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Volume 3 Final Thoughts | Table of Contents | 25 – Volume 4, Episodes 1 and 2
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So, I did something I maybe shouldn’t have before starting this recap. I took another look at the end-of-season fight scenes for Volumes 1, 2, and 3. I almost cried, man. How did we fall so far? How did we have something so balls-to-the-wall spectacular, so seamlessly brilliant, only to end up like this?

But onward we march. RWBY will be on Volume 20 if I keep stalling any longer.

The first piece of media released for Volume 4 is the Ruby-centric Volume 4 short, the first of its kind since the four prologue trailers released in 2012 and 2013. Let’s see what it’s all about.

RWBY Volume 4 Short

The screen starts out black, and we hear the sound of footsteps as we fade in on shoes walking across a dirt path in a forest. A girl in a red cloak with hood drawn up is proceeding at a walking pace. The scene doesn’t hide Ruby’s identity too zealously, giving a close-up on her face as she approaches a cliffside, much like the one she usually hangs out at to see her mom’s grave. But rather than grave, in front of her is an unfortunate view of what lies beyond the cliff face: a village, far down below, in flames.\

We cut to the hamlet’s streets, where Grimm wolves are chasing terrified civilians. We see a closeup of Ruby’s eyes peering down on the carnage, and overhead, two Nevermores wing past without noticing her, heading for the destruction.

We see the updated looks of both Ruby herself and the Grimm, showing off the switch from Poser to Maya, as Ruby unveils and unfolds Crescent Rose, leaps high, and embeds the blade in a third Nevermore passing underneath. After riding the winged beast over to the town, she pulls the trigger, carving off its wing and descending to the earth, crushing a statue as she lands, ready to slay evil.

The strums of “Red Like Roses” plays as she lands. She calmly rises, and the beasts begin to converge on her. Opening her eyes, Ruby bursts into action in a blur as she activates her Semblance, and begins to slash apart the Grimm, with uncharacteristic yells of rage.

Well, this is certainly no Red Trailer, and the combat grunts Lindsay Jones is delivering are only highlighting that. There are some other noticeable problems with the animation, in the tone and delivery of the action, but those, I can comment on later. For now, we’re at least getting action, and we aren’t side-stepping gore.

More come running, and as Ruby cuts them down, she’s forced to dodge rocks thrown by a larger wolf, up atop a cathedral. Ruby simply uses her Semblance again and becomes a blur, speeding through the air without any sort of visible lift, and in fact bursts into three blobs of petals and then reforms on the other side of the Grimm.

…What?

Okay, I get that we’re supposed to be seeing that Ruby’s semblance has advanced, but now she doesn’t even need to generate the forward motion herself, and also doesn’t even take a physical form?

I wouldn’t have twisted her speed semblance that far. That’s only going to make the commonly-asked question of “Why doesn’t Ruby just use her Semblance?” that much more egregious, if she can do this sort of shit.

Also, re: questions about Ruby’s Semblance: yes, it is still “speed”. The main component and advantage is obviously still high speed, so I don’t know where people got the idea that her semblance was never actually speed and started peddling it from. She can turn into rose petals now, but fuck it, it’s still meant primarily as a form of movement.

Anyway, Ruby uses the headshot on the wolf to rocket herself higher, straight into a fourth Nevermore that she again cuts apart, this time with a scythe shot that sends her careening back towards the earth. She rises from a crater, and peers around as the dust settles, sensing another hostile.

She’s then punched through a house’s door by a new adversary.

This ape-like Grimm creature, I believe, was called a “Beringel” and it’s something like Ruby’s miniboss for this short. It roars and charges her, and she flips through the air over it and swings on it—only for the tip of her scythe to stop a short ways into its midsection.

Guys, this is an animated show, not an RPG, and the Grimm don’t regenerate. You need to obey blade-into-flesh combat conventions. You can’t just present a tougher variation of Grimm and then not have the combat visibly differ from standard variations.

