RWBY - Volume 2 Final Thoughts

[surgeworks]

Volume 2 Finale – Episodes 11 and 12 | Table of Contents | Volume 3
____________________

Welcome to the Final Thoughts for Volume 2. As per last Volume’s, and for all going forward (and possibly for other recaps, too), points are not off the table yet.

First thing’s first:

 

Story

The story...is there. Faint praise, yes, I know, but we can at least say that Volume 2 has a story, which is integrated throughout all three of its major arcs, however poorly. That’s a step up from Volume 1, which didn’t bother with an actual plot until the final two episodes.

But it’s not necessarily a good story. The arcs we go through to achieve out plot points are by and large 90% padding; the only thing that mattered within the first arc was Penny and the information on the White Fang hideout, the only thing that mattered within the second arc was Cinder’s invasion of the CCT (which is all sorts of bad), and the third arc...well, actually, I take that back. The third arc is the best of the three, suffering other problems, but not this one.

There are significant problems, like the Paladin Mechs, the ease with which Cinder hacks into the CCT and how nobody does anything about it, the fact that we had a motherfucking prom arc, the fact that it took them that long to realize the White Fang were underground, etc. If there were any realism to this, we probably wouldn’t have much of a plot. But story still remains the strongest part of the second volume. Unfortunately, the weakest part is…

Characters

Main Cast

Ruby Rose

I said that Ruby Rose went largely uncharacterized last volume in its final thoughts. While things are a little better, not much has changed on that front. There’s Penny, and her heartwarming interactions with the robot who doesn’t believe herself to be a ‘real girl’...which is dropped immediately after and not picked up again the rest of the Volume. There’s her effectively leading her team in taking down a hulking robot, which I suppose counts. Despite the big thing about her mother, Summer Rose, finally popping up, Ruby herself has nothing to contribute on this matter. We don’t see any new sides to her during the downtimes when she has a reason (prom, for example), and we see that when the time comes for deep introspection during the Mountain Glenn mission, she is blatantly skipped over.

It sucks.

Weiss Schnee

...Is no longer a racist. We’ve officially left that behind, and I think we can all infer that it would’ve been better never introduced. But, whatever, we’ll put that to the side for present and future considerations.

While more understated, much like last volume, Weiss continues on a steady and appreciable track. She’s more social and outgoing than she was before, openly voices concerns regarding her teammates, and we see that in a fight, she covers her allies’ weaknesses and goes the length to pull them out of danger and help them fight even at expense to herself (the Paladin Mech fight, possibly the White Fang Lieutenant if you believe she gave Blake all the dust she had to spare). She does not have a problem saying ‘no’ to obnoxious men, but doesn’t wait around for her crush to ask her out either, stepping forward herself—and handling it relatively maturely when she is rejected. She continues to be driven and straightforward while being more grounded than before, as we see late in the volume. I would also count her demonstrable over-confidence in the WFL fight, but I think Rooster Teeth might’ve done that one by accident.

Overall, it’s not surprising that Weiss would emerge as a popular character around this time even despite her difficult beginnings.

Blake Belladonna

And just like last Volume (which makes three for three), Blake shines the most for character development overall. In contrast to Weiss, most of her character progression as we see her in this volume is negative, highlighting her flaws—prone to self-judgement, paranoia, closed-off, and susceptible to stress. She is one of the only characters to actually be remotely interesting in the prom arc, because it continues her trend of overcoming these problems.

• Arc 1: Blake is closed-off and isolated and is obviously stressing. Through communication with her team, she overcomes this and is honest about her desire to be proactive and fight evil and her feeling ill over knowing something is afoot but unable to do something about it.
  
• Arc 2: Her prior stresses have accumulated and her furious desire to see justice done is costing her sleep, causing her to break down and struggle both in her classes and within her team dynamic. By the end of the volume, again via communication with a friend, she puts her worries to the side long enough to get healthy again and have some fun.
  
• Arc 3: Now that Blake is getting the things she wants, i.e., personally pursuing dangerous criminals, she’s worried that she is ill-suited to be the hero she claimed to sign on as, and voices particular worry over her habit of running from her problems. By the end of the next episode, she has single-handedly overcome her own personal nemesis-of-sorts, solidly defeating him and earning her first 1v1 win. This in fact makes her the only one to win her fight at all, enabling her to help out Weiss, saving her life.
  

