Spork - RWBY Post Zero (Vanilla)

[surgeworks]

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So, we begin with the Red Trailer. Beautiful lute music starts up, and after a black screen with "Rooster Teeth presents", we see a cloudless deep blue sky, somehow snowing quite heavily. The brilliant white moon takes up most of the screen, and "a new series by Monty Oum" is displayed across it. A rose petal drifts across the letters, dissolving them, and we fade to black.

The next shot is a lone youth dressed in a corset, stockings, and skirt, all black, and cloaked in a brilliant red hood and cape that billows in the wind, being the source of the floating rose petals. She stands in what at first seems to be a blank, misty void, but as we fade out and vocals begin to accompany our lute, we see that she is standing on the edge of a snow-covered cliff, facing a gravestone. The next scene shows her turning and walking away from it, so that the audience can see the words on its face: “Summer Rose”, with the quote, “Thus Kindly I Scatter”, these beneath an engraved rose blossom.

The red hooded youth walks through a forest of barren trees, and black shadows pass through the trees around her. Finally, the girl steps out onto an immense snow-covered clearing, facing a large group of inky black wolves with bloodred eyes and teeth. They seem to consider her for a moment, dancing back and forth, before three attack. Unconcerned, the girl merely vanishes into a cloud of rose petals an instant before they can land their hits, leaving them eating snow and confused. But she’s not gone—no, we see her from below, and it turns out she’s leapt high into the air, silhouetted in slow motion against the moon. The vocals come to a halt, a piercing whistle in the background. The girl’s innocent face, framed in dark red hair, is visible, her hood gone.

And then she whips out an enormous gun and blows a chunk of one of the wolves’ heads off.

The swerve in the prose I just used versus the bluntness of my last sentence is not an exaggeration. That is literally what happens onscreen, in just as much of a swerve as it sounds like. As the first wolf dies with 50% less cranium than before, Spanish guitar music starts up. What happens next is best described as “the most beautiful slaughter”, because transcribing the exact details of long fight scenes is not something I’ll actually have to do until later.

Suffice it to say that not one, not ten, not a hundred of these ghastly wolves offers this girl even the slightest difficulty as she rends them apart. After blowing out a few torsos, her already huge gun unfolds into an impossibly huge and ultra badass scythe blade. Which she then uses in tandem with the rifle function to utterly decimate her opponents, leaping and twirling with inhuman speed and reacting to every movement against her with cool, calm, practiced ease. Limbs, heads, and all manner of body parts inbetween go flying. Each wolf she kills bleeds more floating rose petals until they dissolve into nothing. At one point she bisects a wolf in the middle of its attack without even looking at it, and shortly after she bisects another wolf with the recoil from the shot she killed a second one with. She says not one word throughout, but her expression screams that she is entirely unconcerned.

Late into the fight, she realizes that her head-on approach has drawn the entire horde to her, adding an extra fifty wolves rough to her two-dozen body count. Does she seem worried? Of course not. Not a damn thing changes.

Well, one thing changes. She changes her ammo, discarding one clip for a new one bearing a cross marking on it. The muzzle flash, previously white, turns black as she launches herself across the battlefield at immense speed, firing to turn herself into a spinning whirlwind of death. Things proceed in much the same way across the next few seconds: limbs flying, wolves dying, me crying, teen girl barely trying. They never stood a chance—she is a god to them and virtually all of them die before they know what’s hit them.

Her last kill scored, the girl twirls her scythe and poses, silhouetted against the moon, as her spent shells rain down into the snow around her. There is not a scratch on her.

The scene oversaturates to red and black, and we see the following credits:

ROOSTERTEETH.COM presents

“RWBY”

LINDSAY TUGGEY KARA EBERLE ARRYN ZECH BARBARA DUNKELMAN

animation MONTY OUM and SHANE NEWVILLE

character design MONTY OUM JEFF CHANG music by JEFF WILLIAMS

produced by MATT HULLUM BURNIE BURNS KATHLEEN ZEULCH

written by MONTY OUM MILES LUNA KERRY SHAWCROSS

directed by MONTY OUM

and as they fade out, her saturated red silhouette spins in to become one of four. Four shadowed women lay across out screen, and the one we’ve now met re-colors as a digital artpiece of her. “Coming 2013” is displayed across the bottom. The Rooster Teeth logo promoting their site is the last thing we see.

Well, guess we should go over the information we just absorbed, huh?

First, this is our protagonist of the upcoming series. Her name is Ruby Rose. Two other features to notice are the gravestone bearing what is obviously her mother’s name on the cliffside, and the wolves. Both are important to the story, but only the latter is a stolen Skyrim werewolf re-colored. Woops.

But we can forgive a little theft in the name of art, right? (/s) Because as Monty said, this first trailer was meant more as a weapons display than anything for character’s sake. Fair enough, if I could animate like that I’d show it off, too.

(This is a roundabout way of saying that the character we see of Ruby later is going to be very, very jarring when looking back on this cool, collected, stoic girl).

Secondly, notice the music. That was Red Like Roses (Part I), instrumentals by Jeff Williams and vocals by daughter Casey Lee Williams, who was only 13 at the time. It was a spectacular piece, but special attention goes to the lyrics, of which there are only four, and they describe the four colors and characters who will be leading our cast:

“Red like roses fills my dreams and brings me to the place you rest,

White is cold and always yearning, burdened by a royal test,

Black the beast descends from shadows,

Yellow beauty burns gold.”

