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Volume 1 Final Thoughts | Table of Contents | 08 - Volume 2, First Arc (Part I)
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It feels kind of weird to finally be getting here. I hadn’t realized there was that much to talk about in Volume One. Now I have to enter a season where I know there’s a lot to talk about.

*gulp*

V2E1, "Best Day Ever"

We open up on a ground view of a pleasant, somewhat cloudy sky. An airship is flying above. Birds are chirping. We tilt down onto a building to discover the very same dust shop Ruby was in at the start of this show, “From Dust ‘Til Dawn”, newly reopened. I should mention the time frame here is unclear; I searched “how long do robbed shops take to reopen” and all I got was Grand Theft Auto results. Man, I miss Brucie.

The old clerk is on a ladder, finishing hanging the reopening banner. He promptly falls right off the ladder before he can get all the way down. When the scene next cuts, we hear a voice saying “’Scuse me…sorry!”

We tilt up from the old clerk’s point of view to find none other than Cinder’s associate from the Volume One stinger, extending a hand to help him up.

Boy, that was some prompt payoff. I hope all the drops we get pick up that quickly.

This is Emerald Sustrai, and if her getup reminds you of Sheva Alomar, you have taste—although that’s probably just me. She claims she’s not really from around here, and helps him to his feet. Boy, she’s polite for what I’m presuming is a villainess. She holds up an address, asking for directions, and he kindly points her in the right one. We cut to her waving as she leaves with a smile, while around the corner, the other associate of Cinder’s from the V1 stinger waits. She seems to stride right past him, but he calls out to her, claiming he knew she was lost.

Emerald identifies him as Mercury—his last name is Black, so that you know—and her demeanor immediately changes. Evidently annoyed, she brandishes a wallet, claiming she’ll pay him to shut up…but he just shakes his head and says no deal, and anyway, that's not her money.

…Oh. She’s a thief. She just robbed that dude.

Well. Our first black character introduced is a villainess and a thief. You know, were this a better show, I could probably call that a nod to certain racial divisions, but I know better and I know Rooster Teeth aren’t that smart. I also know that in Remnant, people aren’t supposed to be divided among ethnicities, or sexualities, or what have you, they’re divided purely among humans and faunus. Emerald’s thievery is not supposed to be indicative of poverty inflicted on her by a racist system, so there’s nothing poignant left to say about the status of the first black character we see.

RSVP: 19

Lovely way to start this volume, and that is not the last you’ll here from me regarding her thievery.

J.J. Castillo’s voice brushes her off with “You want me.” before following her to a new destination. We pan across some streets of Vale, wandering—Sun, is that you?

What is with you people and re-using this dude’s head? I know I said the NPCs in this volume would be mix-and-match, but jeez.

Mercury and Emerald discuss their destination and Vale; Emerald likes it, seeming genuinely appreciative of the culture here, while Mercury finds it dull. She doesn’t respond well when he exaggeratedly and animatedly mocks her thieving abilities. They finally arrive at their destination, which is a bookstore. A bell rings as they stride in. The place is dark and seems to be unattended, so Emerald strolls up to the counter and rings a bell while Mercury examines a shelf. A voice announces itself from the back.

“Welcome to Tukson’s Book Trade, home to every book under the sun.”

Tukson starts to ask how he might help his guests, trailing off at first when he takes note of these people, before getting back into customer service mode. And before I forget to point this out, take a real good look at his face.

Mercury answers that he’s just browsing, snapping a book shut and discarding it. Emerald, on the other hand, all smiles, asks if he has any copies of The Thief and the Butcher. As it happens, yes, he does, but she wasn’t looking to buy.

Mercury snaps another book shut in the background. Emerald asks about a copy of Violet’s Garden, in paperback. Tukson obviously senses that something is up, but says nothing, leaving Mercury to mention that yeah, it’s in stock. Mercury snaps that book shut, deriding it for having no pictures. If he’s after comics, he should check near the front, Tukson says. Emerald has one more book to ask about: Third Crusade.

