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31 – Volume 5, Episodes 2 and 3 | Table of Contents | 33 – Volume 5, Episodes 8 and 9
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Last time, Ozpin was creepy, Qrow was aggravating, and Rooster Teeth were homophobic racists...but we got the volume's one really cool fight scene out of it. Let's move on to more beige pastures.
We open on the same dirt road running through a forest that Yang has been traveling for sometime, riding her motorcycle with the unwelcome creep from before sitting astride it behind her, very pointedly keeping his body angled as far away from hers as can be safely done.
He says they're almost at their destination, which appears to be a small clearing in the woods, coordinates: nowhere that matters. He leaves the motorcycle, claiming to be going off to make sure the coast is clear, which Yang is obviously not dumb enough to believe unsalted. She looks down her glasses at his retreating back, shaking her head. Lo and behold, it’s a “trap”.
Toothy tells her he can’t believe she was dumb enough to be led here, and Yang, unimpressed, asks if this is everyone. It’s not, the rest of the camp is some distance away, but yes, this is everyone he thought to bring. He intends to beat her up and take her bike, and brandishes a hilariously pitiful weapon—a revolver with a knife taped to the gun handle. Yang, meanwhile, reveals a gun barrel out of the wrist of her new metal arm. Cue beatdown.
None of these chumps pose any threat to Yang, who casually takes them apart. If there’s a complaint to be had, it’s wondering how a bunch of machine pistol fire only manages to hit Yang’s metal arm when she raises it in front of her face.
Your Fight Scene Sucks: 59
Toothy tries again to shoot her, only for his gun to jam. It gets enough attention from Yang to warrant a flying punch, with just enough close-up on her eyes that we see they’re still their usual lilac color.
Rather than simply blow through him, she takes the extra energy to catapult herself over him and then whack him in the face, sending him barreling into another dude and down for the count. Yang leaves the fight without a single hit taken, and in perfect shape for whatever comes next.
Barring a trembling in her left hand, which she steadies with her right, all is well.
Toothy gets up long enough to warn Yang that Raven will punish her for this, but Yang just lets the dude in on the fact that she’s Raven’s daughter. His face says it all. Then, she rides off towards the Branwen tribe’s base camp.
We cut back to Mistral, where Oscar is training with Ruby.
Band-Aid Brigade: 8
None of this will actually matter for Ruby, whose hand-to-hand skills are unlikely to accomplish anything she couldn’t do better with her scythe, and is really just to mollify fans who didn’t like her turning into dead weight when deprived of her scythe.
Also, if Ruby has to train in hand-to-hand, why doesn’t anyone else? Ren and Qrow can fight with their hands, but we’ve seen no evidence that Ruby’s weakness when unarmed isn’t perfectly applicable to Jaune and Nora, too.
Jaune comments on Oscar’s rapid improvement, just as Oscar decks Ruby in the face. Frantically apologizing, he then gets decked right on his ass by Ruby, who celebrates her victory.
But this scene is important, because it’s big on band-aids right now. Oscar is in pain on the ground, and Ozpin’s voice sounds inside his head:
Oz: You forgot to engage your aura again.
Forgot…?
Ozpin says “mind if I give it a shot?” and doesn’t wait for Oscar’s answer before taking control.
No no no no no no you cannot just gloss over that, you can’t just assume that Oscar is cool with it and hope the viewer assumes that, too!
Reliable Leaders: 20
For lack of a better point to give.
Faced with Ozpin as an opponent, Ruby’s patting of her own back quickly turns to nervousness.
He whales on her with ease. However, when Ozpin relinquishes control, Oscar falls over forward, panting. He openly wonders how this can be so exhausting, and Ren pipes up.
R: Your body’s not used to this kind of training, not to mention generating a defensive aura on your own. It takes intense concentration at first, but in time, it will become second-nature, allowing you to deflect attacks and gradually heal your wounds. After that, you can begin focusing on your semblance…whatever that may be.
Y’all hear that? That’s the sound of a band-aid the size of a city block being applied. It’s getting the general point, too, purely for how obvious it is.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 20
Band-Aid Brigade: 9
That was Rooster Teeth very blatantly covering their asses for the honestly massive uproar that occurred when Adam just shoved a sword into Sienna Khan with no resistance a couple of episodes ago. If you weren’t here for it, then you can’t imagine how pissed off people were with that, and they stayed pissed for quite a while. This wasn’t going to help things.