You specifically had her sink her blade into the fleshy parts, too, when you had a ready-made variable with its armor. This Beringel has armor—but Ruby didn’t hit it.

Your Fight Scene Sucks: 43

This isn’t good, guys. We somehow came out of Volume 3 with that being our highest count, even though I swore off over-analyzing physics for the fight scenes, and even with Volumes 1-3 having by far the better action sequences.

The Beringel grabs Ruby and punches her, and then charges again. Ruby gets back into the fray, leaping atop a building and firing down rifle shots on the apelike Grimm.

The music takes on a heavier action drumbeat as Ruby tries to clear out excess Grimm flowing in—only for the Beringel to grab one of the wolves and throw it at her like a Moblin from Breath of the Wild would, which is hilarious. She cuts it apart, but the Beringel leaps high atop the building to meet her.

The two fighters engage each other. The Beringel is fast, but Ruby keeps up, blocking its punches without staggering even as her rifle shots and scythe slashes seem to only annoy it. She tries for a bit of confusion-fu, using her Semblance to speed into the air and then careening off of nothing, back and forth before trying to descend on it with her scythe.

It doesn’t work, and the Beringel’s fierce attacks end up collapsing the rooftop beneath Ruby, sending her plummeting. The beast stalks off, thinking it’s over.

But it turns around, almost human-like in its perception of fight scene conventions, and notices rose petals floating down and out of the doorway of the cathedral. “Red Like Roses” returns as these petals begin to move as a single current, like a school of fish, floating upwards through the cathedral. All of a sudden, Ruby bursts through the high stained glass window to continue the fight!

Landing down behind the Beringel, she swings her scythe blade around its foot, hooking it and firing to trip the beast up. Almost as if this was her plan all along, she activates her Semblance again, blitzing around it and upward in a spiral, carrying it into the sky her own miniature cyclonic wind. There, she aligns the blade straight before slamming it into the Beringel’s chest, then letting the two of them fall until hitting the ground to jam it in further. Re-aligning the rifle, she shoots it right in the face and it dies.

…Seriously? If she could do that the whole time, why—? Urgh.

Your Fight Scene Sucks: 44

Well, that’s our big short for this volume. Mind you, while it’s obviously not Monty quality, it’s not terrible. The pace is mostly fast, the camera angles are good, there’s no long interruptions for talking, there’s no contrivances involving trips or pinned capes. It says unfortunate things that this is definitely on the better side of the action sequences we’ll see, though.

The Beringel defeated, Ruby takes out her scroll, finding that Jaune and friends are attempting to contact her. With no CCT, there’s no video feed available, but audio is getting through, if only at local level. Jaune, Ren, and Nora are on their way, and Nora bids she not start without them. Ruby simply says to hurry as she prepares to take on the remaining waves of Grimm.

We see the camera pan across the shattered moon, and are presented with cuts of the other members of RWBY, all contemplative—Weiss alone in her room in Schnee’s manor, Blake looking out across the ocean, and Yang at home on patch, still down one arm, but at least outside and enjoying the air.

The screen cuts to black.

The final thing we’ll be commenting on is that, as you’ll have seen via that last gif, all of the girls have new outfits. The glance we get isn’t long enough to comment on the other three (which, trust me, are atrocious), but we can talk about Ruby’s since we got a good enough glimpse.

Remember how obsessed I was with the ten-minute alternate costumes we got in Volume Two? Complete with their own names? How do the new looks compare?

First, the colors. Just, let me talk about the colors, okay? I like doing that.

Ruby’s original outfit is a pure red and black ensemble, with a long-sleeved shirt and corset combo over a skirt full of crinoline and pantyhose, plus mid-calf length boots. It works, as it only needs two colors, red and black. Everything is done via the interplay of those two. The sharp contrast looks good in an action scene and lets you clearly tell how her body is moving when it’s fast-paced.