So, Blake Belladonna has a lot of reasons to be a popular character.

Yang Xiao Long

This is the one that breaks the trend, in that there is significant improvement here over last volume. No, it’s not the shining lighthouse of character development that the last two were, but she got what I said she needed last volume: one-on-one interaction with her teammates and personal history.

Though Summer Rose’s obvious connections to Ruby are not made anything of, we find out that Yang has some mom issues regarding her birth mother, in that despite having had a fantastic adoptive mother, she still desires to know why the one who bore her left. We know that she picked up a lot of slack when losing Summer after already losing the first wide kind of shut down Taiyang emotionally. It provides depth not only to herself, but gives background on characters we haven’t met yet and enables her to assist another character’s growth.

This continues in the Mountain Glenn arc, where Yang begins to question her seemingly-straightforward motivations for going into the Huntress’ world. In the very next episode, Yang, usually a powerhouse and understandably confident, goes toe-to-toe with an unknown enemy and is completely, humiliatingly defeated. Though we don’t hear her thoughts on it, it still marks a change of pace, which is good. Her semblance, revealed in the first arc of Volume 2, is introduced all but winning the fight for her, but by the end of the Volume, is all but useless since she can’t land any hits on her opponent, highlighting a serious flaw.

So, this was a great thing to see.

Jaune Arc

Oh boy, this one.

Jaune is, while not as prevalent as last volume, perhaps even more annoying. He lingers in the fringe during the first and third arcs but is always present, but it’s the prom arc where he gets genuinely insufferable.

Jaune’s attitude towards women, already a stumbling block in the first volume, has nosedived. Despite being given a very clear ‘no’ by Weiss, he continues to pursue her to the point of asking her to the dance despite her disinterest. Instead of telling him to back off, his peers encourage him and he’s going to ask her again before he overhears her being interested in someone else. But that isn’t the point of no return for this issue.

No, the point where it got clearly out of hand and became something that made my dislike of Jaune settle in completely was what happened at the actual dance. Pyrrha, instead of doing the Weiss thing and asking a guy to the dance herself, instead all but blows Jaune on the balcony right there, heaping adulation and respect on him that he hasn’t earned—and when she leaves, Neptune strides in and makes it even worse, because then Jaune just becomes an ass. Neptune did nothing wrong, but to hear Jaune tell it, you’d think he had a personal responsibility to sacrifice his own desires to take a girl he isn’t really interested in to the dance (and I can say that because, whatever Volume 2 may have done, the Weiss/Neptune train goes all of nowhere). Instead of telling Jaune to fuck off, or really instead of Jaune experiencing any consequence whatsoever, Neptune just meekly surrenders to Jaune’s accusations and admits to *long inhale* not being able to dance.

This was the worst part of the Volume for me, full-stop, and it still feels like I’m the only one who noticed it. Jaune’s behavior towards others—and their behavior towards him in spite of it—is seriously tilted and aggravating.

Oh, and then there’s his “glow up” by the end of the Volume. We are supposed to see him show off the results in his training. We don’t see shit, because it’s terribly animated (no, seriously, it was bad) but ostensibly, Jaune’s training has paid off and he can now contribute, even if he isn’t as badass as the others. I have no idea exactly how long he’s been training for, so I can’t really say if his level of improvement makes sense—oh wait, yes I can. It doesn’t, because Jaune is lacking four years of training the others have all had. That’s a little more than a stumbling block, you know, and why we really shouldn’t have introduced “Jaune cheated his way in and doesn’t know basic facts about fighting in RWBYverse”.

The points for these have already been given, though, so I won’t belabor it. The award for worst character of the volume goes to Jaune Arc, hands down.

Pyrrha Nikos

Ohhh, boy. This one has some good and bad parts, and there’s way more to talk about than the first time we did this.