Up until now, aura has never been treated as something characters have to actively concentrate on. It’s always been treated as automatic, to the extent that Jaune’s aura engaged against Cardin purely on reflex. No one has ever “forgotten” their aura, and you know what? This half-assed cover-your-ass doesn’t even work, because every time I’ve slammed my water bottle down and called bullshit, the characters who “forgot” their aura were in very clearly hostile situations!
You’ll recall that I mentioned this waaaaaay back in my Volume Two, Episode One recap! Tukson had to have had some measure of aura or he wouldn’t have been much help to the White Fang. And he was in a very clearly hostile situation that he expected to turn violent, and ended up making the first move—and yet, we were supposed to believe it took one good kick to kill him.
The same goes for Sienna Khan. Adam was armed and had just openly declared his intention to take over her organization, and she was surrounded by enemies pointing weapons at her on all sides. She intended to fight, so there’s literally no reason why her aura shouldn’t have been engaged even if we accept this bullshit modification to the rules of aura.
These were people to whom aura very obviously should’ve been “second nature”, but their aura was ignored because they weren’t meant to be a part of the plot in any way except dying. So they didn’t warrant any effort spent on them.
And this isn’t just a cover-your-ass for prior fuck-ups with aura. It’s also a cover-your-ass for a character’s aura going unaccounted for in coming episodes, because Rooster Teeth fucking suck and weren’t willing to put more budget towards their animation department.
Moving on.
Oscar repeats the word “semblance” confusedly, and Nora gets excited, declaring semblances to be like a person’s very own super-power, and how everyone has one.
*sigh* This isn’t a band-aid matter, but it is something. There’s been several combatants throughout the series thus far who did not display any obvious form of semblance, and fought just fine without it. But around Volume Five and going forward, RWBY as a show suddenly became very meticulous about giving every character a semblance, which is the primary cause for the Invisembl count.
(Also, Nora reiterates that Ruby’s semblance is moving very fast. So there’s that.)
(Also also, Nora only trails off into embarrassed silence when reaching Jaune in her list of semblances, despite the fact that I probably would’ve avoided mentioning Ren’s “masking emotions” semblance purely as a favor to him.)
Ren gets into expository mode again, describing semblances as “speculated to be” related to personality, as in, they’re personality powers. That much was really already clear to viewers, but hey, I guess we’re just saying that out loud now as a nice little nod.
Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 7
Oscar asks what’s up with semblance-less Jaune, and Ozpin again doesn’t ask before taking control, so he can give Jaune a pep talk.
Reliable Leaders: 21
We are getting waaaaay too casual with Oscar’s presumed consent, you hear me?
Cut to the encampment where Raven is hiding out. Yang is being escorted in by the bruised-up bandits who ambushed her. Vernal is seen peeking out of a tent at this, as are many others. Elsewhere in the camp, Weiss sees everyone else getting distracted by something, and decides now is her moment. She summons her small knight, with sword just big enough to cut her bindings.
Yang strides up to the big wig’s tent, and out steps Raven Branwen, ninja sword strapped to her side and face covered by her unique mask. Yang, hand on her hip, simply addresses her as “mom”. Raven unmasks, and addresses her by name.
R: [addressing the crowd as much as Yang] …So, after all this time, you’ve finally decided to visit me.
Yes, because it’s the responsibility of the abandoned daughter to come visit the mom who went out on a long, long drive for cigarettes. This encampment clearly ain’t a retirement home, Raven, although I’m sure one is in your future.
Yang is probably thinking much the same, given how her left hand is again shaking.
Y: You know that I searched for you. I spent years looking for you.
R: And you found me. You were patient, determined, and strong enough to make your dream a reality. Well done, Yang. But did you have to be so rough with my men?
Raven should be a politician with a speech stat this mid-tier. The banter doesn’t get picked up by Yang, and Raven tries again, saying this must all be overwhelming (mostly to her tribe) and that she has to admit Yang has proved herself, so she’s willing to answer questions.
