- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
They're super dead, and I can only hope that before the Grimm got them, I hope they realized they brought it on themselves.
IWIW RWBY
- Thread starter michaelb958
- Start date
- SPOILERS
They're super dead, and I can only hope that before the Grimm got them, I hope they realized they brought it on themselves.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Fair enough.
Well, as long as we're getting into the nitty gritty, while the ceiling clearance in the tunnel is abnormally high, those train cars look to be basically around normal freight train car size to me. Maybe not exactly standard size for our world, but not really different. They're too small to fit paladins in, they had to put those on a flat car. I'm not a train expert or anything but I have taken a few trips on passenger trains and I've watched freight trains go by. Trains are big. I'm assuming the White Fang fixed up an abandoned one left behind in the city rather than making their own.
The ceilings are really weird, though. Not only is there a huge degree of clearance, it periodically shrinks to much smaller, which means the extra space isn't even good for transporting tall things, because they wouldn't fit through the narrow parts.
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- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
CRWBY wasn't really that good with area consistency at this point. That really came later. This strikes me as a 'big as the action shots need' scenario.
In a world of Grimm, OSHA requires tunnel clearance sufficient to have cool fights on top of trains, just in case.
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
It doesn't match my experience, which are all much smaller trains. But now that I actually reflect on it, every train I've ever had experience with - freight or not - has been suburban or suburban-compatible, so it's quite likely that there are bigger beasties in distant countrysides I've never seen.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Ah, well, Freight trains are pretty big.
Distant:
Admittedly the tracks are raised slightly here, so that adds a little to the impression of height.
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michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Yep, those are bigger than any I've met. City life (shrugs).Ah, well, Freight trains are pretty big.
Distant:
Upclose:
Admittedly the tracks are raised slightly here, so that adds a little to the impression of height.
V02C12 Breach
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
V02C12 Breach
It's weird to think I won't be hearing the title song again, which is definitely a feeling that snuck up on me (and I really should have been expecting it given, y'know, the song).
Also, I remembered to turn the subtitles on for it (they turn themselves off every change of video). They hyphenate the stretched-out words ("♪ a-a-ny m-o-ore ♪"). Adorable.
Anyway, Jaune is awoken by receiving a phone call from Ruby that amounts to three seconds of nothing followed by three seconds of ear-splitting I-think-it's-static. He's still slightly rattled in the morning proper as Team JNPR head out to their VTOL for their mission. (The thought of Nora as a deputy fills me with trepidation.) Pyrrha gears up to convince him not to trust his gut (remember last time, when it led them both into a Death Stalker's cave?) when, right on cue, the air-raid siren starts and they notice the column of smoke. That phone call must have been Ruby's attempt to call for backup. Jaune alters the mission.
Meanwhile, Team CEM are caught by surprise for a different reason: nobody told them the planned Festivities™ were starting early.
Meanwhile, large quantities of Beowolves and a King Tajitu have Team RWBY surrounded. The King Tajitu roars again, which is apparently the signal for the Beowolves to attack. Fight scene!
- I question both the practicality and the awesomeness of that trick Ruby just pulled. Come on, she's not even using the sharp bit!
- Yang launches herself a ridiculous distance into the air to strafe some Beowolves. This opens her up to interception by three Nevermores coming from her six-o'clock. Apparently airborne fighting is like sex: doing it without a partner risks blindness. (That is a joke. Masturbation does not cause blindness. If you suddenly go blind at any time, you should see a doctor. Well, not see, but you know what I mean.)
- Blake does boring-but-practical.
- So does Weiss, but with a glyph or two.
- Yang throws a car at some Beowolves. These people just think of cars as ready-made projectiles, don't they.
- Ruby finishes cutting through the Beowolves in her area in a much more practical fashion, bringing her face-to-face with the King Tajitu. Both of them pause to intimidate each other, then pause the intimidation to wonder what the h*ck that is.
- That is airborne Nora. Enough said.
Apparently Jaune is the slowest one on his team. My evidence is that the others all blur into combat, and not only does he not, he seems exasperated at being left behind, in the sort of way that implies it's nowhere near the first time. "Okay, who's first?" he asks the Grimm rhetorically, which draws aggro from the Ursa he just walked past like a blinkered idiot. Being Jaune is suffering.