Tukson reluctantly admits that he doesn’t have that one. The atmosphere has tensed considerably by now. Another book is snapped closed by Mercury. Emerald cheerfully asks for a reminder of the name of the store: Tukson’s Book Trade. And yes, he is Tukson. And yes, it was him who came up with the ‘catch phrase’: ‘Tukson’s Book Trade, home to every book under the sun’, repeated with a sigh when asked about it.

I’m...trying not to get too snide right now, so forgive me if my prose is breaking down a bit. To give you the rundown, Mercury is pretty upset about this ‘catch phrase’, which he declares to be false advertising. Emerald coolly advises Tukson not to make promises he can’t keep. As Mercury kills the lights in the store, Emerald cuts to the chase: he’s planning on leaving, isn’t he?

Tukson’s ‘brothers’ in the White Fang wouldn’t be happy to hear him ducking out all the way to Vacuo, would they? Tukson knows who these two are and what’s happening, so Emerald wants to know…is he going to fight back? And the answer to that is…

“Yes!”

Tukson unleashes a set of claws from his hands, and leaps atop the counter! He lunges, swiping at Emerald, who ducks, and…

Snrk…I’m sorry, that was some Resi 5 shit right there. But anyway, this happens:

They leave the shop, Mercury with a comic in hand.

*lengthy sigh*

Guys, for RT having gone in so heavy-handed and serious, I really don’t think much of this in retrospect. Before we continue to the next scene, let me hash out what happened and the problems with it.

So, the book titles. The Thief and the Butcher is obviously a reference to The Thief and the Cobbler, with the title switched around to reflect Emerald’s and Mercury’s roles (a cobbler is someone who makes shoes—Mercury’s weapons are his greaves/boots, and he is the Butcher in question). Violet’s Garden turned up minimal information I could relate to RWBY on Goodreads, so we’ll skip it. Third Crusade turns up nothing to do with RWBY, so someone more familiar with the real-life historical event of the same name might try and fill in some holes for me, because upon looking it up, nothing that wasn’t a real reach came to me.

Second, the murder. First, I really can’t say this is an especially chilling thing. I mean, I could see what they were going for! But the weak spot is Emerald’s characterization. She and Mercury are clearly meant to aim for ‘disturbingly cavalier attitude towards homicide’ which is fine, but Mercury is the one who does so effectively. Emerald’s dissonant serenity approach is too dissonant, she comes off as ditzy or extremely fake. Mercury is better, but he stumbles too, given his ‘false advertising’ grievance, which is just funny because of how petulant it is.

As for the kill itself…Pyrrha, help me out here: what four-letter word am I thinking of? Hint: it’s aura.

Put to one side how this guy somehow goes sailing through the air when trying to swipe at a target directly in front of and beneath him. Given the lack of an elaborate fight scene and the cut to Emerald and Mercury leaving the book shop, we are clearly supposed to think that one-legged bullet to the skull killed Tukson. This is completely illogical given how commonplace aura is, but we could excuse it if he was an untrained civilian. Unfortunately, he’s ex-White Fang. As we saw from the Volume One finale and Penny’s uber-awesome carving up of the assorted dozen, even the baseline White Fang goons are capable of expressing aura and not getting subsequently slain in one shot. And Tukson is in an obviously suspicious situation he suspects from the get-go, so he has no reason to turn his aura off, if that’s even a thing.

(Which, for now, it’s not.)

Ill Logic: 8

Your Fight Scene Sucks: 5

There’s also the matter of how this is apparently supposed to be a stealth kill.

It is the middle of the day. The streets around this shop are full of people. Gunshots make loud noises, as do bodies hitting floors. Blood splatters onto boots. Turning the damn store lights off isn’t going to cover up the fact that two people just committed a murder on a busy street in broad daylight!!!

Ill Logic: 9

Third and finally, pay close attention to this dude.

Black hair, gold eyes, generally attractive, likes books, name means ‘black mountain’, is a cat faunus…he’s Blake’s dad!

…No? Just me? Damn it!