Yang clarifies that she’s not here for Raven. Raven is just a faster route to Ruby, who will need Yang’s help sooner or later. When Raven asks why she’d help with that, Yang says “Because we’re family” with hands over her heart in mocking pose. Raven doesn’t dare tell her she’s wrong in front of the crowd, though she does mutter that family only seems to come around when they need something. After asking why Yang doesn’t find Ruby herself, she’s told by Yang that Raven’s portals are way faster than wandering all over Anima and Mistral trying to search the manual way.
See, according to Taiyang, Raven’s portals aren’t so much “go anywhere” as “go to any person”, rather like Goku’s instant transmission, but slower, and also allegedly working only for people Raven has a bond of some sort with. Raven has portals available for Taiyang, for Yang, and for Qrow—who will be wherever Ruby is.
Raven, sounding like she’d rather bite her tongue off, loudly says that she’s impressed at Yang’s ballsy demands, more or less. However, she warns Yang away from getting “mixed up” in Qrow’s Nonsense with Ozpin, lamenting that she too once trusted Ozpin. Yang won’t hear of it, since nothing Raven can say will stand between Yang and her sister.
Yang’s final remarks—that she gets her stubbornness from her mother—pisses Raven off enough that she orders Yang removed and stalks away. Yang is quickly surrounded, and her eyes finally go red when demanding to be sent to Qrow, incensed at Raven’s refusal to help. It looks like we’ll have another Yellow Trailer on our hands, and a mook runs at Yang with a machete. Naturally, she repels him—
Straight into a tent, which deflates to reveal Weiss in her cage. If Raven thought Yang was a bother before, she’s going to be a major problem now. But not before Weiss decides that her subtle approach is now busted, and she may as well be the biggest problem Raven has ever seen:
Her tiny Knight grows to gigantic size, shattering Weiss’ pitiful cage, and she and it both run to join Yang, who asks what the hell is up, and Weiss asks what she’s doing here. Each one of them is bamboozled that Yang’s mom kidnapped Yang’s friend, and this officially sends Yang into ass-kicking mode. But just as Weiss is about to send some mooks flying like bowling pins, a lightning bolt strikes!
Vernal is here, and declares “Enough”, lowering the hand that apparently called down the bolt. Raven, while she has a moment of attention, orders Vernal to return Weiss’ rapier to her, and then orders Yang and Weiss into her tent. Her relenting to help Yang find Ruby comes with the caveat that she wants Yang to know “the truth”. Raven gets enough of a closeup to show some aging lines under her eyes, and then goes back into her tent, her tribesmen retreating.
The episode ends, but not before Weiss and Yang rejoice at their reunion:
W: I missed you so much.
Y: …I missed you, too.
Wow.
Yep. That’s the moment that got me to ship Freezerburn. That is heartwarming, that is tear-jerking, and that is lesbian-tastic. All aboard!
The episode ends, and we award our points:
Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 42 (+2)
We open up on Menagerie. Sun and Blake are leaving the Belladonna home at sunset. The both of them have scrolls, and their mission is—!
To…get signatures?
They’re recruiting for the Haven defense mission, I see. We then see a montage of Blake and Sun trying to convince people to sign themselves to their cause, which goes about as well as you might expect. Unlike Raven, Blake’s speech stat isn’t very high, nor is Sun’s.
Later at the pier, when sitting down for a break over some drinks in coconut shells, Sun voices his frustration at the citizens’ apathy when the White Fang is planning bloodshed. Blake explains that the faunus here are either uninterested in fighting, or tired of it enough to move here from other places. But if Haven falls, it’s going to come back to bite the people here as well. Sun, having heard Blake actually mention Adam by name, finally works up the nerve to ask her about that.
S: Adam… He’s the guy you used to… [choosing words carefully] …work with?
Blake sighs and says yes, and Sun quickly apologizes and urges her to forget he said anything. But Blake is finally ready to spill her guts--er, spill the beans, so to speak. A piano melody starts up.
B: Have you ever met someone, and thought to yourself, ‘they are the personification of [this word]’?
