#this goes out to that one christian rwby fan on twitter. you know the one.

[your-dar-ling]

Why Penny is RWBY's Jesus

Don't look at me like that. You all knew it was coming. Yes the idea sounds ridiculous, but RWBY was made in America, primarily written by two cishet white guys. The show is at least culturally Christian. And! This post also doubles as a defense of Penny Polendina's writing, which means positive RWBY content on your dash! So are you gonna scoff at me or let me tell you why?

Well, it all starts with this image that I saw on IG one day. You don't have to read it all, I'm going to hone in on each important part.

Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

Jesus was born crucified. Whenever he became aware of who he was, he also became aware of what he had to do.

This pretty blatantly applies to Penny. She was born to protect Remnant and more specifically -- though this is only commonly accepted fanon -- to become a maiden, whose purpose is only fulfilled when they die. She understands this goal as her destiny. Let's unpack that.

RWBY's understanding of destiny is extremely culturally Christian. Everything on Remnant happens for a reason. This is baked into RWBY's text as a "story about stories." The writing of this show comes to embody this theme increasingly as it approaches its end, as the writers grow and change from their own real life experiences, and naturally improve upon their skills as the narrative progresses. And Penny as a character begins to see to see what role she plays in all of that too, so these themes become diegetic (I could make a billion posts about diegesis in RWBY). Pay attention to that quickening, to that hyperrealization of these themes. We're coming back to it.

RWBY's definition of "destiny" inherently implies The End™. Your "Final Goal." The last thing you do before you die. And everybody gotta die. Salem refuses to accept the death of her dear Ozma, and thus becomes immortal, stuck without a destiny. Without end. So as Salem is the obvious anti-Christ (I mean her name... c'mon), Penny becomes Jesus in her willingness to die.

And this is very important, and not rarely completely missed by those disparaging her story as shock value or fridging or what have you. Penny is WILLING to die. Her choice to die has ALWAYS been the thrust behind her character arc. Penny starts the show completely unconvinced that she is worthy of life at all, but her story in Volume 8 does end in that place; and she literally dies 4 separate times to prove it.

"The Father loves me, because I give up my life, so that I may receive it back again. No one takes my life from me, I give it up willingly!"

The show takes great care to show the difference between Penny's growing acceptance what her humanity means.

Penny spends Volumes 1-3 completely innocent. She is excited to be alive, and wants to forge her own path in the world, but no one values her as a person. She's genuinely shocked when Ruby affirms her personhood. And while her desire for self-determination is something that never fades, right now she is entirely unaware of the harsh realities of the world. Her life is taken from her simply because of the circumstances of who she is and where she was. Completely out of her control. She wanted to live, but did not get the chance.

Penny dies again in Volume 8 Chapter 5 (from henceforth writing these as #.#, so 8.5). She doesn't even make it a full two volumes this time. She doesn't actually "die" here, but it at this moment that her choice, her autonomy, what makes her human, is stolen away. She also falls a from a phbfgillion feet in the air in a flaming, apocalyptic meteor, so. I mean. Anyways this period of her character is marked by the desire to be someone else. She says herself in 8.2: "I was the Protector of Mantle, and now I am much more than that, and I wish I was not." Ruby says "You're still you, Penny," the poor thing, Bestie's depressed. She doesn't wanna be herself. She wishes to live, but as someone with less responsibility and purpose. But not so she can throw all her responsibilities away. Pfft, she's not Raven. It's just that the gravity of her position in the world is now at odds with her desire to protect others. But in any case, those that love her choose to support her decisions and allow her to make those choices, even if it means she dies...and she does, so.

Nnnot everybody is as supportive, and girl actually is suicidal now. This is the ultimate commodification of her person. Her worst fears have come true. She is being literally driven away from her own choices and also towards death, which is not helping with the ideation of it all. Death has officially become a desirable outcome to living, in her mind. She barely makes it half a volume before 8.11, wherein she asks Ruby, who assured her that she could never be anything but herself, to kill her ass and inherit her burden. But! Once again, with the support of those that love her (is it too late to start calling Team RRAYNBOWE her disciples? Add Maria, Winter, and Pietro and there's 12!), she is able to choose (!!) to be reborn as an official Real Girl ™, rid of her depression and completely ready to do what she always wanted to, which was just to protect folks.

