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Volume 2, First Arc (Part II) | Table of Contents | Volume 2, Second Arc (Part II)
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Alright. So far, Volume 2 is not taking me to happy places. But why stop now?

We ended on a gigantic fight between four girls and a robotic mech.

V2E5, “Extracurricular”

The first thing I get to recap to you is a fight scene, right out of the gate. We open on Pyrrha, seeing her gear up for combat, spliced inbetween flashes of the fight itself. Now, for once, since this fight is neither the focus of the episode, nor that important overall, I’m not going to slavishly transcribe it, but rather give you the rundown:

It’s Pyrrha versus the entirety of Team CRDL (Cardin, Russel, Dove, and Lark, in case you forgot). Cardin’s packing his big giant mace, Russel’s armed with dual knives with what look like dust rotors, Lark is swinging around a halberd that looks completely unaltered, and Dove is armed with a slim double-edged blade that can fold into a pistol. If you want to see the fight that badly, I have good news: it’s easy to gif, since it’s brutally short, a mere minute and a half (1:40 to 3:14). So here, my treat:

As you can see, Pyrrha is completely untouchable here, even four-on-one. She sends CRDL’s members flying with precise strikes and sweeps, and deflects Dove’s and Russel’s blades with only the shield braced on her one arm without even going off-balance. Sky and Cardin hit a bit harder, and Cardin gets points for being the only one to take more than three seconds to demolish, but she trounces him, too, the minute she sees an opening. All in all, she was in complete control of the battle and it showed.

You might be wondering how Pyrrha could so skillfully dismantle four attackers, some of whom have clear advantages on her in size and weight and who were attacking together. Don’t worry—you’ll see.

The lights come on in the arena, and Glynda’s voice again announces the end of the match, complimenting Pyrrha and mentioning she’ll have no trouble qualifying for the Vytal Tournament. She turns to the stands, asking any of the attending students if they’d like to fill one last match. RWBY, who are in the stands, appear uninterested, but we can see two familiar faces sitting just behind them. Glynda zeroes in on Blake, who hurriedly snaps some book shut, accusing her of being rather ‘docile’ in recent classes, but before she can volunteer her, a hand is raised and Mercury’s voice pipes up.

Glynda makes to select an opponent for him, but he stops her—he wants to go a round with Pyrrha. Glynda, clearly a tad peeved at having been interrupted twice, tries to tell him that she’s already finished a match, but Pyrrha welcomes another fight, very happy to take him up on it.

Mercury, legs greaved in black metal and showing off glinting silver bullets loading the chambers, slowly struts onto the field to meet his opponent, and in the background, Emerald glances at the back of Ruby’s head, then at the match, with a pointed focus on her eyes. Mercury takes a kickboxing stance, while Pyrrha stands with shield and xiphos at the ready. The two of them rush to meet each other, and Mercury throws a kick that meets Pyrrha’s shield before she sweeps his other leg out from under him. He makes distance with many an unnecessary backflip.

The two fighters clearly appraise one another, before Pyrrha runs forward and presses him. Mercury goes on a fantastic defense, deflecting her strikes and trying to get around her shield, but this enables Pyrrha to just butt him in the chest and send him skidding back.

Mercury nods, as if to say ‘eh, pretty good’, and in the stands, Ruby turns to compliment Emerald on how well her ‘friend’ is doing, who smiles and then rolls her eyes as soon as Ruby turns back towards the match. The two in the arena continue:

Mercury launches a fast and furious series of strikes with the goal of bringing a heavy boot down on something that gives, and Pyrrha performs the sickest move ever, throwing her sword into the air behind her and then just catching Mercury’s next kick with the back of her arm. Mercury undercuts the coolness of this just a bit by answering her next series of slashes with the re-equipped sword and knocking the xiphos out of her hand and some distance away. Pyrrha doesn’t look too concerned about this.

When Mercury makes to pounce on this advantage, she raises her free hand as if to catch his boot, but it doesn’t make contact. We the viewer see a very faint black outline around her hand and his boot as she does it. Mercury is sent off-balance, and takes a moment to absorb what just happened. Pyrrha rushes him, and he gets back up in time to meet her shield with both legs and fire his greave-guns, sending him shooting off of it and a good distance away, just in time to say the magic words before she can press her assault.

M: I forfeit.

Pyrrha is thrown off, and skids to a halt, surprised and rather annoyed at this turn of events. Mercury dismisses her—she’s a world-class fighter, and they’re obviously leagues apart. Glynda understandably shares her irritation, given that Mercury chose to fight her in the first place. Mercury and Emerald are both grinning.