Sun has not, because Sun is unlikely to think of people as more than just people. Blake tries to explain it in further detail. Giving an explanation, she calls Ruby, in a word, ‘purity’. Weiss, she similarly categorized as ‘defiance’, and Yang as ‘strength’. Sun asks what word he himself represents, and Blake smiles, a laugh hidden somewhere in her voice, and looks away, saying the “jury’s still out on that one”, but leaning towards ‘earnest’.
It’s love. You know she was thinking the word ‘love’.
Sun takes a moment to flex some of that old dorky charm he’s got so much of:
And I’m just screaming in my head that if they promise no more stalking and wifebeating, I’ll forgive it all and ship ‘til death do us part.
Blake giggles, but frowns as she brings the topic back to Adam again. She says that at first, the word that felt like Adam was ‘justice’, but over time, it changed to ‘passion’, which was unfortunately unmasked as ‘spite’ by the time Blake left. She specifically says it wasn’t ‘hatred’ or ‘rage’, with the implication that she maybe could’ve forgiven those, but that it was spite—in its petty, cruel totality. Sun focuses intently on Blake, face solemn, as Blake explains that equality isn’t what Adam wants, but rather he wants to make the world suffer for what he feels it did to him.
(Shhhh. Don’t comment on this. Its time will come. And it will be quite a time when it happens.)
Blake continues that Adam’s brand of thinking spreads with dangerous ease, which is why she’s so worried for Ilia. Ilia, she says, isn’t like Adam—not yet.
S: …She was your friend, huh?
She was, Blake confirms, and she explains that she admires Ilia’s drive to fight when she could afford to live as a human. The influences of people like Sienna and Adam, she worries, has ignited something bad in Ilia. Sun says that she’ll have to face Ilia eventually, and Blake agrees.
S: …So what are you going to do?
B: I’m going to try and help her the way you helped me.
I’m a fool, and an idiot, and I shouldn’t get so invested in this, and yet…
Sun questions this response, and Blake explains.
B: You showed me that sometimes, you need to be there for a friend, even when they don’t want you to be.
At a glance, this is true, although I also know this is an attempt to smooth over the stalking issue.
Band-Aid Brigade: 10
Most of us would’ve been much happier if that just hadn’t been a thing, but I will hesitantly accept this as the go-ahead to embrace my “selective canon for people who don’t have time for bullshit” instincts.
B: I was drowning in guilt and fear, I tried to push you away, but you didn’t give up on me.
Which is admirable, because I would have given up around the time of the slapping incident, which I will also submit for “things we can accept as mistakes of canon”.
She can’t give up on Ilia, Blake says. It’s her turn to save her friends, she says. Sun smiles in approval, before we cut to Mistral.
Oscar is training when Ruby comes down and they have a Moment, by which I mean “filler, except for the part this was actually about”. Ruby says at the pace Oscar is going, he’ll be “combat-ready in no time!”
Penny finally exists again, yay. As a painful memory of Ruby’s but she does!
Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 43
Then we get a moment where Oscar is overwhelmed by everything that has happened to him, and he laments “Who would ask for this?”
The answer is nobody, except Desmond Miles, in this one fic I wanna write one day where he takes Clay Kaczmarek up on his offer to share a body because that’s way more interesting than anything Assassin’s Creed did after that game. But I digress.
Oscar has a meltdown at everything that’s happening, and Ruby admits that she lost two of her friends when Beacon fell. Ruby goes into detail about remembering Penny and Pyrrha not as people she was especially close to, but two of the most kind-hearted people she’d ever met. She laments that Pyrrha died fighting a battle she couldn’t win for the tiniest chance she could help, and that Penny was murdered (in cold blood!) just to make a statement.
Band-Aid Brigade: 11
Because I have the distinct feeling this scene wouldn’t be happening if people hadn’t gotten very vocally pissed about Ruby barely remembering either of those girls throughout Volume Four.
Ruby continues about how this has pushed her to fight against Salem’s designs, in a very filler-y speech that doubtlessly contributed to the fandom’s exhaustion with her tiresome speech habits that she would be known for later.
R: So that’s what I choose to do… To keep moving forward.
*seeing red*
I’m fine, I’m cool, I’m fine, I’m not fucking fine oh god—
I’m sorry. After Shane’s open letter, I’m so not interested in hearing that or any other paltry placating remembrances of Monty. I might have to get Shinjiro.