The others have a much better time of it. Pyrrha then has space to observe Jaune trying to back off from the Ursa. Come on Jaune, we've seen this film already! Jaune does eventually have the same realisation and slash it apart. It seems utterly unaffected for several seconds before its brain realises it's dead. Pyrrha seems proud, and rightly so - she didn't even need to help this time.
Cue Sun and Neptune. Guys, I don't think the Grimm care about your junior detective badges.
And now here's the Atlas military to save the day. Maybe. They seem to be making an extended dramatic entrance in their big aircraft, which is actually huge in a way that wasn't apparent previously.
Oh no, Sun dropped his badge.
Ruby is so engrossed by the dramatic entrance of the increasingly large-seeming air force that an Ursa would have had the jump on her if not for an aircraft strafing it down literally bullet diameters away from her. I would not want to be the gunner who tried that and missed ally-ward - can you say 'diplomatic incident'?
As a parting gift, the air force drops off a bunch of robot troopers, which prove effective against most of the Grimm (Boarbatusks, less so).
A Grimm corpse slides to a stop at the feet of Team CEM. Cinder orders her lackeys into combat (at which they are effective) and sulks off, possibly to avoid blowing her cover. Hang on, how has she made it through the inevitable sparring classes without blowing her cover?
Suddenly, big mech! And also Zwei, who is surprisingly effective against Grimm.
Suddenly, VTOL with, let's see, given the presence of Velvet that must be Team Coffee, and Professor Port in the back. Well don't just stand there looking dramatic, do something!
And here come the lyrics!
These lyrics make perfect sense to us, but likely little sense to them. For example, the word "interstate", used here to mean 'major road', actually means "[a] freeway that is part of the Interstate Highway System", that being so named because it established standardised road transport links between ("inter-") the US states. No such infrastructure project is likely to have been practical on Remnant - by the time the technology existed to not just build such roads but protect their construction and use against the Grimm that must be all over the place outside the kingdoms, air travel would provide a safer alternative, with honestly similar capital costs, and the ability to ignore non-flying Grimm and either evade fliers or fight them on better terms. And if they did build such roads, they'd call them interkingdoms. Don't even get me started on the proper nouns.
Holy cow, that's a big sword. And it makes a big crater.
Velvet and the guy in red fight in a much less ...destructive fashion.
Ah, that's why they picked this song.
Well, I've seen Grimm slump over dead, I've seen them get cut apart, but I've never seen them just pop like a balloon without leaving a trace like that Ursa just did. Clearly Fox (the guy in red) killed it much more thoroughly than was initially apparent.
Now there's a young woman not to mess with.
That must be quite the handbag.
Fashion Lass (yes, I know the subtitles tell us her name, but that's cheating) waves off Velvet from opening the case the latter is carrying - apparently whatever lurks within accumulates slowly - okay, that is quite the handbag. Because it's also a gun. A big gun. Holy cow, that's a big gun. The approaching Giant Nevermores fare just as poorly as anything on the ground did.
And now it is the turn of Professors Port and Oobleck to wreak havoc on Grimm.
And now it is the turn of Professor Goodwitch to be relegated to road repair crew. I swear she does everything. Except get any respect.
Roman Torchwick mouths off to his arresting officers. It's a good thing they're robots, or he might have regretted it. Mercury and Emerald, having dropped him off there, then wander over to be all smiles at Team RWBY and kick off the montage of teams basking in the quiet satisfaction of having saved the day.
Tilt up to the sunrise sky, fade to a less sunrise-y one, tilt back down to Team RWBYZ back at Beacon gazing
The subtitle setting is resetting itself to nil every time I seek backwards. Never again will I leave an episode half-played overnight - the player just can't handle it.
Yang and Ruby pour cold water on Weiss' hopes of extra credit - Yang because "a two-headed snake literally crushed a bakery", Ruby more broadly focused on the injuries and unanswered questions. "Not every story has a neat and tidy ending," says Weiss. {{Which hits a bit different now that it looks increasingly uncertain whether Volume 10 is going to be a thing.}} Blake prefers to focus on their accomplishments, like the lives saved and the arrests.
Weiss reckons they don't need any further training for the tournament, and they all agree it's bedtime. Have we just skipped from late sunrise to early sunset? That would explain why the camera faded from sunrise colours to a broad daylight shot in front of Team RWBY and then revealed
Meanwhile, Ozpin plays politics, or more accurately has politics played on him. The council of dark silhouettes (how nostalgic) has brought in General Ironwood as head of security for said tournament, and will be considering Ozpin's position as headmaster after said tournament. Ozpin seems unflapped; after the council hangs up, Ironwood reveals he's monopolising the desperation to be trusted before hanging up too. Or perhaps desperation isn't the right word, for we then cut to Ironwood on one of his huge planes saying "You brought this on yourself."
