loops, cheese is a root vegetable, and her only hope of making progress is a talking mouse whose running gag is that he enthusiastically offers to help even though he has no idea where he's going...and then falls asleep. Also, there's this weird, sensible nonsense logic puzzle dialogue that keeps coming up about conflating one's name, title, and purpose ("What are you?", "How does one 'Little'?", "That's a lot of things to be," etc.).
Soon (and somehow), Ruby and Little the Mouse find Weiss, Blake, and Yang, and defend the rest of Little's tribe (who captured Weiss and Blake because cat ears and mice) from a Jabberwalker (a new, intelligent Grimm-alike monster that is so far exclusive to this Volume) that Yang was chasing. So, yeah; talking mouse, sensible nonsense, and a Jabberwalker. "The Girl Who Fell Through The World" is the RWBY-Verse version of Alice In Wonderland, complete with flat-looking soldiers, a volatile red monarch who likes games and beheadings, a (sometimes) purple cat with invisibility, self-division, and healing factor powers, a caterpillar who works with drugs, and a miscolored knight who rides a giant, white jackalope and has time management issues.
After the previous Volumes being twelve to fourteen episodes in length (not including character trailers or "World Of Remnant" supplements), and Volume Eight alone being so thick with plot, emotion, and stakes, this ninth Volume (which is unaccompanied by supplemental materials, has a very linear story, and only clocks in at ten episodes) feels extremely thin, light on action, and kind of rushed.
In the course of a single episode, Team RWBY find each other almost immediately, learn where they are (the Ever After, which we find out later, is the source dimension of the Brothers and all concepts of life and Creation in RWBY, giving a heirarchical explanation for the "why doesn't the use of the Staff Of Creation wipe out everything?" question that I had last time and sort of explains how the Vaults and the Gateway Space work), and fight a Jabberwalker.
At an auction that runs on a very Made In Abyss interpretation of currency, Ruby wins an object that turns out to be one of Penny's solidified Aura swords (I forgot to mention this last time because I was working on crunch and Volume Eight is so dense, but when Penny gets her human body, she loses her marionette blades, which throws her off when she's fighting Cinder in the Gateway Space, but she manages to conjure Aura construct replacements, and I thought this was a cool detail both times that I watched Volume Eight, but that cool factor was forgotten by the time Penny died again moments later because Volume Eight is amazing and sucks all at the same time) and Yang gets her prosthetic arm back.
The Team's goal this Volume is to get from the beach to The Tree, where the story from their childhood says a girl from Remnant named Alyx was able to return home, and that to get there, they must follow the story's events without changing anything (sort of making this Volume a time travel narrative). But this proves to be harder than expected because Alyx's prior visit to the Ever After already changed things, such as turning the Red King into a paranoid, petulant, cheating, homicidal, shrieking he-hag of a prince. Thankfully (or something), the group are rescued from the Rule 63 Queen Of Hearts by the Curious Cat (the Cheshire Cat of the series), who is supposed to be another gatekeeper/guide character to get the group to The Tree, but has a hunger for knowledge and bugs, teleportation powers, and a hyperbolic case of ADHD (or AD1080P, or AD4K, or whatever the highest visual fidelity of your time is that works as a pun here).
When they are again attacked by Jabberwalkers in a market (learning in the process that they are mostly constructs of Neo's Ever After-enhanced illusion powers, and that they can keep the "Aftrins" they kill from reincarnating like they normally would from their passage through The Tree), Team RWBY, Little, and the Cat are rescued by The Rusted Knight (who turns out to be an apocalyptically aged-up Jaune because Wonderland and time travel make sense).
Along the way, most of the team solidify their convictions about that whole, "who you are, what you are, what you do" existential mess, Jaune comes to terms with his imposter syndrome/hero complex baggage, and Blake and Yang finally and fully put their anime propriety romantic tension behind them. Then, there's Ruby, who has always been the plucky, optimistic leader, but has had it up to her haircut and beyond with all of this monster-fighting pressure in her Monday-to-Friday life, leading to a pretty brutal and emotional fight with Neo and illusions of all the people that they have both lost (Torchwick, Pyrrha, Ozpin, Lionheart) and could still lose (Ironwood, Nora, Ren, her Team, etc.) that ends with Neo convincing her to drink a cup of poisoned tea and "die."