*presses an app on a nearby smartphone*
*An overcoat-wearing, beanie-clad young man materializes in a chair*
Shinjiro: ‘Sup?
Chris: I can’t keep this up forever. This, coming right after all that homophobia and racism…
Shinjiro: Is there anything good left in this episode for me?
Chris: Probably not. Take your lumps and get a salary. *vanishes*
Shinjiro: *huffs*
So Rose finishes her speech, which was blatant filler by the way, and invites Pine down to dinner, before Valkyrie eats everything. These are the right names, right? *checking notes*
Once Rose leaves, though, the Ozpin guy in Oscar’s head comments on her. So instead of getting to the next scene, we get to something that ain’t even a band-aid and is just filler: Pine and Ozpin talking about Rose’s good and bad qualities as a huntress, and her amazing ‘spark’. Then we get to the next scene.
We’re in some kind of creepy shrine, or at least that’s what it looks like. It’s got an altar with candles on it and someone’s just received a message. The fox hybrid dudes, Corsac and Fennec, are talkin’ about Adam Taurus. Someone knocks, and Corsac invites them in. It’s the chamel—cha-mee-lee-un girl—fuck it, I’ll learn how to pronounce that later. It’s the lizard girl, Ilia Amitola.
Turns out word came back from Mistral that Taurus gutted High Leader Khan and took her throne. Amitola spares a look of discomfort for this, and then calls it a “necessary sacrifice”. The two brothers do that annoying thing where they talk back and forth and it takes twice as long to get to a point *annoyed* as they give her her next mission, which they describe as “containment”, centered on “Kuo Kuana”, which I had to look up to find out was Mena--oh god damn it, Menagerie’s capital, and where all this is happening.
Amitola has been charged with eliminating the Belladonna family. This one definitely gets to her, and you can see denials forming in her head.
They want Amitola for the mission so they can make use of her relationship with Blake to get her out of the way. As if this is something to be relieved about, they assure her they want Blake taken alive—per Adam Taurus’ orders. Amitola tries to protest, but Corsac makes it clear that the Belladonnas have got to go, and the faunus of Menagerie’ll get the picture well enough. He puts his hand on her shoulder and repeats “a necessary sacrifice”.
Still full of doubts, Ilia leaves the room, but steels her resolve. Once she’s gone, Fennec and Corsac agree that this could turn the faunus of Menagerie against them if Ghira comes to be seen as a martyr, but orders are orders. They press a button and get in contact with Taurus, who shows up as a hologram.
Taurus rages that the Belladonnas have been a pain in his ass, and says he wants the “deserter” (his ex) brought to him, but not before they’ve “slaughtered her family” – his words. The call ends, and even Fennec and Corsac can see that Taurus is underneath the deep end by now, but orders are orders.
Someone else knocks on the door, and we get another new character:
C: Brother Yuma.
“Yuma” has bigass bat wings and is apparently an assassin, having killed Ghira’s messenger before he could warn Haven about the impending attack. His raspy-ass voice is delivered by Lanipator, one of those dudes from Dragon Ball Z Abridged, a way better show than this.
The episode ends.
Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 45 (+2)
Ehhh… We’ve got time for one more, right? Fuck it, I’m doing it. He made me work here and then never even calls me, so I’m staying while I can.
A door opens with the episode. *boggling at this name* Kwuh-Roh? …Oh, “crow”, but spelled weird. Anyway he’s walking into some kind of dive bar, although even that’s a generous description considering it looks like what 3D students make on their first attempt at an itch.io game. He’s looking for available Huntsmen to put up a fighting force to capture the spring maiden. This goes about as well as Blake’s signature-gathering with her boyfriend, that is to say, shitty. I think it’s also supposed to be another example of his bad luck streak, but the point isn’t popping up, so I guess Chris ain’t sure.
Everybody who could help is either busy or dead. Qrow pays one of the dead dudes’ debts for him (a bar tab from a place that says “no faunus allowed”) and then we’re cutting to Branwen’s tent in uncharted Anima, six and a half minutes into a seventeen-minute episode. No offense, I get that this stuff’s important to the story, but from what I’ve seen, they crawl through these developments as slowly as they can get away with.