The lyric for the red of roses plays as we first see our main character. The lyric for the cold white plays as she travels through the snow-covered forest. The lyric for black the beast plays as we meet the wolves made of living darkness, and the final lyric for yellow gold plays as she looks down from mid-air, the moon with its yellow halo as her backdrop.

The music was very clearly designed to compliment the scene and vice versa. The lyrics are meant to tell the story of what’s happening onscreen, as we see via this setup. It’s beautiful, masterfully done. Each of the colors obviously refers to a main character as designatd by the closing animatic, and we’ll next meet White, then Black, then Yellow.

Fourth, notice those credits. Unfortunately, Monty Oum is not the only name whose time in these credits is limited. But we’ll have to talk more about those later.

Finally, notice the sheer scale. This was made to impress. The direction, the design, the cinematography, pretty much every aspect of this piece, in terms of construction, was wonderful. Do not make this your expectation. Quite unfortunately, being shown trailers and shorts that far surpass the actual content of the show will be a trend.

But for right now, everything is good. Let’s move on to the White Trailer. After opening the video, we are shown a quote. It’s unsourced, which leads us to believe it is invented by the show, and applies to the character. It reads:

“Everyone is entitled to their own sorrow, for the heart has no metrics or forms of measure. And all of it…irreplaceable.”

From the black screen, we are shown “Rooster Teeth presents”, and an echoing voice asks “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Weiss Schnee.” Followed by the sounds of applause as the black screen fades to show a teenage girl striding forward into a spotlight.

She has hair as white as snow, tied back into a long ponytail slightly to the side and held by a black hair clip in the shape of a crown. She has icy blue eyes, and a scar running through her left eye, although it doesn’t detract from her appearance in the slightest. She wears a set of white sleeves with a red collar, a white dress and skirt, and a small necklace and straight earrings, as well as boots with low heels. She seems unsure of herself as the music starts, staring out at an utterly immense auditorium, filled with people. Bright lights cast her several shadows, and her reflection is visible in the gleaming stage beneath her. As the music continues, she closes her eyes, and opens her mouth to sing.

“Mirror, tell me something, tell me who’s the loneliest of all.”

As the wail of Casey Lee Williams’ voice closes off, the scene pans down to her reflection as the real thing disappears, and we transition to a new scene. The focus is not on the auditorium anymore—it’s on the massive theater antechamber behind it. The spotlight expands, and out of the shadow is revealed a massive suit of armor, a kneeling knight who soon stands, brandishing a sword as long as it is tall, which I would guess to be 25-30 feet.

The music starts back up again, gaining quite a bit of energy as the knight attacks. It twists, as does Weiss. It spins and slams its blade down into the ground, while she backflips to dodge it. From her left side, she arms herself with a long rapier, with an odd handle incorporating some sort of rotating chamber. She zooms off, gliding across the ground towards her opponent at high speed. She collides with the knight’s blade, lifting off the ground as she pirouettes behind him. He turns and attempts an overhead strike again, but quick as lightning, she’s on the other side of him, and attacks. She spins into the air, striking the knight three times, her rapier bouncing off the steel ineffectively. With his target now in range, the knight swings.

Weiss, who guards against the blow just in time, is nonetheless sent skidding back by the immense blade. He’s quick to press the advantage, leaping high into the air to bring the blade down. She’s able to dodge the slam, then the swing, but the third strike catches her and sends her sprawling. She bounces back quickly enough, and this time performs some sort of spell-like movement with her free hand, a trail of white following them. She brandishes them beneath her feet, where a large snowflake sigil appears.

Weiss’ counterattack is even faster than before, as she blitzes forward, gracefully dodging the knight’s strikes and leaping around him with ballet-like forms. She leaps off the ground to slash him, but mid-air, leaps off of another snowflake glyph, careening downward for a second strike. She continues the assault, landing four more elegant but ineffectual strikes before crouching. A third snowflake glyph forms under her feet, sending her upward, her rapier knocking the knight’s visored head back. She pirouettes mid-air, sending herself horizontally across said visor from another glyph. Having crossed him, she balances on another mid-air, and successfully leaps over the huge blade as the knight sweeps it her way. However, she’s not so quick with the knight’s fist, which slams into her dead-on and sends her flying backward. The soundtrack, “Mirror Mirror”, seems to reflect Weiss’ peril as she struggles to rise to her feet again, clearly injured.

We fade back to the stage where she sings, but this too fades to nothing. When we fade back in, Weiss stands in the same grand hall, the light of the moon shining down on her through the ceiling. She performs an epic Casey Lee high note, and we flash back to the same chamber where she now gets to her feet, seemingly ready for another round with the animated armor. Her graceful rapier hasn’t put a scratch on it, and her speed-boosting, gravity-defying snowflake seals haven’t helped all that much. What will she try next?

Her face, now wounded across the eye and bleeding, is determined. She readies her rapier in a fighting stance, before bringing it horizontal and pressing the trigger next to the handle. The revolving chamber rotates, settling on a red chamber that infuses the long blade with a similarly colored energy. The knight takes this as challenge, running forward at high speed and preparing his downward slam of his huge blade again. This time, Weiss doesn’t dodge.

