I usually watch each episode at least twice in order to have high-quality notes. Sometimes, like this time, I take no notes at all on the first watching, so I can focus on enjoying what I'm watching before I have to metaphorically tear it apart. The first watching of this episode felt a lot longer than the five minutes it actually was, and I feel like the second watching will feel longer still. I'm not sure whether that makes it terrible or brilliant.
We open by looking out a window onto a sunny day. A fairly complex camera maneuver (it dollies, it pans, it tilts a bit...) brings us to the sleeping Weiss Schnee. Who on earth is still asleep in this much daylight? Well, now she's not, rising to a sitting position faster than anybody who's actually been asleep ever has. She yawns, she stretches, she
almost realises the danger she's in before Ruby Rose blows a whistle pretty much directly into her ear. Oh no, Ruby's a morning person. Weiss's noise of surprise as she falls off the bed, the noise of her impacting the floor, and the resulting camera shake are all a bit mistimed relative to each other.
"Good morning, Team RWBY!" chirps Ruby. Yep, already confusing.
Weiss gets no sympathy whatsoever from Yang or Blake, who are apparently also morning people. Now that Weiss is awake, they can decorate, and unpack, and clean (Blake's suitcase just spilled open). I wouldn't advise doing it in that order. Yang's collection of 'decorations' includes many things seen before: Ruby's headphones, the Dust for Dummies pamphlet, and the animal-face pillow that the siblings had during the first overnight. This is probably a suite of clever callbacks
and a way to save animation costs. It also includes some things not seen before, like a candelabra. Yang why.
Any objections Weiss might have are dealt with by the simple expedient of Ruby knocking her over with the whistle again. Weiss sighs and otherwise silently acquiesces. Mood, Weiss.
And so the decorating begins. (I have never before heard anybody shout "Banzai!" and mean it.) Yang puts up a poster of a boy band. Weiss puts up a fancy painting of a forest. Blake populates the bookshelf, some books more surreptitiously than others. Ruby accidentally slices the bottom off the curtain. You know, normal decorating things.
Having decorated, there is no longer enough room in the room for four single beds. Uncharacteristically, Yang suggests undecorating somewhat. Ruby counters by suggesting bunk beds. Weiss thinks that's dangerous, but she's alone in objecting. She then makes the amateur move of calling for a vote she knows full well she'll lose in a landslide - a surefire way to lose the respect of the electorate, assuming you had it in the first place.
Some stereotypical construction noises later... well, I didn't see why "dangerous" was Weiss's objection, but oh boy do I now see. Ruby's solution for obtaining bunk beds was to construct them from the single beds, and these must be the most questionable bunk beds ever constructed. One of the 'top bunks' - the one on Yang's side of the room, going by the animal pillow and boy-band poster - is stacked on top of stacks of books on top of the posts of the 'bottom bunk', which does not strike me as stable footing. The 'top bunk' on Weiss's side dispenses with the idea of footing entirely and is instead suspended from the ceiling by ropes. In summary, this arrangement would withstand H&S scrutiny for about one microsecond.
Ruby, undaunted, moves on to their next order of business: classes. The classes that, it is left to Weiss to inform them, start in five minutes. Apparently in a different building. Hope nobody was planning on eating this morning.
Apparently Team JNPR didn't have anybody keeping track of the time at all. Pyrrha really letting the team down there. ...What? It's not like any of the others was ever going to.
I previously brushed off somebody else's observation about a lack of any unified character aesthetic by noting:
michaelb958 said:
To be fair, neither does nonfiction - in particular, schools without enforced uniforms. So I'll give 'em a pass there.
I was wrong about the important part of that statement - Team RWBY are all wearing a uniform, and Team JNPR are also all wearing the same uniform so I can now rule out it being Ruby's idea.
Classes start in less than five minutes. Surely at least one of Ozpin and Goodwitch has something better to do than conspicuously stand around and poorly-animatedly check their watch?