Glynda reminds everyone that “the dance is this weekend” and their first mission is on Monday. RWBY file out of the arena, Blake’s nose buried in a notebook and Emerald watching them as they go. Mercury dryly remarks, as he comes up to Emerald, that learning is “so much fun”.

Now before I pounce on the words that I just bolded, which the next scene that we cut to would like to elaborate on, let me draw your attention to something:

Do you see this overhead shot of Beacon’s courtyard? To the right of RWBY, heading out, you will see Sun’s team, SSSN (pronounced “Sun”)—himself and Neptune, plus Scarlet and Sage. Click to enlarge.

That is their—Sage’s and Scarlet’s—only appearance this volume.

No, they do not actually interact with anyone nor are they involved in this scene whatsoever, they’re literally in the background and stay there. I don’t feel bad about spoiling that. Better we got it out of the way now. Do any of you remember something I highlighted in my Volume 1 Final Thoughts?

I said that slow pacing wasn’t something we could afford when this show only runs for 25% of the year and is on hiatus the other 75%. It’s not like live-action dramas, either, able to make up for that by running for 50 episodes at a time or packing 30-45 minutes into each episode. It seemed, at the time, an astounding feat of juggling to introduce so many new characters in the very last episode and then even more in the Volume 2 trailer and opening—but now we can see that it evens out, because they don’t intend on using any of them.

By this point in time, RWBY fans had been sitting on the knowledge that Sun had his own team, salivating in the aftermath of his glorious first impression, and hungering for some details on his crew for quite a while, and have at this point gone five weeks with nothing but scraps. They will go the rest of the volume—ten more weeks, what with the World of Remnant introduction—and then the rest of the Volume 2-3 hiatus with yet more nothing to go on.

Release date of Volume 2 Trailer: July 4th, 2014
Release date of Volume 3 Episode 2: October 31^st, 2015.

Fifteen, almost sixteen months. Over a year. Not a year in which consistent content was coming—a year in which an official entry to the series’ collective body came and went. If you were actually interested in these characters as a team, any sparse involvement of the remaining two, or anything deeper than a petri dish from Sun and Neptune, you were absolutely not going to get it. Sucks to be you.

Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 10

*idly twirling a foil scraper* That’s not good. That is, in fact, pretty fuckin’ bad. Dickish, even. A point each for Sage and Scarlet, plus a point for the lack of unit behavior with Sun and Neptune—plus another for the conspicuous amount of time spent ignoring these dudes whose names haven’t even been said in-show. Fairest arrangement I can think of.

But that’s all I can say now. I will be bringing this back up later, near or at the end of the Volume. The same goes for the hair-ripping Exit Stage Left from last post that had me so bald.

So let’s move on to the issue actually comprising this scene.

Blake is lagging behind her team, head still buried in her notebook. Sun breaks off from his own team to catch up with her.

S: Hey, Blake! You, uh, doin’ okay?

B: I’m fine.

S: *clearing his throat* So I hear there’s this dance goin’ on this weekend… Agh, sounds...pretty lame, but you an’ me, I’m thinkin’, not as lame? Huh?

B: ...What?

S: The dance, this weekend! You wanna go, or what?

B: ...I don’t have time for a stupid dance. *turning and walking away* I thought you, of all people, would get that.

In case the tone of this conversation is not clear to you, here’s a gif, so you can see their body language like I can.

Sun is being his usual chill and somewhat dorky self, and not at all pushy or rude. Blake, who has suddenly developed noticeable circles under her eyes since leaving the school arena, responds in a much rougher tone than we might have expected given her previous characterizations. Sun is visibly deflated and her teammates eye her as she walks off. Ruby spares sad boi Sun a glance before we cut to the next scene.

B: You what?

Ruby answers that they want her to go to the dance. When Blake calls that ridiculous, Yang mentions that they’re worried about her. This investigation, she says, is starting to mess with her head.

Ohhh, the investigation! Yeah, that was a thing that happened last episode, wasn’t it?

Wiess mentions that Blake can’t sleep, hardly eats, and her grades are tanking. Blake wants to know why she should care about grades when lives are at stake! Yang responds that they know, and they’re still trying to find out what Torchwick is up to.

Ruby mentions that thanks to her and Sun, they know that he and the White Fang are operating somewhere outside of southeast Vale, and Weiss follows up that Schnee records indicated that Vale was clearly the primary target of dust robberies over the last month.

Not to interrupt yet more blossoming angst from Blake, but yeah, this is our reward for following that three-episode ‘arc’ that culminated in the Paladin fight. Weiss lists that last bit off as if it’s useful information—it isn’t, because the characters live in Vale, among the robberies, and the viewers have so far only been shown Vale, and robberies happening there. It gives them nothing to go on besides “hey, at least the plot isn’t operating outside of our reach, like in other countries!” and that is why I remain firm in my decision to award it the Road to Nowhere point.