I’m genuinely amazed they didn’t do that. This is not Blake’s father, or uncle, or cousin, or brother, that I know of, which kind of shocks me because we are clearly supposed to think of Blake, as the very next scene we fade to is…

…the girl herself, doodling a figure from her past. Nice to see you in some form at least, Adam. While I send a Surge request to Tukson, let’s see what RWBY is up to in the Beacon cafeteria.

Yang elbows in, observing the notebook and asking Blake, “Whatch doin’?” Blake pretends to be going over notes from last semester.

Last semester?!

I am assuming a typical American school semester length of nine weeks here, and I know Rooster Teeth are, too! Are you telling me that it took nine weeks for that old merchant to get a new pane of glass for the front of his shop?! When the hell are we?!

Yang, with Blake and Weiss looking on, turns away to catch tossed food in her mouth, and we slide over to JNPR’s table to see that it’s Nora flicking foodstuffs from her fork. When we slide back, Ruby has slammed a binder of the approximate size of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix down on the table. This binder, stolen from Weiss and filled with “Best Day Ever” activities is the subject of her teen drama speech, which is about having the most fun day ever as a team. What that entails…is not discussed, because as you and I can both guess, it isn’t actually plot-important. And, oh, there it is…

B: What are you talking about?

R: I’m talking about kicking off the semester with a bang!

Y: I always kick my semesters off with a Yang! Eh? Guys?

You thought I was kidding about Rooster Teeth letting fans in?

Let me explain this. During the first volume’s run time and the hiatus, Barbara Dunkelman, who voices Yang, was already well-known for her enjoyment of bad ~~puns~~ wordplay. Ergo, fandom took off and liked to portray Yang in the same vein.

Well, now it’s canon. Yang does this now. This might seem minor and inconsequential to you, but to me, it’s obnoxious. Not in an in-character sense, either, although rest assured nobody laughs at Yang’s joke. Not only is this an inseparable part of Yang’s character now, but acknowledging it and canonizing it simply made it explode with exponentially more force. You do not see Yang in fandom space without some unfunny bullshit faux-pun accompanying her now that this has happened. It’s since then been pushed right up there with her other canon personality traits, which meant that back in 2014, when Yang barely had any personality traits, it was downright unbearable. Only because Volume Three came along and provided an even greater source of endless fan rotation of the same specific character trait (shhh, don’t spoil) ad infinitum are we not constantly being subjected to this at a multiplied level.

Anyway, the rest of this scene…right then, an apple thrown from a booing Nora hits Yang on the nose.

Time frame information! It’s been at least two weeks since exchange students started to arrive for the Vytal Festival, and at the very least, the Vytal Tournament takes place at the end of the year. Second semester starts tomorrow, so this is their last chance to enjoy Ruby’s ‘wonderful events’ she has planned. Blake wants to sit this one out, but Weiss wants to do stuff as a team, too. They don’t get to talk any further on this matter, because since Ruby started talking, Yang and Nora have been throwing food at each other over Yang’s bad pun.

Yes, Yang making a bad pun is the instigating factor of the next three minute-long scene. A pie hits Weiss square in the face—which, considering she’s on the other side of Blake from Yang, is some pretty bad aim for a person only one table away. We cut to the outside of the cafeteria, where we have visitors!

The guy with the blue hair is Neptune—people were really excited to know more about him, since he was in the Volume 2 trailer and featured in quite a prominent scene! He is part of Sun’s team, along with Sage and Scarlet. Although I don’t know who the guy walking alongside him is. It looks sort of like Sun, but it couldn’t be, because Sun doesn’t have black sharpie lines for abs and a weird amount of shading in his hair.

No, I don’t know why they did that. I never did find out why Sun’s fairly well-modeled abdomen was drawn over with sharpie for three straight years. I doubt I ever will.

They’re talking about something to do with the fight on the docks that we last saw Sun in—Neptune is voiced here by Kerry Shawcross, one of the show’s main writers, so jot that down. Sun is absolutely dorking out over how cool he and Blake were at the Volume One finale, which is adorable.

S: And the best part is, she’s a faunus! *clapping a hand over his mouth* But that’s a secret! Okay?

N: *dryly* Got it.