Granted, I did mention that her updated Volume Two outfit was probably the weakest of the four, because all it really did was wrap her cape around her neck instead of fastening it to her shoulders, and color her top gray, when gray doesn’t really go good with most colors, especially red. But now, the gray has been replaced with a kind of cream-colored off-white, which…also doesn’t go good with red or black. Time to bust out that count I made to contain a petty grievance:

LuLaRwe: 3

The pantyhose now has some stylish tears in it, which suits Ruby’s vaguely goth-punk look. That’s about where the positives end, though. Two things:

First, her skirt is either shorter, fans out more, or both, so Ruby’s upper thighs can be clearly seen. Second, no, you’re not imagining that—that is indeed a cleavage window on the 15-year-old, 16-years-old maximum, Ruby Rose.

Which really pisses me off. Granted, it’s not much of a cleavage window for all that Ruby appears to have a solid mass of flesh where cleavage would ordinarily be, but that’s not the point. The point is that a character who is a minor has just been put into an outfit more sexualized than what she was wearing before.

You know how a women’s bolero is basically a set of sleeves attached to a half-length coat? This isn’t even a bolero—it’s got a sleeve around the neck, but anything resembling a half-coat just stops right under her armpits, making it look like someone just cut the entire length of a shirt off from the neck down. Ruby isn’t actually wearing a top—just a corset and some sleeves with a cape barely taking the edge off of an otherwise uncomfortably eroticized outfit.

And no, it doesn’t pass me by that the off-white cream color of the sleeves is very similar to Ruby’s actual skin tone, so that from a distance, it looks like her upper body is bare but for the corset and cape.

This is so uncomfortable and this is not even the worst example. RWBY may be an animesque show, but I do not look forward to Rooster Teeth actually emulating anime, right down to the ridiculous amounts of teen sexualization.

LuLaRwe: 4

For lack of a better point to give. We’ll take a look at the other updated outfits later. In general, they’re going to come across as a poor man’s version of the Volume 2 outfits, but we’ll get there in time.

For now, let’s get into this season’s World of Remnant.

“Vale”

Qrow does the narration this time.

Narrator: Well, school’s definitely out. Let’s see if we can’t all learn a little somethin’. Welcome to the world of Remnant.

We fade onto a map of said world. Not a nice place to live, and some locations are better than others. Qrow’s voice describes towns and villages “that pop up as fast as they fall”. He describes Menagerie as belonging to the faunus, and the “sweet spots” being Atlas, Mistral, Vacuo, and Vale. Noticeably, neither Vale nor Vacuo, the closest countries, encompass any territory in that northwestern dragon-shaped continent, despite settlements appearing on the map when Qrow described them.

Narrator: In the grand scheme of things, Vale’s pretty well-guarded. It rests on the largest continent, Sanus. Like most successful kingdoms, Vale’s survival over the years can mostly be attributed to prime real estate.

The eastern and southern ends of Vale are protected by a large, steep mountain range running down Sanus, and the waters of the sea to the north and west are too shallow to house any real threat. Presumably these encompass defenses against attack by neighboring nations rather than Grimm morphs.

Qrow confirms that Vale the country is named after Vale the city, and that apart from that city, Vale also lays claim to several coastline cities on the west-north edge of Sanus and a small island called Patch—that’s where Ruby and Yang are from. Qrow calls it a nice place to raise a family, “if you’re into that sort of thing”.

Attempts to extend the kingdom into the further reaches of the continent have been met with universal failure.

The climate is described as pleasant, and the natural regional advantages combine with a good border defense.

Narrator: Of course, with the fall of Beacon, everyone’s a little more worried these days…and they should be.

So in this one, we got the name of the continent, Sanus, and the general description that Vale is just cool, yo. Nothing about the nation’s history, international relations, trade advantages, etc. But I guess expecting more from these things is a pipe dream at this point. They’re made to fill space, not to actually teach us about this world.*

“Mistral”

Qrow’s narration this time is preceded by the sound of him drinking, as if he can’t put the alcoholism on hold even for two minutes.

