RWBY Volume 8 Final Thoughts (Part I)

[surgeworks]

53 – Volume 8 Finale | Table of Contents | Volume 8 Final Thoughts (Part II)

____________________

*pacing back and forth*

*stops for a moment, facing the computer, then continues pacing*

*sigh*

You know, I’ll make note of the very obvious schisms and disagreements at Rooster Teeth that made their way into the text of RWBY, and people will act like I just don’t know what I’m talking about. Even in the face of an ex-employee—one of many who were vocal about dissatisfaction with the company—writing a grand exposé of said schisms, which unfortunately were not resolved before one side unfortunately passed away, people just hand-wave it away as something that couldn’t possibly indicate any fault. Even despite Rooster Teeth cycling through show creators faster than they can launch their shows—! Discount Monty all you like, but Georden Whitman and Gray Haddock are both examples of show creators who have lived to tell of very ill feelings towards Rooster Teeth meddling in their projects. Even despite reveals as recently as 2022 of how Rooster Teeth operates behind the scenes—even with all of that, people will assume you’re just reaching or making things up when you suggest that the product they release says very unfortunate things about the creation process.

But maybe this one will be different. Because Volume 8 of RWBY? People hated it. Even before I could watch the shows on streaming sites, I felt the waves of displeasure, and I can assure you this season of the show has a very, very sour reputation. It’s a very familiar vibe, in that I remember this experience from the aftermath of Volume 5, which was previously the only season of RWBY that its stans would ever begrudgingly admit was bad. Even in polite circles, all I ever heard of Volume 8 was that the show writers made very “controversial” decisions with the plot. Really, the protectiveness of a fanbase is a hilariously reliable algebra function for the measure of the show’s quality, they’re kind of like Nintendo fans in that regard: any time any shred of criticism actually manages to pierce the protective bubble of praise and positivity, you know that the full extent of discontent is severe.

My experience with the actually critical and ex-fandom side of the RWBY fandom tells me that assessment is correct.

So maybe this will be the one where I point to the writing on the wall and don’t get people huffing and brushing me off in response as if I just made this stuff up to be shady and conspiratorial. Because there’s a very visible, very disturbing element to pretty much the entirety of Volume 8’s direction, from plot to characters all the way down to style. I tallied it throughout the season.

Dragged Kicking and Screaming, Current Count: 51

I consider this the equivalent of the Breaking Dawn spork’s “I Coulda Been a Contender!” count and Road to Nowhere count in one, because it tallies basically the same thing: every time it was clear that there was an intended ending, the interim material changed, and the people in charge staunchly refused to change the concluding entries to match.

Honestly, I was reminded of Breaking Dawn quite a bit throughout the volume. The complete cancellation and undoing of every last single good thing Volume 7 had set up put me in mind of the endless, endless Road to Nowhere points, but it was the bitterness and contempt seeping through the screen that put me in mind of the Contender count.

But ultimately, I can only wish it were so simple as Breaking Dawn. That was just a woman slapping her wish fulfillment fantasy onto the pages, giving a complete middle finger to the two books she’d written previously, and then leaving to go cry into her pillows sewn out of millions of dollars. Volume 8 of RWBY just makes my stomach churn, because the writing on the wall paints a much worse picture.

I’ve heard a few unsavory things about Miss Kiersi Burkhart, to the extent I’d like to hold off on any extolling of her major skills as a writer, but I think this once, it’s worth recognizing the honestly very impressive job she did with RWBY Volume 7—after Volume 6, I had honestly thought there wouldn’t be any salvaging the show. I had thought it could only get worse and eventually be cancelled. Rooster Teeth evidently feared the same, because that marked the first time they brought on board anyone with real writing experience—an actual published author. The astounding skyward launch of the quality the very second this happened says, well…volumes.

So what exactly do you think it says when one volume is essentially saved by the skilled hand of a third party, and then the very next volume is one that returns right to the same style as before, bearing every messy thumbprint and earmark, and possessed of an odd bent towards tearing down everything that had previously been established?

Volume 7 says someone finally realized Miles and Kerry were killing the show, and put someone else in charge. Volume 8 says that Miles and Kerry took major offense to this, and took the reigns back. I wish I had another interpretation for this. I wish this did not show so abundantly clearly through the provided text. But the visual evidence is so strong that I can’t really come up with another explanation.

Your authors can be total crap at writing. Sad to say, but plenty of authors are—that’s what editors are for. Even the worst author can eventually improve if they bother to listen to the right people’s pointers. A poor writer is certainly not someone inherently destined to do your IP harm. But a spiteful writer? No, no, never that. A spiteful, petty, or embittered author is not ever going to produce anything fondly remembered by fans or history.

Volumes 7 and 8 are, so far, unique for RWBY in that different writers and directors are credited to different episodes. None of those ever worked on every single episode, at least according to the published details. But they’re all writers who had to complete the same plot skeleton working together, and I’m inclined to stick with my theory that Burkhart was browbeat into backing off, for several reasons: one, the writing style is very distinctly Kerry and Miles, in a way you could only know if you were as familiar with RWBY as I am, and two, outside of the potential for flat-out lying, crediting writing by episode needn’t necessarily mean more than that a person was physically present in the room when the writing was being done, if that. And three, Georden and Kdin’s reveals suggest that lying via the credits happens fairly often, because certain people who did work for the volume were definitely not credited for doing so. So, yeah, between that and the Reddit AMA where Kerry lied through his teeth about being the one to write Jaune’s scenes, I’m sticking to my version of events.