In an obvious, but well-distracted-from twist, the Curious Cat is revealed to be the true villain of Volume Nine (huh; same number of lives as the proverbial cat...), and uses the powers he was made with (gathering knowledge and using it to send "broken" Aftrins to The Tree for repairs and reincarnation) to take over Neo, whose heart was rendered empty by the realized weight of her persisting grief and her anticlimactic victory over Ruby.
Apparently, Alyx had a brother named Lewis (named after Lewis Carroll, obviously), who was really the one to return to Remnant and publish "The Girl Who Fell Through The World," which took liberties with his actual experience and had a different ending to hide his sister's death. The Curious Cat had his own heart broken and his mind twisted when Alyx could not take him to Remnant with her, and so killed her while Lewis escaped.
In the end, Ruby turns out to still be alive inside The Tree, and rejoins her Team's prolonged fight with a Cat-possessed Neo (and then the Curious Cat himself) after learning the truth of the night her mother disappeared and finally coming to terms with herself, aided by a feminine, steampunk robot blacksmith that is possibly The Tree itself. Neo says goodbye to Fake Torchwick and Team RWBY before falling to her death and returning in the same wooden form that Ruby was in before, presumably where she will rediscover her roots--tree puns!--as Trivia Vanille and return as an ally in future Volumes. One last visit to the blacksmith, and Jaune lets go of the remnants (more puns!) of his guilt over Alyx's death--because pulling a clock-fruit off of a tree on the beach flung him back several decades to the events of "The Girl Who Fell Through The World" before everyone was born, and became the Rusted Knight who helped Alyx and Lewis on their journey before the Curious Cat turned evil and killed Alyx, but he still remembers the story and no one knew Lewis was the author of the book even though it's a bestselling children's title in Remnant and time travel in alternate fictional Wonderland makes total sense and no one else will complain about it at all--what was I writing about before the ranting started?
Oh, right; the Tree blacksmith presents Jaune with Alyx's dagger (which might be Alyx herself because of how the whole, "reincarnate to better fulfill your purpose" mechanic works here?), and he gets his Atlas-era design and younger voice back. Back in the physical Tree, the Team are also greeted in the finale's last moments by a reincarnated Little, before passing through the doorway and returning to Remnant on the outskirts of Vacuo, where the sandstorm continues to rage and the kingdom is surrounded by the remains of the Atlas military.
There is no post-credits scene. Instead, we are treated to a trailer for the Justice League X RWBY: Super Heroes & Huntsmen movie, which was concurrently in production with Volume Nine, hence the shorter runtime and scaled-back action here. A tenth Volume has been fully scripted, but not yet greenlit for production.
What Volume Nine lacks in sense, substance, and action, it makes up for with emotional character writing and addressing sensitive subject matter like same-sex relationships, personal identity, the fury and emptiness of grief (which is something I can relate to much more as of this year), and even an episode on suicide that features a disclaimer warning (in the past, these have been used to indicate death-focused episodes and those with frantic fight sequences that could induce seizures). Though RWBY is clearly a fictional series with prominent fantasy elements, the handling of the latter could have been done more tactfully than, "don't worry; if you kill yourself, a steampunk blacksmith tree robot will help you reincarnate as someone better," but the finale offsets this questionable theming by having Ruby come to the realization that being someone else is not being yourself, and (barring any choices you make to harm, stagnate, or actually improve yourself) you are the best and only you that you can be, and being genuine to yourself requires commitment and resolve.
