RWBY 54 – Volume 9, Episode 1

[surgeworks]

Volume 8 Final Thoughts | Table of Contents | 55 – Episode 2
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This recap is fresh, and may change inbetween its initial posting on my journal and its eventual posting on the comm. Do not read this if you aren’t caught up on RWBY up to Volume 8.

I shamelessly pirated this, so the links I give may go dead if the videos are taken down. Just let me know if they fail to work.

V9E1, "A Place of Particular Concern"

We open on a blank screen with that female voice from the trailers.

 

???: This is the story of a girl who had a lot of problems.

The pounding heartbeat comes through, quickening as the sound of rushing wind comes in. We get the same shots of the trailer, shot from Ruby’s point of view as everything at the end of Volume 8 fell apart (because of her stupid decisions).



Ruby awakes in the ether, a small fireball held in her hands that quickly joins the thousands floating around. Neo enters the scene and starts beating her up in freefall—err, free-float. Neo, having shapeshifted to Penny, is just choking Ruby out when gravity reoccurs, and Ruby separates them as they fall into the miasma of gas and energy below.



Ruby then wakes up on the island that is the setting for this volume, hearing echoes of Yang yelling her name. Looking around, she fines a tropical beach that’s fairly nice, albeit there’s two suns hanging in the sky. She watches a flock of bright green duck-like birds taking off from the jungletops nearby. As she makes to head into the woods, the wildlife only gets more bizarre, including a fly with legs bent into a rocking horse shape.



Things occur as they did in the trailer, with Ruby walking and walking past the same wailing bird twice and not seeming to get any closer to the tree in the center of the island. She meets the talking mouse, who she christens ‘Little’...do I really have to recap the trailer’s events over again? That’s all the first seven minutes of this 17-minute episode is.

*sigh* The shock and gasp and awe at Little being able to speak reeks of the same “magic is real oh gwarsh” suckage I had previously thought we’d left behind, so jot that down as another Miles-and-Kerry-ism. In fact…

The Lovegood Fallacy: 16

*dryly* Ruby lives in a world where dogs can be safely lit aflame, but mice talking? That would just be crazy.



Isn’t this funny, guys? Laugh.

Broke-Ass Clowns: 35

And then of course, Little asks the question, “What are you?” that we’ve already been beaten over the head with as it features as the BIG OVERARCHING QUESTION of the volume, and Ruby of course struggles to answer that question because this is the CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT SEASON and so she’ll have to Decide Who She Is, yeah?

People are being ripped apart by Grimm in Vacuo right now, guys. Just saying.

I can’t overstate how stilted and scripted this is, I could’ve walked in here with absolutely no idea what RWBY is or what season we’re on and I would know immediately that they’re cribbing Alice in Wonderland in the most basic fashion. I just want out of this hell.

The mouse invites the bribery of more food in exchange for leading Ruby back to her tribe. The twin suns get a shot via scene transition and I just know that’s going to become something symbolic. But then we finally get new material.

Blake’s voice asks as we pan down:

B: You really think it’s around here somewhere?

W: I wouldn’t exactly say I’m certain about anything at the moment.

Their walk through the jungle reveals them to be searching for Gambol Shroud, and at this point Blake is going to become as memetic as Weiss about not hanging onto her damn weapon. Blake is taken off-guard by a sound from above and behind, but it nothing comes of it, and the two say how happy they are to find each other still okay. For some reason, Blake’s sleeves are unzipped—as a matter of fact, for some reason, Blake’s sleeves have zippers on them. Awkward design choices.

Speaking of awkward, Blake asks what happened after she and Ruby fell. Weiss noticeably does not look at her and dodges this question, leading Blake to fear the worst.



Gambol Shroud turns out to be tangled up in a mass of vines, looking rather Sword-in-the-Stone-esque. Weiss mentions she’s low on dust, which I guess explains why she doesn’t just burn the pile of vines and instead starts hacking away, but it doesn’t explain why she doesn’t at least glyph-step her way up to the top of the vine pile and start slashing there to get this done faster.

Ill Logic: 193



A logic failure that gets exacerbated when the vines regrow to undo the progress she makes. Weiss is also apparently made of Kleenex and demonstrates none of the earth-shattering power that even without dust, she should be capable of, becoming winded after a few slashes. But moving on…

Also, take note of that stupid bit where Weiss, again having forgot she can stand on air, cartoon-cheers for Blake in a way that is both unfunny and out of character.