So, let’s get into exactly how messy this plot is.

 

Story

In sharp contrast to the relative neatness of Volume 7, Volume 8 is a goddamn tornado. Something completely different is happening in each episode, with none of them flowing together in a way that feels natural.

Plots that should have run the length of the volume were resolved way too early, or dropped and then not picked back up again. Subplots would just end and then not be referred to again. Look at the happenings in each individual episode:

• Episode 1: The group splits up to handle separate tasks. Ironwood murders a Councilman.

• Episode 2: Ruby’s team sneaks into a base through a shipping facility, and Oscar is kidnapped by a mutant Grimm.

• Episode 3: This entire episode is dedicated to the military base infiltration. Nora gets booted out of the story in this one.

• Episode 4: Yang’s team chases Oscar but is stranded. Cinder returns to Salem.

• Episode 5: Penny is forced to defend Amity Colosseum so the broadcast can get out.

Episode 5 essentially marks the end of both sides of the party’s subplot. Allegedly, Pietro and Maria were given some stuff to do in “Amity” because Miles Luna said he didn’t want them stuck in the background again, but if that’s the case, he sure didn’t commit to it. At the end of “Amity”, Penny is hacked and the Colosseum starts to fall—we literally never hear from Pietros or Maria again. We don’t see what happens to them, if they’re okay, no one contacts them or checks on them, and the entire rest of the season passes without word on where they are or what they’re up to. We have no idea if they made it through the interstice to Vacuo or even survived the fall.

This essentially marks the end of the split-team, separate missions subplot, since Episode 4 introduces some kind of “fault line” filled with Grimm juice—that literally never gets explained, ever. It’s just dropped on us at the end of one episode, and two episodes later, Salem uses it to break through Atlas’ shield. Only three characters even see it before that point. The presence of a Grimm river that can just erupt into a geyser strong enough to blow through an entire city’s defenses is a massive addition to the RWBY universe but never gets built up, commented on, or acknowledged after its use. An ass pull if there ever was one…and they know it, because they commented on it in the Volume 8 Crew Commentary cut. Just another one of those things that had to be cut down! Gotta make time for the real important stuff, like Cinder’s backstory, yanno.

But what follows is even worse—Salem’s invasion of Atlas should, dramatically speaking, be the plot that started in the first episode and carried through until the end. But instead, it starts only at the end of the sixth episode, and is completely finished by the end of the ninth. Salem’s war against Atlas lasts three whole episodes out of fourteen. She is promptly taken out of the picture via what is, again, a complete ass pull via Ozpin’s never-before-mentioned-or-hinted-at “cane nuke” that he blows Monstra and Salem to smithereens with. This, itself, was clearly a last-minute change made so that the bomb originally intended to blow up Monstra and Salem—in the original drafts, I suspect—could instead be used for another purpose, that being ushering in Ironwood as the next major threat. I say “next” because he’s eventually relegated to the side while Cinder takes over the final boss role, in the worst way possible.

They swept the Big Bad, Salem herself, out of the way to make room for the arc villain. Holy shit, after a certain point, this is just stuff you don’t think to teach people not to do.

And throughout all of these episodes, Qrow is sitting in a prison cell, doing nothing. Let’s take another look at what happens in individual episodes.

 

• Episode 6: We get Cinder’s backstory. There is no point whatsoever to this. Salem starts her assault.

• Episode 7: Mercury and Tyrian leave the show. Yang, Ren, and Jaune look for Oscar with Ren’s new emotion-sensing powers. Penny crashes into Schnee’s front garden and Weiss comes up with a plan to help Mantle.

• Episode 8: The mutant Grimm attacks Schnee manor. This is the best episode.

• Episode 9: The heroes and redeemed villains meet up in Monstra. Salem enters the picture and is immediately blown right back out of it.

 

Throughout all of this, we have not gotten any indication of how the actual war with the Grimm on Atlas is going. For all that we built up that Mantle would bear the brunt of Salem’s assault, she…completely ignores it. Atlas’ citizens all stay safe in the subway tunnels, and though Atlas obviously can’t hold off endless waves of Grimm forever, we get no indication that things are really dire before Monstra gets nuked.

And after that is about where things just go way off the fucking rails.

Episodes 10 and 11 deal with Ironwood being so unfathomably determined to get the staff and move Atlas, even though Salem just got her whole operation destroyed and he has essentially already won, that he threatens to blow all of Mantle to atoms. Episode 12 is entirely about getting the actual staff and cheating it so that they can have Penny around, a moot point as Penny dies for good two episodes later. Episode 13 sees Cinder re-enter the picture, and it and Episode 14 bring about the complete dissolution of all story and plot mechanics so that, barring the winter’ maiden’s power that Salem doesn’t even need anymore, Cinder gets every last thing she wanted and wins it all.

In other words, the derailing and railroading hits an absolute peak at the end.

I wish I could say I don’t understand why this all happened—once again, the story keeps going past what would typically be the end of the season (Episode 9) in another show, yet it unpacks another whole fourth act. Once Ironwood’s out of the way, it still keeps going. And going, and going, and going. It seems to never end.