On a bit of another tangent, this is not the same as "be happy with your dirty, smelly, fat, skinny, ugly, and/or miserable self because being your actual best self takes too much work and is 'conformist' and it's somehow easier to defy Constitutional law and expect the rest of the world to be okay with you." That's bullshit, and I'm sick of it being such a thing that there are "inspirational" songs about it. If you are unhappy with yourself, don't end your life, don't embrace your self-hatred because that will not make you truly happy, don't be ironically reverse-conformist because unrealistic goals won't make you happy either, and don't attack or accuse people for "shaming" your choices because that causes the opposite of the acceptance and peace that you are looking for. Fucking work on yourself! Do some laundry; take a bath; shave; eat better, or eat more; do your hair so it frames your face better, wear a sexy pair of glasses or an outfit you feel confident in, wear more makeup, or less makeup; or get some exercise. Hell, I'm one to talk, but have you considered therapy? I hear that talking to people about your problems (and admitting you have problems) is good for your mental, emotional, and physical health.
Thomas Jefferson once said that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" for criminal action, and today, Sean Wilkinson says that laziness is no excuse for treating yourself like shit.
Don't treat yourself like shit and call it happiness.
Speaking of being happy with shitty end products, let's not forget that RWBY: Ice Queendom exists.
As a long-time fan of classic RWBY, I am biased against Ice Queendom for its unfaithful treatment of the source material and inferior animation.
And speaking again of unnecessary, inferior products, let's wrap things up with the Justice League crossover movies!
Justice League x RWBY: Super Heroes and Huntsmen is a two-part crossover film animated in the RWBY style, and based on the crossover comic book series, DC/RWBY and RWBY x Justice League. I did not read these comics, so my opinions herein will be based exclusively on the movies themselves and their relation to the RWBY series.
The first thing to note here (because it has become something of a sticking point or a profanity, depending upon which side of any particular fandom you happen to land) is the canonicity of the films to either of their source properties. I can't speak to their DC Comics canonicity because I am almost exclusively a Zenescope reader, but as to whether they are canon to RWBY, the answer is a resounding "yesn't." Part One references events as recent as the Volume Eight finale (such as the deaths of Pyrrha, Ozpin, Penny, and Jacques Schnee, the crashing of Atlas, and the flooding of Mantle), but doesn't seem to acknowledge Team RWBY's fall to the Ever After (I will talk more in depth about my expectations regarding this a bit later). Part Two makes reference to a scientist named Doctor Merlot (who was the main villain of the Grimm Eclipse video game that takes place between Volumes Two and Three, and was partly responsible for the destruction and abandonment of the Mountain Glenn settlement, and I have some opinions on this reference that I will address later as well).
The positives in Part One are many, such as the creative reinterpretation of the League's powers into Semblance form (Superman's Semblance kind of makes him Nuclear Man from Superman IV, Wonder Woman's bracelets and lasso are now Aura constructs, Vixen, the Flash, and Cyborg are pretty much one-to-one conversions with the exception that Vixen is now a Faunus, Jessica Cruz--the Green Lantern of this iteration of the Justice League--can see through deceptions in similar but more visual manner to Robin Hill's handshake as well as wielding a Power Ring, and Batman is a bat Faunus with echolocation vision and projectile spit), the interplay between characters on both teams (such as Weiss and Bruce's almost Moonlighting-ish partnership, Ruby and Clark sharing leadership burdens, Jaune helping Jessica activate her Semblance in a nice role-reversal from his early dynamics with Pyrrha, and Yang and Blake having a bit of a warrior-maiden crush triangle with Diana), the balanced fight-to-character moment ratio, and the youthful redesigns of the League to fit the RWBY aesthetic, which also provides some solid personal conflict for Bruce, who never got to enjoy his teenage years and is tempted by the prospect of a world where he has powers.
Unfortunately, the problems show themselves pretty quickly with the rushed introductions of Vixen, Cyborg, Flash, and Green Lantern, as well as the Scene One usage of a glitchy, digital static effect that makes it stupidly, immediately clear that the Justice League and Team RWBY are facing one of a conspiracy theorist's many worst nightmares: they are trapped in a simulation of Remnant and nothing is real!