Cut to an axe that is also a gun, mounted on the wall in a way that suggests its wielder does not expect to wield it again. Below it, revealed as the camera dollies back, are labelled drawings of Creatures of Grimm: the Death Stalker, the Beowolf, the Boarbatusk, and the Nevermore. Later the Ursa, and the King Tajitu, are visible too. Since this is a short episode already, let's go through those names:
- I don't know how the creative folks got from 'giant scorpion' to "Death Stalker". They evidently are pretty deadly: see last episode.
- "Beowolf" is a corruption of "Beowulf", the name of the main character of the most famous Old English works of literature (the work itself has no known title, so is also referred to by that name). Contrary to popular belief, it has little to do with wolves - it's mostly about the guy fighting dragons.
- "Boarbatusk" is, as far as I know, a nonsense word. It sounds like the Moon Moon of words that describe a pig-like creature.
- "Nevermore" is the name of a famous poem by famous poet Edgar Allen Poe, and the name of a character within it: a raven that takes up residence in the unnamed narrator's study (those are the only two characters) as a metaphor for his grief for his dead wife. The poem's structure is also fairly intricate - it's not every day you see something with eleven syllables per verse participating in rhyming, four of which are globally rhyming.
- "Ursa" is just Latin for "bear".
- I've never heard of "Tajitu", but I have my suspicions it translates to "snake". The existence of a King Tajitu also implies non-king Tajitus, presumably smaller.
If I put "tajitu" into Google Translate it detects Chinese and translates it to "She's aroused", which is some psychic damage I was not expecting to take today. "taijitu" - note the extra I after the A - translates from Chinese as "Tai Chi diagram", which makes a little more sense but not really. "taiji" is, shockingly, "Tai Chi"; "taji" does not appear to be a valid word. If I ask what "snake" or "serpent" is when translated to Chinese, I get something that romanises as "Shé"; "serpentine" is "Shé wén shí". So, in summary, it probably does not translate to "snake".
Wait, was the Nevermore fight from last episode some kind of revenge for Ruby obliterating that bird four episodes earlier?
Anyway, that's the front of the lecture hall. The students occupying most of it are black silhouettes, except for Team RWBY and one other student; and are all getting really bored of the lecturer, and understandably so. He really likes to listen to himself talk. He also tries some casual epebosexism - he's lucky only Yang noticed that wink (and was merely the eye-rolling kind of unimpressed), because if Blake had been paying attention then, well, I can't really say "I hate to think" because I don't hate to think what should happen to people who behave like that, but it would have made the lecture quite interesting in the allegedly-Chinese sense of the word.
The problem with this episode is that it has no fight scenes. This means that the non-fight character animations have to fend for themselves. Poorly.
Our other non-silhouette student is just there to be the
only one to enthusiastically agree with some random thing the lecturer said somewhere in the middle there. Poor student.
{{Is this the infamous Professor Peter Port? He sounded more majestic in writing.}}
{{Ruby's notes sheet, bearing no notes but instead a drawing of the lecturer's grandfather who smelled of cabbages (I did not make any of that up, he did), confirms that this
is the infamous Professor Port.}}
Professor Port so enjoys hearing himself talk that he barely bothers giving Team RWBY a disappointed look when Ruby and Yang find smelling of cabbages to be inherently funny. This is the terrible brilliance of this episode - the characters are sitting through an interminable ordeal, and so are you!
Weiss has no patience left for any of these shenanigans at all - when your character models are this lacking in details like noses, it is a very bold move to fill the entire screen with Ruby's face - and so eagerly volunteers herself when Port asks who embodies the traits of a good Huntsman. Somehow she didn't notice the box behind him with the Grimm in it.
It is once again cliffhanger time. This time there isn't even a literal cliff! No beauty sleep, a 'decoration' and 'construction' session, no breakfast, the lecture from hell, and now a cliffhanger with a Grimm below it (
again) - it's just not a good day to be Weiss.
Roll credits. Today's music is the same as the decoration montage. Today's silhouettes are Goodwitch on the right and presumably Ozpin on the left. {{He has an unidentified weapon as well as his coffee mug, which shows you how much attention anybody was paying to this when they came up with the "Ozpin's weapon is his coffee mug" meme.}}
Next time: Helpful advice.