Vernal’s pouring tea for Branwen, Xiao Long, and Schnee before she’s ordered to wait outside. Weiss calls Branwen obnoxious, Branwen gets about the same look on her face that I’ve got, and Branwen launches into her dialogue.
It’s about as bitter and jaded as it gets, and the revelation that the Branwen twins’ reason for joining Beacon in their youth was to get good enough at fighting to kill Huntsmen shocks Xiao Long and Schnee. Branwen says this was to protect the tribe from Huntsmen and the Grimm, the only real threats to them. They were so good at fighting and killing that it got attention from Ozpin, who she describes as grooming them via constant attention, lenience for rulebreaking, and special missions. Xiao Long and Schnee are uncomfortably familiar with that.
Branwen shocks them further by revealing that Ozpin is way older than he looks and that he designed the academies as they are, and has planted exclusively loyal followers in all of them. Ozpin’s reasons for this, she says, are an enormous, awful secret that he eventually got Team Stark in on. There’s a pan over a map of Remnant, focusing on that one Western dragon-shaped continent where Salem is probably hiding, as Branwen describes the weight of that knowledge. Xiao Long wants to know what the big terrible secret is, so Branwen puts it gently: Salem, an impossibly powerful enemy that is bent on the destruction of civilization.
Branwen’s cynicism has been getting to Xiao Long for a while now, and when she insults her uncle and dad, she gets pissed enough to fire a shell at the ground and her eyes go red. Xiao Long threatens Branwen, and gets a weird deer horn knife-looking thing pointed at her by Vernal for it. Branwen’s barb about how Xiao Long’s teammates have “never let [her] down before” gets to Xiao Long pretty deep, and it seems like she’s thinkin’ about Belladonna running away. She finally accosts Branwen for just leaving their family, spilling years of resentment.
Xiao Long asks why. Branwen dodges the question,
Hypocrisy: 21
and I think that point is supposed to be because she claimed to be spilling the truth but ducked out of spilling one she didn’t like. Also, apparently Chris gives Qrow that point a lot and this is “fair”. Family resemblances, I guess.
Branwen goes on about all the things she knows:
R: I know that the Grimm have a leader. I know people that can come back from the dead. I know that magic is real…and I can prove it.
The Lovegood Fallacy: 5
She describes Ozpin as having done “something” to her brother and her, and leaves the tent to go turn into a bird offscreen. Before Xiao Long and Schnee get to that, though, Schnee tries to be a comforting presence to Xiao Long, telling her it’s okay if she’s not okay. Xiao Long asks if Schnee believed any of what Branwen said.
W: Well, not all of it. We have dust, and semblances, but, I mean, there’s no such thing as magic.
Chris’ disgust with this was epitomized in this video. It’s worth a watch, and the comments are a goldmine. Some spoilers at the end, though.
The Lovegood Fallacy: 6
Branwen turns from a raven back to a human to demonstrate that magic is real, because that definitely can’t be a semblance, which if my notes are right, the fandom thought it was back when Qrow did it at the end of Volume Three.
Cue shock and awe. When asked how she did it, she opens a portal and invites Xiao Long to ask her uncle, sending her and Schnee on their way. Or, she says, they can stay and have a fresh start. Obviously, Xiao Long isn’t interested, and they go through the portal, with Branwen’s warning that they might be at odds next time they meet.
Back in Mistral, Qrow’s sitting there baffled that all the good huntsmen are dead or taken when Schnee and Xiao Long show up. Back in the kitchen of their way-too-cushy house, RNJR are making a team dinner. It’s probably lucky they made extra for people they expected. Rose burns some food and goes out to meet her guests.
There’s a moment where Rose worries that her sister is upset at her for leaving, but it’s waved off, and the girls hug and say they love each other, Rose crying into her sister’s shoulder, and Schnee is invited for a group hug. Everyone has a heartwarming reunion, RWBY almost rebuilt.
The episode is over.
Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 47 (+2)
To give you a clue, this episode was seventeen minutes long, about fifteen and a half without opening credits, and took only two pages on this document, when some of the better episodes take up ten pages on their own. This was filler. Fatty, greasy, rubbery filler. Every development in this episode, a grand total of three, could’ve been shaved down to half its size or less. Man, my home material isn’t great at pacing, but this is taking the cake! Almost everything here was talking, talking, talking, and there were so many more words than necessary! Fuck, this feels like a waste, but you know what? It gives us space for a fourth episode. *dryly* Yay, yippee.
