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These next two chapters contain violence. Like, significantly brutal violence, including death, dismemberment, etc. You’ve been warned.
We left off with Vale in dire straits. The Grimm are invading, the White Fang are attacking, the Atlesian robots have been hacked and are turned against the citizens. Penny’s dead, everyone’s traumatized, and there’s a fucking dragon attacking the city. How will things get worse? Because they are going to get worse. Let’s find out now.
We open up on the ship Ruby landed on, the one Torchwick hijacked. The Grimm dragon is winging by, and Ruby watches it go. In its wake are following a horde of flying Grimm, including Nevermores and Gryphons.
The very first annoyance comes when a small Gryphon (smaller than an Ursa) lands near Ruby and attacks. Ruby spins her scythe on it—which for a change, is not a flat spinning disc—but leaves no mark. This is a basic Grimm morph, and one small enough that she should easily have decapitated it in one swing.
Evisceration Evasion: 16
Those points being for the fact that, on top of that, the skirmish culminates in Ruby and the Gryphon charging each other and a few red ‘slashes’ shown against a black screen. Then the Gryphon just falls over dead.
That annoyed me when it was Jaune and the Ursa, and it’s annoying me now.Worse still, Ruby slumps when it’s done, seeming visibly tired. Sweet summer child—this is the first scuffle you’ve had since the Nevermore in the stadium (which other people took out after you landed one hit, and it never touched you) and Mercury in the maintenance halls (which didn’t last even ten seconds). I think this is an attempt to sell the Gryphons as a big bad scary Grimm morph, except they’re not.
Anyway, the Gryphon falls, and behind it is Neo.
[01]
Meanwhile, Blake is still staring at Adam, back at the Beacon cafeteria. She starts to back away.
Oh god. This is simultaneously very creepy and incredibly cheesy. ‘My darling’, ‘my love’, let up a bit, please.
Blake asks why he’s doing this. Adam responds by saying that he and she were going to change the world, remember? He says they were “destined to light the fires of revolution”.
Buddy. If you’re trying to link this back to a fight for race rights, you’re a bit far removed. You’re leading thugs and violent monsters on a rampage through a city full of humans and faunus alike.
Adam tells her to consider “this” the spark, as he stomps on a human student underneath him and takes out his sword. This drives Blake to action and she leaps forward, pushing Adam back and entering a blade lock with her Gambol Shroud versus his Wilt. When Blake says she’s not running, Adam says “you will”, and kicks her away.
A nearby Creep (the small Grimm morphs that have only two legs) tries to pounce on the fallen Blake, Adam shoots it dead with Blush.
A: “But not…before you’ve suffered for your betrayal, my love.”
I’m sorry. It’s not just that this sounds really stupid coming out of the mouth of the stone-cold Adam, but it sounds even stupider knowing that Adam is just a re-colored Grimmjow model. I feel like I need to remind everyone of that.
Adam advances on her, and the scene cuts to the courtyard where the “miscellaneous” crowd are struggling. We open on Velvet Scarlatina, with her little camera box, pulling herself up only to be knocked down when another student is sent sprawling into her. The camera follows Reese Chloris (the skateboard chick) and Neon Katt as they skate around, slicing Grimm and freezing a Paladin Mech’s legs. Let’s just take a look at what everyone is doing.
[02]
- Velvet: struggling
- Coco: getting thrown into Velvet.
- Neon: skating around offering support
- Reese: skating around offering support
- Arslan, Bolin, Nadir: attacking a Gryphon and a rogue Atlesian Knight. Arslan is throwing fireballs. Reese attacks another Knight.
- Sun and Neptune: fighting a Paladin.
- Ren and Nora: gunning down a few Knights.
- Yatsuhashi: slashing a Gryphon.
- Fox: Slashing apart a few Knights
- Flynt: Blasting a couple Creeps. Yes, we hear his stupid trumpet making its stupid noise.
Well, I’ll have a reason to be properly mad in just a minute. So for now, I’ll leave it up to you guys.
Reese and Katt then freeze the other Paladin’s legs and Weiss then attacks it. She just bounces off, though. Neptune calls out in concern for Weiss, and I’m just rolling my eyes. Buddy, no one’s buying that ship, just stop. Yatsuhashi stops the same Paladin’s punch short, but is overpowered and knocked down. One of the Paladins swivels and aims at Ren, whose attention is elsewhere. Nora tackles him out of the way of its fist, but gets knocked to the side herself. She’s down for the count, and Ren gets himself hit when he tries to run to her.
Coco is firing her minigun in vain at the two Paladins, which are unaffected by the bullets just bouncing off.
Okay, number one, I don’t buy that. Miniguns are meant to destroy exactly the type of armory the Paladins are: large, slow-moving war machines. Coco’s weapon should be the only one here besides Nora’s grenade launcher capable of putting the hurt on them.