The eastern dragon-shaped continent is Anima, which houses the kingdom of Mistral. It’s described as possessing the most land of any of the kingdoms, which also lends to a greater regional variety, and a greater variety of different peoples as well.

Narrator: The “high society” folks of Mistral are known worldwide for their contributions to fashion, architecture, and theater…all the things that make the world pretty and tolerable. But its lower class has got a fame of its own, and Mistral’s home to the biggest black market on the planet. Need something that’s hard to find? Got someone that’s hard to kill? They can help, provided you’ve got the lien to pay for it.

Last immediate criticism rescinded—now that is what I’m talking about! That is some world-building!

What connects all these different sorts of people, Qrow describes, is a respect for nature, especially the sea and the sky.

Narrator: The natural resources and geography of the area impacted Mistral’s culture and technology in a big way. Its first settlers found shelter high up in the wind-carved cliffs, and as their population grew, so did their ability to utilize the land to its fullest potential.

The larger amount of territory does prove more difficult to efficiently govern, so that aforementioned black market runs freely away from the carefully-watched capital. Qrow mentions places like “Wind Path” and “Kuchinashi” as being relatively under the radar.

The narration closes out by saying that there’s plenty of places to hide in Mistral—so that’s why you have to know where to look.

Oh god, now I’m worried. Did Mistral get all the good worldbuilding?

“Atlas”

Qrow describes Atlas, situated on the northernmost continent of Solitas, as “Remnant’s youngest and arguably most successful kingdom.” Before the Great War, he says, Atlas wasn’t a thing—it was the nation of Mantle. The continent is a frozen, rocky wasteland. But the harsh climate was as much a danger to the Grimm as it was to early settlers, so they stayed there, despite not being able to thrive.

The solution to the harsh conditions Mantle faced ended up being the continent’s large store of natural resources, that being dust. This along with the drive of the people to flourish led to a faster technological development than the rest of the world, making the kingdom an industrial leader of sorts.

The Great War pushed these advancements further, and Mantle continued to expand its territory across Solitas. Alsius was the kingdom’s combat school, and immediate nearby territory was devoted to research and development facilities. After the Great War, Alsius was reopened as Atlas Academy, and was significantly upgraded, benefitting the most from the cash and excess of resources that had previously been used to fight other nations. The academy expanded so large and fast that the military and the research facilities, the two greatest components Mantle had, were moved in there, and eventually it was made the capital, resulting in the official rebranding of Mantle as Atlas.

Narrator: A golden age of prosperity, they called it. But those left behind in Mantle would probably tell you it was the coldest winter they ever knew.

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.

But that aside, this is good! Again, this is good! Christ, am I actually getting excited to learn more about this world at last? And without ripping my hair out?

“Vacuo”

Narrator: Now if there's one kingdom that's had it harder than the people of Mantle, it's Vacuo, the last of the four great kingdoms.

Vacuo occupies the western end of Sanus, a vast barren desert, once a paradise. The center of the desert housed an oasis, a jungle with an abundance of resources, the world’s largest amount of dust, and geographically defended. Enough people survived the journey across the desert to occupy this “hidden gem” to create the kingdom of Vacuo. But these people grew complacent, Qrow says.

Other nations eventually discovered what a pile of awesome the ancient Vacuo citizens were sitting on, decided they wanted it, and the Vacuo people were completely unprepared to stop them. Between warring, unrestricted mining, and ecological disasters, the country is in poorer state than before, with very little of the past’s prosperity visible in the present day. Fleeting resources and constant threat of attack by Grimm drive many of its people to be nomadic, constantly moving.

A formal government was established after the Great War, but it’s not like there was much left to govern, and lawlessness abounds. The only real home of order in the kingdom is Shade academy.