Ironwood then goes to a prison cell and dismisses the guards so Torchwick, occupying that cell, can mouth off to him. Torchwick, who looks a bit weird without his hat, appears to have so terribly mishandled his imprisonment that he's now stuck in flying Guantanamo Bay. Except he's laughing evilly about it, so maybe that's his plan? But what kind of plan starts with "get tossed into flying Guantanamo Bay indefinitely under the personal scrutiny of the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces"?
Meanwhile, Team CEM lurks on a rooftop near the park and is skeptical of Cinder declaring overall success. Mercury, in particular, is concerned that the White Fang won't listen to them any more after the losses they (the White Fang) just took. Edgy McEdgelord I - yep, it's Adam - wanders in and agrees they (still the White Fang) won't - they'll listen to him instead.
There's three minutes left, which is about enough time for the long credits.
Welp, the music's gone real concerning real fast.
This Volume's character we're not going to meet until the post-credits scene is credited as Raven Branwen.
The same Mysterious Narrator remains credited as part of World of Remnant, which I must get around to watching.
Jaune's cringeworthy guitaring gets its own credit.
Somebody with more time on their hands has doubtless gone through these and counted how many hats everybody wears. As just one example, I think I recognise Weiss' VA doing subtitling.
I didn't think the music could get more concerning, but it has!
Okay, forty seconds for post-credits. Yang walks through a dreamscape that turns out to be Beacon, meeting Edgy McEdgelord II standing in front of the fountain.
And that is it. Not even any art.
Next time: Uh oh.
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Take note of just how many robot troopers it takes to gun down a single grimm. And Ironwood thinks these are a replacement for Huntsmen?
Stylish AND Deadly!
And then he wonders why no one trusts him
Dream sequence that will have no tie to later plots. Monty added it at the last second. Again.
And It's worth noting that this was the last ep that Monty worked on. While there are fragments of his work through Volume 3, he passed away in the time between these volumes, leading to a delay as they restructured into a proper production, as opposed to the shoestring budget and workaholic animating in Poser that was the first two volumes.
LordDarthYoda
#1 Jenova's Witness
- Location
- The Bottomless Pit
Yeah Monty was the only one who apparently knew where he wanted that post credits to go and unfortunately never got the chance to explain. So they retconned it to being a dream.
- Pronouns
- He
If they're too young to drive them, what else are they good for?
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Ruby's actually the only one that's too young to drive. As seen by Yang owning a motorcycle.
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
We can't be certain that the driving age is the same for both kinds of vehicle.
Fic Recs: Nothing Bad Ever Happened Yet
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
{{Good morning ± 12 hours! I brought some fanfics to recommend to you all, if you haven't already read them.
My criteria are few, but stringent: The fic must be either complete or cancelled (in the latter case it has an even higher quality bar to cross), and it must not introduce or rely on any concepts from later Volumes than we've already covered here. Either of these is pretty rare; both, rarer still. Fortunately I found a few anyway.
My criteria are few, but stringent: The fic must be either complete or cancelled (in the latter case it has an even higher quality bar to cross), and it must not introduce or rely on any concepts from later Volumes than we've already covered here. Either of these is pretty rare; both, rarer still. Fortunately I found a few anyway.
- Grimmspawn (xT-Zealot): From Volume 1 where it wasn't confirmed that Blake was a faunus but everyone strongly suspected it, this fic gives us an alternate take on the reveal, with more racial epithets (see title), more self-loathing, and more hugs.
- Faun-Filled Pranks (xT-Zealot): After the dust settled from the canon reveal, well, the title about says it all. This did the laser pointer trick first, which was half of why I was so taken aback when canon did it.
- Impromptu Midterms (PitViperOfDoom): A very slightly newer fandom classic, featuring Teams RWBY, JNPR, and technically CRDL sweeping the Emerald Forest again. Being Jaune continues to be suffering.
- Stories In the Sky (BryonNightshade): It's hard to find anything much newer that meets my criteria and isn't a shipfic, but I found one. Wherein Team RWBY stargazes while they go camping, and Ruby is betrayed.