Weiss has her sword and is in her combat outfit; don't ask me when or from where she got either. Blake has a little "RWBY" pennant; ditto. Ruby has her enthusiasm, about which I have no such questions, but Weiss would appreciate it if she didn't.
Professor Port has his axe that is also a gun. I at least know from where he got it, but don't ask me when, or how (a stepladder must have been involved). Apparently he considers it a suitable tool for opening locked boxes with Grimm in them. Cue one, uh, I'm pretty sure that's a Boarbatusk, but apparently I can't tell the difference between a Beowolf and an Ursa so don't quote me on that.
Initially honours are even, but the fight soon develops not necessarily to Weiss's advantage as the Boarbatusk pins and then flings away her sword. Fortunately its main attack is charging at high speed, which isn't conducive to recovering if the opponent dodges, so Weiss can rearm. Ruby's trying to help by shouting advice, but it's distracting more than helping.
The Boarbatusk now pulls out its advanced attack, curling into a ball and rolling really fast, which incredibly reminds me of the only League of Legends champion I ever clicked with. (In case you're wondering, I haven't played LoL since before they gave up on having lore.) This tends to be very risky for things that can't magically recover onto their feet like Rammus can - the Grimm runs into a glyph and ends up on its back as a perfect target for a glyph-assisted shish-kabobbing.
Port is impressed, and dismisses the class after reminding them to do the assigned reading. My question is when he assigned the reading - we only saw him listen to the sound of his own voice forever and then oversee the duel, and the first words we hear from him give me the impression of being an introductory speech so I doubt he did much of anything before that. Perhaps it was listed on a syllabus along with the class schedules. Anyway, Weiss stalks off without a word to her team. Jaune - I think that's Jaune - doesn't understand the problem, which does sound like a very Jaune kind of thing.
In a darkened corridor, Weiss and Ruby continue arguing - Weiss has apparently accepted being on a team with Ruby, but not Ruby's leadership of the team. "Ozpin made a mistake," declares Weiss over her shoulder before continuing to stalk off. If she'd been facing Ruby she might have seen Ozpin approaching and not said that. Ruby, facing Weiss' direction, doesn't see Ozpin either and just wallows in her misery for a bit. Mood, Ruby.
Ozpin, once Ruby turns around and sees him, declines to pin down whether he's made a mistake. Meanwhile, Weiss seeks out Port, who is able to work out that something is troubling her.
"Dear girl, confess to me your strife!"
"Well... I think I should have been the leader of Team RWBY."
(beat) "That's preposterous."
These conversations are intercut. Ozpin explains to Ruby that it's too early to pass judgment on her leadership, mentioning along the way that "I've made more mistakes than any man, woman, and child on this planet", which is a weird thing to say. Port explains to Weiss that he hasn't seen Ozpin make a mistake yet, which might qualify as dramatic irony depending on how many mistake-sources have occurred in his presence compared to not, and that Weiss's attitude lets her down.
"How dare you!"
"My point exactly."
Somebody check the surroundings for Yang eavesdropping, because that was a
burn. Weiss, Port suggests, would benefit from acknowledging that decisions will sometimes go against her and petulance won't help overturn them, and focusing on what she
can bring to the team.
Ozpin continues to be terrible at motivational speeches. Somewhere in there he drops the episode title.
Later, the moon is out and the shattered side is hidden. Blake is asleep on the bunk under the books, Yang above; Ruby has passed out in the suspended bunk mid-studying, and here's Weiss to disturb her and ...ask her how she takes her coffee? I think that nobody that young should be drinking coffee on a regular enough basis to know how they take their coffee, but I'm a weirdo like that. Anyway, the coffee is Weiss' opener to mending the rift, which I
can get behind. As she departs (after pointing out a wrong answer), she admits "I always wanted bunk beds as a kid". Judging by these ones, if she had them she might not be here. She might be dead. 'Here lies Weiss, flattened by an ersatz bunk bed.'
Roll credits, over a silhouette of Professor Port (the mustache makes it obvious) with unusually quiet music.
Next time: Bullying.