But if that’s not viable, then it’s also not logical. If Coco can’t waste the large mechs, let the other students handle them while she mows down the smaller, more numerous enemies to buy them space. Coco should be more effective in this struggle than she is.
Your Fight Scene Sucks: 39
Neptune, while firing, notes “this is bad”.
You. Have. An. Electric. Weapon. SHOCK THAT DAMN THING INTO OBLIVION, GODDAMN IT.
Your Fight Scene Sucks: 40
Ill Logic: 45
You could literally be the MVP in a fight with robots! Just shock them! Short-circuit them! It’s that easy! I am sick of being shown this character in a position to be helpful and then pointedly not doing the logical thing!
Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 27
Coco decides they’re at the appropriate time and orders Velvet to use her oh-so-special weapon that’s been teased the whole damn season. Yes, it’s time for that payoff. And it’s going to be quite something.
Velvet marches forward, facing the two mighty Paladins alone. “I May Fall”, a song from Volume 1’s soundtrack, starts up. Weiss gets up from the ground and demands to know what Coco’s deal is—Velvet’s going to get hurt, isn’t she? But Coco tells her to just watch.
Velvet sticks out her hand, and displays her power: to create holographic copies of other characters’ weapons and wield them with the same skill and effects. A hard-light copy of Ruby’s Crescent Rose appears in her hand, and we get several re-creations of shots from the trailers as Velvet goes through the entire catalogue of weapons from the show to single-handedly dismantle her opponent.
[03]
Velvet brings the scythe down on the Paladin’s arm joint, but despite a sound of tearing flesh (?), we see nothing fall off or indicate damage.
Evisceration Evasion: 17
The scythe fades and Velvet summons Myrtenaster in her other hand, expressing the red dust setting and repelling the Paladin’s punch the same way Weiss repelled the Knight’s blade. She lunges forward, slashing ineffectively across the mech’s armor and spinning into the air, before landing a punch with a re-created Ember Celica. Rolling away, Velvet launches some hard light shotgun shells (also ineffective) at the oncoming Paladin, before switching to Gambol Shroud.
Using the circular motion of the Paladin’s next swing, she lodges the blade in the mech’s fist and swings around it, using the momentum to wrap the cord around the mech’s legs, landing and pulling it tight to make it fall over.
[04]
Your Fight Scene Sucks: 41
Uhhh… I’m pretty sure Blake couldn’t have done that. The thing Velvet is mimicking is a stretchy ribbon. That mech’s legs must weigh a couple of tons apiece and the whole thing must be much more. Velvet doesn’t have nearly the mass to anchor—oh, what the hell am I bothering with all this for? Nevermind.
Noticing the other mech coming up behind her, she swings with Gambol Shroud’s cleaver blade, which is again more effectual than expected when it chops...something on the offending fist and leaves sparks coming out. She then tosses the cleaver blade and embeds it in the mech’s face.
Okay, what’s going on here? Per the canon logistics of Velvet’s weapon and semblance, she can mimick other characters’ weapons and skills (not sure about powers), not exceed them. Am I supposed to believe the blades Ruby and Blake use are just that sharp? But not any of the other blades on display here? Why are these weapons working when this character uses them, but not any other? And why is it only certain weapons working?
Your Fight Scene Sucks: 42
Velvet mimicks Coco’s minigun next, which is again ineffective. The Paladin stomps towards her, readying another attack, and this time Velvet ditches the minigun for Ruyi Bang and Jingu Bang.
[05]
Which just pissed me off. We have officially seen more of Velvet fighting with Sun’s weapon in this scene than we have of Sun himself.
She successfully repels the punch and emulates Sun’s high leaps, flying high into the air over the Paladin’s head before mimicking Nora’s Magnhild, bringing it down on the Paladin’s arm (possibly the one she slashed earlier with Crescent Rose) so that it breaks off and falls to the ground.
Then Velvet does something special.
The next hard light weapon she forms is the backpack Penny used to wear, in which she kept her array of floating knives. Said knife array pops out, unfolds, and splits apart just as the original did.
Okay, yes, I cried when I first saw that. Leave me alone.
Velvet has one Paladin down while the other is recovering. Her moment is now.
[07]
She leaps down and swings the blades up through each of the Paladin’s legs, severing both. Readying another collected laser, she…erm, blasts the Paladin she just hamstrung. At least, I think that’s what she’s doing. It’s this part right here, but I admit I don’t know what it’s supposed to be.
[07.5]
What was the deal? Did you not have time to animate the mech bursting apart as the one in the Volume 2 fight scene did?
Look, I’m sorry to be the Debbie Downer Negative Nancy type, but you’re specifically expending a lot of attention here so this one-off character can have a moment to shine, her only moment to shine. If you want your animators to deliver, give them the time and the money to create the product properly. If there’s obvious rough spots in the end result, that’s on your ruling parties, Rooster Teeth.