Broke-Ass Clowns: 36

The vine mass is revealed to be a trap, as just when Blake manages to move her sword, the vines attack and swarm over her and Weiss. Then a horde of mice run out of the woodwork and capture them.



It is worth mentioning that for the entire nine minutes up to this point, there has been no music whatsoever. Seriously, since the episode began. And unlike with the awkward Weiss conversations in Volume 4, where this was done to highlight the tension in the air between her and Whitley, this just feels like the music is missing. Something tells me Jeff Williams’ employment was undergoing maintenance at this time. But it finally kicks in as we cut to Ruby walking through the jungle.

She stumbles across the scene just in time, Blake and Weiss bound to makeshift maypoles, the talking mice celebrating their victory over the larger predators. It’s dumb. This development doesn’t last, as Little explains to her kin that the humans are allies.



Broke-Ass Clowns: 37

The music, which had started at the 8:09 timestamp, is already over and replaced with silence by 9:45. Once released, the girls (Blake mainly) inquire of the whereabouts of Yang, but unfortunately, the one-eyed leader mouse has not seen her, nor has anyone else.

Ruby explains her meantime objective, getting to the cliff where the baobab tree sits, and Little offers to be their “trusted guide”. Cut to her snoring on Ruby’s shoulder.



Broke-Ass Clowns: 38

All but spelling out that yes, this is the cute mascot character no one asked for.

Weiss shooes away the rocking horse fly that we saw before, leading the group as they travel through the jungle. Blake says “At least they got us to this path,” which confused me for a moment before I realized ah, yes, she’s talking about Little. Y’all hear that? That’s the sound of RWBY fishing for praise because lookee, they have a nonbinary talking mouse! Kdin Jenzen says hi, by the way.

How To Piss Off Gay People: 88

Ruby somberly asks Weiss, as Blake did before, if she knows what happened to the others who might’ve fallen. Weiss does not look back, maintaining silence for a moment before lying and saying she doesn’t know if anyone else fell. The scene here feels less like Weiss trying not to bring up Penny’s second death and more like the crew trying not to.

Before they can discuss any further, a haunting, eerie sound rings out, resembling the roar of a Grimm if even that. Everyone starts to hurry to see what made it.

Then things get super fucked.

???: [in a deep, echoing voice] Seeking… Searching…

What the unholy fuck…

???: Scouring… Stalking… Searching… Scouring…

The score is back, a haunting track highlighting this horrible thing which wouldn’t be out of place in a horror video game.

Little wakes up and promptly hides in Ruby’s scarf.

???: Detecting… Listening…

Can’t promise accurate transcripts since the Ruby wiki won’t have them and this thing’s voice is so over-edited it’s hard to properly hear what it’s saying at times. Sorry.

The monkey-like thing hears Little’s yip of fear and turns around to face its new guests. Weiss and Blake draw their weapons and advance, while Ruby realizes she doesn’t have her scythe. Well, time to make use of that awesome hand-to-hand combat training you got in Volume 5 that literally never became relevant! Love that.



The beast attacks, roaring something I was clearly supposed to be able to make out but wasn’t. Blake engages, and Weiss and Ruby just kind of stare awkwardly, and Weiss moves to assist before Yang’s voice rings out.

Y: I said I wasn’t done with you, yet!

A thrown rock hits the beast upside its head, drawing its attention. Yang, however, stumbling out of the woods, is missing her mechanical arm and clearly winded. Unlike Ruby (snrk), hand-to-hand combat will clearly not go well for her. But, realizing it’s outnumbered, the beast retreats, murmuring more one-word phrases as it does.

Yang falls to a knee as Weiss and Blake make to take after the beast, and Ruby runs over to her sister in concern. Yang, upset, says they weren’t supposed to come here, and Ruby brushes this off as she asks what happened to Yang’s arm. We already know what happened, because that revelation made it into the trailer as the sort of kuh-razy so-ha-ha-funny thing that was just bound to draw in more fleeing fans, right?

But before that revelation can come, this happens:



And Blake murmurs Yang’s name into her shoulder.