S: And not a ‘I’m gonna go tell Scarlet the second Sun turns his back’ secret! I’m talkin’ SECRET secret.

N: *smiling* Woah, chill out man, okay? I got it. I got it.

S: *nudging him* You better. I just don’t wanna screw this up, yanno?

[The two begin walking by the cafeteria as a food fight silently breaks out; Jaune is comically thrown against the window]

S: The people here are the coolest! …No offense to you guys!

N: None taken. S: Okay, they’re just in here. I’m really excited for you to meet them, so, be cool, okay? …You’re gonna be cool, right?

N: Dude.

*bitterly* Normal people would’ve taken this cute, charming scene of two guy friends chatting it up at face value and perhaps received a nice serotonin shot in response. The RWBY fandom at the time was populated instead by people capable of absorbing only two things from this scene:

Sun heinously spilled a deeply personal secret about Blake that affects her entire life! What a reprehensible person, he needs to apologize immediately, and perhaps sit under a piano attached to the ceiling by a rapidly fraying rope. There is of course no ulterior motive for this reception whatsoever.
hehe neptune do the tooth sparkle

*miserably reminiscing*

They go in, but there is no time to say hello to Blake and friends. You see, the food fight has escalated quite a bit. A tide of students all run screaming out of the cafeteria while Sun and Neptune look on. Yes, there is a Ruby and a Nora and a Cardin among the crowd.

Nora herself is evilly laughing atop a mountain of tables, declaring herself “Queen of the Castle” in a throw-back to the Volume 1 gag, while JNR stand beneath her with arms crossed in a gesture of challenge. Ruby slams her foot down on a table and demands justice!

The first fight of the volume is RWBY vs JNPR! JNPR begin launching watermelons across the cafeteria! Even Jaune manages to launch one by somersaulting over it.

Yang responds appropriately.

Blake assists her with dual baguette swords, and Yang launches her poultry bracers at poor Jaune, who is summarily taken right out of the fight—one in the head, one in the stomach. RWBY scores the first kill.

Blake goes for a strike on Pyrrha, who arms herself with her own baguette, and they have a duel. Take note of how Blake’s semblance has advanced—she leaves proper clones now instead of rapidly dissipating shades.

Blake is repelled, and Yang knocked down shortly after, so Ruby enters the fray, surfing a metal tray across a long table and landing against Pyrrha’s braced arms, kicking off the tray to knock her to the floor.

...Damn, Pyrrha, that was all it took?

Ren and Nora rush to take action, but Ruby steps aside to allow Weiss to handle this. She squirts a puddle of ketchup that sends Ren skidding right onto his ass, sending tables flying like bowling pins. Nora leaps off one, and uses the momentum to—!

—slam a pole down into a watermelon to create a makeshift hammer. Weiss grabs a swordfish and very unwisely decides to pit her elegant, breakable frame against Nora’s might.

She gets dunked on very hard.

(This pieta pose was also a bit of a troll on the White Rose shippers; this moment in the Volume 2 Trailer was presented without any of the food fight context, although I do still wonder how they thought anything serious would come of it given the dramatics).

Yang’s back!

Grabbing two more fists of fowl, she lunges to match the freshly-composed Ren, who gets his ass handed to him a second time in quite embarrassing fashion.

Since the same eerie sound rings out as happened when Weiss got wasted, we know Nora is about to hulk out in response to Ren being literally merged into the floor. She doesn’t disappoint.

Nora’s longer reach seals the deal, and Yang is taken straight out of the fight. And not to ruin the fun of this moment by being a technical stick in the mud, but no, Death Battle, Yang did not stay in the air for a solid minute and a half. There is this thing called arc.

She probably landed on a faraway rooftop and had to walk back.

Anyway, RWBY has been reduced to RB now, which doesn’t bode well. Blake grabs an enormous length of linked sausages and wields them like a whip, repelling Nora straight into a soda vendor—whose spilled contents she decides to toss like grenades.

But Blake is too fast! JNPR is pretty much being carried by Nora at this point, who may have met her match!

Until Pyrrha wakes up, that is.