- One Tea Pairing (StVincent): For those of you prone to shipping Bumblebee. Pre-relationship Blake and Yang bond over tea. No, I do not count any shipping as a concept from a later Volume, we all know the fandom was doing it from day dot.
- Grape Soda (ChrisRainicorn): Should you instead be an Arkos shipper, here's the story of how Sun and Neptune might have got those two dorks to do something.
- Home (WobblyJellyfish): And if Arkos isn't enough JNPR ship for you and you'd rather Juniper Berries, I present to you Pyrrha regretting being temporarily leaving Team JNR behind when she's called back to a social function in Mistral. Don't worry, they're all okay.
V03C01 Round One
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
{{Volume 3, where everything bad starts happening. The first one is out-of-universe.}} Late in the volume hiatus, series creator Monty Oum (who also wore hats including director, co-writer, modeller, lead animator, and Ren's voice actor) abruptly died of a severe allergic reaction during a "routine" medical procedure. Allergies are no joke: For the bulk of my childhood I was deathly allergic to several dairy proteins, and I'm told it was quite a time convincing people that no, that seemingly innocuous thing would actually put me in hospital, at best. Anyway, if several things (including Ren's voice) change abruptly, that's why. And when I said
The sun is rising, the grass is rustling, and Ruby again stands at Summer's cenotaph (now proven by writing thereon) emitting rose petals. We are now privy to the unspeakable intimacy of a conversation with a loved one's resting place.
"Haven't gotten kicked out of Beacon yet! So that's cool." Oh Ruby.
It must really have been a while since Ruby visited if she hasn't mentioned Weiss or Blake before.
The Ruby/Team RWBY confusion is real.
"Oh! We've also stopped some bad guys too!" So your record is now, what, one from four?
Ruby reflects that Ozpin sounds increasingly like Qrow. Given that we know that Qrow apparently sends Ozpin coded messages at odd hours, I'm not too surprised.
{{Ah, there's Dad.jpg.}}
Tilt back up to the sun, where a subtitle says
And wipe through rose petal (just one) to a massive floating stadium. I'm not game to estimate its seating capacity, but it has to have sold out. Currently, the arena floor is half volcanic biome, half ice biome, and entirely Team RWBY's playground. Unfortunately somebody let Professors Port and Oobleck into the commentary box. ...They have the budget to make this thing fly, but not even for a second microphone, let alone professional commentators?
Yep, it's that tournament the show's spent a Volume and a half building up.
Does this stadium have guardrails on the outside that can't be seen very well from this camera position, or is it just even more of a safety hazard than it initially appeared?
Port and Oobleck explain the tournament structure for the benefit of the audience (the us audience - no respectable commentary would cut from the ongoing action to tell people what they already knew - but then again, this isn't respectable commentary, this is at best highly vulnerable to accusations of partisanship). It looks like the kind of tournament structure that writers 'invent' when they need to have the characters in a tournament, which is to say it's pretty poor. I'll let Tanya von Degurechaff explain:
For some reason the broadcasters are showing the commentary-box feed instead of the ongoing battle - y'know, the entire point of this event, the things of which there are a strictly limited number. Even in venues with seven h*cking screens, five are these two guys, two are static graphics of somebody's logo that convey no information, and zero are the ongoing fight between Team RWBY and Team Auburn.
Finally we, at least, can see the fight again. Blake proceeds to demonstrate the safety hazards of somebody else's hoverboard.
Yang has met an opponent she can't outpunch, and is thrown onto the ice side of the arena where she can't stand either. Fortunately for her, a third member of Auburn cannot fully exploit this because Ruby shoots him with an instant-ice round.
And here come the lyrics!
??? proceeds to dodge the 2v1 and throw the hoverboarder a volcanic crystal, which she plugs into her hoverboard to make it glow red instead of green (that would be the king of "hoverboard" safety hazards IRL). She swings by the guy who was frozen in place to insta-melt him out, before going back after Blake, who is forced onto the back foot - or is she? Eventually Blake pulls a fast one with a mildly-persistent shadow clone showing its back near the arena edge to bait out an overcommitted hoverboard attack. The hoverboarder is thrown out of the ring instead. Measuring by displayed Aura level, Blake actually had the upper hand the entire time. Also, helmets save lives, you should wear one. Reader, that goes for you as well as Reese here.
