Ice Queendom C3 A Nightmare Comes
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michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
We skip past awkward things like sleep, and awakening, and redecorating, and arrive directly at the aftermath of bunk bed construction. Team RBY are pretty happy with it. Weiss sounds a bit unsure. "I've never seen a bunk bed before." she says. "This still doesn't look safe." she implies.
Ruby continues to be excited about the next order of business: classes. Weiss doesn't say anything about the time, she just calls Ruby "excitable". They're cutting half thebest jokes!
On closer inspection of the titles, each character has their emblem displayed in it somewhere in the main chunk - Teams RWBY and JNPR; Ozpin and Goodwitch; even Shion, assuming that's their emblem. All of JNPR's combat scenes come from the Death Stalker battle last Chapter, and all of RWBY's from bits of C1. Then Shion gets a combat scene, provenance still unknown.
Anyway, the Weiss imagery scene. Weiss kneels in the courtyard, straight out of C1. The black vines develop at bottom of screen, which is totally not going to be trouble later (/s). After a moment, a superimposed shot of a windowsill with two white knight chess pieces on it.
Remember Professor Port? Here he is, in his natural habitat. The posters of Grimm types behind him on the back wall are so absolutely huge that I've no idea how anybody hung them. Anime scale problems.
Ruby has fallen asleep at her desk as Port drones on. If you turn your head (or the video) upside-down when Weiss' notes are shown, they're perfectly legible and go into greater detail than Port's lecture did, including already having written down (and expanded upon) the sentence he's only just finishing. This shows us that Weiss is academically-minded. The effect is marred by Weiss dragging her pencil across half the blank page as she realises that Ruby's asleep.
We finally get half an explanation for nobody noticing the cage full of Boarbatusk - Port had it hidden behind a curtain. If the Grimm was marginally smart enough to reckon it could get an ambush in if it kept quiet, that would complete the explanation. Also, Port has also had a subjectively bad time moving to this art style. Perhaps it's just the standard male face drawing style that I have trouble with.
Yang lampshades by wondering how Port even captured the Boarbatusk (that's my favourite hypocritical joke in Grimm Eclipse), then she and Blake are taken aback by the enthusiasm with which Weiss volunteers to fight it. Ruby wakes up and realises she missed something.
Cut to Weiss ready for combat. The time required to change into her combat outfit is still not explained. Ruby still shouts helpful advice and Weiss still brushes it off but actually follows it. The Boarbatusk, animated Eastern-style, looks the absolute weirdest mix of terrifying and goofy. Also Weiss' combat scene in the titles might actually be from here instead of C1. In total, Weiss comes off a lot better here than in V01C10. ...I take that back, Ruby tried to congratulate her and she just growled back.
Weiss enters a courtyard at Beacon, and stops in her tracks because on the other side of it is ...herself??? Team RBY are thereby able to appear on a nearby walkway. Weiss turns to wordlessly acknowledge Ruby talking, giving herself??? the opportunity to disappear while nobody's looking at them. I do hope it's not a Weeping Angel, but I'm told those would be more immediately violent.
Anyway, Ruby and Weiss argue over team leadership, in a sunlit courtyard instead of a darkened corridor. Ruby leaves. Yang moves to intervene, but Blake advises against it, saying that Yang propping Ruby up would undermine her in Weiss' eyes and thereby solve nothing. Yang makes the cutest just-ate-a-lemon face in response to this.
Weiss proceeds further out, monologuing about how she deserves to be team leader. Ruby attempts to follow, but the detour necessary to get off the walkway has meant she's completely lost track of Weiss. Clearly Beacon's faculty must have put the fear of the gods into her about Semblance usage on campus, or else she would have Semblanced her way down from the walkway and not lost any time.
Ruby has also decided that she (Ruby)'s not fit for team leadership, which is just as heartbreaking every time it happens. Fortunately, here's Ozpin to tell her otherwise. Meanwhile, Weiss finds Port.
Now back to Ozpin, who still kinda sucks at leadership pep talks. It's because he's burned out on leadership after thousands of years.
Now back to Port, who puts the exact same burn on a well-deserving Weiss. 🔥
Now to a breakneck timeskip into combat class, where Cardin (he does exist!) is definitely winning an official spar with Jaune. Most of the fighting happens off-camera, presumably for animation cost reasons; we mostly see Teams RW and NPR reacting to it. Ruby and Weiss have evidently smoothed things out again, a little.
Cardin is once more prevented from getting a real good hit in by Professor Goodwitch calling an end to the spar, but with less audible buzzer this time. Goodwitch starts on her post-spar analysis. Meanwhile, we get a good look at the developing vine-pattern scar-thing at the back of Jaune's neck. Oh. Oh dear.