We’ve capitalized on the hints from last volume, with Pyrrha’s semblance on full display...once. Regardless of whatever bullshit had to happen so that Mercury could explain it to us, it is shown to us that Pyrrha is craft, smart, and subtle. She has Magneto-esque powers, as shown to us in the, err, privacy of the gigantic food fight at the first of the Volume. But most of the time, she hides it, only using it in subtle ways to make sure the battle is always in her favor, but which prying eyes mostly woudn’t catch. In this way, she gains a reputation for being invincible that she really does deserve, despite the fact that she isn’t doing it on skill alone. It’s cool. Really, there are very few fighters that could reasonably expect to defeat Pyrrha since so many of them rely on metal weapons.

Her case is hurt by how much her interactions among the cast are still limited to Jaune. She is slowly becoming Jaune’s satellite, which isn’t a good thing, nor is it a good thing how she attributes praise to him that he doesn’t really display and how her crush on him, despite being lovingly outlined to us, is built on completely nonexistent traits and happenings.

I am eyeing Pyrrha and her character with distrust. But not yet disinterest.

Side Cast

Lie Ren and Nora Valkyrie

These two have not changed whatsoever. I pointed out halfway through the volume that we have still seen nothing of Ren and Nora interacting with their teammates, or said teammates interacting with them. These two are simply supporting cast with no roles of their own, so they share a comic relief role, which means Nora occasionally makes a funny interjection and Ren occasionally preaches sense.

While their back-and-forth about their closeness and their denying other peoples’ assumptions that they’re together is cute, I don’t really find it all that compelling. These two aren’t characters, they are pegs filling holes in the four-person team dynamic so people don’t wonder why Jaune and Pyrrha don’t have a complete team.

Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 13

Ozpin and James Ironwood

These two will be sharing their space, because they now have an actual plot presence. Glynda has officially lost hers, as we can safely (and unfortunately) call her an extension of Ozpin. The entire plot that is happening in the background where RWBY can’t see it is being played out between these two.

I’ve been bringing up references to Harry Potter in previous discussions about Ozpin—calling him Dumbledore, calling Glynda McGonagall, etc. Obviously, the intention is there and I commented on it, but now I want to talk about that analogy in more depth. Ozpin resembles Dumbledore on every surface level, not just in physical attributes, but in kindly, twinkling demeanor and mysterious, powerful vibe, and now his plot presence backs it up in that he is some sort of leader for the good fight and is working to defang the villains from the shadows. McGonagall is there to support him in that role while educating the students.

Volume Two introduces James Ironwood, and the plot hidden in the shadows. He is a technical ally of Ozpin’s, in a similar position of authority but younger and brasher, and disagrees with him on many fronts and takes issue with his secretive nature. Is that reminding you of somebody? If it isn’t, don’t worry, I’ll talk about it in more depth later.

The point is, the plot surrounding a shadowy force for good and order comes from the clashing of these two figures, and how does it end…?

With it blowing up in Ozpin’s face.

That, in particular is only half Rooster Teeth’s intention. They certainly seem to have meant the breach at the end of the volume being his own failing and reflecting on him, but they seem to intend us to support him in spite of it. However, Rooster Teeth forgot a critical part of the Dumbledore analogy they were creating:

In Harry Potter, Dumbledore’s failings come later. His errors, with all their tragic consequences, come at the second half and tail end of the story—Voldemort invading Harry’s mind and Sirius dying are partially his own fault and the result of his own hubris, and losing his life to a Horcrux’s curse and being forced to leave Harry and co direction-less and unaided in the final hours is his own fault, though he adjusts accordingly. And we don’t hear all about the truly flawed individual he really was under all that grandeur until the very end, when we’ve actually gotten used to the grandeur!

The point being, Dumbledore wasn’t said to be a powerful force for good and then immediately shown the door. We had four straight books of him proving he was a powerful force for good, an intelligent ally and capable leader, and someone to be relied upon in times of trouble. Books Two, Three, and Four have plots mainly foiled by the heroes, but it is only through his timely assistance and planning that everything doesn’t go belly-up. We are shown his fairness, his goodness, his wisdom and his experience, well before we start poking holes in it.