Instead, she raises her blade defiantly. The instant the knight’s greatsword makes contact with it, it doesn’t just bounce off: it’s sent flying back, and he reels with it. She spins, and her sword glows light blue before she slams it into the floor, triggering a large wave of ice that forms a line of freezing spikes, encasing the knight’s legs. Although it’s stuck, it still has its greatsword, and swings it across at her. “Mirror Mirror” ramps up, as she runs towards the blade, her rapier glowing a yellowish-green as she lands on it, seemingly gravitized to it. She rolls forward on the blade, slashing at the knight’s gripping arm. Not only does she succeed in separating the armor from its sword, which lands almost perfectly upright as it embeds itself into the ground behind her, she also shatters the ice. Freed but unarmed, the knight looks around, and Weiss prepares an especially large snowflake glyph underneath her, readying her rapier solemnly, settling its revolving chamber on a dark purple infusion.

The knight opts to try what’s worked best: its fists. It runs forward and tries to slam one heavy metal fist down on her, but she rolls to the side, and swings her arm out, where another snowflake glyph appears, but it’s merely a signal towards the one she laid before. The knight, now standing where she was, is sent careening high into the air on a large shockwave, before Weiss swings her rapier, glowing energy trails following the blade. Five smaller seals form before her, before sending forward five streaming blasts. They hit the knight in its four limbs and neck, securing him mid-air with a glyph each binding it there.

Weiss’ moment is now. She uses her glyph again, and sends herself skyward, stopping almost at the ceiling. Like with Ruby, we get a decidedly badass slow-motion shot of her silhouetted against the bright moon—only if we look closely, the moon isn’t whole, but it’s slightly fractured at the edges, pieces of it broken off. Her chamber settles on a white infusion this time, and strange lettering appears down the guard and length of her rapier’s blade.

“I’m the loneliest of all…”

The song and the fight both come to a close. One last glyph sends Weiss, face hardened, speeding down towards her target. We see her slash the knight, landing perfectly on three points. Behind her, the knight falls to the ground, white flames bleeding from the gaps in its armor, disintegrating into a thousand ice crystals and then nothing as it hits the ground. One strike, and it was over.

The bleeding wound on Weiss’ face settles into the scar over her eye that we first saw, as she stands and opens her eyes, watching the crowd in the auditorium clap and cheer at her song. She seems surprised, having been lost in memories, and looks up at the almost-whole, nearly-perfect moon, but eventually remembers to curtsy properly to the crowd.

The curtain closes, and with it, in comes our closing animatic from before with the four shadows of mysterious, powerful girls. Ruby and Weiss’ art pieces fade in, while “B” and “Y” remain in shadow.

And so we have a second protagonist. This girl is Weiss Schnee, and she is evidently quite different from Ruby Rose. Her challenger is not an immense horde of scary but easily-carved opponents, but a single, monstrously powerful entity. What’s more, while “Red” Ruby relies on a huge intimidating weapon that contrasts her innocent appearance and seems highly confident, “White” Weiss is elegance itself, yet unsure of herself. She needs more than one try to take down her opponent, but when she gets serious and begins infusing her blade and her glyphs with that odd colored magic in her sword, her opponent lasts no longer than the wolves did.

We also need to discuss the music. There’s obviously more to a song with a “Part 1” in the name, but what we’ve seen of Red Like Roses was a short four lyrics before switching solely to some fun Spanish guitar instrumentals. “Mirror Mirror” is a lot more in-depth. The lyrics talk about a perfect reflection in the mirror, a perfect outside as presented to the world, but a heart that is unsure and in turmoil.

The art decisions in the trailer also lean towards this idea. The crowd in the stadium would see Weiss at the front of a grand stage ready to impress, but we the viewer can see the shadowy antechamber and the large snowflake seal behind her. The moon seems perfect until a keen eye catches that fractured edge. Weiss herself is physically perfect until you look closely and see the scar that was once a very ugly wound.

Overall? A great follow-up to Ruby’s trailer. Now, we take a look at “Black”. We open with a quote again.

“Your hopes have become my burden. I will find my own liberation…”

If you’ve paid attention to the last two trailers, you might be surprised: Ruby’s trailer setting was almost entirely white, while Weiss’ trailer setting was almost entirely black. But if you thought the Black Trailer’s setting was going to be golden, you’re wrong—the first thing we see, along with a shot of a very broken moon, like ‘a large chunk and then a million pieces’ moon, is a vividly red forested mountain range. Missed opportunity, I say—I love solemn, orangey-yellow late afternoon forest lighting. But this is cool too. Red leaves fall over the screen, much like the rose petals from before.

Solemn piano music and some soft vocals welcome us into this crimson wood. Our camera descends onto a beautiful girl with flowing black hair, sitting atop a rock. She wears a white undershirt underneath a set of black coattails. One arm in a black sleeve, one without. Her boots go up to her thighs and are shaded purple, each bearing a zipper. Lastly, a black ascot goes around her neck, a black ribbon is wound around her arm, and a black bow sits atop her head. All too soon, black slacks and loafers walk onto the scene, and a voice says “Blake. It’s time.”

The girl—perhaps “woman” is a more proper term—turns to the camera, revealing large golden eyes. Okay, she says. Preceded by a dramatic piano chord along with some synth, the man dashes through the woods, too fast for a good look, followed at a fast pace by Blake. Yes, unfortunately, Blake will not have this trailer to herself. More on that later.

They finally stop their dash at the edge of a cliff, and we can get a good look at this mysterious man. Black suit with an intricate flower design—probably a rose—on the back, black slacks, black loafers, black gloves, red undershirt, black belt with studs, and a ninjato sheathed at his side. His hair is two-tone, red and brown, and there appear to be horns aimed backwards on his head. And if you look really closely, you can see that he is a blatantly stolen Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez model from Bleach: Soul Resurreccion.