~~No, seriously, getting kicked by a 5’2” girl on a tray put you out of commission for that long? Seriously, girl…~~

Taking advantage of the mass of debris around the kitchen that happens to feature a lot of soda cans, Pyrrha makes use of her polarity semblance, magnetizing them in a mass wave to take out Blake.

It’s just Ruby, now. Time to flex those main character muscles! Variable magnetism, meet speed!

Ruby sends herself forward at half a mach, or something like that, and the resulting wave of displaced air overpowers the electromagnetic pull on the cans. Ruby becomes a blur of red cape as she streaks past every member of JNPR, letting the blast of wind carry her enemies and a shit ton of debris right into the far end of the cafeteria—stopping in time to leave a pulse that puts a crater in the wall, and then getting out of the way.

Jaune and Ren woke up just in time to join Pyrrha and Nora in being plastered to a wall and eliminated with foodstuffs. The four of them peel off the wall as Ruby makes her iconic landing.

Alright, well… 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

I could say my piece about the immaturity of this turn of events, but hey, it was a fun fight. It wasn’t possible to recreate every single piece of art from the girls’ trailers and Greatest Volume One Hits, but what they did do was really, really cool. This was beautifully animated and intense and just hilarious. Probably the most insane food fight in fictional history.

Sun is quite ecstatic to have witnessed this, but Neptune, splattered with something grape-y, is not as enthused (shoulda pulled those goggles down over your eyes, eh kiddo?) Glynda, too, is having none of this shit.

She promptly restores the entire cafeteria in one go (I like how she shoved all the food and broken plates to the back so as not to intrude on the pretty, clean picture).

G: [grinding her teeth together] Children, please. Do not. Play. With your food.

The ceiling gives way under Yang, who collapses back into the cafeteria, leading to laughs had by all. Ozpin got here when no one was looking, and advises Glynda to let it go.

G: They’re supposed to be the defenders of the world.

O: And they will be. But right now, they’re still children. So why not let them play the part? [turning his back and walking away] After all..it isn’t a role they’ll have forever.

And that just got under my skin.

Why not? I'll tell you why not--because they're not children! You have no excuses for excusing this behavior you mollycoddling mongrel! These are not eleven-year-olds going after the Philosopher's Stone! These are 17- and 18-year-olds wielding firearms and treating a school cafeteria like a warzone inbetween slaughtering incarnations of pure evil like cannon fodder! Glynda is right in this scenario--whatever I may have said about the coolness of the fight outside the story, in-story, they have no reason to behave like this, and I am going to double down on this because this isn't the first round of Badassery School these "children" have been through! Signal Academy, remember? Badassery prep school? The excuses you're making for them would be appropriate when coming out of the mouth of a Signal teacher gently commenting on inexperienced, starry-eyed thirteen-year-olds. These kids are not inexperienced and are superhumans aiming to have a lot of responsibility! Students at your academy, Ozpin, are supposed to be the best of the best, the elite, and are going to age into full-on adults with mountain-leveling power within the course of their school careers here! Even if they're still teenagers, at least have enough backbone to make excuses for them that are convincing and aren't, you know, full of holes.

Reliable Leaders: 4

The Beacon scene ends here, and we cut to some sort of warehouse being loaded by White Fang goons. Mercury and Emerald walk on in. Torchwick is also here, staring at a map until noticing that Cinder "sent the kids again”. On remarking on how this is just like The Divorce, Emerald asks to be spared the thought of Roman procreating. Shoving him away, she fails to notice the paper he took from her until it’s waved in her face—that’s the address they were doing their fun little murder spree at. He becomes the second to mock her thieving skills.

The friction here continues to mount, but is easily dispelled with the arrival of Cinder herself. Roman is immediately cowed, and Emerald, the big ol’ lesbian, immediately strides forward for what I can only assume is either a hug or a very enthusiastic handshake, but is ignored.

Before your brain melts at one of our first villains being a black woman who might be gay, don't. This is simply an awkward moment, and probably not meant to imply what I just said.