The most tragic part of Penny's final death is that she can't do it herself. It isn't random, it isn't the result of who she is, or someone using her, or even necessity. It's a direct result of her own choice to turn around and fight, despite her loved ones' pleas, despite knowing she is meant to die, and this death would be final...and still. She can't do it herself. The real test of faith here is whether or not her family still believes in Penny's RIGHT to choose, even when they disagree with them. It's a very extremely philosophical example of that, but well, remember what I said about hyperrealization and the "quickening" of the story's pace? This is it. Not even 2 full chapters after the last death. And well, Jaune passes, at least. The point is, Penny is not suicidal here. Penny got to choose how she lived her life, including ending it by the hand of a friend. We are all human, which means we all have goals and hopes and dreams we want to achieve in life, which means, we all, on some level, have to want to die a little as well. It's the inevitable risk of life. At any moment, that could be it. Penny was only able to truly live once she accepted it, which is ironic because it seems like some of the audience can't even accept this fact, and Penny is LITERALLY FAKE.

But I'll empathize for a moment. I could see how someone could think, "Penny didn't get to choose anything! She got stabbed through the heart and was left with not enough time to be healed, Jaune was her only option outside of leaving things to fate entirely! That's not choice, that's just awful." And honestly? I'm inclined to agree. But here's the thing: even if Penny didn't get to choose how she lived her life, she gets to choose what it all means.

So call it what you wish: An act of grace. A martyr's sacrifice, but whatever you call it, don't call it an accident. Things did not just "happen" to Jesus. By following God's will, he changed our history. It was God's plan from the beginning.

Penny knew what her destiny was and she fulfilled it. She got Jaune to kill her because he was her only option, yes. But she also got Jaune to kill her because she wanted to die by a friend's hand instead of an enemy's, in the ultimate show of trust and vulnerability. She gives Winter the powers so that she could beat Cinder, yes. But she also gives Winter the power because "You were my friend." Mind you, she doesn't even know that Winter is alive. She just takes that risk because she WANTS Winter to have the chance to escape the cycle of duty and sacrifice that she herself couldn't more than anything. Do you understand how powerful this is???

So after after all this you might be wondering, "Who is God?" Oh if only you cod see the grin on my face. It's Penny. It's all Penny. She rejects Trinitarianism lol. After all, there are 4 versions of Penny, not 3: and 4 is the biblical number of creation (although: you take three 4's and you get the angel numbers, just like Penny is an "angel" watching over Penny, and the 12 "disciples" that watched over Penny herself, but that's a bit more tinfoil hat behavior than I'm used to)! So just as Jesus died for our sins, the world of Remnant is created in Penny's image. They call it "The Final Word" for a reason.

Amen.

[hypeathon]

RWBY - Volume 6, Chapter 9 Production Analysis

Previous Volume 6 Production Analysis Posts:

Chapters one, two, three, four, five, six, seven & eight 

With the holiday break behind the CRWBY and the show’s fan base, it is easier to look back at how things have been steadily maintained in volume 6, minus a couple of small bumps in production and presentation. So let us now see what chapter 9 provides.

Since the first scene centers with the two characters that originally were seen to help make Cinder look more intimidating, Emerald and Mercury, this is a convenient time to highlight some notes from the February, 2018 CRWBY Ask Me Anything event over on the RWBY sub-reddit. A few things were hinted at as to what they planned on covering in volume 6′s narrative, some of which have more or less already been shown prior to this episode. Director and co-writer, Kerry Shawcross answered that beyond Jaune being at the younger end, we would find out more about where he places compared to his sisters. He also addressed the matter of having to push a character out of volume 5 and reserve him/her for volume 6 which may have been likely Maria Calavera. He even casually mentioned Salem’s backstory as being the one to look most forward to in the future. Then there’s the matter of why Mercury decided to work for Cinder, to which Kerry vaguely replied that it’s “not simple”. There were other questions answered that directly tie to this chapter, but for now, there’s one more thing regarding Mercury’s character that was touched on by Gen:Lock director, Gray Haddock, along with Miles Luna and Kerry via the volume 3 directors audio commentary:

Miles: "More uh, more subtle hints at family life! Apparently Mercury's Dad smells like Qrow after a long day."

Kerry: "Yeah."

Miles: "Daaark co-me-dy!"

Kerry: "Yeah uh, we're not gonna get into it right now probably. But uh, yeah, Mercury's had a life."

Miles: "Yeah, we didn't get as far into Mercury's backstory as we were going to mainly because we were like, "why reveal all that right now", and uh, looking forward to more of that."

Gray: "But a lot of fans are already starting to clue in the real differences between him and Em and uh, which one you might actually be more sympathetic in the end despite kinda how you thought that dynamic was work going to work out after volume 2".