That night, Jaune and Pyrrha are practicing on the roof. This is where the writers have moved Pyrrha's speech about what Aura is and why Grimm don't have it, regardless of how little sense it makes to have it this much later in the timeline. It rather reminds me of the time in V2 where Ruby explains Yang's Semblance to Blake, because Sun and Neptune were meant to be in that scene but Monty zoomed and forgot to animate them in. Also we're rapidly ticking boxes on the 'where did this bit of the titles come from' checklist.
Pyrrha draws out Jaune's Aura. He seems unfamiliar with it. Is this a flashback? It must be, we get another zoom on the back of his neck and there's less trouble there, until it grows. So how did he survive initiation?
Uh oh, Weiss is eavesdropping on them. ...It's not a disaster, yet(?), she's taking the opportunity to internalise being a good teammate as a path to high marks, instead of anything short-sighted like reporting him. Not that she could possibly have any idea how short-sighted that would be, but still.
Here are those chess pieces on a windowsill! On second thought, I don't like what that seems to be building to. Anyway, it is Team RWBY's windowsill. This is the part where Ruby fell asleep studying in her bed, making everything since Goodwitch one big flashback. Maybe. Maybe I misread how much vine Jaune had on his neck then and this is all later on. That would be adapting scenes badly out of order without telling anybody, which would be awkward, but the alternative is this giant flashback that's barely any less awkward.
The curtain of the dorm room window is white. In the main show, it was red. This is probably some deep thematic thing about who the respective shows are obliquely named after.
Weiss has decided to prop up Ruby's leadership, partly so she can look good when the dust settles. The size of that part will change. "I always wanted bunk beds." she says, which doesn't have to foreshadow her siblings this time because we already know about them. She settles down to rest with the rest of the team, not noticing the developing vine-scarring on the back of her neck. That's gotten so much camera time, both here and in the titles, that it's got to matter somehow.
Meanwhile in Team JNPR's room, complete with privacy screen of sorts between JR's beds and NP's beds, Jaune is still marvelling at the fact that he could one day have a Semblance. That hurts. What hurts even more is when some kind of floating shadowy doppelgänger appears behind him and starts berating him on all the things he already doubts about himself. Wait, Weiss saw a shadowy doppelgänger in the courtyard. Are they related to the vines? How? What's going on? Jaune's case visibly advanced after Pyrrha exercised his Aura, does using Aura accelerate whatever this is?
Oh no oh no oh no, here are the real vines.
Cut to the next morning, whereupon Ren is unable to awaken Jaune. The alarm bells in my head are getting louder. Ren concludes "he must be tired from training", and tries to bodily haul him out of bed. They abandon the effort and stare in shock: Jaune's entire back is envined, and the score is treating this as seriously as they are and I am. Also Jaune is in pain in his sleep.
Cut to later, when Team RWBY, not to mention Ozpin, have also crowded into Team JNPR's dorm room. Next to join the party is Goodwitch, who has brought Shion. Shion appears to be the subject matter expert in whatever the h*ck is going on. "It's here," they declare, "we need to start now.".
I see we've diverged from RWBY V1 now.
In a nameless hall somewhere, Jaune has been laid out on the floor (that doesn't look comfortable) as the other ten convene. I'm guessing this big case contains all of Shion's specialised anti-Aura-vine equipment. Also check off the provenance of their (Shion's) combat-looking scene in the titles.
In narration as Shion does their work (which is where the animation budget went), they introduce themselves as a "nightmare Hunter". Weiss asks what a nightmare ("Nightmare"?) is. "A type of Grimm," Shion answers, "that possesses humans and grows by draining their Aura.". Well, h*ck, that confirms that.
Nightmare Grimm, continues Shion as she wraps Jaune in glowing purple medical bondage filament, nest and breed in the host's dreams (into which the host is locked), and have to be fought and driven out from there, specifically by their "closest friends":
The score, which has been getting steadily more 'stuff is happening now' over the course of this scene, crescendos as the camera plunges into and through Jaune's filament-blindfold to the symbolic black void beneath...
Here's Jaune, stuck in a nightmare. Animate combat equipment shouts at him about his family's history of being warriors that he's letting down, or so they claim. In this closer shot we can see they all have obvious Pumpkin Pete stylings.
The laughing malevolent equipment fades out. Jaune, who from this side-on shot is small and bunny-like, insists he's capable. The Nightmare Grimm watches from a high vantage point nearby. Jaune pleads for Saphron to help him, but instead only gets five different copies of the Nightmare Grimm, and the statue atop which it sits, bearing down on him.
Suddenly, Pyrrha! And Nora and Ren too, but Pyrrha spoke first. And now, the halfway ad break.
A telephone rings. The console visible next to it is labelled "Nightmare" and what I think is Shion's emblem, so we probably haven't cut too far away. Yep, this is part of Shion's kit, deployed in the hall near the spiderweb of purple filament that holds Team JNPR.
Pyrrha doesn't have any of this context. Instead, she's living her best life, wiping the floor with possessed statues and Nightmare tendrils inside Jaune's dreamscape.
The Nightmare withdraws from Jaune's suddenly-fortified soul and attempts to physically flee the scene. This is what Shion was waiting for. They catch it: first with their weapon, a dreamcatcher, because of course it is; then in a large holding jar, telling it "it's your turn to be a captive". (The dreamcatcher is the source of all glowing purple filament.)
Apparently Nightmares stuck in holding jars revert to some kind of dormant state. Maybe we'll get more details of that later. Maybe we won't. Who knows? Not me yet.
Welp, here's more details! When Blake asks what that means, Goodwitch elaborates: Most Grimm look like "beasts", but some don't.
Okay, apparently that's all the details we get. I'm a bit disappointed. On the plus side, the Nightmare has gone dormant, Ruby watching its hateful glow going out.
Shion withdraws the bed of filaments. Jaune bolts awake, panicking about oversleeping - which is technically correct, but somebody tell him he's just been through a medical challenge and can therefore be excused. He's a bit confused as his team all have a chuckle from behind him.
(Jaune has been shirtless for this entire mess, ever since it was required for us to see the Nightmare tendril pattern all over his back. I have Concerns™ about how Weiss' status will be communicated to us.)
Teams RWBY and JNPR bond over Jaune's bad morning as Shion and Goodwitch exposit that Jaune has underdeveloped Aura, no Semblance yet, and friends willing to dive into his dreams. Which would be very reassuring if this was a 3-Chapter series and nobody else had a Nightmare gestating in their dreamscape, but maybe half of one of those 5 things applies to Weiss, so the writers are just foreshadowing a greater crisis. It's going to be quite the year at Beacon Academy.
Shion, in between describing the perfect conditions for Nightmare growth and also Weiss, does know that more Nightmares are about. However, they can't locate them any more specifically than 'were in the Emerald Forest', so the best anyone can do is a public awareness campaign.
At a Team RWBY meeting, Yang suggests doing as Shion recommended. "You must be joking," says Weiss, "I would never let a Grimm possess me like that." I could list everything wrong with that sentence, but this post would double in length. Ruby and Blake brush it off as unlikely anyway (internal screaming), Yang makes a joke that nobody gets and I think I might not want to, and then Weiss brings up the Vytal Festival which is already gearing up.
In Vale the next day, it is indeed. I see the entire Jaunedice arc has been ruthlessly cut. {{I'm told this is common to every retelling of the events of V1.}}
For the sake of narrative economy, the latest Dust shop to be robbed is another From Dust Till Dawn storefront. Shopkeeper really does run everything in this town. Anyway, welcome to V01C15, same as ever except adapted with unwieldy translated-and-back dialogue.
Check off another one on the 'where did this bit of the titles come from' checklist, and here's Sun, complete with "great stowaway" quip and lovingly animated slow-mo wink at Blake on the way by, all extremely true to the original Chapter. Yang calls him a "weirdo" somewhere in there, which is not.
The adaptation of the dialogue has not been kind to Weiss (or Sun, or Blake) here. Rather than any pretence of "observing the competition", because Yang didn't bring that up, Weiss just comes right out and accuses Sun of running off to "commit more crimes". Blake's momentary hesitance to follow the rest of her team in hot pursuit makes a lot more sense.
Exit Sun, pursued by a couple of sailors whom I don't think stuck around this long in the original Chapter (checks solid maybe). Enter Penny by collision with Weiss. Penny here does not have to be prompted to get up off the road, she just takes the opportunity to do a half-front-flip on the way up, because she can and this is anime. Ruby immediately calls her "brand new friend", which rather diminishes the effect of the original scene's 'there but for the grace of Ruby's careless word choice went this ship' aura. It's still there, but not as much.
Later, after making their excuses to Penny, Yang advocates giving up the search for Sun, whose name they don't even know. Weiss insists on continuing, in exactly the terms to raise Blake's hackles. The adaptation really has not been kind to her dialogue. Now Blake retaliates and the argument's really on.
There is no mid-argument cut to night in the Team RWBY dorm room; instead everything happens in daylight on a street in Vale. The metaphorical-record-needle-scratch moment isn't quite the same without the eight seconds of excruciating silence that followed it. I'm not sure if Ruby missed the revelation, or chose to ignore it in service of trying to get Blake to stick around to mend things. Probably the latter. Probably.