*holding head in hand* Is it always like this? Maybe I should be glad Chris don’t call me often…
There’s a big dinner, and everyone’s happy and catching up. It’s…lame, up until Xiao Long shows off her new arm. Rose is enthralled with it, and Valkyrie wants to test it out. They arm wrestle, and Xiao Long shows off a special feature: the arm can disconnect from its socket, and/or shoot out. She throws Valkyrie into a wall this way.
This will definitely not be important later.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 21
Then there’s more lame banter that feels way more like fatty filling than actual substance, with everybody discussing each other’s *sigh* nicknames. I think Xiao Long and Schnee flirt at some point in there, though.
Ren then spells out just how much everyone has grown, I mean he legit spells it out.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 22
Look, I could skim and snip this drek just ‘cause it’s a job and I don’t care about doing it well, but it’s true: this is some really lazy shit right here. You’ve gotta be a real hack to turn to the audience and wave your arms around, yelling “see how much they've developed?!” Chris told me this show was actually good at character development on occasion, but this ain’t impressing.
Rose even remarks on how talkative Ren gets, since he’s the one doing most of the telling-not-showing.
Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 8
Qrow and Pine show up, Qrow being in a shittier mood than usual. A team meeting is called, I guess, and they’re all sitting in the living room staring at nothing while a clock ticks in the background. Schnee finally pipes up.
W: So, the maidens…magic…Salem… It’s all true?
The Lovegood Fallacy: 7
You know, we might not call our Personas “magic” but that damn sure don’t mean they aren’t magic. Ozpin confronts Xiao Long about the shit her mother told her, and she in turn confronts him about “what [he] did to Qrow and [my] mother”.
Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 48
Hang on, a message is coming through from the boss.
*reading aloud* “Summer Rose first entered the story as a gravestone, and then a heavy metal song with loaded lyrics, and then was finally mentioned in Volume Two. It’s Volume Five now, and since then, she has not come up at all except as the person Ruby Rose inherited her eye powers from. Ruby’s own address to her mother’s grave at the beginning of Volume Three has not recurred or been referenced to, and has not addressed the trauma Ruby is implied to have from the loss of her mother at all. Summer has only been mentioned by Yang a grand total of once, during the dialogue that serves to introduce her issues with her birth mother. Despite describing Summer Rose as “super mom” and an ideal parent, Yang has not spared a thought for her since, and Yang’s repeated reference to Raven as her “mother” and her “mom” flies in the face of the fact that Yang has another parent figure who did not abandon her and who she evidently respects. Summer Rose being long dead means she’s not necessarily a character, let alone side cast, but they are letting the issue of her dangle to such a severe extent that it warrants the point either way.”
Damn, he talks a lot.
There’s also something I noted, which was the weird way Xiao Long and her birth mom referred to the twins’ powers: as things Ozpin “did” to them. The way they keep talking about it, you’d think this was an awful power, one that came with some sort of negative effect. It doesn’t, though, he literally just gave them the power to turn into birds and will at back. Very useful and no downsides. It makes no sense to talk about it this way.
Oz: That’s…not a secret I thought she would give up so easily. Your mother must trust you a great deal.
We’re s’posed to take that at face value, even though it comes off the same placating, bullshit-y way as Branwen’s congratulatory attitude to Xiao Long. And then he takes way, way, way too long to just say he gave them the power to turn into birds.
On hearing this, everyone expresses disbelief. ‘Cause turning into birds is just so different from slowing down time or manipulating magnetism or creating clones, right?
The Lovegood Fallacy: 8
Y: …Why would you do something like that? I mean, what is wrong with you?!
What the hell is this chick’s damage? You’d think Xiao Long’s mom and uncle were some of those kids that had experimental Personas shoved in their skulls. They’re treating this like some kind of violation, but we haven’t gotten any indication this power is anything but useful since the twins use it at will and don’t seem to experience any side effects or changes they didn’t ask for.
*buzz buzz*
Hang on, another message.