Prepare your anuses, fellow netizens. This Post Zero is about to go downhill fast, in more ways than one.

The bellows of a train sound in the distance. The duo’s target appears to be a freight train speeding through the beautiful red forest at a fast pace. The man leaps from the cliff, Blake following his every movement, and slides down the mountainside. He leaps, she leaps, and they slam down onto the roof of the train unhurt, the man unsheathing his ninjato in time to cut a four foot gash into said roofing. The speed off on the traintop, until they find a hatch inside that they like. The music has taken a decidedly techno turn.

The man slashes the hatch open so fast it isn’t even animated (like. Not even a white ‘slash’ anim to make it look like it actually happened). They descend into a pitch-black room, and the man says, in a truly cringe-inducing delivery, “Looks like we’re gonna be doing this the hard way.” The camera pans out to reveal the laser wires they just tripped, and the numerous robot guards.

They, grey-skinned and red-accented, awaken all at once. Their visors slam shut, and they surround the duo, fists raised. Blake, delivered by Arryn Zech, responds: “Don’t be so dramatic”. Their hands rest on their weapons, and one robot in particular extends its arms, where its fingers transform into gatling gun-type machine guns, and a deep robot voice echoes:

“Intruder, identify yourselves.”

The camera focuses on the man as he gives a small smile, allowing us to focus on the intricate designs on his rather dirty mask and his uncannily Arrancar-like hair spikes. His physical appearance quickly reveals itself to have not been the only thing about him stolen, because how does he answer the guard?

By firing his blood-red ninjato out of his shotgun sheath.

This trailer came out just a month after Metal Gear Rising was released. There is no fucking way that is a coincidence, my dudes—this is plagiarism.

Anyway, the man shotguns his red sword hilt-first into the robot’s face, grabbing it before it can fall and promptly whirling, blasting the robot’s head off and cutting it in half diagonally, resheathing just as quickly. Guitars start up, and for some reason all of the robots decide that rather than whip our their own machine gun arms, they’ll whip out machete arms and go at it blade to blade. Naturally, this is a very poor decision.

As the vocals start up, Blake takes a crouching stance, unleashing a goddamn two-foot cleaver blade—like an actual meat cleaver butchers would use—on two of her foes, cutting them in half in one leap and curiously leaving behind a quickly-fading, blurred after-image of herself.

The two slash and gash, slice and dice, clearing the crowd from around them fairly quickly. One robot decides to correct the clear mistake and aims both gatling arms at the two—but it’s too late. The man casually deflects a select few bullets from the hailstorm, while Blake runs ahead, swinging her cleaver in such a way as to block all of them before leaping up and decapitating the guardbot. Flowing from slice to slice like water, she follows up by bisecting another at the torso, then cutting another off at the knees.

We get a wonderful slow-motion shot as Blake separates her sword in two—the cleaver is actually a sheath with a cutting edge, and inside it is a katana. The chick promptly dual-wields with style, alternating between forward and reverse grips as she carves apart a group of robots without stopping, again leaving blurring, fast-fading after-images in her wake. She even jumps into the air while slicing a robot, finishing it by leaping off of her own after-image much like Weiss leaped off her glyphs. He follows up by kicking the not-very-dismembered robot through a train door, leading them to the outside where the rest of the pissed off robot guard force awaits.

Blake’s suit-wearing partner gives an equally cringe-inducing “Let’s do this.” before running forward. Blake follows his lead. They work together, the man sending two bots into the air for Blake to kick with her high-heeled feet. As more enemies surround them, Blake looks up patiently. She then removes her katana, swinging it back behind her—where the blade folds back on itself. She launches it forward on the ribbon wound around her arm, and the folded blade is flung like a kusarigama.

She flings it past several enemies, then whips her hand back, somehow firing the trigger on what is revealed to be a hand pistol built into the katana-kusarigama’s guard and handle. She then whips the cord-gun-blade around, always missing her partner but able to hook the blade into several robot necks and leave them headless, before leaping into the air and whirling, her ribbon blade flying around her in several arcs and repelling all opponents around her.

The man runs forward, slashing several robots so fast they all fly apart at the same time. Blake unleashes a whirlwind hell on two robots, spinning her cord blade lightning-fast, and the two of them launch a few robots into the air so that the man can juggle them with his slashes. Blake jumps and kicks one of the juggled ones back to him, who slashes and shotguns it. All of their adversaries slain for the moment, he and she descend through another door into another traincar, evidently where their prize is.

The man opens a crate, and his voice actor is just really…clearly not experienced enough for this role yet. His findings are “perfect” and he orders Blake to move up into the next car—but we can see something moving in the shadows behind them. As he declares that he’ll “set the charges”, we see several crates behind Blake, bearing the same snowflake sigil as was in Weiss’ theater hall and on her glyphs. Blake hesitates, asking what’s to become of the crew members. Adam coldly responds “What about them?”

So this dude likes murder. Or is at least totally cool with the preventable loss of human life. I getcha. Blake looks like she’s either going to say something or bite her tongue, but she doesn’t get the chance to decide—a creaking announces a new opponent. The camera settles on an immense, heavily armored, heavily armed arachnoid robot, walking on four legs and brandishing four cannons. The second half of “From Shadows” starts up.

