rwbynarrative

[rwbynarrative]

Why Adam is dead as hell but Cinder survived

I’ve seen enough snide mediocre hot takes today.

The context, content and presentation of Cinder’s “death” in V5 and Adam’s death in V6 are incredibly different, and both give severely different implications about the fate of the characters. Not only was Cinder surviving the clash in V5 fairly obvious even at the time, but there is no room for doubt that Adam is dead now. And as one woman’s attempt to at least stem this sort of sentiment, let me explain fully:

1. Context

Let me lay out the set-up of V5, just so we can be clear. Cinder, our primary villain (not the final antagonist, the main villainous force towards the protagonists), is defeated by Raven, a secondary character introduced the volume before. Cinder, it should be noted, has no revealed backstory, no personal conflict with Raven, unresolved personal conflict with the main cast, including the main character, and is the main antagonist. 

These all indicate that she’s not dying now. Frankly it’d be pretty awful writing to kill her off. Raven is not significant enough to kill Cinder, in the grand scheme of the story. We still don’t know why Cinder does what she does, in an explicit sense. Having her final fight not only not occur with the main cast, but not even in their presence? Do I need to explain why that’s not happening? Also, do I need to explain why killing off the main antagonist before the story is even half over is unrealistic?

Cinder was very clearly not done in the narrative. But Adam?

Well, your mileage may vary. I’ve seen a few people express that they’re disappointed that his story ends here, and propose ways that he could have been incorporated into future arcs. I’ve seen plenty of others express that they feel him dying here was a perfect climax to the arc set up by the V3 finale. If I had to sum it up, some feel disappointed that he was a personal villain to Blake, rather than a plot villain.

This post is not for judging the quality of the writing, but the point remains that he was intended to be a personal villain to Blake. With that in mind, let me lay out the context of his death like I did for Cinder:

Adam, Blake’s personal antagonist from before the start of the show, is killed by Blake and Yang together, main protagonists whose arcs revolve around the trauma he inflicted on them. Adam has no other personal conflict with the protagonists presented in the show, a semi-revealed backstory that infers a lot about his personality, and is a personal antagonist to a character who killed him.

Almost everything, context-wise, is a complete 180 to Cinder’s “death”. This time it is set up in the narrative, in almost every way possible. Narratively speaking, there isn’t anything more to reveal about Adam - we know what sort of person he is, and we know what likely put him on that path. More importantly, this caps off the arcs of two main protagonists, and is a huge important stepping stone for their development. A possible argument you could make is that the reveal of his SDC brand ties him to the Atlas plot and theoretically sets up future conflict potential for him, but even so the show has continually reinforced that his role in Blake and Yang’s story is his main purpose in the story.

Revealing Adam to be alive now? I... I genuinely can’t see any way it wouldn’t feel like a hack move. Because it would be. This is where he’s meant to end. And that’s also exemplified through the presentation of both events.

2. Presentation

I will never claim to have an objective viewpoint. The things I have said in the comments above are, to some degree, arguable, and I respect your right to disagree. So allow me to present evidence for my next point: Cinder’s “death” and Adam’s death are similar on the outside, but are very different in presentation.

For length’s sake, I’ll keep this at the moment of “death” in both cases, because if I get into the differences in the tone of the fights I’ll be here all day. To start with: Raven never lands a lethal strike on Cinder.

The move is never presented as a killing attack, but instead as a powerful stunning blow that downs Cinder. It’s notable even, that Raven wields a bladed weapon, but it wasn’t used in this scenario.

This is, obviously, in direct contrast to:

This, even within the universe of rwby, pretty fuckin fatal. The most serious injury that has been survived on-screen in rwby so far as Yang’s arm being cut off, which was under the implication that it received medical care fairly quickly. But an arm is not required for living - your internal organs definitely are. 

The aftermath of both blows is also notable. In the case of Cinder vs Raven, Raven’s strike knocks her off the platform - after which Raven freezes her solid, allowing her to fall to her “death”

Once again, actual lethality is avoided - there is an implication of Cinder’s death, but it is not shown as an on-screen event. The phrase “no body, no death” is appropriate - the theoretical lethal impact of Cinder is never shown. In the case of Adam, a similar technique is used:

However, what isn’t captured in these screen-caps is the difference. With Adam, the action following the fatal strike isn’t quick. We see nearly 30 seconds for Adam to react to his injuries, from him slowly dropping his arms, to him stumbling forward, his expression, to him finally falling. Staying on this moment is important, because it allows the gravity of the situation to build, and reinforces the scene beforehand - that Adam has been mortally injured by Blake and Yang. It also demonstrates the severity of the injury. It is arguable that the scene implied Adam was dead before he even started falling.

Let me be clear - the length of the scenes, the type and severity of injury, the framing - it is all hugely different between these events. The only overlap is “no body no death”, which I’ll give you - although Adam does hit the rock bridge on the way down with a very loud crunch, which I can only assume is meant to be reinforcement of death.

I could go on. The post-death scenes are also important - the focus put on how Blake reacts to Adam’s death in juxtaposition to the unimportance of Cinder vs Raven in terms of the actual finale conflict in V5, which was between Yang and Raven. 

But the tl;dr of this is: there’s a mile of difference between these scenes, and taking into account these differences suggests far more significantly that Adam is dead than alive.