But anyway, Velvet is caught off-guard by the other Paladin mech, now recovered, which charges her and sends her sprawling. Other students see her in danger and unload with their (ineffectual) ranged weapons. But it’s Weiss, not ready to see another student die, who springs into action.
[08]
Her drive to protect others expresses something significant with her Semblance, and she manages her first true summon. As we all know, there was only ever one enemy truly personal to Weiss that she managed to overcome with her own abilities and determination. And that one enemy is now a titanic ally.
All she manages to summon is the arm with the sword, but that alone casually blocks the Paladin’s punch—surprising Weiss, who was only going to block it with Myrtenaster and her own body. And then…
[09]
That arm rises and swings down on the Paladin—cleaving the whole thing in half with one stroke.Weiss is very surprised in herself, and caught off-guard when Velvet takes a photo, smiling. But before anyone can get comfortable celebrating their victory, there’s a rumbling…and a third Paladin comes barreling down the street, ready for battle. Sun says it best:
S: You have got to be kidding me.
I mean, on the one hand, it’s good. It’s an impressive display of improvisation. Rooster Teeth took this one-off character and gave her a grand fight scene against powerful enemies and paid off on teases they made, and successfully blended that with Weiss hitting another milestone on her character arc, finding the drive needed to summon slain enemies when protecting an ally (not saying ‘friend’ ‘cause I’m not sure these two even know each other). Weiss protecting a (faunus) student in danger while activating a power she needed a specific mindset to utilize, shows she’s come a long way from someone who considered faunus thugs and thieves.
In other words, they succeeded in delivering on hype they’d promised and seamlessly bounced off of that to complete Weiss’ development for this volume. That’s good, it was smart. The scene rings with emotion and triumph and it’s good.
On the other hand, I’m more than a little pissed, as you guys read above, that Rooster Teeth gave this character such a grand scene, seeming to prefer putting all of their attention on her while ignoring (SSSN) or severely dampening (CFVY) the characters and the combat capabilities that Velvet emulated here. This is like ordering steaks for every member of your party at a restaurant and instead the chef brings you one really big steak and expects everyone to eat from it. That’s weird, and probably unhealthy, and not conducive to me leaving the restaurant a good review.
Anyway, we cut to a new scene, which is Ruby battling Neo atop the hijacked ship. Will she fare any better against Neo than Yang did? At least initially, I’d say the answer is yes.
[10]
No, she’s not landing any hits, but she’s swinging a very large blade very fast, and Neo can’t get close enough to strike. Ruby tries to hit her with a rifle shot, only for Neo to shatter and reveal Torchwick behind her, who shoots her with a firework. Said firework strikes Ruby in the chest, sending her flying, but she drives the blade of her scythe into the hull of the ship to stop herself.
Torchwick strolls up, and Ruby finally asks an important question: what the actual fuck does he think he’s doing? Without these ships, the Grimm will lay waste to everything, and Torchwick just tells her that’s exactly what he’s after.
So, omnicide. That’s what allying with the Grimm essentially is.
Something very funny happens when Torchwick, standing right next to her, tries to aim his cane gun at her, but she, laying down on the ground, just sweeps the barrel aside and shoos him off. Hehehe.
[11]
But Neo pounces and is on Ruby before she can get back up and recover properly. Neo’s kicks almost send Ruby stumbling straight off the edge of the ship, but she stops herself. Ruby tries again, asking Torchwick what he could possibly gain out of total annihilation. Torchwick’s answer to her is that she’s asking the wrong questions; the important part is not what he stands to gain, but what he can’t afford to lose.
So, his life. That’s basically what he’s saying—he’s allying with the people trying to totally annihilate civilization purely because they’ll make him part of the annihilated if he doesn’t.
That’s worse than Beni Gabor. You know, the little creep thief from The Mummy movie, who allies himself with Imhotep purely to save his own skin? Yeah, Imhotep was a monster rendering excavators into lifeless husks, but Imhotep also had a relatively low-key end goal of just reviving his love interest and killing whoever was in the way of that. Torchwick is siding with people who will have the whole of humanity destroyed acting the way they do.
Vale is getting trashed, guys. That’s Torchwick’s whole power base, it’s where he lives and operates. He stands to gain nothing, and is only preserving himself.
Ruby lunges again, but this time Torchwick and Neo are ready for her. Torchwick leans forward and Neo leaps over him, kicking Ruby back with both feet.
[12]
Ruby tries to get her scythe back up in time, but Neo is too fast and leaps off the handle, letting her falling momentum drag the scythe on the hook of her parasol as she sweeps underneath Ruby, separating her from her scythe and swinging her around, then kicking her back towards Torchwick.