So, this is where I talk about my blind expectations regarding the movie's canonicity and how I think it could have been done better. In Volume Nine's first episode, Blake asks Weiss what happened after they fell in the Gateway Space, and Weiss dodges the question, hinting that there was more to the fall than falling and landing in the Ever After, and she remembers what that was. So, Justice League x RWBY could have easily been written as one of those extradimensional stops on the way to what Volume Nine would eventually reveal as the origin of all life and realities in its as-yet-unexplored multiverse. Hell, screw all the licensing red tape and do what every comic book publisher has been doing for the past thirty-plus years. Do a series of these dimension-hopping crossover films where Team RWBY and the original Power Rangers have to fight Salem and Rita, or they wind up in New York helping the Ninja Turtles fight mutagen-enhanced Grimm and a Grimm Shredder, or Ash Williams misreads a spell in the Necronomicon and winds up in Remnant while Team RWBY fight the Army Of Darkness, or they wind up in the Monarch MonsterVerse fighting kaiju with Blake and Yang befriending Kong, or be completely on-the-nose and unoriginal and have them team up with their Zenescope counterparts. It may be obvious, but it would have given more time for Ruby to explore her reluctance about being a leader (rather than just having her suddenly blow up at everyone in Volume Nine after some too-subtle foreshadowing), and at least it's a better series of premises than "RWBY villain happens upon digital Justice League villain on the internet and they trap each other's nemises in virtual reality because that's how the internet and multiverses work, and both teams just happen to have been doing tech stuff at the exact same time." Yeah, the Justice League were fighting the A.I. villain, Killg%re, and Team RWBY were doing a VR training mission on an Atlas airship, which makes no sense considering this is set after an alternate version of Volume Eight where the Atlas/Mantle crash still happened, and they were marked persona non grata by the Atlas military as of the Volume Seven finale.
My head hurts, and the premise of this whole thing is stupid. Also, they do the whole, "superhero names sound stupid because they were thought up seventy-plus years ago by people on drugs" joke that every superhero movie (particularly MCU entries and the lighter-tone DC projects from the tail end of the DCEU and the beginning of the Gunn Era) from the last decade has made. Also again, its runtime is barely half that of the average modern movie. So let's move on to Part Two and find out why it didn't need to exist.
The worst offenses by Part Two have to be the fights and the villains. The villains here are Dr. Watts (who died in this continuity and gave himself the Dr. Gero treatment--digitizing his consciousness and putting his mind in a mechanically enhanced body--but was a pompous chump in life and is now a pompous chump with a shiny new body with two extra arms who gets wrecked fairly easily, and should have been replaced by someone else--like Dr. Merlot, who invented the Grimm modification process that Watts used here, and might have been more interesting or threatening, if not made more sense given the scenario and Weiss name-dropping him early in this Part) and the aforementioned Killg%re (who is essentially a stupider, less interesting, less threatening Curious Cat, and only poses a challenge when in his own domain and able to possess one of our heroes or Huntresses). As for the fights, with Part One having already done the heavy lifting with respect to character establishment, Part Two is almost an hour of non-stop fights that are monotonously under-choreographed (with the exception of a few cool teleportation bits from Ruby) and become nearly devoid of stakes once Bruce, Canary, and Weiss figure out how to literally give everyone power hacks. While visually unique, even Cyborg getting corrupted while trying to hack Killg%re and Watts out of their endlessly replicating horde of enhanced Grimm feels like a Nothingburger with a side of Nonion Rings and an empty 20oz of Caffiene-free Nope Zero. I actually fell asleep multiple times during this, and so had to run it back, doubling the length of my viewing experience to 300% longer than it needed to be.
Imagination is still more important than reality, and a good night's sleep is more important than watching Justice League x RWBY: Part Two. I would subject myself to finishing Ice Queendom before I'd watch this crossover again.
Re-watching RWBY (and near-daily doses of caffeine from drinks that exist) has given me the idea to continue RWBY Tuesday in the future, especially in the form of a "Build the Roster"-style post, but I might also explore other media, such as playing the Grimm Eclipse and Arrowfell games or reading the comics or novels. Let me know in the comments what RWBY media you'd like to see content about in 2024, and as always, please remember to join my Team by Becoming A Ticketholder if you haven't already, help out my ad revenue as you Scroll, cross over to Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to follow me and 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.
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Crossing Over,
Rolling Out.
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