Team ABRN (that seems the 'obvious' 'spelling' of Auburn with the available letters) are now outnumbered, but Weiss treats Bolin and Nadir like she's outnumbered and conservation of ninjutsu applies. Eventually she wraps them up in a big ice boulder and Arslan (punch-proof) has to break them out of it before they roll out of the ring. That probably would have been a good time to attack Arslan, jeopardising that and forcing a 4v1, but Team RWBY do their own fight choreography rather than listen to me. Instead, they use the time Team ABN are recovering to set up a combination attack that looks much better for the cameras that are hopefully watching them. It certainly looks pretty impressive when a ballistic Yang impact hurls all three of them back into the volcano biome to hit a hillside and all simultaneously drop below the Aura threshold.
For some reason, Weiss seems surprised that they won.
Outside, Ruby is starving. Blake admits she "may have worked up an appetite" before her stomach growls fit to rival an Ursa. Weiss sarcastically wonders where they could possibly get food as the camera pulls back to show us a section of fairgrounds. Ruby, as usual, misses the sarcasm. Yang has to break up the argument.
As they head for food, Weiss' father calls. She leaves him with the answering machine.
Suddenly, Emerald! Her idea of an excuse to make conversation is to pickpocket Ruby's wallet and offer it back as if she found it lying around. Ugh. Emerald proceeds to lay on the praise, which I might be less skeptical of if I didn't know she was an accomplice to murder and associate of Cinder.
Weiss muses that Emerald's teammates aren't with her much. Flashback to Team CEM's fight, where I suspect they had a fourth. Yep. Oh no, it's Neo.
Emerald attempts to get out of Ruby inviting the team for food by claiming that they're all really socially awkward (Mercury backs this up by sniffing the inside of a boot for sale). Somehow, this stops Ruby.
Weiss continues to undermine Ruby's leadership in front of outsiders. Anyway, Team RWBY decided to send Weiss and Yang to the next round.
Finally, Emerald makes her excuses.
Team RWBY are at a noodle place. It is the same noodle place (and shopkeeper) as ever.
The writers make a dietary requirements joke with Weiss asking about low-salt. You can imagine my opinion on dietary requirements jokes.
Blake gets the Fishy Noodles, of course.
Weiss pays for the noodles. {{The shipping chart has Shopkeeper/Weiss listed as "Card Declined", so I have a sudden horrible feeling. ...Yep. Should probably have answered that call, Weiss.}} Blake is despondent at the prospect of not getting the Fishy Noodles {{which, in not a coincidence at all, is how the shipping chart lists Blake/Shopkeeper}}.
Fortunately, Pyrrha.
Ren implies that Team JNPR are yet to fight, and questions the wisdom of going into it on full stomachs. Pyrrha continues to be a lethal cinnamon roll. Seriously, the words "It will give us energy" have never before triggered my cuteness reflex.
Jaune has eaten too much. I'm with Ren on this one: Nora, that's disgusting. Also Ren definitely sounds different.
When Ruby inquires about Team JNPR's combat readiness, Nora launches into what's basically that meme that lists the names and positive qualities of things and conspicuously leaves the latter off in one case. (I don't think that meme format was around in 2015, but I'm not sure, especially because I can't think of a single example to try and reverse-image-search my way to the KYM page.) In this case the thing with no redeeming qualities is Jaune, who says she's not wrong. Nora passes it off as "I'm kidding! He knows I'm kidding" before, well, continuing to be Nora, falling down the rabbit hole of catastrophisation (that is an actual word) to the point of actually greying herself out and then crying. Being Jaune (and Nora) is suffering. (Also apparently Ren and Nora are orphans.)
It is left to Ren and Pyrrha to try to salvage Team JNPR's morale. Pyrrha apparently relishes a tournament fight "as opposed to, well, murderers". Blake lists everything Team RWBY has been up against so far; Ruby misses the point a bit:
Team RWBY re-enter the stadium seating, shortly followed by Emerald and Mercury, who turn the other way; Yang gives them a look over her shoulder that I choose to interpret as distrustful. Cut to the first-class seating, where Cinder joins her longer-serving teammates. She displays great resource efficiency by extracting an unpopped kernel from Mercury's bucket of popcorn and using her Semblance to pop it. I will allow her this compliment despite her continuing aura of malice.
Teams JNPR and Bronze are assigned a half-forest half-mountain battlefield. Cut to black as the countdown ends and the fight begins.