Cut to Blake on a rooftop somewhere, bow loose in her hand. Sun still finds her and says "I knew you'd look better without the bow.".
Cut to Team RWY reconvening in some plaza. Weiss is quite unsympathetic to continuing to search for Blake. Ruby makes an excuse and leaves, which gives Yang the opening to inform Weiss in no uncertain terms:
We advance to V01C16 as Blake and Sun have their White Fang exposition tea date, now with 100% less animatic.
Sun, after recovering from listening mode, asks if she's perhaps mentioned any of this to her friends. Blake doesn't answer intelligibly. They then plan to stake out the big Dust shipment tonight.
Meanwhile, Ruby is once again in a troubled near-fetal position, this time somewhere else at the docks. (The traffic/pedestrian lights out here are way less fancy than they are deeper into Vale as seen in C1.) Penny teleports next to her with absolutely no explanation given. It's actually great.
Penny explains, patiently as only Penny can, that she saw Blake without her bow (another divergence from V01C16). Ruby asks where, hoping for a lead.
Meanwhile, Weiss and Yang evidently did not split up after all (checks no, plausibly Yang could have signalled Weiss to follow and Weiss done so), and Yang is still trying to change Weiss' mind away from 'all faunus are terrorists'. Yang tries to lever open a different crack in Weiss' psyche by accusing her of faking supporting Ruby as leader, which is actually true but I don't think Yang knows that. It works: Weiss starts trauma-dumping about her team composition and then starts crying. How will Yang handle this? And how much progress has the Nightmare inside her (Weiss) just made?
Yang handles this by asking the camera to give her (Yang) a break. Sympathy will take more character development from Weiss.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a shipping container. (Well, actually it's golden hour before sunset, but that ruins the joke.)
Blake and Sun, who have so far escaped ingestion, watch over the docks for signs of the White Fang coming to steal the containers or the contents thereof. Some soon arrive by tiltjet, complete with Torchwick. Blake doesn't know who he is, but isn't having his attitude, and dives in.
Ruby and Penny detect the resulting sounds of gunfire from some distance away.
Meanwhile, Weiss is psychoanalysing Ruby to Yang's face, declaring that Ruby shows off to get Yang's approval because Yang coddles her. Yang acknowledges that that's true and asks Weiss to start trying this friendship thing out. Further useful discussion is averted by police running past towards "another robbery", and of course Weiss and Yang follow. No prizes for guessing which one it is.
Cut back to Torchwick on a tiltjet as it flees for its life. For the purposes of Comedy™, we only see the aftermath of Penny happening to the robbery. Yeah, girls' night! Then she dramatically jetboots her way back to Ruby, Blake, and Sun, who were waiting on the periphery, and comedically declares "Mission complete!".
The credits start even as Weiss and Yang arrive at the scene of the crime. Ruby spills everything to Weiss, who isn't interested, but the rearranging of dialogue means that this is the first time that anybody tells Yang that Blake has "cat ears" so we get a quick background funny out of that.
Weiss, having had twelve hours to reflect on the matter, chooses not to care about Blake's former affiliation[s] in favour of insisting that Blake talk to her team next time a problem comes up, "instead of someone else" (Sun shrugs). The gravity of the moment is damaged by the credits music. Ruby declares the team back together and then, offscreen but very audible, goes for the cat ears, because V1 Ruby, I guess. They cut the tuna line, so they had to work something in.
Back in the dorm room, Weiss clarifies to anybody listening, mostly Yang who accused her otherwise earlier, that she was sincere about the bunk beds. (That line wasn't foreshadowing siblings, so instead it got to be picked back up later this Chapter when Weiss and Yang were hashing things out.)
And then the credits music fades right the h*ck out as Nightmare Weiss makes herself audible. Red alert, red alert, all hands to battle stations.
That's a big Nightmare. I feared this, and I was right to.
I should have paid a little more attention to the post-credits art. C1 had I think Ruby trying to pose with Crescent Rose and look awesome, C2 was Team RWBY being silly together, C3 now depicts Shion.
At some point - it's already blurring together a bit - Weiss was shown behind Ruby going "hm" in exactly the same way that Pyrrha did to Jaune to prompt me to call Arkos shipping. So either I'm wrong, or I'm not.
Next time: Fiscal irresponsibility.
Ruby continues to be excited about the next order of business: classes. Weiss doesn't say anything about the time, she just calls Ruby "excitable". They're cutting half the
On closer inspection of the titles, each character has their emblem displayed in it somewhere in the main chunk - Teams RWBY and JNPR; Ozpin and Goodwitch; even Shion, assuming that's their emblem. All of JNPR's combat scenes come from the Death Stalker battle last Chapter, and all of RWBY's from bits of C1. Then Shion gets a combat scene, provenance still unknown.