But now that the war is over, the people mostly seem to get along, and via the art deco animatics, we’re shown a more free and positive relationship between humans and faunus than other kingdoms can claim, founded on the fact that survival is equally difficult across the desert, and unity is needed to survive.

Qrow reminisces, saying Ozpin called the four kingdoms a sign of the benefits of such unity, and generally misses him.

Huh. These past three have all been really solid. Maybe Vale didn’t get much effort put in because the story’s pretty much left that continent by now.

“Between Kingdoms”

So what’s between these great kingdoms, which mostly seem to comprise a single capital and some less fortunate surrounding territories? Grimm, mostly, but you knew that. Huntsmen and Huntresses are really the only ones capable of surviving outside the kingdom walls for extended periods of time.

There are small villages and hamlets here and there, mostly filled with people that have found issue with their lives in the kingdoms. Rarely do they end up not regretting it, with the lifespan of an average settlement outside the walls—but some settlements, founded by smarter individuals with an eye for natural advantages, do stay standing.

These towns and villages can also be threatened by the more lonesome types, bandits who find their own successes at the expense of others. These sorts tend to prey on the vulnerable, such as convoys inbetween stops and hamlets that have recently endured Grimm attacks. Qrow actually lets out a “damn” when impressing on the viewer these issues, saying that if bandits run amok in a town, the Grimm are likely not far behind due to the negative emotions that result.

As the episode closes, Qrow states that what the inter-kingdom areas look like kind of depends on the continent, and pretty much all of Remnant has been mapped out—though there are places that haven’t yet been called home to any surviving settlers.

Narrator: And somewhere out there…is where she is.

Salem? My money’s on the big dragon-shaped continent in the northwest where there isn’t a pesky kingdom.

“Faunus”

Narrator: In case you’re not in the know, the faunus are a species on Remnant that appear to be human in just about every way, every way but one. Each faunus has a single animalistic trait, some more apparent than others.

Faunus and humans have been on Remnant for about the same amount of time and are completely compatible reproductively. Animal traits that are similar between two faunus parents will reappear in the child, and a child born of human and faunus will also generally share their animal morphology with the parent faunus—meaning they may not both have a tail, but they’ll both bear resemblance to the same type of animal in some way. The only real guessing game is what happens when two faunus parents of different morphologies produce a kid, who could legit be any kind of animal faunus, even one completely unrelated to either parent.

Beyond this, the science can be a little murky. Also murky are racial relations, so, on that subject…

Narrator: Early man was scared to death of the faunus, and honestly, it’s not too hard to sympathize with that. Seeing something that looks like you and acts like you walk out of the forest and reveal a pair of fangs can be a little…upsetting.

Alright, problem located.

When I think of this the way I imagine real-world ancient peoples would—the Hellenic peoples, the Hindus, or the Egyptians if you want to go further back—I can kind of make sense of it. Gods and demons alike often resembled humans with animal attributes, and there’s things like werewolves that are the stuff of ancient peoples’ nightmares and hushed whispers. But all of the things I just stated are human creations, from our world—a world where humans are the only sapient species. The fear that the people of Remnant would have in this situation is less understandable because you’ve just told me that humans and faunus have cohabitated Remnant together for eons, so these legends and myths are unlikely to exist (at least in those forms) because they were already reality in the form of a sapient and civilized people. If it were humans originating from one area of Remnant and the faunus from another, that might make it understandable, but without that addendum, it becomes just as senseless as hating or fearing your neighbor for something completely normal, like having a bald head or big ears.

*sigh* Which I guess does seal up the racial allegory pretty decently. But no, that doesn't make it 'understandable'. Don't defend racism, please.

So the faunus have had it pretty rough due to all this racism, even sometimes being subjected to hunts. Their populations dwindled in comparison to regular humans, and they are understandably not very enthused with said humans. Competition began to spring up over land safe from the Grimm. But the Grimm, very tellingly, don’t see any difference whatsoever between humans and faunus, which has perhaps shaken some of the ignorance out of folks here and there.