I was thinking it was a bit early for the episode to end, but then I remembered that it's the first of the season so we're getting long titles.
(The YouTube upload appears to have slightly different sound editing and scene transitions.)
Next time: Could everybody stop arguing for a moment?
I was, in fact, making an absolutely dark joke. Sometimes I just can't stop myself.
V03C01 Round One
The sun is rising, the grass is rustling, and Ruby again stands at Summer's cenotaph (now proven by writing thereon) emitting rose petals. We are now privy to the unspeakable intimacy of a conversation with a loved one's resting place.
"Haven't gotten kicked out of Beacon yet! So that's cool." Oh Ruby.
It must really have been a while since Ruby visited if she hasn't mentioned Weiss or Blake before.
The Ruby/Team RWBY confusion is real.
"Oh! We've also stopped some bad guys too!" So your record is now, what, one from four?
Ruby reflects that Ozpin sounds increasingly like Qrow. Given that we know that Qrow apparently sends Ozpin coded messages at odd hours, I'm not too surprised.
{{Ah, there's Dad.jpg.}}
Tilt back up to the sun, where a subtitle says
And wipe through rose petal (just one) to a massive floating stadium. I'm not game to estimate its seating capacity, but it has to have sold out. Currently, the arena floor is half volcanic biome, half ice biome, and entirely Team RWBY's playground. Unfortunately somebody let Professors Port and Oobleck into the commentary box. ...They have the budget to make this thing fly, but not even for a second microphone, let alone professional commentators?
Yep, it's that tournament the show's spent a Volume and a half building up.
Does this stadium have guardrails on the outside that can't be seen very well from this camera position, or is it just even more of a safety hazard than it initially appeared?
Port and Oobleck explain the tournament structure for the benefit of the audience (the us audience - no respectable commentary would cut from the ongoing action to tell people what they already knew - but then again, this isn't respectable commentary, this is at best highly vulnerable to accusations of partisanship). It looks like the kind of tournament structure that writers 'invent' when they need to have the characters in a tournament, which is to say it's pretty poor. I'll let Tanya von Degurechaff explain:
Of course, this is not stopping anybody in-universe from watching, even if they themselves are also JPEG images.jacobk said:
For some reason the broadcasters are showing the commentary-box feed instead of the ongoing battle - y'know, the entire point of this event, the things of which there are a strictly limited number. Even in venues with seven h*cking screens, five are these two guys, two are static graphics of somebody's logo that convey no information, and zero are the ongoing fight between Team RWBY and Team Auburn.
Finally we, at least, can see the fight again. Blake proceeds to demonstrate the safety hazards of somebody else's hoverboard.
Yang has met an opponent she can't outpunch, and is thrown onto the ice side of the arena where she can't stand either. Fortunately for her, a third member of Auburn cannot fully exploit this because Ruby shoots him with an instant-ice round.
Weiss, we talked about this.
And here come the lyrics!
??? proceeds to dodge the 2v1 and throw the hoverboarder a volcanic crystal, which she plugs into her hoverboard to make it glow red instead of green (that would be the king of "hoverboard" safety hazards IRL). She swings by the guy who was frozen in place to insta-melt him out, before going back after Blake, who is forced onto the back foot - or is she? Eventually Blake pulls a fast one with a mildly-persistent shadow clone showing its back near the arena edge to bait out an overcommitted hoverboard attack. The hoverboarder is thrown out of the ring instead. Measuring by displayed Aura level, Blake actually had the upper hand the entire time. Also, helmets save lives, you should wear one. Reader, that goes for you as well as Reese here.
Team ABRN (that seems the 'obvious' 'spelling' of Auburn with the available letters) are now outnumbered, but Weiss treats Bolin and Nadir like she's outnumbered and conservation of ninjutsu applies. Eventually she wraps them up in a big ice boulder and Arslan (punch-proof) has to break them out of it before they roll out of the ring. That probably would have been a good time to attack Arslan, jeopardising that and forcing a 4v1, but Team RWBY do their own fight choreography rather than listen to me. Instead, they use the time Team ABN are recovering to set up a combination attack that looks much better for the cameras that are hopefully watching them. It certainly looks pretty impressive when a ballistic Yang impact hurls all three of them back into the volcano biome to hit a hillside and all simultaneously drop below the Aura threshold.
For some reason, Weiss seems surprised that they won.