Cinder is irritated with Tukson not having been killed before now, and Emerald kisses exorbitant amounts of ass by loudly volunteering the information that Tukson was going to flee to Vacuo before Mercury and she decided to “kill the rat”. They then engage in a bit of highly racist banter about what exact cat might’ve been reflected in Tukson’s faunus heritage.

Cinder is not placated, as she also ordered Mercury and Emerald to keep their hands clean while in Vale. When Emerald stammers out excuses…

C: Don’t think. Obey.

When she turns back to Roman and asks why this wasn’t handled sooner, Roman waves an arm around him, and points out that his schedule has evidently been quite full of robbing the entire city-state of Vale blind of any trace of dust. The ammunition stockpile has been reaching pretty impressive heights, and prices have risen in Vale specifically because carrying dust is evidently an invitation to Roman these days.

Roman thinks all of these efforts deserve some details as to the master plan. Cinder thinks Roman should maybe remember he’s an inch away from an ignominious fiery death when he bows up like that.

As it happens, this part of the operation is done with, anyway.

C: We’re moving. Have the White Fang clear out this building. I’ll send you details and coordinates tonight.

RT: Coordinates?

C: We’re proceeding to Phase Two.

Emerald and Mercury follow Cinder out, Emerald leaving Roman behind with a tongue-out gesture as she reveals she stole his lighter without him noticing.

That’s the end of the episode, but we’re not done! You see, we now have to examine the opening movie that will be playing before each following episode for the volume! Back in Volume 1, this wasn’t important, because nearly all of the footage used in the opener was taken from the four preceding trailers, with very little information you wouldn’t have had by the time you finished the first episode. From Volume Two onwards, these act a little bit more like proper anime openers, teasing the content of the actual volume. Thus, we can gauge how well they do that. Watch it here:

Watch on YouTube

The song used for the Volume 2 opener is "Time to Say Goodbye". It's a rock song about losing one's innocence, making tough choices, and throwing one's self out there to fight the good fight regardless of whether authority thinks you're ready. And since this is playing after Ozpin's little token speech about letting RWBYJNPR act like idiots, this will have absolutely nothing to do with the coming volume at all, to give one example.

Now, we examine the video elements:

Slow panning shots of Beacon featuring the four heroines gives way to a shot of Ruby falling from the sky...
...which transforms into a shot of Ozpin's office.
This is replaced by a shot of Pyrrha, with Jaune's hand on her shoulder, and then a shot of JNPR.
Following this are rapid-fire shots of various factions, which includes CRDL, SSSN (Sun's team) and CFVY (Velvet's team):

plus Ironwood (the general guy from the trailer), Penny, and two placeholder NPCs, followed by the Beacon faculty.
There's a relatively slow pan-out shot of Cinder's faction, which apparently includes Junior and the Malachite Twins, strolling through Vale, which is in flames.
A shot of a beowolf crossing a snow field.
This cuts back to Ruby, still falling from the sky, but now finding herself surrounded by allies, which includes every non-villainous character previously shown as they all slam down into the ground and stick their landings.
This is followed by a scene of Pyrrha fighting Team CRDL, then a scene of Cinder atop a rampart watching airships go by as her eye bleeds fire.
Then is a shot of RWBY sprinting into the thick of danger. Their opponents meet them, and we get separate shots of Yang fighting Mercury, Emerald fighting Weiss, Blake fighting Torchwick, and Ruby fighting Cinder.
As each girl brandishes her weapon, we close the song out on the text "RWBY" on a black screen.

Shots implying new or plot-related content bolded. We are going to examine this opener once the volume is done and see how much of it was faithful to the content it teased, and what turned out to be broken promises will be tallied as points for a new count. But that's for quite a few posts from now.

Until next time.

Counts:

Jaune: 6
It Was Right There: 2
Fauxminism: 5
Hypocrisy: 1
Ice Cream Queens: 0
Reliable Leaders: 4
- Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 0
Threatening Enemies: 1
Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 1
Your Fight Scene Sucks: 5 + 2
- Evisceration Evasion: 2
Ill Logic: 9
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 3
- Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 0
- Band-Aid Brigade: 0
RSVP: 19
Road to Nowhere: 1
Y.A.S. Queen: 3