Narrator: A village in Sanus fell under attack, and the only reason anyone survived, was because the humans and Faunus united against their common enemy. It was a step in the right direction, but it didn't fix everything.

The faunus’ differences from humans might not have been that huge, but they still ended up being used as excuses to treat the faunus like shit, making them outsiders and targets. Significant improvement didn’t come until the Great War, which saw Vale and Vacuo allying against Mantle and Mistral. So terrible was that war that compromises were made. Faunus were awarded equal rights as citizens across the world, and awarded land that came to be called Menagerie, a small Australia-esque continent southeast of Anima.

That’s a pretty decent boon, but naturally, some saw it for what it really was—“a slap in the face from a nation of sore losers” and pretty much just a place where faunus could be out of sight, out of mind.

Qrow notes that the continued mistreatment of faunus, whatever legal rights they have, is going to eventually push them to a tipping point, and that having an entire continent of people bearing that resentment means that coalescing them into a force for retaliation will be easy. The episode closes on the flag of the revamped White Fang, with its red claw marks, indicating the country to be a stronghold for the organization.

I did consider giving this a Band-Aid Brigade point. How faunus and humans’ genetics crossed over was a very common question among the fandom. But I’ll relent on the grounds that I do admit it would be hard to work an explanation like this into the show proper.

“Schnee Dust Company”

Qrow openly looks forward to speaking on this topic, which makes me drag my hands down my face because I have a bad feeling it will be as petty and unreasonable as it was before.

Narrator: The Schnee Dust Company. Bunch of self-entitled, monopolizing, S-N-O-Bs, who only care about making a profit, no matter how many little people they gotta step on to make it happen. A-hem. [Qrow clears his throat] But, uh, that's just my opinion.

Toldja. Mind you, I’m all for bashing corporations, but Ironwood and Winter are military, not CEOs, jackass.

Qrow reaffirms the world of Remnant’s overreliance on dust, which I talked about in the last World of Remnant recap, and most all of it is mined and sold by Schnee. Nicolas Schnee, the creator of the company, was born to a dust miner turned soldier, and was born just after the Great War. The post-war economy offered Nicolas good opportunities.

Nicolas was just the cream of the crop, pulling double duty as a miner and a knight working for his father and being an intellectual type who spent his time learning everything he could. Left an inheritance after his father died, Nicolas sought new dust deposits in northern Solitas that could free Mantle-soon-to-be-Atlas from stress put on their current resources, and found them. Nicolas’ training as a soldier meant he could safely oversee all expeditions, and soon Schnee grew from a last name to a respected brand, being incorporated across every kingdom. When he retired, he did so with a family, but eventually died of health complications brought about from an early life of mining.

Jacques Gelè (that’s Weiss’ dad) would then marry into the family, taking the Schnee name, and bringing with him all sorts of icky stuff like racism and child abuse and ruthless monopolization. Qrow all but slavishly spells out that Nicolas’ good, pure, Christian generation of business had its soul sucked out by Jacques’ evil, dirty, scandal-ridden corporate empire.

Again, I will always support the guillotine over the billionaire, but this does seem a bit unsubtle and unpolished for a backstory.

Narrator: Cheap lapor, unsafe working conditions, doing whatever it takes to destroy the competition. Jacques Schnee doesn't care about people. He cares about winning. That, and making sure he's got the best damn PR team in the world.

The future of Schnee and their name, can only be determined by those taking action today…

“The Great War”

The last World of Remnant episode of the Volume, and of the show so far.

The Great War lasted about ten years and was preceded by a century of tension. Mistral was the origin of much of it. Mistral’s emperor had managed to settle almost the entire continent, largely due to assistance from Mantle. Trade relations were good as Mistral benefited from Mantle’s tech, and Mantle benefited from Mistral’s merchant services.