And yet it somehow still ends too early. An ‘arc’ of RWBY is typically three volumes—we spent three volumes with Vale, and three with Anima. Yet only two volumes in, Atlas is completely destroyed and the story has already moved to Vacuo—or rather, the alternate world RWBY, Jaune, Neo, and like fifty civilians are at the end.

You guys remember my talk about torching a franchise and running? Yeah, that’s the subject here.

Because that’s what happened here, and is the cherry on top of my big theory that Miles and Kerry wrested back control of RWBY. After a volume in which Ironwood has a hard journey from struggling authority figure to heroic leader, after we bring back Penny and explore her concepts of right and wrong, after Cinder is forced to recognize that maiden powers don’t make her invincible, after we explore Oscar’s freedom from Ozpin and desire to have autonomy, after we finally have a cast and protagonists that make understandable decisions and struggle through them appropriately—it’s all undone. All of those things I just mentioned, among others, are run over with a lawnmower and the bloody pieces buried in a ditch, and more. And just to make sure there’s no “fixing” all of it later, the cast are booted to Vacuo and/or the afterlife, and Atlas and Mantle are both destroyed. Really, the glitching words in the animated opening really spell out exactly what this is, changing from “HAPPY EVER AFTER” to “NEVER AGAIN” almost like an omen. As if they’re telling you up front that the little good the show had is being undone and will never be allowed to happen again.

This had the result of not only blasting the story to smithereens on a front-facing basis, but also completely axing several dangling plot threads midway.

• We’re finally in Atlas, and so can finally examine the situation with the Schnees and the faunus up close. Except we can’t, because someone decided Atlas should just get blown up instead. Bye bye, faunus ills against capitalist abuses!

• Oh, by the way—Schnee as a corporation is effectively destroyed, with absolutely nothing said as to their assets, the mines, the flow of dust that they had a monopoly on, the livelihoods of those depending on them for a salary, or the Schnee childrens’ inheritance of the company. Or how they’d reclaim its good name, a mission that was very personal to Weiss.

• In fact, the entire plight of Mantle vs. Atlas is destroyed with them. Robyn Hill’s entire character, as well as those of the Happy Huntresses, was built on the social, political, and economic power differences between those two parts of this city-state. None of those women has anything to say about the disastrous effects on the citizenry that will be had by, quite literally, blowing both places up. In fact, they’re not even let in on the plan to do so, and would probably have had quite a lot to say if they were.

• Oscar’s desire to be his own person and express independence from Ozpin, who is parasitically attached to and fusing with him, was very quickly thrown out almost as soon as Volume 8 started.

• Quite obviously, the buildup of Salem attacking Atlas was nipped—or rather, nuked—in the bud. We ended Volume 7 on that very ominous note but Salem herself accomplished very little for the story until being swept out of it. Of all the consequences for Atlas, pretty much none of them amounts from Salem's actual attack on it.
  

• Penny’s Roads to Nowhere were already counted.

Road to Nowhere: 35 (+5)

But you can’t really examine the story without examining the characters, because those are the ones that drive the plot. So let’s take a look at the characters as Volume 8 presents them.

Characters

Main Cast

I’m going to do something unusual and do the cast listings out of order. Because certain characters moved this volume far more than others.

James Ironwood

This is the biggest, most blatant example of character assassination we have seen since Adam Taurus, and as such, it is the biggest sign that RWBY itself was derailed.

Miles and Kerry have gone on record defending this portrayal of James Ironwood—who shoots children and councilmen, kills anyone who so much as annoys him, works with someone he was established to hate on a deeply personal level, and sabotages relief efforts for a struggling city before trying to just wipe it off the goddamn map—as the natural progression of his character from Volume 7.

This is a lie. This is part of their insistence that Ironwood is a ‘fallen hero’ figure who eventually became as bad as Salem in his desire to defeat her—which is not what they wrote, and not what they even wanted to write. They wrote Ironwood as a villain. Not even an interesting villain, a mustache-twirling lunatic who is a danger to anyone and everyone to the point his actions don’t make any sense when set up against his stated goals, even with the assumption of paranoia and control issues in play. Much of the way he behaved was simply the same way Cinder Fall behaved in early volumes to sell her charismatically intimidating persona, with soft-spoken malevolence. None of his actions, behavior, or demeanor matched up with his previous character at all, and they could barely even be bothered to pay lip service to it. The patch job was already behind them—they did that in Episode 11 of Volume 7, with an extended look into Ironwood’s trauma from Beacon, after which they were totally free to write Ironwood behaving with the goal of kicking puppies and eating babies, with any subtlety or nuance left behind.

You really have to hear Miles Luna talk about James Ironwood and the reactions to his portrayal of him to get the full picture. Here, I’ll paste the Cameo link.