Blake finally speaks the man’s name, Adam, and the creature begins charging and firing several laser bursts. Adam rolls to the side, while Blake dodges several blasts and runs forward, jumping to try a direct assault on the machine’s head, but it simply headbutts her out of the air. It moves forward to attack her as she lies on the ground, but Adam lunges forward and slashes it in the face several times, but it kicks him away unaffected. It attempts to stomp Blake underfoot, but Adam, evading several more blasts, snatches her and carries her away just in time.

He sets her down from her suspicious bridal carry, and Blake suggests they get out of there. The Spiderbot agrees, combining all four of its cannons into one and charging a huge blast that sends the pair flying through the door and back onto the train’s outside cars. They get to their feet as the Spider Droid, some hundred feet away, steps out of the hole it blasted in the train wall.

Adam asks Blake to buy him some time, and she asks if he’s sure, but when pressed, she runs forward. Zig-zagging her way to the bot, she sends her kusarigama forward into the robot’s body, swinging herself high into the air from it. She yanks it back, and for a split second only, we get a slow-motion shot of her silhouetted against her very broken, very distressing moon, before the action picks up again and she careens downward, lodging her blade in the robot again as she hits the ground and yanking herself forward on it. She gets her cleaver out and straightens the blade back into a katana, and as she streaks forward, another split-second bonus includes black butterflies flying from her hair.

Blake launches a short but fierce assault against the Spider Droid, making too many attacks for it to focus on Adam but moving too quickly for it to counterattack. She leaps back and forth, leaving afterimages here and there, and for her finisher, she finds a vulnerable spot—the underside of the robot’s head—and rams her katana into it, firing the pistol it’s attached to directly into the monstrous robot’s neck. Finished, she detaches and does several backflips to reunite with Adam.

The Spiderbot responds by collecting its four cannons into one again, and he tells her to get out of the way, which she does, as it fires its blast. Standing his ground, Adam half-unsheathes his sword, collecting the massive amount of energy fired at him into it, before resheathing. Adam’s hair and suit accents glow a vivid red in the darkness for an instant and he laughs, and the Spider Droid presses forward. Having failed with ranged attacks, it tries simply jumping on top of him and crushing him. How does Adam respond?

By landing one clean mega-slice, in which the screen over-contrasts into bloodred background and black silhouettes against it, the better to see the Spider Droid disintegrating into nothing from his attack and the leaves on all the nearby trees being scattered into the wind.

Adam resheathes his sword again, and turns to walk away, satisfied with his victory. However, he stops short, noticing Blake on the other car ahead of him looking…odd. He puts his hand out as if to stop her. The music, which had previously calmed to silence after the Spider Droid’s destruction, returns to a somber piano melody much like we opened with, as Blake turns, says “Goodbye”, and slowly, deliberately takes out her cleaver…and severs the links between the train cars.

The cars separate, Adam being left behind with the cargo, Blake speeding off into the distance with the now-safe train crew, fading into shadow as the screen over-contrasts again into red and black.

Our closing animatic returns, this time with art of three of our four main heroines unshadowed, leaving only one…

*claps hands together* So, what to say here?

Well first, there’s plenty I could say about what becomes most notable here, but I have a lot of it saved for after the Yellow Trailer. I think we can all guess the part I’m gonna talk about now: Adam.

This trailer should be about Blake Belladonna. It is not about Blake. It is about Blake and Adam Taurus.

There were ways to include his character, and his ruthlessness, without actually having him take up so much of the spotlight. One comes to mind very easily: have him talk to Blake over radio chat and instruct her on the traincar mission, which she acts out alone. But even saying that he had to be present for extra badassery, there’s still ways he could’ve been “toned down”. He didn’t have to be the one to start the fight with the robots, and he didn’t have to be the one who killed or landed the finishing blow on the Spider Droid. So we have our first points, the first of many.

It Was Right There: 1

Fauxminism: 1

I happen to have heard that Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross—you’ll be getting to know them very soon through my rants—were making alterations to Monty’s script as early as this trailer. I suspect this was one of them, because after two trailers focused solely on the girls, it’s rather jarring that we put so much focus on a man. Let’s face it, he stole a spotlight that was rightfully Blake’s. This will not be the last time this happens either, unfortunately.

With that out of the way, and putting to one side my forever unyielding rage about Adam’s model and weapon being so blatantly stolen and re-textured, this trailer was still a bit weak. Despite Adam and Blake cutting through robots like there was no tomorrow, we didn’t see so many limbs flying or heads rolling—a lot of the time the animation was noticeably cutting corners, as the robots just fell down or went sprawling without showing any visible signs of damage. Another point makes its debut.

Evisceration Evasion: 01

The art direction was good as usual, and now we get to talk about the music, “From Shadows”. This one is quite varied, opening and closing with piano and incorporating rock, metal, electronic, and synth into it widely. It’s a great arrangement, but it’s the lyrics that matter. If you pay attention to them—a duet between Adam and Blake—it tells the story of the fall of those subjugated by racism. At first, they were peaceful protesters, but as the human cruelty ramped up, their methods got more extreme, and they now reside in shadows, embracing their use of violent tactics to achieve their message.

Yes, this is a very very bad omen for this show.

But as for Blake, and her trailer, we’ve ended up somewhere inbetween our previous experience with red and white. Ruby was unconcerned, confident, and stoic while slaying monsters by the dozen with a dramatic over-sized weapon that was a deliberate contrast to her small, seemingly innocent appearance. Weiss was elegant grace and fought a single titanic enemy with a suitably thin, graceful weapon and what seems to be magic. Blake carves apart futuristic robot guards with a combination of pistol, cleaver, katana, and blade-on-a-cord. She’s both unapologetically violent and graceful.