Narrator: An incident in Mantle led to a strange and unexpected decree—the abolishment of the arts and the repression of self-expression.

Umm, why?

Narrator: The people of Mantle had come to believe that they would be much safer from the Grimm if they could simply keep the emotions of the masses in check.

Oh, are we finally addressing the dystopian elements here?

Narrator: Given Mistral's strong artistic culture, many assumed this would be the end of their alliance. But they were wrong. Mistral complied... selectively, enforcing Mantle's wishes only in the outer territories, allowing the central powers to continue to live as they pleased. If you haven't caught on yet, Mistral's full of jerks.

…No, no it is not. Oh god damn it, come on! When I commented on this before, I was making the point that Grimm are attracted to entirely too broad and ubiquitous an element! Negative emotions are not something you can really work around in any practical way! They aren’t a single collective feature of a civilization, swinging back and forth like a meter, they’re an individual experience! I imagine the emperor and other governing forces of Mistral didn’t feel like enforcing such a bone-headed decree because forcing the population to repress themselves would only a) make them miserable, thus defeating the whole purpose and b) would probably get them pretty pissed off with the people who enforced it.

Are we saying here that Mantle’s government literally did what I joked about Ozpin doing, and said “no more sad episodes of television”???

Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 6

Narrator: The people of Vale had a problem with this.

Good thing they’re totally uninvolved in this situation.

Narrator: Well, they had a problem with a lot of things Mistral and Mantle had been up to—treatment of their citizens, use of slave labor and their constant insistence that their way of life was what was best for everyone.

Oh, okay, that makes sense. Vale, get as involved as you please.

Conflicts over island territories on Sanus’ far eastern coast were the ignition of war. No one knows who shot first, but once the fighting broke out, it wasn’t stopping.

Narrator: Mantle quickly came to Mistral's side. Battles were fought on both Sanus and Anima soil. Villages were lost to both combat and Grimm. And it wasn't long before Vacuo decided to join the party.

What are they gonna do? They’re a desert on the other side of the planet with no expanded territory at this point, aren’t they?

The narration describes this entrance into the war essentially being forced by hostile negotiations on the part of Mantle and Mistral, with Vacuo taking Vale’s side to safeguard themselves from annexation.

War on its own would already be enough, but the way the Grimm reacted to it meant that nothing was safe forever. As the battles raged on, technology and weaponry advanced, yet settlements continued to fall. Everyone had it hard. Vacuo again came to the fore when their stock of dust became the prized gemstone, a target for Mistral and Mantle to strike to destroy the enemy once and for all. So, it became the site of the last, largest battle.

The king of Vale personally led his army in the fight, and brought the heat, whooping the opposing forces’ asses. “Crown atop his head and armed only with a sword and his scepter, he laid waste to countless men.” The Grimm got involved this time, big time, and there was no ceasefire.

Narrator: It was the single deadliest battle of the war, and legends of the greatness and terror of the Warrior King were born that day.

So it was probably Ozpin.

Narrator: Historians will tell you that most of these stories are nothing but grandiose hyperbole. Unusually violent weather conditions, combined with Mantle's unfamiliarity with desert combat, are likely what led to such a high death count. But whatever the reasoning, everyone bowed to the King of Vale by the time it was over. The Great War had ended. The world was ready to live under the rule of Vale. But the King refused.

Thus came peace, signed on the island of Vytal, and the abolishment of slavery, and other post-war effects discussed prior. The Huntsmen academies seem to have been established at that point despite at the very least Mantle’s having already been in place, if I recall correctly.

So closes the final episode of World of Remnant.

Color me impressed. After the pitiful showings in Volumes Two and Three, I didn’t think they were ever actually going to utilize this little segment for more than to ramble on about things we already knew or could’ve inferred.

But with that out of the way, we move on to the Volume proper, which won’t be so neat and tidy.

Counts: