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RWBY 00 - Volume 1 Trailers | Table of Contents | 02 - Volume 1, Episodes 2-5
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Well…time to get this show on the road. It ain't gonna spork itself, much as I wish it could.

We open on a black screen fading into an art deco-ish diagram with Jen Taylor’s voice narrating the world setup for us. As she describes, mankind has gotten very into old stories and legends, but forgotten that they are “byproducts of a forgotten past”. Ouch. In six years, that’ll be both funny and horrifying, but mostly just enraging.

Thus she begins talking of the features of this world. “Man, born from dust” had strength, wisdom and resourcefulness. But man faces an enemy in the form of the creatures of Grimm, which are displayed via encroaching animal-like shadows with red eyes. And then Ms. Taylor’s narration starts to show the flaws of writing by people who haven’t ever done it before.

As she describes, even the smallest spark of hope can ignite change. “Eventually, man’s passion, resourcefulness, and ingenuity led them to the tools that would help even the odds.” A graphic of a gemstone hovers in the air above the portraits of mankind, and she says it’s come to be called “dust” and she also refers to it as “nature’s wrath”, with lines of lightning showing its power. Wait for it.

As the Grimm were repelled, mankind was able to form true civilization. The screen zooms out to show four nations on a map, yet Ms. Taylor declares that even the brightest of lights eventually flickers and dies. We tilt up to a portrait of the moon, whereupon the art deco fades away to show the animated one, a chunk of it broken away into pieces. We tilt back down to a street, where we see a man in a…bowler hat? He looks like a fairly stereotypical mob boss, with hat on head, cane in hand, and a cigar in his mouth that lights on its own. Jen Taylor suddenly takes on a darker tone. When those lights are gone, darkness will return, she says.

As our mob boss walks down the street, flanked by the same type of thugs we saw at Junior’s club and coming up on a shop called “From Dust Til Dawn”, her voice becomes angry, saying that humanity can enjoy their free world all they like, but strength won’t save them. A male, Shannon McCormick voice responds, saying that perhaps what will save them is a “smaller, more honest soul”. Right on time, we pan down to our protagonist, Ruby Rose, hooded, headphone’d, and enjoying a weaponry magazine in the back of the shop. Now, I can start recapping properly.

The mob boss at first seems chill, but he’s still here to rob. He doesn’t want money, he wants dust—that multicolored material being sold here. One of his thugs notices little Ruby, and attempts to hold her at knifepoint. Ruby, asking if she’s being robbed, makes short work of the man, launching him into a shelf from offscreen. Mob Boss catches this, but is unconcerned, directing his other thugs. Ruby tosses one through the shop’s window.

As Mob Boss looks on, she quickly shows off her weapon, the same gigantic scythe blade, and clicks her music off. The predictable happens, and she beats down the thugs sent after her on the street by knocking them all away with the back end of the scythe or kicking them, taking visible care not to carve them up. It’s very cool for how short it is. Mob Boss is irritated, but wait! He has his own form of compensation.

He lifts his cane and points it at her, revealing it to be a gun when the plastic reticle pops up. He shoots a firework from it, using this as a distraction to get away by rooftop, but he’s pursued! A helicarrier-type airship comes to lift him away, and he tries to blow Ruby up by tossing one of those red dust crystals at her and igniting it with a firework. But Ruby is saved by the timely intervention of the local McGonagall, and an unwise person would say she’s a very hot for a McGonagall clone.

Hot Witch tries to down the airship, but Mob Boss has backup—a woman in a red dress, glass slippers, and face shadowed beneath her black hair, but one eye is glowing orange. Hot Witch on the ground and Hotter Witch in the plane display a beautiful duel, Hot Witch using telekinesis and Hotter Witch using fire spells. Ruby tries to assist by firing her rifle, but the Hotter Witch blocks her shots with her bare hand. Neither one truly wins, but winning wasn’t the goal—getting away was, which Hotter Witch and Mob Boss succeed in doing once she puts a bit more muscle into her attacks.

That? That was beautiful. That was everything that Monty Oum was capable of and the height of what a good action-packed fight scene was. Not only did the two opponents respond quickly and creatively to each other’s attacks, but the pace was fast. The action didn’t crawl by assuming the viewer’s eye couldn’t keep up. This fight scene is everything that you will slowly stop seeing over the first three years of this show. For now, RWBY, Your Fight Scene Doesn’t Suck.

Ruby turns to the Hot Witch, noting her to be a “huntress” and asking for an autograph. We cut to Ruby being detained at a table, and Hot Witch turns out to be strict and annoyed with her for “putting [her]self and others in great danger”.

Sorry, what now? How was she the one putting people in danger? This isn’t like a young superhero’s foolhardy attempt to stop a minor crime resulting in a lot of damage from whatever show you’d like to pick. She removed a fireworks enthusiast from a store full of apparently very reactive substances, defeated all of henchman, and even asked the shop owner if he was okay with her chasing down Mob Boss. Literally nothing about the situation was any riskier when she intervened than before.

Ill Logic: 01

But that’s not truly important. It’s important only in that it establishes the McGonagall clone so we can introduce the Dumbledore clone. McGonagall walks around with an iPad-like device showing the recording of the events (how does she have that?) and says she’d send Ruby home, if it were up to her. But then Good Cop Dumbledore arrives. A silver-haired man with small spectacles walks in bearing coffee and cookies, but only the cookies are for Ruby. He walks in, calls her by full name, and takes special note of her silver eyes. She is understandably a little put off, but he then motions towards McGonagall’s spypad, asking her where she learned to do that, referring to her crime-fighting.