“Now, this Cameo was booked by Ash, and, according to the notes here, it is for "the filth in my degenerate Discord server”. So, hello Filth! It’s me! Miles Luna. I’m, uh, one of the writers on RWBY and… I heard that, uhm, some of you Ironwood fans out there… feelin’ a little hurt, feelin’ a little low. And you know what? That’s okay. Sometimes a character that we really like… doesn’t make it, or does something we disagree with… or both, in- in ol’ Jimmy’s case. Uhm, James Ironwood’s fate was sealed the moment, uh, his character was conceived, many, many years ago, but it was an absolute delight getting to ride shotgun with this guy that had all the best intentions and, uh, and really, really dropped the ball on execution, there- really, really fumbled it when he needed a touchdown. Uhm, but y’know, the thing about conflicting and complex characters is that it is those inner conflicts that… are normally why we fall in love with them in the first place! Y’know, when James was introduced, we kind of intentionally made him look like a big dickbag! Uhm, but then we realized that that dickbag had a heart, and was also half-metal, and that was pretty cool! Uhm, but then unfortunately, he, uh- uh- did get worse, a- as time went on. It’s so- let us all take a moment to thank General James Ironwood for his service to the Kingdom of Atlas, but then also, maybe all agree that, y’know, CBB- coulda been better, uh- but he tried his darnedest, and at the end of the day… don’t do a genocide. [laughs] Just don’t- maybe don’t do that. But do try your best! So long as it doesn’t hurt other people. Uhm, thank you, Jimmy. May you rest in pieces, crushed beneath the weight of the kingdom you tried so hard to hold up above your head. Amen. [laughs] Thanks guys, and thank you for watching.”

This is why we have the lawyer rule: shut the fuck up before you make things worse. You can guess how well fans took to this video, posted on Cameo, given how it basically vanished from the internet very quickly. They got mad, and they had a right to be mad—I mean, come on. You open by calling dissatisfied fans ‘filth’ and piss off the guy who paid you $40 so badly you have to do a second cameo to apologize?



The amount of condescension in here was palpable. So let’s just go over some of those things he said that he really doesn’t want us to realize he said, and apply them to the character, shall we?

• Uhm, James Ironwood’s fate was sealed the moment, uh, his character was conceived, many, many years ago | Oh, that I believe. I mean, you made it very clear throughout Volume 8 that as far as you were concerned, any heroism or good qualities Ironwood had could go straight in the garbage disposal, and even back in the early seasons of RWBY, it was abundantly clear y’all didn’t really like him because of how you kept casting him as a dickhead when he hadn’t really done anything wrong.

• that had all the best intentions and, uh, and really, really dropped the ball on execution | No, no. That is not how that works. Blowing up a city if he doesn’t get a magical artifact to go to space with is not “all the best intentions”. Murdering people who are no threat to him or his plans is not “dropping the ball on execution”.

• the thing about conflicting and complex characters is that it is those inner conflicts that… are normally why we fall in love with them in the first place! | Yeah, that’s true. That happens to be exactly why people fell in love with Ironwood…in Volume 7. Volume 7 had a complex Ironwood, had an Ironwood with inner conflicts. Volume 8 did not because as far as you were concerned, complexity and conflicting feelings had no business getting in the way. What you’re describing is exactly what happened, Miles. And those people that fell in love with conflicting and complex characters are pissed at you.

• Y’know, when James was introduced, we kind of intentionally made him look like a big dickbag! | I’m well aware. However, because you and your cronies are Suethors, Ironwood became a classic Scary Sue—villainized even though his only crime was taking issue with the real heroes and looking all the more sensible for it.

• Uhm, but then we realized that that dickbag had a heart, and was also half-metal, and that was pretty cool! | Half metal. Half metal… I’m gonna remark on that in a second, but for now, let’s talk about that ‘heart’. I want to know, Miles, what part of Volume 8’s Ironwood shows me that heart. Because I can’t see it. I don’t see any of the Ironwood who defended Yang and Weiss and gave them leniency, I don’t see any of the Ironwood who trusted Ruby and worked with her, and I don’t see any of the Ironwood that pursued uniting the people and communicating openly with them. I didn’t see it because you didn’t want to see it or write it.

• Uhm, thank you, Jimmy. May you rest in pieces, crushed beneath the weight of the kingdom you tried so hard to hold up above your head | That was…yeesh. That was said with a smile in the video, but hearing it spoken just felt like gleeful spite. But yeah. There it is. You killed him off, and destroyed the kingdom. And I know full well why.

 

This is spite, guys. Miles Luna is proving again that he’s not ready to be a writer, and has failed to grow as one over the last ten years. He treats the work of his fellow writers with contempt and barely manages to hide his disdain for fans who give him shit over it. This is just not cool, this is toxic and tragic.

But we’re still not done. The character assassination of James Ironwood was always going to be unpopular—and they knew it. But they didn’t care…or at least, they didn’t care any further than doing a blatant cover-your-ass shortly before the volume aired. Yes, that’s right, more meta about Ironwood, incoming.

You see, there is one thing we didn’t get to that concerns his character, and I didn’t mention it in the course of the recap because it didn’t appear in the story. I am talking about the out-of-story reveal of James Ironwood’s semblance.

It was revealed at October 2020’s RTX panel, a month before the volume aired. And it is a massive, unholy form of covering one’s ass with a paper umbrella. Let’s all thank god for the attentive fans who preserve bullshit like this.

“Mettle[1] was the Semblance of James Ironwood. It bears particular distinction as the only Semblance of which the effects were never explicitly shown or mentioned, to the point where it isn't even named within the series.

It strengthened his resolve, which allowed him to carry through with his decisions, and helped him hyper-focus.”

Information taken from the RWBY wiki—which notes, in a manner that evokes the image of a very dissatisfied wiki editor grinding one’s teeth, that the effects were never so much as mentioned, let alone shown, in-story. Because they couldn’t be, even if they had bothered to mention it, which they didn’t, because this was a last-minute ass pull to try and soften incoming blows.

Dragged Kicking and Screaming: 52

But wait! There’s more!

“As a passive Semblance, Mettle was only ever present in the background, essentially acting as the uncompromising aspect of Ironwood's personality. It emboldened him to act swiftly and help lessen the psychological burden of difficult decisions. If anything got in the way of his goals, he took action to eliminate the variable from the equation as soon as possible. However, this had the consequence of feeding into his paranoia, making him hesitant to take advice from or even trust those closest to him. By his own account, the sole exception to this was Winter Schnee.

It was also unable to fully suppress his mental burdens or mounting stress, nor could it grant him true emotional clarity, as was evident by his visibly increasing desperation throughout the invasion of Atlas. At best, it could make him appear calm and collected, even when he was acting otherwise.”

Meaning, this is all one big sour-tasting ‘trust me on this’ to try and explain Ironwood’s actions throughout Volume 8, and how utterly abominable and out-of-character they were. A pre-emptive band-aid, if you will, only it’s not so much a bandage as a crutch. Actions which were supposedly already the result of a super-unfortunate spiral into paranoia and erratic behavior, those themselves not exactly believable explanations, now get a shiny new crutch to try and further justify them. Which didn’t work, to put it simply.

Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 35

The wiki goes into a list of “possible uses”, which is generally just a list of Ironwood’s out-of-character moments throughout Volume 8—actually, just a list of Ironwood’s appearances throughout Volume 8. I think they literally list a moment from every time he’s onscreen.

Now, Miles and Kerry would have you believe that this was totally a part of the plot and made all the difference—that they intended to show it, and just never got around to it. As usual, this is a lie.

“According to the show's writers during the RTX 2020 panel, Mettle was meant to be mentioned explicitly at some point during Volume 7 or 8, and was always accounted for while constructing the story, but they never felt it was so important compared to anything else occurring that it would've merited disrupting the situation for the sake of exposition. They also expressed hopes of bringing attention to it in some future material.”

Ohohoho—! That’s hilarious! Future material, you say? Having destroyed Atlas and Mantle and killed off Ironwood? As if. Don’t bullshit me, you never planned to show this. This was never accounted for while constructing the story. You made time to include a Tragic Backstory^TM for Cinder Fall that had absolutely no impact on her character or motivations or actions or those of anyone around her, but “disrupting the situation for the sake of exposition” was suddenly a concern when it came to Ironwood’s semblance? Get real. This whole goddamn farce screams ‘something we made up in 5 minutes before the panel’. And you wanna know how I know? ‘Cause of the bullet point directly above this one on that very same wiki page.

“Ironwood's voice actor, Jason Rose, mentioned during a 2021 GalaxyCon panel that he was unaware of Mettle while recording for the character, and only learned of it from a fan following it's reveal at RTX 2020. Without this outside knowledge, it's reasonable for one to assume that Ironwood may lack a Semblance, similar to what was revealed about Watts never developing his.”

This oh-so-relevant semblance that Ironwood has, that influences his actions and behavior, is so very critical that his voice actor—for the record, a member of Monty Oum’s circle of friends in the industry from way back when, and a very respected talent in said industry in his own right—learned about it from a fan who watched the panel. *cackling* Poor Jason Lei Rose must’ve been so confused when it came time to record for Volume 8.

And in case you’re wondering, no, Ironwood’s semblance didn’t make it into the Arrowfell game that’s supposedly canon and placed in the timeline of Volume 7, either, which was made two whole years after Volume 8 ended. Just letting you know. So much for "future material", huh?

The comments section on this wiki page is a very quick shorthand for how the fandom tends to feel about this semblance—that it’s bullshit. People aren’t even trying to hear this nonsense. One user went so far as to suggest that, since it’s passive and affects his behavior, Rooster Teeth essentially vilified a man for having a mental illness.



It wouldn’t be the only time ableism popped up in relation to Ironwood, since Kerry has confirmed that Ironwood’s left-hand prosthetic is supposed to represent his loss of humanity—a lovely thing to be saying to the show’s disabled viewership and total hypocrisy when it comes to Yang. That’s on top of all the blatant ableism laced throughout Ironwood’s entire heel turn—writing him as a one-note villain who just kills people that defy him or even just annoy him when they’re no threat, and then hand-waving it as the result of his PTSD and a bullshit semblance.

So, the obvious point—for this being a semblance that basically didn’t exist.

Invisembl: 15

Plus another point, now that we’ve had time to look at Ironwood and what was done with him—and the total lack of respect for any direction his character was taking before Volume 7, Episode 11.

Road to Nowhere: 36

None of that mattered, guys! He was always going to be a villain and always going to die!

What a detestable way to treat a character who was traumatized and bore the weight of nationwide hate so that he could protect people. What a pathetic and petty villainizing of a character that we are repeatedly told wants to do the right thing and has had to trade in whole body parts to keep the world safe. What an utterly contemptible destruction of one of the show’s most interesting characters overall.

Penny Polendina

Most fans that I’ve seen, when talking about the derailing aspect, only talk about Ironwood, because he’s the most blatant, but he’s hardly the only example. Most RWBY fans don’t pay as close attention to the show as I do, so they didn’t realize that the derailing was affecting pretty much every single character, including this one.

I was absolutely furious with how Penny’s story ended, and still am. It’s still a struggle to wrap my head around a character who has been dead for three volumes coming back to life by surprise in one volume…and then immediately dying again by the end of the next.