Anyway, the Weiss imagery scene. Weiss kneels in the courtyard, straight out of C1. The black vines develop at bottom of screen, which is totally not going to be trouble later (/s). After a moment, a superimposed shot of a windowsill with two white knight chess pieces on it.
Ice Queendom C3 A Nightmare Comes
Easy mode.Remember Professor Port? Here he is, in his natural habitat. The posters of Grimm types behind him on the back wall are so absolutely huge that I've no idea how anybody hung them. Anime scale problems.
Ruby has fallen asleep at her desk as Port drones on. If you turn your head (or the video) upside-down when Weiss' notes are shown, they're perfectly legible and go into greater detail than Port's lecture did, including already having written down (and expanded upon) the sentence he's only just finishing. This shows us that Weiss is academically-minded. The effect is marred by Weiss dragging her pencil across half the blank page as she realises that Ruby's asleep.
We finally get half an explanation for nobody noticing the cage full of Boarbatusk - Port had it hidden behind a curtain. If the Grimm was marginally smart enough to reckon it could get an ambush in if it kept quiet, that would complete the explanation. Also, Port has also had a subjectively bad time moving to this art style. Perhaps it's just the standard male face drawing style that I have trouble with.
Yang lampshades by wondering how Port even captured the Boarbatusk (that's my favourite hypocritical joke in Grimm Eclipse), then she and Blake are taken aback by the enthusiasm with which Weiss volunteers to fight it. Ruby wakes up and realises she missed something.
Cut to Weiss ready for combat. The time required to change into her combat outfit is still not explained. Ruby still shouts helpful advice and Weiss still brushes it off but actually follows it. The Boarbatusk, animated Eastern-style, looks the absolute weirdest mix of terrifying and goofy. Also Weiss' combat scene in the titles might actually be from here instead of C1. In total, Weiss comes off a lot better here than in V01C10. ...I take that back, Ruby tried to congratulate her and she just growled back.
Weiss enters a courtyard at Beacon, and stops in her tracks because on the other side of it is ...herself??? Team RBY are thereby able to appear on a nearby walkway. Weiss turns to wordlessly acknowledge Ruby talking, giving herself??? the opportunity to disappear while nobody's looking at them. I do hope it's not a Weeping Angel, but I'm told those would be more immediately violent.
Anyway, Ruby and Weiss argue over team leadership, in a sunlit courtyard instead of a darkened corridor. Ruby leaves. Yang moves to intervene, but Blake advises against it, saying that Yang propping Ruby up would undermine her in Weiss' eyes and thereby solve nothing. Yang makes the cutest just-ate-a-lemon face in response to this.
Weiss proceeds further out, monologuing about how she deserves to be team leader. Ruby attempts to follow, but the detour necessary to get off the walkway has meant she's completely lost track of Weiss. Clearly Beacon's faculty must have put the fear of the gods into her about Semblance usage on campus, or else she would have Semblanced her way down from the walkway and not lost any time.
Ruby has also decided that she (Ruby)'s not fit for team leadership, which is just as heartbreaking every time it happens. Fortunately, here's Ozpin to tell her otherwise. Meanwhile, Weiss finds Port.
Now back to Ozpin, who still kinda sucks at leadership pep talks. It's because he's burned out on leadership after thousands of years.
Now back to Port, who puts the exact same burn on a well-deserving Weiss. 🔥
Now to a breakneck timeskip into combat class, where Cardin (he does exist!) is definitely winning an official spar with Jaune. Most of the fighting happens off-camera, presumably for animation cost reasons; we mostly see Teams RW and NPR reacting to it. Ruby and Weiss have evidently smoothed things out again, a little.
Cardin is once more prevented from getting a real good hit in by Professor Goodwitch calling an end to the spar, but with less audible buzzer this time. Goodwitch starts on her post-spar analysis. Meanwhile, we get a good look at the developing vine-pattern scar-thing at the back of Jaune's neck. Oh. Oh dear.
That night, Jaune and Pyrrha are practicing on the roof. This is where the writers have moved Pyrrha's speech about what Aura is and why Grimm don't have it, regardless of how little sense it makes to have it this much later in the timeline. It rather reminds me of the time in V2 where Ruby explains Yang's Semblance to Blake, because Sun and Neptune were meant to be in that scene but Monty zoomed and forgot to animate them in. Also we're rapidly ticking boxes on the 'where did this bit of the titles come from' checklist.