Imagine if, in the first Harry Potter book, Dumbledore had had virtually nothing told of his great exploits and respect among the wizarding world, but retained his mysterious twinkling vibe that gets commented on by the characters. Imagine that he did nothing of note in the first book at all, and in the second, a ton of students died instead of getting petrified, and Harry defeated the basilisk but lost the diary, resulting in permanent consequences for the Weasley family and a Horcrux with that kind of dreadful power remaining loose in the world.

Would you really respect his position of sway over the plot and the trust instilled in him by others? No, because you’d have been given no reason to believe it. So why should I believe in Ozpin?

I haven’t been shown Ozpin actually succeeding in anything he’s tried his hand at, and so far, the villains have shown him up time and again. For that, I award him this point:

Reliable Leaders: 9

Sun Wukong and Neptune Vasilias

Unlike last Volume, Sun unfortunately does not get a slot to himself. These two…agh. Where do I begin?

Sun Wukong and Neptune Vasilias appear in almost every episode, only being absent in the two they couldn’t physically be present in. Here, let’s run it down again:

• Episode 1: Sun gushes to Neptune about how cool Blake is and namedrops Scarlet. Scarlet and Sage are nowhere to be found.
• Episode 2: Sun formally introduces Neptune to RWBY and JNPR and tries to connect with Blake, but she leaves.
  
• Episode 3: Sun displays a very concerning behavior and effectively inserts himself and Neptune into the plot, Sun assisting Blake and Neptune assisting Yang.
  
• Episode 4: Sun comments on Blake’s history with the White Fang, Neptune Is There while Yang throws a hissy fit at Junior. Both attempt to take on the Paladin but are removed from the scene.
  
• Episode 5: Scarlet and Sage appear in the background. Sun tries to ask out Blake but is rejected.
  
• Episode 6: We find out Sun is from Vacuo, the desert nation, but attends Mistral’s Haven academy with Neptune. Blake goes out with Sun to the dance.
  
• Episode 7: Neptune *growl* gets his head bitten off by Jaune Arse. He can’t dance, you see.
  
• World of Remnant: Sun is implied in passing to be a gifted martial artist.
  
• Episode 8:
  
• Episode 9: They’re shadowing a detective.
  
• Episode 10:
  
• Episode 11:
  
• Episode 12: The two arrive with Junior Detective badges and fist-bump even though they weren’t shown doing anything to alleviate the problem.
  

On paper, that looks like a lot. Sun, at least, has a growing relationship with Blake that he navigates around her sour moods. Neptune is given a half-hearted position as a potential love interest to Weiss, though this doesn’t go very far. But their interaction with the over-arching plot is very thin—the only parts of it they actively participate in are Blake’s infiltration of the White Fang meeting (which is mostly uninvolved on Sun’s part, simply being there while Blake and Torchwick say things), and the two big fights of the Volume in Episodes 4 and 12—in both of which, neither character contributes anything.

Ahh, yeah, that. Tell me, in how many of these episodes could you completely excise Sun and Neptune and find almost nothing changed?

It’s a well-recognized rule that a character or object should not be in a scene if it is not advancing that scene and the plot in some way. That’s how you get filler and padding and an irritated audience. Sun and Neptune were very unnecessary throughout this volume, and yet still appeared. I don’t say “took up screentime”, because being honest, they didn’t—which is a good way to lead into what I really want to say about this problem: why are Sun and Neptune here?

I don’t think it’s a result of Rooster Teeth just liking these characters and wanting them involved, or they’d have done more, been more. In the episodes in which they are most unhelpful, as it happens, there’s very little point to actually showing them onscreen, despite the fact that the episodes’ direction seems to be deliberately setting them up to contribute. Yet, their appearances are too consistent for them to simply be incidental additions to the episodes. I think if Rooster Teeth liked these characters, they easily could’ve found things for them to contribute. But…look back up at those bolded entries.

What happened in “Painting the Town”? Sun and Neptune fought the Paladin mech in ways that specifically showed off Sun’s semblance and Neptune’s weapon—but neither accomplished anything, despite Neptune having a reasonable ability to do so, and both were summarily ejected from the scene. What happened in “Breach”? Everyone’s fighting the invading Grimm, we’ve just seen RWBY and then JNPR engaging them, and then Sun and Neptune show up...but don’t do anything. The scene effectively introduces them, then skips them, devoting attention instead to faceless robots fighting in their place and then CFVY arriving to strut their stuff.

In both cases, they are in positions to be useful and contribute, but in both cases, they are not allowed to. It’s very baffling, because it would be very easy to remove them from the scenes entirely, and since they don’t add anything, I’m left wondering why they were shown at all…which leads me to a very unsettling conclusion.

Rooster Teeth were not united in what they wanted to do with these characters.

That’s the way it honestly reads—part of Rooster Teeth wanted these characters present and doing things, and the other part wanted them out of the picture. The clash on this matter resulted in the very jarring display we got, where the characters are constantly shown to us but are hamstrung and prevented from earning a viewer’s positive attentions. It doesn’t read like a compromise—it reads like infighting.

You’ll forgive me if I feel like I have an inkling as to who constituted what halves.

This unfortunately is not the only symptom of such a suspicion—because there’s also Scarlet and Sage. As I repeatedly pointed out, we know they exist by now, we know they belong in a four-person team dynamic with Sun and Neptune...but they aren’t here. They are extremely conspicuous in their absence, to the point that I am left wondering why they were created and named at all, until I come to the only conclusion I can. These two were not simply present, but inactive—they were hidden and muted. They did not exist this volume, for all intents and purposes, despite their presence being a sustained hype leading up to it, and I am convinced that was done on purpose.

I am going to award two points for Sun and Neptune and their odd predicament, and another two points for Sage and Scarlet having passed this volume in complete obscurity.

Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 17

Penny Polendina

We have officially had the revelation that Penny is, in fact, a robot with a soul. We have had it confirmed that she has a ‘father’ who, along with General Ironwood (gaaaaay) are in charge of her. After that, she vanished from the Volume except for a short appearance in which she danced at the prom.

There is nothing else left to say of her. I want to give her a point for just up and vanishing like that, and really only appearing in one episode, but…well, actually, what the hell, I can totally do that.

Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 18

Villains

Volume Two has continued Torchwick’s prominence, but has now fully affirmed Cinder as the main mastermind in charge of the effort against Beacon and Torchwick as the lackey. She’s rather Ozpin-like in that we have a sheen of characterization but little else to go on, and her case is damaged by the ease with which she moves against the heroes, but at this time there isn’t much else to say about her. The same goes for Emerald and Mercury, who are casually murderous and unconcerned with fellow human or faunus life, are effective killers, and were able to work out Pyrrha’s semblance together. In other words, they’re very like Volume One Pyrrha in that what we have is good for how far we’ve gotten, but we’ll need more later on.

Torchwick and particularly Neo warrant special mention. Torchwick is the one doing most of the heavy lifting over at Mountain Glenn, and while he remains largely uninteresting to me—he’s got the style and the snarky demeanor down, but nothing beyond surface-level to keep me interested—the same cannot be said for Neo.

Now, hear me out. When you’re already under-developing your current cast and a lot of them are struggling for screentime and meaningful contribution, what’s one thing you probably shouldn’t do? Yeah, introduce more characters.

So just on principle alone, Neo is not a good idea. We know she’s Torchwick’s henchmen, but we don’t know anything more about her attachment and motivations with regards to the evil plan than we do his, which is not a good thing. But, if nothing else…she’s got a goddamn revolutionary design, and creates a perfect foil to Torchwick—he’s tall, snarky, talkative, pimped-out, and carries a fire theme, while Neo is small, elegant, utterly silent, and is themed after ice cream. What’s more, while Torchwick is a capable fighter but is clearly capable of being overwhelmed, Neo whoops Yang’s ass almost effortlessly. It works.

It’s not necessarily good, but it’s fun, so we’ll leave them be for now.

Music

Here’s the Volume Two Soundtrack list:

1. Time to Say Goodbye
2. Die
   
3. Shine
   
4. Dream Come True
   
5. Caffeine (feat. Lamar Hall)
   
6. All Our Days
   
7. Boop
   
8. Sacrifice
   
9. This Will Be The Day (Acoustic)
   
10. Time to Say Goodbye (James Landino's Beach Bae Remix)
    
11. This Will Be the Day (James Landino's Magical Girl Remix)
    

Along with the scores for all 12 episodes.