But now, we move on to the Yellow Trailer. Like with the last two, we open with a quote.

“Scathing eyes ask that we be symmetrical, one-sided, and easily processed. Yet every misshapen spark’s unseen beauty is greater than its would be judgement.”

We then get several shots of a girl riding a large motorcycle through some city streets. We don’t see the girl’s face, but she’s wearing a brown shirt (I don’t know what you would call that specific top she’s wearing, I’m sorry), a brown miniskirt, orange stockings, brown leather boots, and there’s a dark scarf tied around her left thigh, and an orange ascot around her neck. She’s also wearing very large yellow bracelets and black fingerless gloves. Long golden blonde hair is flying in the wind behind her.

Her motorbike skids to a stop, and she disembarks, showing off the zippers on her leather boots and the yellow goggles and helmet she was wearing—both discarded with the bike. A panty shot is prevented from shocking the children as she walks ahead of the low-angled camera staring up at the black micro-shorts under her miniskirt.

In the background, club music starts to play. We get the reverse of Blake’s ending shot as “Yellow” walks forward behind a translucent set of doors, silhouetted in black except for her striking blonde locks. A spotlight rises on her as she approaches the doors, mimicking the rising sun. They open to reveal our first undeterred shot of her:

My my, those are some bright blue...purple...lilac? Eyes. We recognize the club music as a dance remix of “Red Like Roses” as she walks in. The camera circles behind Yellow to reveal the most epic fucking nightclub you’ve ever seen.

As the vocals to “Red Like Roses” start up, the flashing white club lights turn a vivid red to match. Yellow smiles as she walks through the shadowed crowd, until her eye settles on the bar. Up ahead, a posh-looking man with a cane and bowler hat is speaking to what seems to be the club manager, flanked by two waitresses decked out in red and white with feathers atop their heads. The posh-looking man leaves, and Yellow walks up in his place to speak to the huge dude running the bar. The waitresses, who seem to be twins with black hair and sharp green eyes, are dismissed as the girl walks up and orders a “Strawberry sunrise, no ice. Oh, and one of those little umbrellas.” Said manager asks if she isn’t a little young to be in this club, calling her “blondie”.

Correct! She’s seventeen. However, she just retorts that hey, isn’t he a little old to be called “Junior”? So we have, if not names, then at least nicknames for them to go by. He can see that she knows who he is, and asks if she has a name, “sweetheart”. Blondie replies that she has several, but he can just call her “sir”.

While grabbing his crotch in a death grip.

…Excuse me? That’s...that’s assault. It’s also sexual assault. He’s done nothing to provoke this. In case you aren’t watching the video (and you really should), he didn’t call her “blondie” or “sweetheart” in a mocking or lecherous manner. If anything he was just being dismissive of her. It's not feminist to just grab dudes' ballsacks and start squeezing.

Fauxminism: 02

Blondie, pulling out a holographic phone and pulling up an image of an indistinct, dark-haired woman on it, says that according to the gossip, Junior knows all the gossip. She wants to know where to find the woman in the picture, and if he can tell her, she’ll let him go. He swears he’s never seen her before, in a high-pitched tone clearly in a lot of pain. She simply replies “Excuse me?” and grabs his crotch harder with an audible crunch, and he repeats himself, adding “sir”. She does not let him go.

Fauxminism: 03

This is, uh. Not encouraging for one of our protagonists. I understand this was intended as...what did they call this in 2013? Well, in 2018 they’d call this a power move and big dick energy. I’m sure we were supposed to think this teen girl manhandling and assaulting a man is cool and makes her strong and forceful. And it would, if he’d done anything to warrant it. But he didn’t.

She continues making herself rather easy to dislike when Junior’s gangsters show up, all dressed in black with red sunglasses and armed with hatchets and red machetes. Blondie simply responds that they’ve now got an audience, and this must be pretty embarrassing for Junior, huh? Junior, still in the death grip, says that she’d better let him go if she wants to leave the club alive. She lets him go, and he staggers away, telling her she’ll pay for that and donning his own set of red shades.

She walks alongside him, cheerful smile still in place, and claims she was just playing with him and tells him not to be so sensitive. Because that's cool and not awful.

She suggests they “kiss and make up”. Junior, put off but clearly not sensing the imminent danger, goes along with it. Naturally, before I even have time to do more than open my mouth at the sight of a club manager of unknown age puckering up for a seventeen-year-old girl, she sucker-punches him across the room when he leans in, through a glass light pillar and against the wall. The clubgoers scream and start running for the exit as little hearts circle above Junior’s head and a bourbon bottle thunks down on it, leaving him unconscious.

Naturally, the gangsters are ready to act now, and run to attack Yellow, and the other three lyrics to “Red Like Roses” finally play. But those weird bracelets on her wrists? They unwind and reveal themselves to be bracers. Now appropriately armed, Yellow expels a shotgun shell from the visible chambers wrapped around her right wrist, and leaps high into the air as the mobsters surround her. We get a slow-motion shot of her silhouetted against the skylight up on the ceiling, just as round and white as the moon. Small flames seem to surround her right fist as she grins, then falls down, slamming that fist into the ground.