Pyrrha draws out Jaune's Aura. He seems unfamiliar with it. Is this a flashback? It must be, we get another zoom on the back of his neck and there's less trouble there, until it grows. So how did he survive initiation?
Uh oh, Weiss is eavesdropping on them. ...It's not a disaster, yet(?), she's taking the opportunity to internalise being a good teammate as a path to high marks, instead of anything short-sighted like reporting him. Not that she could possibly have any idea how short-sighted that would be, but still.
Here are those chess pieces on a windowsill! On second thought, I don't like what that seems to be building to. Anyway, it is Team RWBY's windowsill. This is the part where Ruby fell asleep studying in her bed, making everything since Goodwitch one big flashback. Maybe. Maybe I misread how much vine Jaune had on his neck then and this is all later on. That would be adapting scenes badly out of order without telling anybody, which would be awkward, but the alternative is this giant flashback that's barely any less awkward.
The curtain of the dorm room window is white. In the main show, it was red. This is probably some deep thematic thing about who the respective shows are obliquely named after.
Weiss has decided to prop up Ruby's leadership, partly so she can look good when the dust settles. The size of that part will change. "I always wanted bunk beds." she says, which doesn't have to foreshadow her siblings this time because we already know about them. She settles down to rest with the rest of the team, not noticing the developing vine-scarring on the back of her neck. That's gotten so much camera time, both here and in the titles, that it's got to matter somehow.
Meanwhile in Team JNPR's room, complete with privacy screen of sorts between JR's beds and NP's beds, Jaune is still marvelling at the fact that he could one day have a Semblance. That hurts. What hurts even more is when some kind of floating shadowy doppelgänger appears behind him and starts berating him on all the things he already doubts about himself. Wait, Weiss saw a shadowy doppelgänger in the courtyard. Are they related to the vines? How? What's going on? Jaune's case visibly advanced after Pyrrha exercised his Aura, does using Aura accelerate whatever this is?
Oh no oh no oh no, here are the real vines.
Cut to the next morning, whereupon Ren is unable to awaken Jaune. The alarm bells in my head are getting louder. Ren concludes "he must be tired from training", and tries to bodily haul him out of bed. They abandon the effort and stare in shock: Jaune's entire back is envined, and the score is treating this as seriously as they are and I am. Also Jaune is in pain in his sleep.
Cut to later, when Team RWBY, not to mention Ozpin, have also crowded into Team JNPR's dorm room. Next to join the party is Goodwitch, who has brought Shion. Shion appears to be the subject matter expert in whatever the h*ck is going on. "It's here," they declare, "we need to start now.".
I see we've diverged from RWBY V1 now.
In a nameless hall somewhere, Jaune has been laid out on the floor (that doesn't look comfortable) as the other ten convene. I'm guessing this big case contains all of Shion's specialised anti-Aura-vine equipment. Also check off the provenance of their (Shion's) combat-looking scene in the titles.
In narration as Shion does their work (which is where the animation budget went), they introduce themselves as a "nightmare Hunter". Weiss asks what a nightmare ("Nightmare"?) is. "A type of Grimm," Shion answers, "that possesses humans and grows by draining their Aura.". Well, h*ck, that confirms that.
Nightmare Grimm, continues Shion as she wraps Jaune in glowing purple medical bondage filament, nest and breed in the host's dreams (into which the host is locked), and have to be fought and driven out from there, specifically by their "closest friends":
Team NPR absolutely are. Shion produces improvised voodoo dolls of Team JNPR from somewhere, lays down the four humans on a bed of no-longer-glowing filament (some of which is used as blindfolds and medical monitors), and suspends the dolls above their heads.
The score, which has been getting steadily more 'stuff is happening now' over the course of this scene, crescendos as the camera plunges into and through Jaune's filament-blindfold to the symbolic black void beneath...
Here's Jaune, stuck in a nightmare. Animate combat equipment shouts at him about his family's history of being warriors that he's letting down, or so they claim. In this closer shot we can see they all have obvious Pumpkin Pete stylings.
The laughing malevolent equipment fades out. Jaune, who from this side-on shot is small and bunny-like, insists he's capable. The Nightmare Grimm watches from a high vantage point nearby. Jaune pleads for Saphron to help him, but instead only gets five different copies of the Nightmare Grimm, and the statue atop which it sits, bearing down on him.
Suddenly, Pyrrha! And Nora and Ren too, but Pyrrha spoke first. And now, the halfway ad break.
A telephone rings. The console visible next to it is labelled "Nightmare" and what I think is Shion's emblem, so we probably haven't cut too far away. Yep, this is part of Shion's kit, deployed in the hall near the spiderweb of purple filament that holds Team JNPR.