Outside, Ruby is starving. Blake admits she "may have worked up an appetite" before her stomach growls fit to rival an Ursa. Weiss sarcastically wonders where they could possibly get food as the camera pulls back to show us a section of fairgrounds. Ruby, as usual, misses the sarcasm. Yang has to break up the argument.
As they head for food, Weiss' father calls. She leaves him with the answering machine.
Suddenly, Emerald! Her idea of an excuse to make conversation is to pickpocket Ruby's wallet and offer it back as if she found it lying around. Ugh. Emerald proceeds to lay on the praise, which I might be less skeptical of if I didn't know she was an accomplice to murder and associate of Cinder.
Weiss muses that Emerald's teammates aren't with her much. Flashback to Team CEM's fight, where I suspect they had a fourth. Yep. Oh no, it's Neo.
Emerald attempts to get out of Ruby inviting the team for food by claiming that they're all really socially awkward (Mercury backs this up by sniffing the inside of a boot for sale). Somehow, this stops Ruby.
Weiss continues to undermine Ruby's leadership in front of outsiders. Anyway, Team RWBY decided to send Weiss and Yang to the next round.
Finally, Emerald makes her excuses.
Also it turns out Emerald was fishing for information about who Team RWBY would be sending to the next round. I say again, ugh.
Team RWBY are at a noodle place. It is the same noodle place (and shopkeeper) as ever.
The writers make a dietary requirements joke with Weiss asking about low-salt. You can imagine my opinion on dietary requirements jokes.
Blake gets the Fishy Noodles, of course.
Weiss pays for the noodles. {{The shipping chart has Shopkeeper/Weiss listed as "Card Declined", so I have a sudden horrible feeling. ...Yep. Should probably have answered that call, Weiss.}} Blake is despondent at the prospect of not getting the Fishy Noodles {{which, in not a coincidence at all, is how the shipping chart lists Blake/Shopkeeper}}.
Fortunately, Pyrrha.
Ren implies that Team JNPR are yet to fight, and questions the wisdom of going into it on full stomachs. Pyrrha continues to be a lethal cinnamon roll. Seriously, the words "It will give us energy" have never before triggered my cuteness reflex.
Jaune has eaten too much. I'm with Ren on this one: Nora, that's disgusting. Also Ren definitely sounds different.
When Ruby inquires about Team JNPR's combat readiness, Nora launches into what's basically that meme that lists the names and positive qualities of things and conspicuously leaves the latter off in one case. (I don't think that meme format was around in 2015, but I'm not sure, especially because I can't think of a single example to try and reverse-image-search my way to the KYM page.) In this case the thing with no redeeming qualities is Jaune, who says she's not wrong. Nora passes it off as "I'm kidding! He knows I'm kidding" before, well, continuing to be Nora, falling down the rabbit hole of catastrophisation (that is an actual word) to the point of actually greying herself out and then crying. Being Jaune (and Nora) is suffering. (Also apparently Ren and Nora are orphans.)
It is left to Ren and Pyrrha to try to salvage Team JNPR's morale. Pyrrha apparently relishes a tournament fight "as opposed to, well, murderers". Blake lists everything Team RWBY has been up against so far; Ruby misses the point a bit:
It then emerges that Team JNPR were late to their fight even when this scene started, never mind now.
Team RWBY re-enter the stadium seating, shortly followed by Emerald and Mercury, who turn the other way; Yang gives them a look over her shoulder that I choose to interpret as distrustful. Cut to the first-class seating, where Cinder joins her longer-serving teammates. She displays great resource efficiency by extracting an unpopped kernel from Mercury's bucket of popcorn and using her Semblance to pop it. I will allow her this compliment despite her continuing aura of malice.
Teams JNPR and Bronze are assigned a half-forest half-mountain battlefield. Cut to black as the countdown ends and the fight begins.
I was thinking it was a bit early for the episode to end, but then I remembered that it's the first of the season so we're getting long titles.
(The YouTube upload appears to have slightly different sound editing and scene transitions.)
- Establishing shot of the shattered moon. Tilt down into a forest as a rose petal comes to rest atop a solitary rose. Suddenly, Grimm hurtle through and destroy it. Symbolism!
- Well, yikes, the music's even more ominous than last time.
- Teams RWBY, ...Sun's team, JNPR, and CEM (no Neo) standing on the blank arena floor. Cinder is even more menacing than usual.
- That is a lot of Grimm heading for Beacon.