But seriously, think about what’s going on here. Blake’s grievance about lives is that they’re at stake, not that any have been lost, just in case you don’t believe that all those murdered people on the interstate really didn’t matter. They don’t even register here. As if to underscore the fact that we just hit the reset button—on everything, including Blake’s inner turmoil over Torchwick that seemingly got resolved in Episode 2—they’re even back in their standard outfits, with the cool, unique, badass outfits that they wore for an episode and a half completely ditched, forgotten, and never brought up again.

None of that mattered. We went nowhere.

Alright, now that I’m good and mad, let’s continue with the scene.

Y: Don’t forget about their missing military tech, too.

I’m fine! I’m cool, I’m calm, I’m fine!

When Blake protests that there’s still unanswered questions, Ruby responds that she won’t find any answers if she can’t even stay awake. Yang reiterates that they want her to relax a bit for one day, and Weiss insists it’ll be fun—because after all, Weiss and Yang are going to make sure of it! You see, they’re planning the whole event!

Yes, Yang said that verbatim. They—two girls—are planning a school event comprising not just the hundreds of students living at their campus, but hundreds more students coming in from three other countries! Sorry, I’m not letting you get away with that.

Ill Logic: 16

It isn’t alleviated by the fact that the event was originally being managed by four students instead of a mere two. Weiss mentions that upperclassmen team CFVY (pronounced “coffee”) aren’t back from their mission yet, so she and Yang were asked to pick up where they left off. Weiss promises that after the dance, they can return to their regularly scheduled business, nose in Torchwick’s business and all.

B: I think this is a colossal waste of time.

She gets up and strides out, mentioning that she’ll be in the library, with her team bemoaning that she can’t keep going like this.

But enough about that! There’s a knock on the door, and Weiss answers it. Guess who it is!

What he’s here for is obvious before he even says it. Weiss shuts the door in his face, and he knocks again, begging that she open it, and promising not to sing.

J: I lied!

W: [facepalming]

J: Weiss Sch-nee! ♪ Will you accompany me? ♪ To the daaaaance on! ♪ Sunday? ♪

W: Are you done?

J: ...Yes?

W: No. [she shuts the door in his face, then turns to her teammates] ...What?

Y: And that, is why they call you the ice queen.

W: All my life, boys have only cared about the perks of my last name. [crossing her arms and turning away] Besides, I already have a date in mind.

R: Date or no date, none of this will matter if we can’t get Blake to go.

The scene here ends on a zoom-in towards the sky outside the open window. But first…You didn’t think we were going to escape this shit without a little commentary on boundaries, did you?

Mkay. We’re not quite done with this issue, but we may as well do this—you may be flashing back to the first interaction Weiss actually had with Jaune, and his very pushy and rude flirting in the same scene. I mentioned there that it translated worse when written than watched, and could easily be brushed off as harmless even though it wasn’t. There is no such allowance here.

We’ve already established, through that scene and through the recent cold shoulder she gave him in class, that Weiss has no interest in Jaune’s time. Trying to ask her out to a dance, therefore, is a bad idea, but not necessarily a full-stop no-bad-wrong. Once she made it clear via door slam that she still wasn’t interested, that was the official cutoff, and any further pursuit should’ve been given up. He continues to pester her, and then she still gives him the official “No”.

If, like me, you mis-remembered this as Jaune asking her out like four or five times past a clear “No”, don’t worry, there’s still more to talk about. Because while Jaune is still over the line—

Jaune: 8

—what the real issue here is, is the framing of Weiss’ answer. See, it’s not because Jaune has qualities that turn Weiss off, or that his behavior is bad, or even that she simply doesn’t want to go to the dance—it’s that she assumes that Jaune only wants her because she’s the illustrious Schnee heiress. It is framed as though Weiss’ ‘no’ to Jaune is simply one of caution rather than actual disinterest in him—as though he ‘deserves a chance’, and the only reason he isn’t getting one is because a) Weiss made the wrong assumption and b) she already has the spot filled.

The problem is that Weiss doesn’t need a reason. She may hate Jaune’s guts, or may be head-over-heels with him. She may simply find him unattractive, or may simply not enjoy his company. She may not enjoy dances on principle. She may already have a date, or may not. She may have no reason whatsoever to say no to Jaune.

And she can still say no to him, and deserves to have that respected. Because a girl doesn’t need a ‘good’ reason to reject a guy. The ‘no’ is the beginning, middle, and end. She says no, and that’s that.