Torchwick happily follows up by blasting his cane right into Ruby’s face and then hitting her with a firework, which only fails to send Ruby hurtling off into open air because she grabs the scythe on her way past, and it’s embedded in the hull of the ship. Er, which it shouldn’t be because Neo had just yoinked it out from under her…
Your Fight Scene Sucks: 43
Ruby is now hanging on for dear life. Neo slowly approaches, letting the blade hidden in her parasol slip free and drag across the ground. Torchwick rambles about certain gambles just being unwise, and Neo points the blade directly at Ruby. Ruby casually kicks away a Nevermore that tries to harass her while Torchwick is flapping his gums, which is kind of impressive.
T: Like it or not, the people that hired me are going to change the world. You can’t stop ‘em, I can’t stop ‘em, and you know the old saying—if you can’t beat em—”
[13]
Torchwick calls out in alarm for Neo, and Ruby drags herself upward and back onto the hull of the ship, spitting on Torchwick’s self-serving approach.
R: I don’t care what you say. We will stop them, and I will stop you. Bet on that!
[14]
She zips back and forth with her semblance, moving quickly to deter any projectiles or melee weapons being aimed at her and seemingly fully prepared to take Torchwick in melee.
This will come up later.
Surprisingly, it doesn’t work. Torchwick fires a candle shot, then sweeps it in such a way that it produces a wave of fire that catches Ruby. He pounces and smacks her with the cane, then plunges the barrel end into her gut and fires, launching her back towards the center of the ship.Going into a rant about the real world being harsh and cold and unforgiving, Torchwick starts to just beat on Ruby with the cane, until she kicks him in the shin and he leaps back. He tells her that if she wants to be a hero so badly, she can die the way heroes should. He barely has time to finish by saying that he’ll survive, when a rather large Gryphon swoops down and swallows him whole.
[15]
Woops.
The Gryphon tries to go for Ruby next, but Ruby lunges and stomps its head downward as she passes, which causes the Gryphon to lose its balance and go sprawling into what is apparently a very important component of the ship, because just after she does that, the whole thing starts to blow up for no reason. Ruby starts to head back for her scythe, dislodging it and then using it to propel herself through the air until she can safely land on solid ground.
[16]
The airship goes down, and with it, the hacking program on the device installed there. The signal controlling the Atlesian robots goes down, so Ruby has solved at least that problem for now.
Regarding this scene, I am again of mixed feelings. It’s actually one of my favored fight scenes for this last act of the Volume, mostly for the music and its fast pace. Ruby’s scythe swinging clashes just the right way with Neo’s opportunistic melee. And it’s funny to see Torchwick knocked around.
So imagine my surprise to find out that this was not the way the scene was originally scripted to go. According to insider commentary, the original sequence would have been very different. I have to wonder what it would have looked like, as it apparently wasn’t going to take place atop an aircraft, for starters.
It’s a rare thing to have my satisfaction with a scene marred by something not actually present in the scene. I can tell you that a large portion of the fandom was dissatisfied with this scene a lot, but not for the reason I just stated. I am sure you can guess why.
Yes, a large portion of the fanbase was very mad that Torchwick had been offed. They called it bullshit, they called bad writing, they called shock value, they called it a waste of an interesting character. They did that thing where they wrote all sorts of scenarios where Torchwick bursts out of that Gryphon’s stomach like a phoenix for some miraculous, inane comeback and isn’t really dead, and a few actually managed to convince themselves he was going to come back. Torchwick’s fans were not at all happy over this.
The Volume’s explosive contents and their effects on the fandom were passing by too quickly to gauge them all in their entirety, so this might be just what I experienced in my little corner, but I would say fandom was more upset about Torchwick’s death than Penny’s. Yeah, it was that serious.
I am not one of those fans. I am more grounded than that.
Now, I will be the first to say that a character you like dying does not instantly equate to bad writing. Granted, I’ll also say a little more than some “grounded” fans would, and say that there are a lot of deaths that do amount to bad writing, because of more factors than just character death being bad. Characters are the pieces of the serial most directly involved in the story, they are the moving elements. And they are the parts of the story that fans get the most attached to. You do have to be careful when killing off characters, because when you do that, you’re killing off the attachments your fans have made to the series. It’s not settings or art design or even story that people really find themselves affected by and fond of, it’s the characters.
There were characters in Harry Potter, Star Wars, Attack on Titan, Supernatural, Assassin's Creed, in any overhyped media you can choose from, who most definitely should not have died. Characters are a part of your story same as anything, and you can mishandle them—and their deaths—just like any other part of the story. The fact that fans can react badly to their favorite character dying, as one does, does not immediately mean that their complaints about bad writing that arise in response are automatically null.
It’s just that this one definitely is.