A shockwave goes through the floor, knocking back the mobsters that surrounded her as a dance remix of “Mirror Mirror” starts up. She rises from the fire surrounding her, ready to go. She leaps up again, this time flipping mid-air to bring her leg down on one unfortunate mobster, sending him on his back through the glass floor. She uppercuts another, spin-kicking two more on her way back to the ground. The gang surrounds her, but are helpless—she’s too fast and too strong. Her punches are assisted by shotgun recoil out of the back chamber, which should really be hurting her arms like hell, and she takes care of them all with a huge smile on her face. Even with swords and axes aimed her way, she’s able to block by meeting the attacks with her armored limbs, then devastating them in close range.

Another glass pillar gets shattered before, of all people, even the DJ wearing his bear head pulls out a machine gun. Yellow swerves left and right to dodge the hail of bullets, then leaps atop the DJ’s platform, kicking him in the gut. She slams her elbow into his stomach, grabs his masked head and slams it into his sound board, then yoinks him onto her shoulders and blasts him up against the ceiling with her shotgun bracers, K-O’ing the poor dude in short order.

His limp body falls back down to the dance floor, where the camera follows it, right past a bladed white high heel decorated with chains. The next shot is of one of the twin waitresses, dressed in her red glitter skirt, with double claw blades on each hand, walking up behind her white-clad sister, asking “Melanie, who is this girl?” Melanie responds, saying “I dunno, Miltia, but we should teach her a lesson.”

Yellow recognizes the challenge, and her bracers fold back, revealing their chambers. She pops out the empty casings, re-arming herself with a fresh pair of magazines full of red shells, wrapping them into the bracer’s chambers before re-folding them. She leaps from the DJ’s soundboard back to the floor, raining down shotgun shells that actually work as projectiles this time, as a dance remix of “From Shadows” begins to play. The twins pull off a succession of backflips to evade, and it’s on!

The two are clearly a bigger deal than standard mobsters, as if you couldn’t tell by their unique appearances. They flank Yellow from each side, Melanie deflecting a shell with her heel, right before Miltia attempts a side swipe. Yellow attempting to fire on the latter lets Melanie get in close, kicking her straight and sending her sliding backward. Yellow responds with another shotgun blast, which Melanie straight-up slices in two with a flip kick while her sister advances.

The two gang up on Yellow, Miltia first with two wide swings with her wrist claws, Melanie following up with three high kicks and then swiping at her heel to keep her from aiming at Miltia, and the two pulling off a combined set of kicks that sends the intruder sprawling back on her stomach. She isn’t deterred though, getting back up just as fast and hurtling back into the fray. She shotguns herself back towards the two, her hair briefly flaming and glowing white as she lands a punch too powerful for Melanie to block, sending her to the back of the dance floor.

Her sister taken care of for the moment, Miltia is Yellow’s next target. Though she succeeds in blocking a few of her punches, she’s quickly overwhelmed when Yellow hits her low, then juggles her with three successive punches to the gut. Miltia is sent flying with Yellow’s final smash straight to the face, hurtling through the third glass pillar. Yellow pounces on the still-recovering Melanie.

Melanie isn’t such easy prey—she performs a few backflips, cutting Yellow’s bullet again, and blocking a second one with a kick that hits Yellow’s gauntlet straight-on. The two duel in footwork for a moment, but Melanie succeeds in blocking her active arm each time, taking no punches nor bullets, and kicking her back a second time.

Yellow seems to pause, considering Melanie as she presses her advantage, testing the waters with several kicks and trying to land her bladed heel on Yellow from several angles. Unfortunately, Yellow sees an opening when dodging Melanie’s high swipe, elbowing her in the gut. She immediately grabs Melanie by the arm, pulling her over and swinging her in a circle. Her enemy’s balance all but gone, Yellow leaps up, spins, her hair glowing and flaming again, and lands a vicious kick to the face that knocks Melanie down for the count. “From Shadows” comes to a close.

The chandelier of spotlights circles and flashes. The high note from “Mirror Mirror” comes back. Melanie staggers off, too defeated to continue. What’s next?

It’s Junior, a spotlight on him, back on his feet, and bearing a shoulder-mounted multi-missile launcher that would be massive on anyone but him. He angrily declares that Yellow is going to pay for this.

Yellow’s very own theme song, “I Burn” begins to play as she readies herself, and Junior takes aim. She’s almost caught-off guard dodging the first couple missiles, rolling to the side to avoid the rest. Junior fires a second volley, but she responds by shooting them out of the air. Quick as lightning, Junior leaps down to where she is in one jump, his missile launcher transforming into a goddamn club, and swings on her. He’s too strong, and his weapon too large and heavy, and he easily blows past her defenses, staggering her with three hits. He follows up by slamming his club straight into her, launching her across the room and shattering a glass stage. He observes his handiwork as Yellow stumbles to her feet, bat over his shoulder, but although she’s hurt, she smiles. The small flame amongst her hair explodes around her as Yellow slams her fist together and goes in for a second round. Junior fires another volley, but his weapon’s club form isn’t ready in time as she dodges and gets in close. He swings twice and misses, and she goes straight for his face and chest, landing seven consecutive blows. She slams her left heel into the ground, her hair aflame and her eyes turning from violet to red in slow motion, as she lands a final right hook that smashes Junior’s weapon in two pieces when he tries to block, sending him sprawling.

Junior must know he’s fucked, but he has something to smile about. He looks down at his hand and grins, having accidentally come away with a lock of Yellow’s hair. As she realizes this, Yellow goes ballistic, the fire in her hair exploding around her and shattering the whole glass floor. Junior can only stand helplessly as she launches herself, screaming in rage, and meets his face with a vicious haymaker that sends him straight through a window and onto the street outside, unconscious.