*sigh* You know, it’s almost not worth talking about, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to. We all know this season’s trump card, or rather last-resort card. Bumbleby are going to finally kiss and go canon this season because that is literally the only thing fans of this show ever watched it for that has not yet been utterly fucking destroyed.

Putting to one side all other potential ships which have fallen by the wayside (unless they go for what I sensed with the Robyn/Qrow plotline, in which case I have some exploding to do), Bumbleby...wasn’t built up. Wasn’t developed.

And don’t argue that with me because I haven’t recapped all eight seasons of this show so far to be called a liar.

The Bumbleby relationship only really started as of Volume 6 with Sun bowing out, and anyone that tries to tell you that it’s a “slow burn” that had canon backing before that point is kidding themselves. But the fact remains that Rooster Teeth used the drama with Adam as a bouncing-off point for their bait, that being the Bumbleby relationship.

The problem with that ship is that typically, it would sit within a hurt/comfort dynamic with the new love interest showing warmth to the abused victim and helping them heal and learn how to love again. There’s three problems with that.

• One: in Blake’s case, the warmth and healing was done by Sun, leaving Yang nothing to contribute, but even then,
• Two: Any actual discussion of the abuse Blake suffered by Adam was emphatically avoided, with any unhealthy dynamics that were critical to their relationship completely skated over, ducked around in Volume 5 so that the Ilia plot could shine, and ditched in Volume 6 with but a token comment about Adam making others feel small, because…
• Three: in this particular version of the hurt/comfort dynamic, the hurt person is Yang. She’s the one who lost her arm and it’s her who receives a bulky plot package and character development bonus. The trauma and recovery arc is hers, not Blake’s. And once Adam bit it, Yang’s recovery arc was over, because losing her arm gave her confidence issues, not trust issues.

This leaves Bumbleby as a relationship with nothing to capitalize on since their major defining feature has a net 0 points for it.

In fairness to Volume 7, they do appear to have done some legwork into making it appear as though Blake and Yang have chemistry, mainly by having them, you know, interact and have fun together and go out clubbing and even that nonsense about their partner dynamic in battle. I attribute this largely to Kiersi Burkhart, who as I understand it has written her fair share of LGBT romance, but this just becomes another evidence that Kiersi was browbeat into backing off for Volume 8, because in that one, it’s all face-touching and Yang ignoring her sister because she has a girlfriend now and that super weird and out-of-character moment where Blake lost her mind because she thought Yang died and tried to pull a psycho girlfriend attack on Neo. It’s a bunch of dramatic moments that haven’t been earned because Blake and Yang never actually grew closer or learned about each other, they just had separate arcs that shared a common feature in Adam. Thus all of these moments are just cherries on top of thin air, moments that would be impactful if they’d had any real foundation, but they don’t.

This scene appears to be following that pattern.

Guys, Blake doesn’t launch flying tackle glomps on people. She doesn’t go batshit crazy and homicidal over loved ones being lost to her. That’s not her character, it never has been. Our requisite point for the bait before we move on:

How To Piss Off Gay People: 89

Yang says she’s happy to see them, but remarks that the battle must’ve gone pretty bad if they’re all here. Everyone turns to Weiss, who starts to cry.

The music remembers it’s supposed to be on as Weiss explains through her tears that everything was happening so fast, that Jaune was useless (my words, but still), that no one came back from Vacuo… As soon as she mentions Penny, Ruby’s eyes go wide and she faints. No, seriously.



Some five-ish seconds of black screen later, we pop back in on Yang questioning Weiss on what happened as Ruby remains unconscious. It’s raining, which is probably tied to Ruby’s negative emotions somehow because Symbology. The fact that no one knows what happened to Vacuo or the Atlesian citizens pouring in there gets a mention.



And odds are no one ever will. By appearances, we’re going to spend all ten episodes on this stupid Alice in Wonderland island.

Ruby--who just wakes up with nothing said about Penny or her fainting--confirms Neo will be on the island somewhere, and Blake recommends finding Yang’s arm and Ruby’s scythe and leaving. Weiss wonders how they’re supposed to leave, and Yang brings up the obvious question: what if they’re dead?

Then an orchestra starts playing and a whole different show happens as Blake moves through some banana vibes and looks out upon the hill overlooking the baobab tree, and literally drops this line in total seriousness:

B: I don’t think we’re dead. I know how this sounds, but… I think we’re in a fairy tale.