Guys, Torchwick wasn’t supposed to even make it this far. We know that! This isn’t like me being mad that SSSN was ostensibly going to be bigger and more important than they ended up being and sensing a rift in what different parts of Rooster Teeth wanted to do with them. We knew from the very beginning, because Rooster Teeth’s staff on the project had admitted it, that Torchwick was a one-off character intended to appear only for the first episode. They only kept him around for further appearances because fans really liked him, same as Velvet Scarlatina. Rooster Teeth had, by Episode 7 of this Volume, as good as admitted that they had no real reason for Torchwick’s involvement in the villains’ scheme, and in this episode, confirmed it’s just because he likes being alive and the other villains will un-alive him if he doesn’t help them un-alive everyone else. And I’m sorry, but having a friend in Neo doesn’t automatically make him complex and compelling.
He got a really long way for what little he originally had to go on. He made his grand exit in a fashion appropriate to a cowardly villain out for his own skin and nothing else, after a good fight sequence with Ruby. He got as good a deal as a one-off character stretched far beyond his initial scripting could get, so I’m not mad about how he was disposed of.
I get liking Torchwick, but it’s not in good faith to let that fondness of him make you call bad writing. There’s much worse writing to go around to complain about.
Now that we can finally move on from this scene, let’s examine what’s happening on the ground.
On the streets of Vale, Glynda and Qrow are dealing with some Grimm, before we see someone we haven’t heard from for a while.
[17]
Hey Cardin!
He takes out an Ursa with his mace, but is surrounded by Atlesian Knights (the ship with the hack hasn’t crashed just yet), but someone steps out of the wreckage of a nearby ship. It’s Ironwood, and holy shit, the entire right side of his body from the neck down is robotic.
This is the other part of the “Ironwood 180”, in which Ironwood gets a shirtless scene and uses his massive handgun to take apart the crowd of rogue robots and now the fandom loves him and he’s so cool and hot and gah.
I believe Barbara Dunkelman was quoted as saying, in response to this scene (I might be wrong), “Yang’s about eighteen, right?”. i.e., legal age to have sex with an adult character. I was eighteen when this aired and now, I’m twenty-five, and it sounds much worse than it did then. Bleh. Moving on.
So yeah, Ironwood, who was previously suspected to have a robotic right arm, is actually just a wholeass cyborg. And is not evil.
Just as Ironwood is saying the area is secure, Qrow gets a mean look on his face, transforms his sword into a scythe, and lunges. Ironwood throws his hands up and assures Qrow he’s not responsible for this—only to see that Qrow was actually aiming for a Gryphon coming up behind him, whereafter Qrow assures him he knows this wasn’t his fault.
[18]
Awww, look, they’ll put aside their differences and—nah, fuck you, Qrow, you’re still an asshole. Your character is not fixed just because you haven’t actually tried to murder Ironwood. Although being willing to ask for his direction a second later (as opposed to stubbornly blowing him off like he has previously) is a moderate step in the right direction.
When asked what they should do now, Ironwood says that the machines have gone rogue, and the Grimm dragon seems to be fixated on the school. He wants Glynda to form up with the local Huntsmen and establish a safe zone, and wants Qrow to evacuate Beacon. He himself still needs to get to his ship. Just then, the ship Ruby fought Torchwick and Neo on crashes in the distance, rendering all the robots, from the Atlesian Knights to the Paladins, inert. Many lives throughout the city have undoubtedly been saved.
Such as the ones at the courtyard. Sun comments, as the approaching Paladin falls inactive before them, that this went better than expected, and we hear a voice calling for Weiss. It’s Yang, coming up out of the distance.
She’s happy to find that Weiss, while exhausted, is otherwise okay, and asks if she’s heard from Ruby, but Weiss shakes her head. Yang then asks where Blake might be, and Weiss says she went after an Alpha Beowulf and some members of the White Fang (The Alpha was present in the scene just before Blake found Adam, but only visible for a second or two and didn’t amount to anything, so I didn’t comment on it). Yang orders Weiss to meet up with Ruby and says she’ll regroup with Blake. Weiss gives her a thumbs-up as she goes.
We’re almost twelve minutes into this episode, so it’s about time we figured out what happened to Jaune and Pyrrha at the end of last episode, right? Right.
We open on the underground vault, where Ozpin, Pyrrha, and Jaune come out of the elevator. They rush down the length of the hall, as Jaune wonders what this place is, and what the school would need to hide here. The obvious answer is at the end of the vault, where Amber waits in the aura-transfer machine. Ozpin starts messing with the computers there, and before Pyrrha can properly explain, Ozpin orders her to get in the pod. Ozpin also says this:
Oz: Mr. Arc, if you’d like to help, you can stand guard here.
[19]
Jaune seems to take this order very seriously, readying his sword and shield.Pyrrha asks what they do, and Ozpin tells her they have a choice to make. In response, Pyrrha sees Jaune standing guard, then wipes a tear as a choir finds its way into the already-ominous music. She steps into the pod, committed to whatever comes next.
[20]
We then cut back to Adam and Blake.
A: But I understand. Because all I want, is you, Blake.
Ewwww. Someone make him stop.
[21]
Blake tries to lift her gun again, but he kicks her away. Adam continues:
Well that’s fucking ominous. As it happens, who should come by looking for Blake at that moment but…Yang?
Yang is nearby, calling out in worry for her missing teammate while punching a nearby White Fang mook. Adam looks down at Blake, and Blake realizes with horror he just found his first target.
Back down in the vault, Ozpin is busy at work on the computers attached to the aura transfer machine. Ozpin asks Pyrrha if she’s ready (perhaps the only time this character will ever show respect for another person’s consent), and when she nods, he hesitates and says he needs to hear her say it.
Oz: …Thank you, Miss Nikos.
A few button presses later, and the pod with Amber in it lifts, locking into a ready position. As Ozpin starts the transfer, Amber flutters awake in her pod, starting to glow with an orange aura. Orange light moves up the tubes and down into Pyrrha’s pod, flowing into her, and Pyrrha starts to cry out in evident pain, distress, or both.
[22]
Jaune whirls around, concerned, and approaches the pods. Ozpin can only tell him he’s sorry. But while these two are focused on Pyrrha, someone else is focused on Amber.
[23]
An arrow flies past the two of them, through the glass of Amber’s pod, and pierces her in the chest. The two whirl around, and find none other than Cinder standing in the center of the vault, having fired it. The second the arrow hits, “Such Arrogance” starts to play.
Alright…Welp…Sorry guys. You know I have to do this.
For an added bonus, that scene also contains some arms separated from bodies. And if you’re curious about what that’s all about, that’s the next scene, so just hang on.
But before that, we gotta talk, because…
Jaune: 17
Eeeeup. Yep. Because he was. He was supposed to be watching the door.
Oh come on, don’t give me that look! I know Jaune was obviously concerned when the girl he loved started screaming. I know that that’s a totally reasonable reaction for a teenager who’s not hardened to war. I know that this is both in-character and totally logical.
The problem is that that doesn’t matter, because fans didn’t like Jaune. For him to make this critical mistake—which, spoilers, is going to lead to Pyrrha’s death, in pretty direct fashion (albeit not as direct as originally scripted)—after a few volumes of being developed and sold as a character fans can root for and enjoy would be one thing, but that’s not what happened. Jaune has, up until now, spent two volumes being obnoxious and unlikeable and generally unwelcome. He finally started to improve on that record only in this volume, by not taking screentime other characters needed and behaving sympathetically in the bit of screentime he did have. The sad fact of the matter here is that that wasn’t enough.
The sad fact is, even fans (like myself) who realize that Jaune’s failing here was understandable, if terribly, critically unfortunate, were soured on him for good after this, because this was the final cherry on top of a very large sundae. You can be an asshole character and improve, but it’s kind of hard to come back from being responsible for the death of a character fans actually like.
I almost feel sorry for Miles Luna here. Almost. Because what this boils down to is the fact that the solid writing that was set in place was bogged down by his obvious first-time-writer antics in the first two volumes. I genuinely believe that this is the point where Jaune, sadly, became unsalvageable in the eyes of fans. They were just never going to trust him again.
Not that his antics in the future volumes were going to do much for his reputation, but still.
Anyway, next scene, we cut back to Adam and Blake and now Yang. Adam finally quits playing around and just straight-up stabs Blake in the stomach, causing her to scream and getting Yang’s attention.
Yang orders Adam to get away from her, and from the ground, Blake futilely tries to beg Yang to run away. Adam, with a smirk on his face, sheathes Wilt with a click. Yang loses it, eyes going red, hair on fire, and somehow we all know what’s going to happen before it does.
[23]
Yeah. He lops her arm right the fuck off. One of our heroines has literally been dismembered.
Down in the vault, Amber’s heart has been pierced. She dies, and the machine’s tubes stop glowing as Amber’s aura fades, and the power she had as the Fall Maiden flies off to the person who wanted it the most: Cinder.
Cinder starts to glow, eyes on fire, as Pyrrha futilely beats the walls of the pod. Against Ozpin’s warning, Jaune lunges, but Cinder blasts him away.
Evisceration Evasion: 18
That point is for that thing up there, where you can see Yang’s aura spilling out of her wound instead of blood.
This actually caused a bit of confusion among fans at the time, wondering if Adam’s sword were capable of somehow bypassing aura, since Yang obviously had some left to spare if it was coming out of her like that. Per director commentary though, Adam’s slash was “so badass” (their phrasing, not mine), that he eliminated Yang’s aura and lopped off her arm in the same slice.
So, this was just a weird way to have gore while also avoiding gore. And yes, it is gore. We are shown a character with a stump where an arm was seconds prior.
Guys, commit to your craft. I admit I’m not exactly busting to see Yang’s bloody arm stump, but if you’re gonna have the arm cut off, have it bleed. You could have just stuck with the shadowed art deco silhouettes from the actual slicing animation if you didn’t want to show the blood.