I'm guessing that was a message from Team NPR, and that the message was along the lines of 'yes'. Yep, Shion tells Ozpin as much. Ozpin is impressed at how long this didn't take, to which Shion says:
Something tells me that it's going to be a lot rockier once Team RWBY are strung up in purple filament trying to save Weiss before she bursts into a mess of Nightmares. C'mon, you know it's going to happen, this is Chapter 3 of 12.
Pyrrha doesn't have any of this context. Instead, she's living her best life, wiping the floor with possessed statues and Nightmare tendrils inside Jaune's dreamscape.
The Nightmare withdraws from Jaune's suddenly-fortified soul and attempts to physically flee the scene. This is what Shion was waiting for. They catch it: first with their weapon, a dreamcatcher, because of course it is; then in a large holding jar, telling it "it's your turn to be a captive". (The dreamcatcher is the source of all glowing purple filament.)
Apparently Nightmares stuck in holding jars revert to some kind of dormant state. Maybe we'll get more details of that later. Maybe we won't. Who knows? Not me yet.
Welp, here's more details! When Blake asks what that means, Goodwitch elaborates: Most Grimm look like "beasts", but some don't.
Okay, apparently that's all the details we get. I'm a bit disappointed. On the plus side, the Nightmare has gone dormant, Ruby watching its hateful glow going out.
Shion withdraws the bed of filaments. Jaune bolts awake, panicking about oversleeping - which is technically correct, but somebody tell him he's just been through a medical challenge and can therefore be excused. He's a bit confused as his team all have a chuckle from behind him.
(Jaune has been shirtless for this entire mess, ever since it was required for us to see the Nightmare tendril pattern all over his back. I have Concerns™ about how Weiss' status will be communicated to us.)
Teams RWBY and JNPR bond over Jaune's bad morning as Shion and Goodwitch exposit that Jaune has underdeveloped Aura, no Semblance yet, and friends willing to dive into his dreams. Which would be very reassuring if this was a 3-Chapter series and nobody else had a Nightmare gestating in their dreamscape, but maybe half of one of those 5 things applies to Weiss, so the writers are just foreshadowing a greater crisis. It's going to be quite the year at Beacon Academy.
Shion, in between describing the perfect conditions for Nightmare growth and also Weiss, does know that more Nightmares are about. However, they can't locate them any more specifically than 'were in the Emerald Forest', so the best anyone can do is a public awareness campaign.
At a Team RWBY meeting, Yang suggests doing as Shion recommended. "You must be joking," says Weiss, "I would never let a Grimm possess me like that." I could list everything wrong with that sentence, but this post would double in length. Ruby and Blake brush it off as unlikely anyway (internal screaming), Yang makes a joke that nobody gets and I think I might not want to, and then Weiss brings up the Vytal Festival which is already gearing up.
In Vale the next day, it is indeed. I see the entire Jaunedice arc has been ruthlessly cut. {{I'm told this is common to every retelling of the events of V1.}}
For the sake of narrative economy, the latest Dust shop to be robbed is another From Dust Till Dawn storefront. Shopkeeper really does run everything in this town. Anyway, welcome to V01C15, same as ever except adapted with unwieldy translated-and-back dialogue.
Check off another one on the 'where did this bit of the titles come from' checklist, and here's Sun, complete with "great stowaway" quip and lovingly animated slow-mo wink at Blake on the way by, all extremely true to the original Chapter. Yang calls him a "weirdo" somewhere in there, which is not.
The adaptation of the dialogue has not been kind to Weiss (or Sun, or Blake) here. Rather than any pretence of "observing the competition", because Yang didn't bring that up, Weiss just comes right out and accuses Sun of running off to "commit more crimes". Blake's momentary hesitance to follow the rest of her team in hot pursuit makes a lot more sense.
Exit Sun, pursued by a couple of sailors whom I don't think stuck around this long in the original Chapter (checks solid maybe). Enter Penny by collision with Weiss. Penny here does not have to be prompted to get up off the road, she just takes the opportunity to do a half-front-flip on the way up, because she can and this is anime. Ruby immediately calls her "brand new friend", which rather diminishes the effect of the original scene's 'there but for the grace of Ruby's careless word choice went this ship' aura. It's still there, but not as much.
Later, after making their excuses to Penny, Yang advocates giving up the search for Sun, whose name they don't even know. Weiss insists on continuing, in exactly the terms to raise Blake's hackles. The adaptation really has not been kind to her dialogue. Now Blake retaliates and the argument's really on.