And who should be there to observe the destruction? Little Ruby Rose, standing on the side of her street, cape and all, glances down at the huge dude, then up at Yellow, who followed him out the window. We get a real name for Yellow promptly:

“Yang? Is that you?”

Yang’s hair de-immolates, and a smile returns to her face as her eyes go back to normal, and she says hi to “sis”. Yep, they’re sisters! Ruby asks what Yang’s doing here, and Yang replies that it’s a long story, as we get a wide shot that shows either two moons (one broken) or one broken moon and a rising sun (the latter behind Yang). So closes the Yellow trailer. The closing animatic comes in, all four girls’ art cards de-shadowed, and when it vanishes, flames line the bottom of the screen, highlighting “See the premiere at RTX 2013: Austin TX, July 5-7. RTXEvent.com”

Well, now, to analyze the trailer itself. We’ve reached the final stage, presenting mooks, mini-bosses, and a tougher boss. Yang’s trailer was fun to watch in the fights, and beautiful in set design, even if her character is off to a rough start. More impressive than anything else here is the music: We have dance remixes of all four songs (yes, I Burn’s original mix is more on the rock side with a dash of rap). The music tracks stop and pick up at exactly the right points—Red Like Roses for the relaxed opening, Mirror Mirror for the mobsters, From Shadows for the twins, and I Burn for Junior. From Shadows even picks up its chorus when Yang beats Miltia and moves on to the more competent opponent Melanie. The same happens with Junior—the chorus picks up when Yang gets back on her feet and destroys him, closing as she lands the final punch. It’s easily the best part of the trailer.

The content of I Burn, like Mirror Mirror and From Shadows, relates directly to Yang, but isn’t quite so deep. Mirror Mirror was a song of internal questions and a reflection of an unsure, isolated self. From Shadows was a rebellious song about sinking deeper into violent reactionary methods to fighting oppression. I Burn? I Burn is about how Yang is going to fuck you up, is going to enjoy fucking you up, and you don’t have a chance in hell of stopping her. It’s her “I’m a badass and I know it” song.

But now that we’ve got that under our belt, we need to look at all four trailers as a whole. What do they have in common? What do the girls in them have in common?

You already know all four girls are identified and named after a color. Ruby Rose for red, Weiss Schnee (“white snow”) for white, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long (“little sun dragon”). This is a theme carried for virtually every character in the series—their name must bring a color to mind in some way if it isn’t already a color name to begin with. They are also themed after the other aspects of their names—rose petals, snow, shadows, and the sun. You probably noticed that all of them are related to fairy tales in some way. Ruby Rose is obviously Little Red Riding Hood, Weiss is Snow White, Blake is Belle (and Adam Taurus is the Beast), and Yang is Goldilocks—the bear theme being present in the DJ, and Junior’s real name being Hei Xiong (“little bear”). That too will be a theme that supposedly extends to every important character: being themed after fairy tale, historical, legendary, or otherwise literary figures.

Also, three of the four characters opened with a quote that delved a little bit into who they are. And yes, this is unfortunately an ominous omen. Get used to one of the four main protagonists and the center character not having much of an arc while the other three do. As for their contents, the one in the White Trailer indicated to us that although seemingly well-off and cared for, this girl in front of us has a troubled life that doesn’t cease to be because of her money. The one in the Black Trailer becomes clear at the end, describing Blake’s problem: whatever change Adam once sought is gone in the face of a love of slaughter, and she’s cutting herself away from him to find her own liberation. The last trailer seems to describe Yang’s overall personality: vibrant, spontaneous, and fun-loving, refusing everything clean and quiet. It is a bit confusing in its derision of “symmetry”, though, seeing as of all four girls’ designs, Yang’s is by far the most symmetrical. Blake fits it far more than she.

Before we move on, I'd like to note one last thing, and that's the progression--or regression, actually--of the violence we've been seeing. The Red Trailer, you'd need to be at least 13 or 14 to see it and not have your parents shriek in horror. But from then on...? There's already been a steady drop-off. The nature of Weiss' opponent obviously prevented a lot of gore, but the robots Blake and Adam fought were being carved apart in a variety of ways--only for them to not actually come apart half the time. Though they by all appearances delivered a violent laceration on every single droid, most of the bots just fell down, ragdoll-like. Yang's choice in weapon is the only one of the four that doesn't incorporate a blade of some sort, meaning there's no bloodshed or even the possibility of it in her trailer or her future given her fighting style. This is sort of a disappointment--the first we saw of this series told us there was going to be violence unmitigated and wonderfully animated.

But, overall…good, right? Impressive? Some early warning signs, but nothing that truly drags down the anticipation for a great, awesome-looking, awesome-feeling series, right?

Well, once July of 2013 hit, we’d find out. Let’s leave the trailers here and move on to Volume 1, Episode 1: Ruby Rose.

• Jaune: 0
• It Was Right There: 1
  
• Fauxminism: 3
  
• Hypocrisy: 0
• Ice Cream Queens: 0
• Reliable Leaders: 0
  • Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 0
• Threatening Enemies: 0
• Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 0
• Your Fight Scene Sucks: 0 + 1
  
  • Evisceration Evasion: 1
• Ill Logic: 0
• Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 0
  • Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 0
  • Band-Aid Brigade: 0
• RSVP: 0
• Road to Nowhere: 0