[24]
Pyrrha’s fear for Jaune causes her to pry the door of the pod off with her Semblance, which Cinder also deflects. Trying to attack Cinder, she is stopped by Ozpin, who orders her to get Glynda, Ironwood, and Qrow, and bring them here, as they can’t lose the CCT tower. Pyrrha says she can help, but Ozpin somberly states she’d only be in the way.
Pyrrha elects to leave with Jaune, and Cinder watches them go before staring down Ozpin, eyes full of spite.
Meanwhile, Adam is advancing on the downed Yang. He’s stopped short by Blake, who throws herself across Yang to protect her. Adam only pauses long enough to say the following:
A: “Why must you hurt me, Blake?”
[25]
Blake appears to have been coldly decapitated—before she disappears, revealing that it was a shadow clone, and the real Blake is stumbling away with Yang in her arms, looking back in fear as she goes.
Ozpin faces Cinder alone in the vault. She has something to say to him.
C: This whole time, right beneath our feet. She was right about you. Such arrogance.
Ozpin readies his cane, and as the two prepare to face off, Ozpin facing Cinder with the full might of the Fall Maiden’s power at her disposal, the episode cuts to black and ends.
*long, very long, low whistle*
Well. We have a lot to say.
But before I get into what I’m gonna discuss, I need to offer that fleeting genuine praise again. Just like the last two episodes, this one was excellently done—I don’t mean for writing, I mean for cinematography, voice acting, set lighting, camera angles, and especially music. Even after all this time, even after all these years of considering RWBY an unsalvageable series, rewatching this episode still hit very hard. I feel the emotions experienced by these characters. I feel their sorrow and anger and terror.
If nothing else, I am definitely paying attention, and not nitpicking at random details. And if you expected me to nitpick a specific detail, let me counter: Yang’s arm will not be getting an Ice Cream Queens point because her injury will primarily affect her own character, not others’.
What I really need to talk about is Adam. See, with the Cinder plot, I’m sure fans were hoping for better, but all we needed to hear was this Volume’s theme song to know that things were going to end badly and Cinder’s faction was probably going to get exactly what they wanted. Fans just weren’t sure how or to what extent.
But it’s Adam that was the brutal surprise here, and not in a good way. I waited until the very end of this episode so we’d have all our eggs in one basket, all our chickens in the coop, and we could stare at that hideous “Why must you hurt me, Blake?” that precedes Adam attempting to decapitate his ex.
The very last word of that previous sentence is what I want you to focus on right now: ‘ex’. Let me draw up the conceptions people had of Adam’s character up until this moment.
Majority Fandom Conception:
> Adam is a dark rebellion leader, a mysterious figure from Blake’s past who she left behind due to his violent methods. Fans eagerly await his return and debate among where his character and interactions with Blake will go is common. Fans either see him as a fallen hero who will be redeemed or a tragic villain Blake will defeat. Whether he will prove as a rival and counterpoint to Sun, Blake’s current love interest, is a common talking point.
My Conception (And Any Fans With Similar Thoughts):
> Adam is a dark rebellion leader, a mysterious figure from Blake’s past who she left behind due to his violent methods. He is too far gone and, now that Blake has severed ties with him, she will most likely be forced to put him down due to his vengeful desires overtaking any goodness he once had, removing a piece from Cinder’s faction and bringing Blake’s character arc to a close.
Canon Conception as of Volume Three, Episode 11:
> Adam is a mass murderer, casually taking lives and vowing to destroy Blake’s life and trying to kill her in the worst of abusive ex fashion.
You will notice that the third bullet I posted has absolutely fucking nothing to do with either of the first two.
Adam and Blake—“Beauty and the Beast”, as it was called—was a popular ship in fandom, guys. People really liked Blake’s morose and dark attitude but ethical stance combined with Adam’s somber fallen leader qualities. It wasn’t universal, of course, but it was popular primarily because it had a minor base in canon.
I say “minor”. Ships like White Rose, Bumbleby, Monochrome, etc., had way less basis and were more popular, but Blake is most definitely hinted to have had romantic feelings for Adam at some time in the past. Whether or not it was requited was left up in the air, but most people probably did not think they were actually in a relationship prior to the Black Trailer, even if they were into the ship. Not only would this have been a conflict of interest as Adam is a leader of Blake’s faction, but Blake is 17 and Adam, at the time, was purported to be 23 (that may not have stuck in the years since), meaning he would’ve been 17 when Blake was 12 (when Blake says the “new leader” stepped up to head the White Fang), which was skeevy.
What with Blake sketching Adam in her notebook in Volume 2’s opening act, and describing his gradual fall in Volume 3’s midpoint, we definitely are not left an impression of Adam in which he acts like a batshit crazy abusive boyfriend, which is exactly how he acts here.