I already talked about the utterly brutal and uncomfortably excessive amount of torment Penny received by the narrative, but in case you want a reminder, here it is.







Just like everything to do with Ironwood, what happens to Penny by the end of the story makes it clear that what Miles and Kerry wanted was Winter Schnee as the winter maiden, and that they did not appreciate the twist that resulted in that power actually going to Penny. It’s one of the dirtier things they did with Volume 8, watching that happen and then immediately course-correcting, and to hell with what happens inbetween.

There are not many ways to write a character begging to be killed without pissing people off, but Miles and Kerry didn’t care. This is not like Pyrrha Nikos, where her tragic death sat atop a pile of trauma for the dramatic appeal of a promising hero falling in the darkest hour—which already wasn’t fantastically done. No, this is a character who had a lot to contribute, who was an interesting part of the story, being tortured and attacked and stripped of her free will until she feels no other option but begging for death so that her enemies won’t be able to cannibalize her power. All for no other reason than because M&K didn’t feel like adjusting for her or her possessing that power in the first place.

One of the most major tells for that is who exactly the power goes to when Jaune just stabs Penny to death. Penny had no idea where Winter was or who she was fighting, or if she’d be able to help in time. The person Penny, logistically speaking, would’ve thought of when passing on the power would’ve been Ruby, her dearest friend and the one who consistently treated her as someone with her own life and wants that deserved to be respected. But Ruby got dunked in dimension juice before this happened. The next most logical choice is Weiss, who is present and who desperately needs help fighting Cinder, and has always had some respect for Penny and shares her issues with being in control of her own life. But no, it’s Winter—who does make some modicum of sense, but less for being a person Penny trusts and more for being the person who was originally written as becoming the winter maiden, absent Penny even existing. While Penny and Winter had plenty of interaction throughout Volume 7, Volume 8 does not see them even meet each other so much as once until after Penny’s been killed.

Which really shows how much care went into this plot shift: none at all.

Cinder Fall

The writers have described this as “Cinder’s volume” and to say I don’t care is an understatement from hell.

Cinder was mildly entertaining at first, guys, what with her Machiavellian presentation, all smugness and cool malevolence. Then she got her shit wrecked by Ruby, and since then she’s been harboring an increasing lust for power salted with a vendetta. Miles Luna has reported being worried that fans would think she was going to be redeemed in this volume once Watts started talking down about her various failures. Well, I have news for you, Miles—you want to know why people were worried about that?

Because it’s something you would do! Hell, nobody knew why you wanted a Cinderella backstory for Cinder to begin with, since she was a character long past any opportunity for sympathy. But they sure knew that that hadn’t stopped you, despite three volumes’ worth of being told no. And it sure hadn’t stopped you with Emerald Sustrai, either.

But writing Cinder as a straightforward villain didn’t work any better. There were abundant barriers between her and what she wanted, but the story was railroaded into giving her the win anyway. Miles’ and Kerry’s statements imply that her coming out on top in that situation is supposed to be the result of some sort of development on her part, in that she no longer charges into situations without thinking and relying on brute force...even though that’s exactly what she did and it worked out anyway. Cinder’s moveset hasn’t changed since Volume 7, but the results have. Miles and Kerry can say whatever they want about Cinder’s approach changing, but it hasn’t—she charged into a situation with many capable enemies allied against her, and they were all nerfed to hell and back to prevent her from getting smashed.

And honestly, her getting smashed was probably the best option. The story has moved past Cinder. Her maiden powers are not enough to keep up with the heroes. This should’ve been the volume where we saw her descend deeper into madness and rage and corrupt herself further, attaining new Grimm powers and abilities to counter the heroes—and if not, then being frozen into stone by Ruby until a later volume where she would then go to such lengths.

But nope—Cinder has left Volume 8 in possession of something that can literally give her anything she wants at any time. Any dawning realization that she’s too weak to keep up with the elites of the cast? All of that talk from Watts about how she can’t have everything she wants? Gone.

Road to Nowhere: 37

Not to mention her vendetta against Ruby being, again, ignored in favor of other characters. Cinder just flat-out refuses to gun for Ruby at this point despite opportunities being available, without even the justification (as with Volume 7) of her fear of the silver eyes. She just ignores Ruby. This failing is just not forgivable and I’m starting to think they don’t care. As far as Cinder is aware, Ruby Rose is dead, and she had nothing to do with it.

Road to Nowhere: 38

Side Cast

Calling anyone else the main cast would be overly-generous, since not a single one of them moves the story along on their own. So we’ll just split them up into various teams and factions.

Team RWBY

Ostensibly, every member of Team RWBY had some sort of major ‘moment’ during this volume. But as usual, Weiss’ is the most interesting and entertaining, with Ruby’s following and Yang’s and Blake’s being frustrating.

Yang’s best moments, unsurprisingly, come in relation to her sister. In the group with Oscar, Ren, and Jaune, Oscar is ostensibly mission control and Jaune the leader, but it’s Yang who directs most of their movements, having a good enough head on her to know when something’s up and how to handle it. However, when it comes to interpersonal problems, like with Ren’s mounting frustrations, she’s not as adept at handling it as Ruby is. Once she’s back in the picture, she sees fit to let Ruby handle things again until being faced with a moment where Ruby finally breaks, forcing her to be a big sister and try to keep Ruby in the game, in a veritable reversal of what happened after Yang broke in Volume 3. This is something we haven’t really seen since Volume One, with almost all of Yang’s big moments being reserved for Weiss and, to a frustrating extent lately, Blake.