There is no mid-argument cut to night in the Team RWBY dorm room; instead everything happens in daylight on a street in Vale. The metaphorical-record-needle-scratch moment isn't quite the same without the eight seconds of excruciating silence that followed it. I'm not sure if Ruby missed the revelation, or chose to ignore it in service of trying to get Blake to stick around to mend things. Probably the latter. Probably.
Cut to Blake on a rooftop somewhere, bow loose in her hand. Sun still finds her and says "I knew you'd look better without the bow.".
Cut to Team RWY reconvening in some plaza. Weiss is quite unsympathetic to continuing to search for Blake. Ruby makes an excuse and leaves, which gives Yang the opening to inform Weiss in no uncertain terms:
Weiss starts acknowledging that, then protests about the White Fang. Yang tells her to drop it. They split up. Always a bad idea. Nightmare Weiss lurks, watching, around a different corner to drive that lesson home to us.
We advance to V01C16 as Blake and Sun have their White Fang exposition tea date, now with 100% less animatic.
Sun, after recovering from listening mode, asks if she's perhaps mentioned any of this to her friends. Blake doesn't answer intelligibly. They then plan to stake out the big Dust shipment tonight.
Meanwhile, Ruby is once again in a troubled near-fetal position, this time somewhere else at the docks. (The traffic/pedestrian lights out here are way less fancy than they are deeper into Vale as seen in C1.) Penny teleports next to her with absolutely no explanation given. It's actually great.
Penny explains, patiently as only Penny can, that she saw Blake without her bow (another divergence from V01C16). Ruby asks where, hoping for a lead.
Meanwhile, Weiss and Yang evidently did not split up after all (checks no, plausibly Yang could have signalled Weiss to follow and Weiss done so), and Yang is still trying to change Weiss' mind away from 'all faunus are terrorists'. Yang tries to lever open a different crack in Weiss' psyche by accusing her of faking supporting Ruby as leader, which is actually true but I don't think Yang knows that. It works: Weiss starts trauma-dumping about her team composition and then starts crying. How will Yang handle this? And how much progress has the Nightmare inside her (Weiss) just made?
Yang handles this by asking the camera to give her (Yang) a break. Sympathy will take more character development from Weiss.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a shipping container. (Well, actually it's golden hour before sunset, but that ruins the joke.)
Blake and Sun, who have so far escaped ingestion, watch over the docks for signs of the White Fang coming to steal the containers or the contents thereof. Some soon arrive by tiltjet, complete with Torchwick. Blake doesn't know who he is, but isn't having his attitude, and dives in.
Ruby and Penny detect the resulting sounds of gunfire from some distance away.
Meanwhile, Weiss is psychoanalysing Ruby to Yang's face, declaring that Ruby shows off to get Yang's approval because Yang coddles her. Yang acknowledges that that's true and asks Weiss to start trying this friendship thing out. Further useful discussion is averted by police running past towards "another robbery", and of course Weiss and Yang follow. No prizes for guessing which one it is.
Cut back to Torchwick on a tiltjet as it flees for its life. For the purposes of Comedy™, we only see the aftermath of Penny happening to the robbery. Yeah, girls' night! Then she dramatically jetboots her way back to Ruby, Blake, and Sun, who were waiting on the periphery, and comedically declares "Mission complete!".
The credits start even as Weiss and Yang arrive at the scene of the crime. Ruby spills everything to Weiss, who isn't interested, but the rearranging of dialogue means that this is the first time that anybody tells Yang that Blake has "cat ears" so we get a quick background funny out of that.
Weiss, having had twelve hours to reflect on the matter, chooses not to care about Blake's former affiliation[s] in favour of insisting that Blake talk to her team next time a problem comes up, "instead of someone else" (Sun shrugs). The gravity of the moment is damaged by the credits music. Ruby declares the team back together and then, offscreen but very audible, goes for the cat ears, because V1 Ruby, I guess. They cut the tuna line, so they had to work something in.
Back in the dorm room, Weiss clarifies to anybody listening, mostly Yang who accused her otherwise earlier, that she was sincere about the bunk beds. (That line wasn't foreshadowing siblings, so instead it got to be picked back up later this Chapter when Weiss and Yang were hashing things out.)
And then the credits music fades right the h*ck out as Nightmare Weiss makes herself audible. Red alert, red alert, all hands to battle stations.
That's a big Nightmare. I feared this, and I was right to.
I should have paid a little more attention to the post-credits art. C1 had I think Ruby trying to pose with Crescent Rose and look awesome, C2 was Team RWBY being silly together, C3 now depicts Shion.
At some point - it's already blurring together a bit - Weiss was shown behind Ruby going "hm" in exactly the same way that Pyrrha did to Jaune to prompt me to call Arkos shipping. So either I'm wrong, or I'm not.
Next time: Fiscal irresponsibility.
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