“Die” is the song that played over the second half of the Paladin Mech fight, while “Shine” played over the JNPR dance break during the prom, and “Caffeine” is CFVY’s theme that played over their introduction and last-minute badassery.

“Dream Come True”, which played over the credits of Episode 6, needs some elaboration—it’s a ship song. Specifically, it describes in romantic and envious tones Pyrrha’s affection for Jaune. If you think I’m going to let that go, well, you’re sorely mistaken. You didn’t develop this. And yes, I’m sorry, but I expect you to develop a romance before you go writing silly songs about it! This feels like a fanfiction, with a giggling teenage girl putting less thought into the romance itself than the wonderful feels it inspires.

“Boop”? That’s even worse. Y’all know what that is. That’s a song about Nora’s affection for Ren, using her oh-so-iconic “Boop!” from Volume One as a substitution for her saying “I love you”. Pyrrha and Jaune (“Arkos”) at least has the premise right, which is that Pyrrha likes normal-guy Jaune for not treating her like a starlet way up so high (even though he does). Ren and Nora (“Renora”) don’t have that. At this point, their entire characterizations extend to “secretly in love with each other” while one is loud and one is quiet. This doesn’t impress me! Yeah, it’s a cute song and all, but I happen to be expecting more from this show, and I expect it to not let its soundtrack do all the work for it.

*taking deep breaths* “All Our Days” is not so offending. It describes a woman watching a little girl (could be her sister or daughter, can’t tell) grow up, and promising to stay by her side. It’s sweet and was allegedly written by Jeff Williams for and to his daughter, Casey, who sang it. Obviously, it could apply to one of Ruby’s parents or Yang herself.

“Time to Say Goodbye” is, of course, the opening theme for Volume 2, which I discussed during the first post for this volume. The loss of innocence theme is, unfortunately, not well-applied. This is a volume in which we spend extraordinary amounts of time focusing on who likes who, tee hee, and wouldn’t it be so awesome to save the world? As of now, the only remotely applicable event to such a theme is the breach in the finale, except that that got smoothed over with nothing more said about it, not even on the part of the heroes or shadowy leaders who should be expected to comment on missing persons or slain victims of the Grimm. The heroes still don’t have any idea of the scope of the villains’ plans and are back at square one.

Oh, and the opening itself. I did promise to comment on that, way back when the Volume started, didn’t I?

Retrospective

Back then, I said that the openings would be functioning as teasers, displaying the active characters for the volume and hinting at events to come, as they typically do in anime. I’ll cut and paste the description of it I provided here:

• 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.
  

If you will recall, I bolded the elements which specifically implied new characters, events, or information. Now that the Volume is over, I’m going to compile the bolded bits and see which ones were reflected in the coming material?

• Sun’s team? Only half of them even showed up, so no.
• Velvet’s team? They showed up, and had an active, if last-minute role, in the plot, so yes.
  
• Ironwood was involved throughout the entire volume, so yes.
  
• Junior and the Malachite twins? No. Their role amounted to cameos, and not only were they unimportant, they certainly didn’t cooperate with the villains or work with them in any way, as was implied, so no.
  
• Pyrrha fighting Team CRDL? That happened, so yes.
  
• Yang fighting Mercury? No.
  
• Emerald fighting Weiss? No.
  
• Blake fighting Torchwick? Yes.
  
• Ruby fighting Cinder? Well, she didn’t know it was Cinder, but it still counts, so yes.
  

Four “no” answers. So I will be adding four points to a new count:

Rooster Tease: 4

But hold on—this isn’t a count centered solely on something as silly as an anime opening. It’s about teasing, it’s about hype, it’s about dangling material in front of the audience and never making good on it. It’s about dishonesty and lack of direction. So we have more to talk about.