By contrast, Yang doesn’t interact with Weiss at all this volume, and her interactions with Blake…lack. I mean, I wish I had better to say—it’s gay bait. And unlike in Volume 7, it’s not even gay bait where we get to see them hang out and appreciate each other’s company. They just seem to have jumped straight from crushing on each other to girlfriends-but-we-aren’t-going-to-say-that and no one saw fit to show it. There’s also no consistency to the interactions and they end up clashing. Yang returns to the manor to meet her teammates? Ruby gets a three-star hug full of love, Weiss gets a single-second hug as if they barely know each other, and Blake gets a hand on the cheek and forehead touching, like…? When did you guys establish this, and why does it feel like Weiss got dealt the short hand?

Same thing with Blake at the end of the volume. Yang sees an enemy moving to harm her sister, and leaps in the way of said harm, getting knocked off the platform and to her (seeming) death…and for some reason Blake loses her goddamn mind and tries to kill Neo, which is straight-up out of character. Meanwhile, Ruby—her sister and the one she was protecting—gets only a moment to look shocked before the rest of her time is taken up by Neo. Weiss is somewhere on the outside of all this, not really getting to react at all.

But, well, Weiss brought her backup team, her actual blood family. If her teammates are gonna leave her out of all the good moments, she may as well dig into her supply closet. By now, no one will be surprised that the portion of content taking place in Weiss’ house will be the best of the volume, especially not when it’s designed with horror elements in mind. I would’ve liked if Weiss had had the opportunity to actually sit down with Whitley and address the issues that growing up with Jacques has left him with. But barring that, it’s nice how each of the Schnee family members in the household at the time is able to contribute something—Whitley comes up with the plan to help the citizens of Mantle and enacts it pretty much by himself, while Weiss saves his life with assistance from Willow and her cameras, a striking moment that calls on panicking civilians to think carefully in a risky situation.

However, that’s as far as we get, because Weiss (and Winter) have been hamstrung yet again by the railroading. Weiss and Winter had a villain, guys, a personal villain that was theirs to defeat and triumph over—and that villain was Jacques. We do not get to see the Schnee family’s ultimate casting off of the cancer called Jacques, do not get to see him finally forced to pay for the abuses he put his family through, don’t get to see Whitley finally disown him...because it was more important, apparently, for Ironwood to get in one last utterly senseless murder. That moment that was used to further destroy Ironwood by killing him took that potential away from Weiss and her family.

Ruby, meanwhile, is coasting again. She is interesting and sympathetic during her one major moment, which is when she realizes that Salem intends to corrupt her into a Grimm mutant and that this is probably what happened to her mother…but this is undercut by Ruby barely interacting with Cinder this volume and never once with Salem herself. I’m sure I’m neglecting to mention a bunch of good Ruby/Penny interaction, but it’s kind of difficult to appreciate it a) when so much shit is happening at once and b) when all of Ruby’s efforts to keep Penny alive and in control of her own life went to naught as soon as Cinder knocked Ruby into the dimension juice two episodes later.

Road to Nowhere: 39

Naturally, what Ruby would logistically go through in response to losing Penny a second time is not going to line up with what we actually get in Volume 9.

Team JNPR + Ozpin

The first major part of the talking here needs to be about Ren and Nora, the ship that was officially broken up this volume, as if to give one final ‘fuck you’ to fans with even the most sparing reasons to stay. On the surface, it’s good, with Ren and Nora continuing on their diverging paths established in Volume Seven, ostensibly making it one of the few things to continue from that volume unchanged. Separating these characters is good, and encouraging them to find out who they are without each other is also good—it reads like a direct response to some of my comments made about them in earlier volumes.

But the way it was done was not fantastic. Ren’s frustrations mounting doesn’t lead to any direct realizations on his part. It leads into a Band-Aid for Jaune (of course) which is something we’ll talk about in a second. The actual solution for his frustrations with the current situation essentially come via him getting brand-new powers that also don’t address this, but let him instead talk at the audience about how other characters are feeling and have grown—a Miles-and-Kerry-ism that you will recall popping up in the infamously bad Volume Five, as well. Ren doesn’t actually do anything or change in any way with regard to his rather understandable feelings. He’s just handed the answer, and then he magically knows how to communicate his feelings to Nora at the end of the volume.

Nora’s is equally bad. It seems to be the more direct of the two character arcs, with very visible attention given to how Nora has essentially been stapled to Ren at the hip for eight years now, and much of her character is driven by protecting him and hitting things. However, the only real contribution to the volume’s events she gets to make—as compared to Ren, who ventures into Monstra to retrieve Oscar—is smashing open a door, which directly leads to her getting benched for the rest of the volume, unable to channel her passion for helping those less fortunate and never even getting an update on the status of the Amity CCT she got so badly hurt to launch. Sure enough, when it’s time to funnel civilians through the interstice, this just means she gets to be offscreen and not helping the fight. So, steps in the right direction but with no real power behind them.