*reading aloud again* "The way that they keep framing the bird powers Ozpin gave the twins as something shady and negative noticeably doesn't make sense by itself, but looked at next to Oscar's situation and how the fandom were reacting to it, it becomes a pathetically obvious attempt to try and distract the viewer, hoping that they'll take this scene to mean that Ozpin's negative actions have been "addressed" rather than actually addressing what's creeping them out, which is his parasitism of Oscar as a host body, which is going to be ignored and swept under the rug."
Oh.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 23
Ill Logic: 64
That one’s on me.
Ozpin eventually makes the point that his power is “finite, and dwindling”. Which doesn’t make sense, because the maidens’ powers don’t seem to dwindle at all and have worked at what is apparently the same strength since they were first granted—and Ozpin created those powers.
Ill Logic: 65
Not my words, his own. He fesses up that he’s the one that gave the maidens’ their magic centuries earlier. Rooster Teeth don’t even care that this doesn’t make sense.
There’s all a very placating air here, since this is an effort by Ozpin smooth out discontent. But that air isn’t just from the character, it’s from the story, too. This is just an effort to get Ozpin back into fans' good graces, because they’d picked up on him being creepy with Pine—
Band-Aid Brigade: 12
—which is also that point, by the way, and if Chris’ notes here are correct, this ultimately didn’t work. I ain’t shocked, ‘cause part of Ozpin’s monologue—which is going on for way too long, by the way—is about choice and the choice the Branwens made. Pine’s choice doesn’t seem to be important enough to mention.
Reliable Leaders: 22
There’s a moment where he offers the “choice” to the surrounding gang to leave, saying there’s no shame in “abstaining”, only in “retreat”, which is a distinction I don’t think makes a lot of sense. But nobody chooses to leave.
Xiao Long stands up and insists on an end to lies and half-truths if her continued loyalty is assured, and this goes in one of Ozpin’s borrowed ears and out the other. But on the surface, he agrees and all is well.
Ozpin declares that they all can rest until tomorrow. He then surrenders control back to Pine, who has nothing to say about any of that. Nora has a moment that I hope Samantha Ireland sorely regrets when she exclaims that Qrow’s and Raven’s first names fit because they can turn into birds.
Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 9
There’s exactly one thing about this episode that’s worth the time spent on it, and it comes at the very end. Cinder Fall, who’s gone unmentioned since episoooooode…two? Shows up at a pair of gates, which I guess is the front door to Raven Branwen’s bandit tribe. Emerald Sustrai, Mercury Black, and Arthur Watts are escorting her.
Toothy, who I think was called “Shay D. Mann” by the crew because someone thought they were clever, is standing guard when they walk up, and threatens them. Fall smirks and orders Sustrai to force their cooperation, resulting in Emerald taking out her sawed-off gun-chain-blade things and striding forward menacingly.
LuLaRwe: 12
Road to Nowhere: 10
Rooster Tease: 16
That first point is for those spinning discs used when Sustrai is brandishing her weapons, which wasn’t necessary to the scene at all. The second and third are the more important points: apparently, this literally goes nowhere. They pick a fight, and then this development stays on the backburner but picks up in Episode 9, where Fall’s faction have entered quietly and are negotiating peacefully—it doesn’t even flow, from one episode to another. Why not cut the scene if that was the plan? Why animate it?
Because this stuff gets written on the fly, that's why.
The double Someday points for Winter Schnee and Wukong’s team, of course.
Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 50
That count finally reached fifty, huh.
Counts:
- Jaune: 31
- It Was Right There: 16
- Fauxminism: 24
- Hypocrisy: 21
- Reliable Leaders: 22 + 8
- Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 8
- Threatening Enemies: 16
- Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 50
- Your Fight Scene Sucks: 59 + 20
- Evisceration Evasion: 20
- Ill Logic: 65
- Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 23 + 21
- Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 9
- Band-Aid Brigade: 12
- RSVP: 43
- Road to Nowhere: 10
- Y.A.S. Queen: 9
- Rooster Tease: 16
- LuLaRwe: 12
- The Lovegood Fallacy: 8
- How to Piss Off Gay People: 10
- Invisembl: 3
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31 – Volume 5, Episodes 2 and 3 | Table of Contents | 33 – Volume 5, Episodes 8 and 9