- Ozpin and Goodwitch stand in the former's office. The big window initially has a pileup of Grimm on the other side, then dramatically shatters to reveal the Atlas air fleet. Ironwood has a lot of troops lined up behind him.
- Blake walks through a red forest and finds Adam and a lot of White Fang minions.
- Teams RWBY and JNPR lead Atlas' army into battle against all those Grimm.
- Duels! Yang v Mercury, Blake v Adam (replacing Torchwick), Weiss v Emerald, Ruby v Cinder.
- Weiss and someone with a family resemblance. Winter?
- Ruby, Yang, and someone who has a bone to pick with Winter(?). A group photo blows past: Summer, I think that's Taiyang, Raven, and the same someone..
- Return of the gears motif.
- RWBY and JNPR do a skydive. JNPR are ripped loose and go hurtling away. Ruby looks worried (wouldn't you?).
- RWBY sit on the floor in a heap of sadness. Did I mention how ominous the music is? Between the lyrics themselves, the minor chords, and the discordant droning vocals just now, it's ominous as all hell.
- At no point did it actually tell us the name of the show. Good thing we already know it.
Next time: Could everybody stop arguing for a moment?
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- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think this is honestly the weakest of all the openings of the show.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
I like to call them Team CMSN or "Crimson."
Yes it is canon that you can use last names instead of first, Team CRDL does it and so does at least one of the teams you haven't met yet.
Apparently this actually a real world way to check the quality of leather, though not the most popular one.
It doesn't really matter, because that particular joke predates the internet.
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This isn't my favourite opening song, but it is up there.
The birds actually make his signature for a moment.
It's his brother, which is the closest they could get.Also Ren definitely sounds different.
dragonx99
Actually Satan
This line continues to be a weird one, because Pyrrha's team hasn't, knowingly, fought any murderers. Unless you count the Grimm I suppose, but that feels like it'd be a weird thing for her to complain about considering the job she signed up for.
hellgodsrus
Actual Real Game Dev!
- Location
- Behind You
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I disagree extremely. For me both song and opening are easily in my top five, maybe my top three (song definitely is, opening it's a bit more of a tossup, some of the later openings are very good).
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Little continuity error there, I suppose, the writers must have forgotten JNPR wasn't present for any of the multiple White Fang fights or the line was meant to go to another character and accidentally got assigned to Pyrrha. Maybe it'd make more sense if Weiss said the line?
Details are arguably in a game that is set between volumes two and three.
engiSonic
Yesterday's Minder
- Location
- Deep below ground
Today I learned a new word.
...Wait, that's actually a really good point. New joke theory: some bureaucratic quirk means camera work falls under the jurisdiction of the head of security, so when Ironwood was appointed at the end of V2 he just put the minimum amount of attention/work into hiring camerapersons and broadcasters.
The logo is the logo of the Vytal Festival itself (as seen on posters in the spectator seating and fairgrounds
Insert crude jokes about them being Team CMEN. Personally, I'm partial to CMNE (Carmine), though they don't actually have an official four-letter team name as far as I recall.
Yeah, the rules are basically:
- The four-letter acronym is comprised of a single initial from each team member. The initial can be from either the given name or the surname.
- The full team name is either a color, sounds like a color, means a color, or makes you think of a color (the so-called Color Naming Rule™)
- The team leader's initial must be first.
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michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Well, I've had some time to have it stuck in the music player in my head, and now the second lyric (the pool of...) makes me feel ill because, if you recall, I'm the most squeamish person you'll ever hear of. So I probably won't miss it.
Maybe so, and I did know that about Team CRDL. But I haven't yet used a name that's only appeared in credits so-far-if-at-all (for appropriate value thereof at the time) and I'm not about to start; and I can just about stretch 'CEMN' into "cement".
Yes, but I know what I'm thinking of and I want to know!
I was wondering what the birds were doing.
My guess was that RWBY told JNPR offscreen all about their adventures.
Mission accomplished!
I'd believe it.
The best guess I had was that it was a stylised shape of Amity Colosseum. Perhaps it's both.
We got so far without making that joke.
I've already seen Chapter 2 in order to fill in the "Next time:" quip, so I've seen the logo there. But in Chapter 1 it does not appear: the heap of sadness (whicb is of course where they put the series creator credit) fades in at 16:38, fades out at 16:42, and playback stops at 16:43 without any further visuals.