Oscar was difficult to appreciate this season as compared to Volume 7, precisely because of what you’re thinking of. Because Ozpin is back in the picture, and constantly with him, that means Oscar can never undertake anything alone. It’s pretty much confirmed that eventually, Ozpin is going to take over (oh, I’m sorry, they’re going to “merge”) and how they’re going to portray this at all, let alone without it looking terrifying as hell, is a total mystery to me. Miles and Kerry still refuse to approach the idea of Ozpin separating from Oscar for any reason. And I can’t appreciate Oscar’s only major contribution to the volume because Hazel dies anyway and all of this was mostly just a way to get Emerald onto RWBY’s side, even though no one wanted that and it just looks like a cheap ‘woman = sympathy’ angle. Oscar not being familiar with Emerald’s abominable actions, I was not able to appreciate his vouching for her. Oh yeah, and Ozpin’s cane nuke can go fuck itself.

Which just leaves Jaune. It’s funny how you can gauge the overall quality of a volume largely by how much attention Jaune gets and what he does in it. You guys remember how Ren had that moment when they were stranded, where he was venting his issues, and he brought up Jaune cheating his way into Beacon? Well, that’s not all that was originally going to be there. There was actually going to be more about Jaune in that little spiel, which might’ve been a little bit more understandable and a lot less dated. One of the things Ren was also going to be pissy about was Jaune’s Leroy Jenkins moment with Cinder in Volume Five.

Three guesses as to how that got snipped, and the first two don’t count.

Jaune: 83

Honestly, it still would’ve been a blatant band-aid either way, but at least it wouldn’t have left me totally baffled. That’s something the fans were way more upset about than Jaune cheating his way into Beacon, because, you know—it got Weiss injured and nearly killed, and ended up benefiting him anyway. Which is something Miles still hasn’t gotten right: the end of the volume presents us all of Team RWBY getting knocked off the platforms until it’s only Jaune and Weiss helping Penny—which fails to stop Cinder from killing her. Everyone takes dives, and for what? So Jaune can be the one to kill Penny…? Fucking yikes, call that a crossover—the demented railroading aspect of this volume crashing headlong into Miles Luna’s need to give Jaune spotlight at all the wrong times.

Putting to one side Miles and Kerry stomping all over Penny and everything previously written with her and everything fans liked about her return by killing her, I don’t…I don’t understand this. I do not, for the life of me, understand why Jaune is the one to give Penny the mercy kill. It’s like Miles Luna’s writing has actually regressed. Even in earlier volumes, I understood the seeming aim behind why Jaune was put in the spotlight, even if it was the stupidest or most offensive thing I’d seen either way. But having Jaune kill Penny…? Killing Penny was going to be wildly unpopular no matter who ended up dealing the deathblow, and Miles knew that and didn’t care. Why on earth would he highlight Jaune in this moment, when all logic dictates that if you were going to do this, it should’ve been Ruby, or at least Weiss? Or even Pietro, had you remembered he existed? Out of all the possible candidates, I don’t get why it’s Jaune, and I can only chalk this up to Miles’ chronic need to put him to the fore at least once in every single volume. It’s something he has never gotten better at and if history has said anything so far, he never will. We’ve had almost ten years for him to learn why Jaune is an unpopular character, and indications are that he just. Doesn’t. Care.

I’m not even sure what the point of breaking Jaune’s sword is. So far, it’s held up to everything, and I don’t see why Cinder’s own swords made of glass would be able to break it. Truthfully, I can only wonder if this is yet another consolation, much like the Penny and Winter scene immediately after her death—except instead of “See? Don’t be mad, Penny was happy to die and give her power to Winter!” it’s “See? Don’t be mad at Jaune, ‘cause he’s suffered, too!” Spoiler alert, that is exactly where his screentime heads in Volume 9. And if that’s really the purpose of it, it’s a woefully insufficient one. And another proof that Miles will cut off his nose to spite his face, because that sword, gilded with gold, was supposed to be the legacy of Pyrrha Nikos, something he clearly put a lot of effort into and something he hoped would prove popular. But I guess now that attempts to ply the Arkos fans’ aching hearts have failed, and they’ve long since unofficially cast him off, they can go to hell, and so can the sword. I have an awful, insidious suspicion that Jaune’s going to get a replacement in the form of the Sword of Destruction if Volume 10 ever miraculously happens. And he’ll probably be able to wield it because only he’s pure of heart or some other crap like that.

And I would love to keep going, but I’m afraid we’re running long. The Final Thoughts will continue in a part two, where we’ll do the other half of the characters and then make our comments on music, hype, and style. See you then!

Counts:

• Jaune: 83
  
• It Was Right There: 63
  
• Fauxminism: 61
  
• Hypocrisy: 47
• Reliable Leaders: 80 + 17
  • Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 17 (RETIRED)
• Threatening Enemies: 59
• Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 102
• Your Fight Scene Sucks: 155 + 33
  • Evisceration Evasion: 34 (RETIRED)
• Ill Logic: 192
• Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 111 + 89
  • Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 34
  • Band-Aid Brigade: 55
• RSVP: 71
• Road to Nowhere: 39
• Dragged Kicking and Screaming: 52
• Y.A.S. Queen: 18
• Rooster Tease: 31
• LuLaRwe: 61
• The Lovegood Fallacy: 15
• How to Piss Off Gay People: 87
• Invisembl: 15
• Broke-Ass Clowns: 34
• Shut the Fuck Up: 18
  

____________________

53 – Volume 8 Finale | Table of Contents | Volume 8 Final Thoughts (Part II)