This scene is terribly stilted. There’s nothing genuinely broken about it but it’s a good idea to not answer questions the viewer is asking by having characters in the show ask them when they already know. She states she learned it at Signal Academy, and Dumbledore raises an eyebrow, calling her scythe “one of the most dangerous weapons ever designed”. Pfft, not the way she uses it, bub. But yes, turning teens into superhumans is indeed what Signal Academy does. She clarifies that one teacher in particular taught her. He slides her the cookies, and she swiftly gobbles them up without bothering to animate them but for the cookies literally disappearing upon reaching her face.

Dumbledore starts reminiscing on a “dusty old crow” who also used a scythe, and she clarifies through her mouthful that that’s her uncle, Qrow, who is a teacher at Signal.

*shudder of vague rage and disgust*

Ruby says she was garbage before he took her under his wing,

*eyebrow twitch of vague annoyance*

and shows off some karate moves and noises to display how badass she is. Dumbledore asks what an “adorable girl” like herself is doing at such a badass academy that trains warriors. I would presume it’s to train as a warrior. God, this conversation is on twelve-foot tall stilts and it’s only going to get worse. It’s especially bad because the way this world works means that nobody actually has to look a certain way to kick ass.

But it gives Ruby an opportunity to explain her dream: to be a huntress, aka a supercool hero who slays monsters and stops baddies. There’s cops in this world, but they’re not half as romantic as huntsmen and huntresses. She says that she’s only got two years left at Signal, which I am going to presume is a four-year academy due to the use of “only” implying equal or more time having already trained, and the thought of twelve-year-olds wielding weapons like hers is somewhat alarming. After she finishes, she says, she’s going to apply at Beacon, where her sister’s going now—Beacon apparently being the Badassery High to Signal’s Badassery Middle School. If you’ll remember, her sister is the somewhat dickish Yang who tore up Junior’s nightclub.

Dumbledore asks if she knows who he is, and she answers handily—he’s Professor Ozpin, headmaster at Beacon Academy. He promptly makes her dream come true.

We cut to the inside of an airship, where Yang is bear-hugging her little sister, talking about how proud she is of her. She’s been allowed to skip two years ahead and has been enrolled at Beacon, evidently, and Ruby’s reaction is utterly baffling, because immediately after quite dramatically expounding how she wants to be a badass cool hero who helps people, her response to her sister is:

“I don’t wanna be the bee’s knees! I don’t wanna be any kind of knees, I just wanna be a normal girl, with normal knees”.

I think my brain hurts.

Look, it’s normal to want to achieve something big and then start to get a little nervous and apprehensive once you actually are coming up on your goal. It is not normal to say shit that is in complete defiance of one of the only things we’ve established about you. I don’t know why that line was even scripted, let alone recorded. Ruby’s desire to be “normal” never makes it off this ship. It’s a BLAG.

Yang asks why she isn’t excited, moving to show us the other students as black shadows behind her, but Ruby says she is, she just doesn’t want other people to think she’s special. I call foul on that too, because a world where badass superheroes are a normal thing can’t counterbalance this sort of reaction if you’ve already established them to be romantic and cool and the elite above the normal police line. Yang calls foul too, because too late: Ruby is special.

Nearby, a news report on a holo-projector shows a mugshot of Roman Torchwick, aka Mob Boss, who hasn’t been caught yet. A cartoon lady named Lisa Lavender then moves on to a report about a “faunus civil rights protest” with pictures of people with animal ears holding picket signs, and says it was disrupted by members of the “White Fang”, a once-peaceful organization. The insignia that shows up when this is said indicates it’s also a faunus group.

Man. Everything in this first episode just feels like a bad omen with hindsight.

The holoscreen cuts off, replaced by a hologram of McGonagall. She introduces herself as Glynda Goodwitch and welcomes them to Beacon. She highlights how prestigious an honor it is to be selected for enrollment, and says it will be their duty once they graduate to ensure the current era of peace and prosperity continues. The hologram then disappears.

Ruby goes to the window, saying she can see Signal from up here. We won’t, because what it zooms out to show us is more indistinct, black-shadowed, art-deco buildings. The beautiful-ish moment is ruined by a Very Clearly Important Character (he has a full model instead of a shadow) who loses his composure, running offscreen to go be airsick someplace more appropriate. We see the airship approach Beacon, which actually does have a fairly visible model in the form of a nice building at the edge of a cliff, and Yang wonders who they’ll meet. Ruby just hopes they’re better than “Vomit Boy”. Then she’s heard noticing there’s puke on her shoe. The scene closes out with their scrambles to get the nasty stuff away from them clashing with the dramatically triumphant music for a nice little laugh.

The episode ends as ROOSTER TEETH is displayed and hard guitars start up. As the pilot closes, we get Volume 1’s title intro theme and movie that will be played ahead of all future V1 episodes and which will be the pattern for all volumes thereafter. It’s nice and pretty and you can see Adam’s mask shadowing the moon behind Blake, but we don't need to analyze it the way we will for future intros. Casey Lee Williams sings a shortened but still longer-than-the-following-episodes' version of “This Will Be The Day”, an amazing track produced by her father.

So, what did you think of the show’s pilot? Awkward, but with some good points? Get ready, cuz we move into full awkwardness in the next few episodes. Whatever my disgust, you’ll notice I only awarded the one point today. Next post on this show will be...longer.

Counts:

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: 1
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