Then the episode ends. Yeah, seriously.



But of course, we have our volume opening to show. I don’t know if I should even bother doing these anymore, but I do want to know if MK are gonna lie to their audience again. I think what I’ll do is just go through and pick out any moments that seem like obvious tells of the volume’s events.

Hmmm… Uh huh…. Ooookay…. Hmmmm….

Well, there’s our character sliders featuring Jaune and Neo looking sad, and then we get our montage of outfits that we last saw in Volume 7, which handily demonstrates that the style of this show fucking tanked after Volume 3 and only got worse as time wore on. But that montage does give us this interesting shot:



Who is this new character, and why is she colorless?



Oh nevermind, it’s gonna be Alice.

Yes, the opening does manage to feature Studio Killers versions of both the Cheshire Cat and Absolem. There’s a shot of the Alice character wherein she appears to be dark-skinned, so I expect her to die or become a villain before the season’s over.

Then there’s this shot, indicating that Neo will be the main villain of the season:



And that the Alice character will be more blatantly important than we could’ve imagined. And also that they’re still willing to attach Monty’s name to this show.

The credits also pack a new surprise: Kerry Shawcross is listed as the sole director and writer, not to mention a supervising director and executive producer, although “story by” is still noticeably including Miles’ name. His presence was always going to be obvious given they talked up how this Volume is the other half of Volume 8. Naturally, Monty is at the top of the list (a bald-faced lie) and Kiersi is at the bottom (which is probably an accurate reflection).

Jessica Nigri is credited for Cinder’s re-used line from Volume 8, and the fucked up masked horned monkey-thing is apparently called the “Jabberwalker”, rounding out the Alice copy-pastes and is voiced by Richard Norman.

Jeff Williams’ name does not appear in the credits at all.

Well, what a shitshow this has been so far. I mean, I expected it, but wow. I don’t even have the heart to rail about this not following in Volume 8’s setup, for what little there was one. The next ten weeks are going to be painful.

As a parting gift, though, I’ve decided to be petty and award a Road to Nowhere point for each episode we spend in this volume not addressing the Vacuo situation. Because that’s not a matter that can wait.

Road to Nowhere: 43

And as another parting gift, some predictions for the season as a whole, which will earn Pay Attention points if I end up right on any of them:

• Everyone very noticeably did not use their semblances at all during this episode; even Neo only used hers in the void above Wonderland—oh sorry, the Ever After. I’m going to guess there’s going to be some inhibiting factor that keeps them from using it and handily allows them to not have to animate anything remotely complex.
• The Jabberwalker is obviously going to be an underling to either Neo or Alice or whoever the Red Queen expy is.
• Jaune will, undoubtedly, be way more important than advertised so far. And he’ll fuck something up.
• The Crown of Choice will pop up somewhere.
• The Bumbleby kiss.
• Summer Rose reveal, perhaps?

Since I don’t expect RWBY to actually make it to Volume 10, since people aren’t willing to pay for it anymore, and Rooster Teeth have no reputation left to salvage to draw in more, I’m already drawing up my final thoughts on the series as a whole. The one thing this Volume appears to be ready to influence in that department is the Style section.

But I’ll see you with another episode recap next week.

Counts:

• Jaune: 83
  
• It Was Right There: 63
  
• Fauxminism: 61
  
• Hypocrisy: 57
  
• Reliable Leaders: 80 + 17
  
• Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 17 (RETIRED)
  
• Threatening Enemies: 59
  
• Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 104
  
• Your Fight Scene Sucks: 155 + 33
  
  • Evisceration Evasion: 35
    
• Ill Logic: 193
  
• Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 110 + 89
  
  • Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 34
    
  • Band-Aid Brigade: 55
    
• RSVP: 72
  
• Road to Nowhere: 43
  
• Dragged Kicking and Screaming: 52
  
• Y.A.S. Queen: 18
  
• Rooster Tease: 37
  
• LuLaRwe: 61
  
• The Lovegood Fallacy: 16
  
• How to Piss Off Gay People: 89
  
• Invisembl: 14
  
• Broke-Ass Clowns: 38
  
• Shut the Fuck Up: 7 (RETIRED...for now)
  

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Volume 8 Final Thoughts | Table of Contents | 55 – Episode 2