Fauxminism: 6

There’s shades of this with Blake, too, mind, what with her team trying to push her to go to a dance she has no interest in. Blake may, like myself, simply not find dances enjoyable and want to skip it, regardless of whatever turmoil is causing her to lose sleep, but this passes just a tad more easily because her physical health and mindset are clearly not their best.

Back to the next scene. We are shown Jaune training with Pyrrha. Both of them are wielding their swords with both hands and have gone shieldless, so Pyrrha seems to be teaching him the basics. He presses her into a couple of sword locks, before she sweeps his legs out from under him with her own. She laughs, and compliments how much his swordplay has improved, extending a hand to help him up (while a very creepy but un-commented-on green glow emanates from the headmaster’s tower in the background).

She asks if he wants to go ahead with Aura training, and Jaune hesitantly wonders about skipping that for tonight. She recommends he keep at it, and that she’s sure they’ll discover his Semblance in no time (hinting for the audience that one is attached to the other). Jaune dismisses this as the problem, saying “It’s dumb”. Pyrrha presses him when he clams up, and he admits he wants time to lament about Weiss.

What about her, Pyrrha asks, and he confesses he asked her to the dance and she promptly shut him down. Pyrrha, quite stiffly, mentions that there’s plenty of fish, as the saying goes. Easy for her to say, he says, since she probably has guys falling over themselves in line to hit that up. She subtly hints that this isn’t the case, only to be blown off. If she doesn’t get a date to the dance, he says, he’ll wear a dress.

Wait for it.

Pyrrha gives Jaune’s retreating back the solemn gaze of the unrequited crush, and all I can do is question her taste, which I will do in detail soon enough.

The next scene we cut to is the dorm room where Cinder, Emerald, and Mercury are staying. They’re commenting on ‘the invincible girl’, Pyrrha Nikos, who Mercury appears to have figured out. He and Emerald explain that her semblance is ‘polarity’, but she hides it well, using it to manipulate combat in her favor in subtle ways that won’t be noticed if you aren’t looking. In this way, she creates the impression that she really is untouchable in combat on skill alone, rather than because most fighters would realistically be helpless against her.

We will ask a question now: if Pyrrha’s so good at being subtle about her abilities, why did she magically wave Mercury’s foot away from her face rather than simply catching it? She proved she was capable of doing just that. One looks significantly less suspect than the other, and likely wouldn’t have actually been caught by Mercury’s oh-so-clever analysis!

Ill Logic: 17

Your Fight Scene Sucks: 10

C: People assume she’s fated for victory, when she’s taken fate into her own hands. Interesting. Add her to the list.

How very ominous. Mercury mentions that Cinder should be able to take her easily, and she adopts a more serious demeanor as she declares that it’s not about overpowering the enemy, but taking away what power they have. How different those two things really are, in this context or any, is something I’ll leave up to readers.

When Mercury bemoans more waiting around, Cinder mentions a ‘fun weekend’ in store for them, while holding up a needle she’s using to sew something. The episode ends.

Before I move on to the next episode, I need to air an issue I’ve been saving since the beginning of this one, and I will preface it with an apology, because one last time, I’m about to use the j-word: juvenile.

It took me a while of casting about to settle on that word, you know, when I was first outlining a spork of this animation, and when I finally settled on it, I was thinking of this plot point right here, and nothing else. It didn’t occur to me until I was actually writing the recaps for the preceding episodes just how many times I could, and would, apply that word.

And it does occasionally hit me that I may come off as snobbish or elitist for that, and I apologize if so. I promise that’s not my intention. I’m not some fun-hating asshat that takes issue with a show being accessible to kids and not being filled with blood and gore and sex and f-bombs. I’m not trying to put RWBY ‘beneath’ me.

But there is nonetheless a problem with how this show is treading its water. There are certain things the audience is expecting, was expecting, and some they most certainly weren’t—and probably didn’t welcome. And as for me, I would call this one of them. Let’s lay our cards on the table here: we now have a dance arc to sit through. Dance arcs are restricted, generally speaking, to a few different settings, and it’s rather difficult to make most of them cross over with the dramatic, monster-slaying world of Remnant. And failing the one, rather more flexible type of dance arc—the whole ‘regal, fancy high-society ball’ type—we instead are being handed the other type. Say it with me now, what we’ve really got is a prom arc.

I cannot fucking stand the prom arc.

Suppose for a minute that I did enjoy high-school shows, of which the prom arc is the most standard, inseparable staple. Regardless of the fact that I detest them in general, there are interesting things you can do in a high school setting, especially if there are fantasy elements involved. If binging Supernatural doesn’t scar me deeply enough by the time I’m done, hell, the one I’ll probably move on to is Teen Wolf, in which I understand this problem to have reared its ugly head. The prom arc is emblematic of both high school shows and what ends up being wrong with most of them, in that it’s the least interesting thing you can possibly show me.

Absent any monster-slaying or teens with superpowers, maybe on occasion I can still get invested in a plot about how some chick is trying to hide her pregnancy, about how a bully gets his due (one we had in this show, as it happens!), or how some kid getting in with the wrong crowd tries to get out before it destroys his life. To say nothing of the oft-ignored or mishandled potential of trying to watch teens struggle through things like sexuality or gender, which more and more of us could relate to and want to see. And yes, even that is relevant to what I will say later on.

The fact of the matter is, ‘who is taking who to prom? Tee-hee! Ooooh!’ is the plot point that is both the least interesting and the one that often takes up way too much time and attention. It’s tired, annoying, endlessly-retreaded, boring…and now we have one right here.

Coming right off the heels of Torchwick chasing gun-and-sword-wielding teens down a crowded freeway and the large-scale implications Blake keeps babbling about, why should we disagree with her assessment of this? Why on earth would we care about some freaking prom? Do we not have a million more interesting things to look at?!

And don’t think that it ends with me calling this juvenile farce for what it is. There’s also the fact that it doesn’t make sense. This prom is happening on the heels of a bazillion exchange students arriving to stay on campus.

Really? You want to ask hundreds of people who are unfamiliar with the city and have never been here before to try and find dates, ostensibly with people from other countries that they hardly know, when they barely know their way around? That makes sense to you? Someone should bitch slap Ozpin upside the head for thinking that’s a good idea.

Ill Logic: 18

It’s not getting Reliable Leader points because I can’t prove it was him that organized it, but it’s still a terrible idea nonetheless. Whatever, let’s move along.

V2E6, “Burning the Candle”

We open on Ruby sitting at a table when set upon by Weiss, asking her opinion: which tablecloth should she go with? But they’re both the same, and Weiss leaves in a huff when this is pointed out. Yang is carrying a huge amp and sets it down with a colossal thud. She asks if Ruby has picked out her dress yet, and Ruby, incredibly down in the dumps, asks what the point is if Blake isn’t going.

You have a weird fixation on Blake attending a very pointless event, you know that? Do you have some terminal inability to enjoy anything if it isn’t being done with your whole teeeeaaam? I’m gonna start calling you Esme.

Yang waves this off: don’t worry, Ruby, Blake’s going! Said with a confident smirk, which given Yang’s track record with coercion so far, does not make me think the things I imagine Rooster Teeth wanted me to think, so great work there. She then snaps at Weiss that she doesn’t want doilies everywhere. No doilies, no fog machines, Weiss answers.

This leads to a comment from Neptune, who walks in with Sun. Lovely to see you two again, did you ever find your missing two team members? No? Sorry to hear that, keep at it! Neptune thinks this might be pretty cool, and Sun asks if the ladies are all ready for ‘dress-up’. Ruby is not as enthused as Yang and Weiss are at the idea of getting all dolled up to turn heads. So what are they going to be wearing, the latter asks?

S: Pfft, uhhh, this?

Before I can point out that this is yet another detail implying that Sun is poor, Neptune tries to wave him off, but Sun will not be ignored. He mentions that, despite having moved to Mistral, he grew up in Vacuo, which viewers will by now understand to be a desert nation and rather dangerous.

S: It’s not exactly a shirt-and-tie kind of place.

Y: Yeah, we’ve noticed.

Hey, Yang, if you don’t have time for six-pack abs, I do!

Sun, visibly uncomfortable, asks what Blake thinks of all this, and if she’s still in her ill mood, and they confirm that she is. Yang, again all a-smirking, says to just trust her, because Blake will definitely be at the dance tomorrow. Whatever could she mean?

She means racism, of course! See, in the next scene, she’s got a laser pointer, and interrupts Blake’s time poring over a library computer by bothering her with it until she gives in and tries to follow it to the source. It is an extended sequence and very uncomfortable. Remember: this would not matter if Blake was just a cat person, and cat people and humans coexisted with nothing else said about it. But the faunus in this show are explicit stand-ins for people of color! So this joke is unfunny and offensive by default. Imagine if some black kid was hanging out on the computer and some rudeass white kid started trying to dangle fried chicken or watermelon in front of them, ‘cause black people love that stuff, right? Ha. Ha. Ha. So very funny.

RSVP: 22

When Blake finally finds Yang holding the laser pointer, she drags her off by the arm, claiming they ‘need to talk’ and no, it’s not funny. Cut to the next scene!

Lie Ren walks out of the JNPR dorm’s bathroom wearing only a towel. In the exact same manner, Jaune comes out of nowhere and grabs him by the arm, claiming they need to talk. Ha, funny, hee.

J: Ren…I’m just gonna come out and say it. You…are one of my best friends. These past few months, I feel like we’ve really bonded! Even though...you don’t say much. I mean, you’re really quiet. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know that much about you personally...but darn it, I consider you to be the brother I never had!

R: [still in a towel and visibly uncomfortable] ...And I you.

J: Which is why I wanted to get your advice on...girls!

I love when racism is followed by good old-fashioned homophobia! Because yes, that’s what this is. The fact that Ren’s in a towel and Jaune starts by using language like “you’re one of my best friends” and the ever-suspect “come out and say it” make it clear that this is obviously a funny joke meant to make the audience laugh because oh, he sounds like he’s about to confess his love to another man! Isn’t that funny?!

*icily* Miles Luna, you see this big fat dick? Eat me. It’s fucking scary as hell for gay people trying to approach love and you don’t get to make us the butt of your jokes.

And for the record, no, I don’t think that was a one-off. See, people watching RWBY had, before Volume 2 even aired, asked about the topic of sexuality within this show. They wanted to know...well, mostly whether their favorite ships were gonna happen, but beyond that, they wanted to know whether Rooster Teeth intended to display non-heterosexual identities and how they felt about doing so. Monty went on record and assured them, perhaps in not so many words, that the characters would figure that sort of thing out under their own power and on their own time, and that it would not be brushed aside but also wouldn’t be a huge part of the story. So by this point, Rooster Teeth are already aware they had an LGBT audience...and this little scene still got greenlit.

Malevolent? Malicious? No and no. But abso-fucking-lutely in poor taste? Definitely so.

Jaune eventually says that he wants to know how Ren and Nora got together, only for them both to uncomfortably clarify that they’re not a couple. He urges her to put her headphones back on, since obviously he wanted Ren’s opinion on this and not hers. Dick. Ren asks him what this is about.

J: It’s Weiss. I’m completely head-over-heels for her, and she won’t even give me a chance. She’s cold, but…she’s also incredible. She’s smart, graceful, and talented...I mean, have you heard her sing? I just wish she’d take me seriously, you know? I wish I could tell her how I feel, without messing it all up.

Yes, we are still not done with this tiresome matter.

First, this was clearly an attempt to back up what I said above: it’s all a misunderstanding! Jaune doesn’t want her because she’s a Schnee, (or just because she’s hot), he’ll have you know! It has nothing to do with superficial qualities like her money (or her hotness). It’s all about those other not-at-all-superficial qualities like how graceful she is, what a beautiful voice she has, and uhh, what was that last one? Oh yeah, how smart she is! Notice that Jaune said nothing that actually indicated he knows her. Is she a kind person? Does she have passion or drive? Does she care about others? Does she put forth effort to be the best she can be and make every day great? What are her interests and hobbies? The best you could say is that ‘smart’ technically isn’t superficial, but it’s one short step away from ‘aw yeah, she’s got a brain to go with those hot titties!’

This was clearly a transparent attempt to smooth over burgeoning distaste for Jaune and his interactions with women, so it’s getting two points, and one of them is our very first!

Jaune: 9

Band-Aid Brigade: 1

Moving on. Pyrrha cuts in, telling Jaune that if he really feels that way about Weiss, he should just tell her. No schemes, no pick-up lines, just honesty.

P: Jaune. You can’t get it wrong if it’s the truth!

I beg to differ! He can get it very wrong! He’s gonna show us that much very soon! Like, 'next episode' soon!

But Jaune likes this advice and hurries out, leaving Nora to sadly advise Pyrrha to practice what she preaches.

Now we cut back to Blake and Yang. They are occupying some unused theater classroom, with Yang sitting cross-legged on the teacher’s desk and Blake pacing back and forth with her arms crossed. Blake insists that they can’t afford to slow down, while Yang says that taking a break isn’t a luxury, but a necessity. At Yang’s invitation, Blake reluctantly sits down to listen to her story.

Cuz it’s story time!

Y: Ruby and I grew up in Patch, an island just off the coast of Vale. Our parents were Huntsmen. Our dad taught at Signal, and our mom would take on missions around the kingdom. Her name was Summer Rose. And she was like...Super-Mom. Baker of cookies and slayer of giant monsters. And then...one day she left for a mission and never came back. It was tough. Ruby was really torn up, but…I think she was still too young to really get what was going on, you know? And my dad just kinda...shut down. It wasn’t long before I learnt why. Summer wasn’t the first love he’d lost. She was the second. The first was my mom. He wouldn’t tell me everything. But I learnt that they had been on a team together with Summer and Qrow. And that she’d left me with him just after I was born. No one had seen her since.

Yes, this is belated Yang Time. Pay careful attention to what she said here. I’ll be talking about it in just a minute.

Blake asks why Yang’s birth mother left. Yang answers that it’s that exact question that ate at her as a kid and drove her to find out why. We transfer to art deco as Yang delves deeper into her backstory. She found a clue, she describes, while the art deco shows us a picture in a broken picture frame, that she thought would lead her to her mother or answers thereabouts.

Y: I waited for Dad to leave the house, put Ruby in a wagon, and headed out. I must’ve walked for hours. I had cuts and bruises, was totally exhausted…but I wasn’t gonna let anything stop me. When we finally got there, I could barely stand. But I didn’t care. I had made it. And then I saw them. Those burning red eyes. There we were. A toddler asleep in the back of a wagon and a stupid girl too exhausted to even cry for help. We might as well have been served on a silver platter. But, as luck would have it...our uncle showed up just in time. My stubbornness should’ve gotten us killed that night.

The bolded material, this time, is for me. First, I know a lot of you will expect me to comment on Yang’s parents and what they’re like, and on this matter, one in particular. But please wait. Give it time—there is an appropriate moment to talk about this, and you need the full effect. For now, let’s just focus on the first one: Ruby.

In addition to Yang Time, we now have our very first details about Ruby’s mother, Summer Rose! Fans had been itching to hear about this ever since that extremely loaded song, Red Like Roses Part II, debuted in Volume 1. A dark past, trauma, a desire to know why her protectorate left her...and then we find out Ruby was too young to understand Summer dying. That handily puts a stopper in any of that juicy development we were kind of relying on for Ruby, not to mention any development of it in the future, too. It’s not as though it doesn’t make sense for Yang to angst about a missing mother as much as Ruby, but this kind of locks it onto Yang and away from Ruby. And with Yang focusing on her birth mother over Summer, that means Summer will continue to be unexplored. And Rooster Teeth will continue to fumble this going ahead.

At the end of this story, Blake makes a very good point: these situations are not the same, and she is not a child with no sense of scope. Yang, gripping the desk rather hard, reiterates that she isn’t telling Blake to stop. After all, she hasn’t—she’s still looking for details about her birth mother. The difference is, she doesn’t let the search control her, which is what she wants for Blake. Blake insists that she doesn’t understand. That she’s the only one who can fight this. Why…? I’m not sure. Perhaps you guys need to see how this goes down:

Y: No, you don’t understand! If Roman Torchwick walked through that door, what would you do?

B: I’d fight him!

Y: You’d lose!

B: I’d stop him!

Y: You can’t even stop me!

I’m not of the opinion that Yang shoving Blake necessarily constitutes abuse, or even just an unhealthy scenario. Certainly I wouldn’t do it, but Yang is supposed to personify ‘tough love’, and she’s right: Blake is literally running on fumes and would suck ass if the time came for her to get what she wants. That said, this is another one of those Yang Things^TM that looks way worse when considering prior missteps surrounding her. Fortunately, I think this is one Rooster Teeth actually caught onto in time—but that’s for later.

Yang gives Blake a hug, reiterating one more time that even though she supports what Blake wants, the way she’s going about it is self-destructive. And that’s why they want her to get some rest, for both her and the people she cares about. And...maybe try and head to the big event tomorrow, if she feels up to it? Yang’ll save her a dance, she says. They both leave, allowing us to get a good look at the winged gear emblem Yang was drawing on the chalk board.

(I will, even with what I said earlier, condemn anyone that, like Certain People Back in the Day, has the audacity to say this would’ve been a perfect time for them to kiss or for Yang to ask Blake to the dance. That turns what is framed as a gentle suggestion into the sort of thing that you do not do to an emotionally unstable and hurting person. You wait ‘til a person is stable and in good health to put the moves on them or you face my fiery wrath.)

That was pretty okay. A bit belated, and a bit of a forced fit for Blake’s problem, but we did indeed get two things I said we needed in my Volume 1 Final Thoughts—in-depth Yang characterization and one-on-one interaction with her team members. Here, have a cookie.

We cut to Jaune strolling down the sidewalk with a big ol’ smile on his face, holding a white flower and yes, he is doing exactly what he shouldn’t be doing—!

Jaune: 10

Pyrrha, I gotta pin this one on you. You were in the room when Jaune said he got turned down, why did you encourage this?

Yes, he’s off to go announce his feelings for Weiss! On...the night before the dance. And unless I’m just dumb, hoping to get a date with her. But his attempt is, as we already know, doomed. Jaune passes an alleyway, only to hear Weiss’ voice...calling Neptune’s name. Peeking around a corner, he (and we) watch Weiss catch up with the man himself, who asks what’s up.

W: I know this is a little...unorthodox, but…I wanted to ask you something. Would you...like to accompany me to the dance tomorrow?

Neptune’s hand is behind his head in apparent recognition of how ‘unorthodox’ this is. Jaune, crushed, backs away from the alley and goes back to his dorm, the flower discarded, and since he didn’t stick around to see Neptune’s answer, neither do we.

We cut to the very next night, where the dance is happening indoors. Yang, in a very untypical plain white dress and heels, is hosting, and yes, before you ask, every single one of the couples in view behind her is visibly a man/woman pairing. The latest visitor Yang welcomes is her very own sister Ruby, who she gushes over for having gotten all prettied up, including heels. Ruby would like to complain about those in particular, lampshading Weiss’ uncanny ability to fight in them. We then cut to Sun.

Sun is wearing…black? His tail is swinging behind him and we see that he’s swapped out his white jacket and lack of shirt for an identical jacket in black, this time buttoned up just high enough to let him display his necklace, and that he’s also wearing a white tie, which he is very unfamiliar with and struggling in. Behind him, a quiet voice reaches him:

B: I knew you’d look better with a tie.

Awwww!

She takes his arm, and he asks if this means they’re going, yanno, together. Technically yes, Blake says, though her first dance is spoken for.

Cutting back to the dance, we get a lovely view of all of those cookie-cutter heterosexual couples dancing, before...

…Blake finishes one dance, and starts another.

*tapping his foil scraper on the desk* Yes, I know I was a tad snide about the background characters, but we got the important bits here with the main characters. Via Blake dancing with Yang, we are being shown that it’s not a stigma for people of the same sex to dance together, even if they’re not there as a date, so to speak. I’m not going to call that an accident, because that was the purpose of the scene and that’s what it did. I am going to call this dangerous, because even if the intent was clean and hit the mark for once, this also adds potential energy to a burgeoning fandom war.

See, what they aimed for was “Same-sex couples can go to the ~~prom~~ dance!” And they got that. They did. Laud them for it. What they also got was “Blake and Yang went to the ~~prom~~ dance—right before she got together with Sun!”

Yang bows out, Sun steps in. I’ve already commented on the...particular energies of certain shippers in this fandom. I also mentioned that, with the somewhat-too-close relationship Rooster Teeth have with their fans, and the way they like to eat away at what gap there is between them, they can invite bad things. A lot of people were not happy with how Sun, the resident love interest, was still ‘getting the girl’. And yeah, that’s entirely on them—shippers take things too seriously and get very up in arms over shit that doesn’t matter. We know that, that’s what they do. But things like this stoke the eventual fires that break out. I, personally, would’ve had Blake dance with a woman that wasn’t the other half of the biggest ship in fandom at the time—Pyrrha or Weiss, perhaps—but I’m not going to berate RT for not thinking to do that.

Enough about that, though. Sun and Blake are very cute dancing together, as commented on by the others, who are very happy that Blake is happy and is going so far as to laugh, apparently having gotten some rest and improved.

When Ruby asks what they do now, Yang just tells her to have fun before walking off, as does Weiss. She’s left alone to complain about her dumb stilt heels she can barely walk in. The music takes on a twinkling tone as Ozpin shows up, asking if she’s not enjoying herself.

They talk about nothing. No, I’m serious, nothing of any importance is being said here. Ozpin and Ruby bemoan that life is more than just fighting, Ozpin says fighting and dancing aren’t that different, and then muses on bonds becoming stronger. I think he showed up just to give this closing line:

Oz: Nights like these are ones we’ll never forget.

Yang then welcomes in two more guests—Emerald and Mercury.

The episode ends. And so does this post—unfortunately, this arc has to be split in two as well. Like the last one, it’s a bunch of little annoying fails leading up to a huge fail-fest that will get me absolutely furious and chatty about it. Then we’ll do the World of Remnants, and then the last arc, which will take...three posts? Maybe four?

Counts:

Jaune: 10
It Was Right There: 3
Fauxminism: 6
Hypocrisy: 1
Ice Cream Queens: 0
Reliable Leaders: 4
- Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 0
Threatening Enemies: 2
Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 10
Your Fight Scene Sucks: 10 + 2
- Evisceration Evasion: 2
Ill Logic: 18
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 4 + 1
- Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 0
- Band-Aid Brigade: 1
RSVP: 22
Road to Nowhere: 6
Y.A.S. Queen: 3