Remember the Volume 2 Trailer? It’s still available on YouTube. It features such moments as Ironwood and Ozpin’s disagreement in the first episode, the warehouse where Cinder threatens Roman, Blake’s turmoil about doing nothing, and Ruby’s plan for fun activities (and the prom). Then, when action music starts up, we get cuts of the four girls’ new outfits, JNPR standing on tables in the lunchroom, Ironwood displaying his robots, the White Fang rally (with pointed shots of both the Paladin mech *grrr* and the White Fang Lieutenant *immediately pacified*). Then there’s a rapid-fire shot of several of the scenes throughout the album, which includes Mercury’s murder of Tukson and the highway chase with the Paladin mech. Two of the very last shots are: Neptune on the bike unfolding his gun, and Ruby cradling Weiss from the food fight.

Those last two scenes are important, because they got the RWBY fanbase extremely hyped for two reasons: one was new characters doing cool new things, and one was their ship being teased. Both of them were definitely on purpose as is implied by their placement at the very end of the trailer.

Funnily enough, the one I just described as a tease does not get this point. But guess what does?

You had people hyped for the Paladin fight, Rooster Teeth. You had people hyped for this cool new blue-haired character who was surely a badass. And then you did all of that.

Rooster Tease: 5

We’re still not done though. Guess what else was a cocktease that was not made good on? It only came up last post, and will never come up again. That’s right—Yang’s meeting with Raven, her savior from the train incident. You don’t put shit like that in the stinger and then pointedly lock it in the freezer for the rest of eternity, guys.

Rooster Tease: 6

Hiatus Observations

(warning for subjective opinion matter from here forth)

The Volume 2 hiatus was a thrilling time to be a RWBY fan. I said that Volume 2 was my favorite volume of the bunch, and I know I’m not the only one to feel that way. Volume 2 drew a much bigger crowd than Volume 1 had, in that a lot of the complaints were genuinely addressed. The part of the fanbase that had genuine issues with the show had not fully blossomed into its own demographic yet, and really the only problems people took issue with en masse were Jaune’s behavior (okay, fair) and Neptune and Sun (no, not their treatment by the narrative, their very existence). If you think shipping went wild in Volume 1, you had seen nothing until Volume 2—there were now official ship wars. And again, there will be a time when I treat you guys to a full retrospective on the two most involved shipper fandoms in the notorious flame wars…but it’s not going to be now.

There was also a new punching bag added to the pile, which now included James Ironwood. This one, I will openly deride—while I can see people reading only the surface level of the things shown to us and finding Ironwood to be brash and irresponsible and so untrusting of poor Ozpin, I genuinely don’t know where “Ironwood is secretly the villain and working with Cinder” came from.

On the flip side of things, fandom did what they do and went nuts, even over minor details. The Ruby and Penny ship (“Nuts and Dolts”) blossomed despite their limited screentime here, and people went wild over Weiss having a sister, Winter, who at the time was characterized as the younger sister (which makes sense, as Weiss is the heiress and thus presumably the eldest). Torchwick stans were hyped as hell (albeit a tad bitter, I presume, about his browbeating by Cinder and loss by Blake), and Neo—oh god, Neo. The fanbase went supernova when she was introduced and on this one thing, I will not blame them. She was just that cool.

Mercury and Emerald became very popular characters, especially among the sides of the fandom who were eager to see RWBY abandon the more upbeat, childish tone and do something darker. There was still some snide chatter about Jessica Nigri voicing Cinder, but it was dying down.

At the time, I was still feeling good, but there were things I was concerned or dissatisfied with that nobody else seemed to be talking about.

…So now, Volume 2 is done and over with. If you know your RWBY at even a basic level, you know we are officially heading into the storm.

Counts:

• Jaune: 16
• It Was Right There: 3
  
• Fauxminism: 6
  
• Hypocrisy: 8
  
• Ice Cream Queens: 0
  
• Reliable Leaders: 9 + 1
  
  • Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 1
    
• Threatening Enemies: 4
  
• Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 18
  
• Your Fight Scene Sucks: 20 + 12
  
  • Evisceration Evasion: 12
    
• Ill Logic: 28
  
• Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 11 + 2
  
  • Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 1
    
  • Band-Aid Brigade: 1
    
• RSVP: 24
  
• Road to Nowhere: 7
  
• Y.A.S. Queen: 3
  
• Rooster Tease: 5
  

____________________

Volume 2 Finale – Episodes 11 and 12 | Table of Contents | Volume 3