Which leads me to believe this was not in the original script, and was, in fact, a very hard swerve made last-minute.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 13
It has not escaped me that some members of the comm, including sporkers, have unfortunately been victimized by abusive partners in the past. My heart goes out to you. But I want those who can stomach it and happen to be reading to tell me what was going through your head when you first watched this.
Were there signs of it appearing throughout Volumes One and Two? I don’t think there were. And would you say that this Adam we’re seeing now at all fits the ‘gradual fall’ depicted by Blake earlier in the volume? I don’t think it does.
And this tends to be Exhibit A when it comes to my stance that Rooster Teeth have no clue what subtlety is: Adam here doesn’t act insidiously abusive. He acts like the culmination of a sociopathically abusive ex, deranged to the point of violence, a worst-case-scenario end result that encompasses stalker and wife-beater, and that ‘why must you hurt me’ at the end makes me think someone checked up a list of abuser traits just to be double sure the message got across.
There were ways to show that Blake’s decision to leave Adam was rooted in an ill relationship that had affected her if that had been the plan all along. A prime example, albeit a bit recent for my tastes, would’ve been the backstory sequence in Episode 7, where the White Fang Lieutenant says they’re prepared to go after Blake, who had just left. The Adam from Episode 11 would’ve readily agreed, but the Adam from Episode 7 did not.
And now Blake is a battered woman and Adam…Adam as we knew him is gone. I won’t use the word “unsalvageable” again, because I’m saving it for later, but this twist was not one that RWBY fans welcomed, and caused them to leave the Beauty and the Beast ship in droves.
What’s more, Yang…Yang is an odd choice for Adam to target. Oh, there was enough drama surrounding the Adam-Blake-Yang thing once Blake negatively compared her to him in Episode 8 to make it dramatically appropriate, sure, but it’s still bizarre. I know how the drafted version of this confrontation went, so I know it was in the plan somewhere, but I know I’m not the only one thinking that Yang doesn’t feel like the character who was best slotted in here.
Obviously, Sun is the candidate most people are thinking of, for obvious reasons. He’s the current love interest, and Adam’s loose “moon” theme and dark tragic villain angle are a perfect contrast to Sun’s easygoing and cheerful nature, solar theme, and highly positive effects on Blake. Furthermore, it would’ve sealed the parallel.
See, Adam is said to be based on the “Beast” in Blake’s Beauty and the Beast metaphor (given that RWBY’s characters are generally inspired by fairy tales) and his animal heritage is that of a bull. Sun is based on Sun Wukong of the same name from the Chinese literature Journey to the West, and one of his more notable enemies is the Bull Demon King. For this reason, a lot of viewers remain convinced the original target Adam would’ve had would’ve been Sun. I admit I have no proof of this, but I’m inclined to say it might've been the better option, given Adam could’ve lopped off Sun’s tail and achieved a similar shocking injury to a heroic character. However, he's not even the only other option.
The primary positive interactions Blake had this volume were with Weiss. Weiss is the one Blake spends the most time with and the one she goes back-to-back with when everything goes to hell. Weiss is the Schnee heiress, and therefore a greatly hated enemy to faunus rebels who have beef with the Schnees and their abuses of faunus labor. Blake befriending her would be seen as a very personal betrayal to Adam and basically the actions of a traitor.
In fact, Weiss could’ve intervened in Blake’s plight against Adam and this could have been the plan for her to awaken her summoning in an effort to protect Blake. I say this because while Blake versus Adam is clearly a thing that was in the works for a long time, Weiss protecting Velvet can only have been in the works since about Volume Two or later.
But I digress. The point is, Adam being what Adam is now was a huge curveball, and basically the only people happy with it were Bumbleby fans, because now they had some extra drama for their ship. It’d be a while before they could use it given the absolute chaos that was fandom at the time, but that’s what it was.
The episode is over, all that’s left is to seal the lid on Volume Three with the last episode, and the amount of trauma and bullshit it brings.
As we move into that last episode, I admit a bit of nostalgia. I went back to watch some of the trailers for the series aired in 2012 and 2013. I was surprised to find a lot of comments disdaining the recent RWBY volumes and missing the older times. I'm not so sure the older times were good, myself.
I’ll see you next post.
Counts:
- Jaune: 17
- It Was Right There: 7
- Fauxminism: 8
- Hypocrisy: 16
- Ice Cream Queens: 3
- Reliable Leaders: 15 + 5
- Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 5
- Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 5
- Threatening Enemies: 6
- Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 27
- Your Fight Scene Sucks: 43 + 18
- Evisceration Evasion: 18
- Evisceration Evasion: 18
- Ill Logic: 45
- Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 13 + 2
- Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 1
- Band-Aid Brigade: 1
- Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 1
- RSVP: 25
- Road to Nowhere: 8
- Y.A.S. Queen: 4
- Rooster Tease: 7
- LuLaRwe: 2
- The Lovegood Fallacy: 1
21 – Volume 3, Episodes 9 and 10 | Table of Contents | 23 – Volume 3 Episode 12