This insight is basically to further reinforce that despite Monty Oum not being around anymore, there was always a forward momentum with what to tell with many characters and aspects the show and Mercury was among them. There was another answer from that AMA that plays into this episode specifically, but let’s save that for later in this analysis. For now, let’s shift focus into the set design, which is nothing short of breathtaking. There were no mentions from anyone in the art department via Twitter about the set, but there were a few notes from a screenshot of the artwork shown during the ending credit (courtesy of Changyuraptor). One to the far left says, “windows on opposite side filled in w/ stone”, while three on the bottom say, “book wall”, “ignore floor texture”, and “use texture from the old circular training room but as square tile.” The last three notes can’t be fully seen from the above picture (at least not without adding the end credits text being there), but let’s examine what these mean. With the last note, by “old circular training room”, this is probably referring to the one in chapter 11 of volume 4 which was likely used as a reference while at the same time straying away from the design to make it be more of Emerald and Mercury’s scene. The added tatami mat designs were probably also there to further indicate that the setting was more of a sparring room compared to the one Cinder was in.

However, the one note that was especially intriguing was the one about windows on the opposite end being filled in with stone. This was a deliberate choice to make the lighting from the stained windows be one-sided and I believe the reason has to do with providing visual subtext to the story behind the scene. Both Emerald and Mercury deeply wanted something before meeting Cinder for different reasons and while both take the fact Cinder is not around to guide them very differently, they do feel currently muddled and express that in their own ways. One could even interpret the lighting through stained glass can serve as a Christian metaphor for wanting to seek salvation and the shot composition supports this. In one shot, Emerald sulks in the light, explicitly stating she doesn’t know what to do next while Mercury actively trains right outside of it, as if he’s fine. Then cut towards the end of the scene and both of them are seen in the light after talking with Tyrian. Speaking of which, both he and Watts are first shown from utter darkness and the former playfully goes right back in. It’s also worth adding that the colors of the stained glass themselves are the same as Salem’s palace, helping further indicate that despite wanting better, both won’t easily find it through Salem.

I’ve gone on record on how much the cinematography has been utterly incredible this volume, which is saying a lot considering how previous volumes had already been praised. There have been excellent uses of staging and framing through objects like windows, doors, and stair banisters, as well as the usage of height to display conflict and power struggle. But rarely has lighting played a key factor in volume 6, so to see it done so effectively here makes a great way to mix things up. Of course, the animation helps compliment things which I suspect Hannah Novotny may have done the first half before Tyrian arrived. The the types of facial expressions being emoted by Emerald and Mercury are a bit of a giveaway, what with the snarl-like mouth movements and shrunken pupils to help sell the tension between them. Finally, there’s Tyrian’s new tail which had a few notes, including the stinger having a retracting ability.

With that out of the way, next is the Argus scene which the work-in-progress version emitted a bit of controversy a few weeks prior. The matter had already been addressed in detail through a previous post, so not much more will be touched on here. But to put simply, the one shot of this scene simply did not go yet through the compositing and final rendering stage where lighting, effects, and characters could be properly layered to avoid the phasing through aspect. The animation was already done if you compare the shots in the video side-by-side.

What’s much less controversial to talk about and more intriguing is the Argus setting in general. To say a great quantity of thought was put into this setting would be an understatement and in the eighth episode of CRWBY - Behind the Episode, a lot of insight is shared with screencaps provided once again from Changyuraptor. First, there’s the matter of it being a combination of San Francisco in terms of the landscape and trolleys (which most fans recognized) and Greco-Roman architecture. Second, there some notes about the structure of buildings for both residential homes and shops in order to distinguish them from each other, right down to the latter having “flatter fronts” than the former. There were also designs and notes about the plants and trees and lamp posts which altogether, just make for a very pleasing-looking setting that no doubt took a lot of time, planning, and crafting to make. The scenes in this episode especially help sell the bustling, yet peaceful and vibrant feel. RWBY has done nighttime city settings, most of which were in Beacon during the earlier volumes. But the differences are just night and day (pun not intended) and while it’s definitely a coincidence, as a fan of the Tales Japanese role-playing games series, I got strong Flanoir vibes from Tales of Symphonia.

The next scene to follow is of course the one fans could not help but get deeply emotional over. Though to sidestep from talking about how gut-punching the scene was for a moment, let’s break down certain aspects of it. Based on how her design the concept art for the courtyard matches that of concept designs by Ein Lee, I imagine that the statue was based on Pyrrha’s exact model in volumes 1-3 which would be rather fitting. Moving on to the character animation, there were very strong moments on Jaune’s part. The way his shoulders lowered as his clothing and hair were briefly blown by the wind to express shock and bewilderment when he first saw the statue and how in another shot, he wanted to say something but hesitated to and attempted to pardon himself as if he didn’t deserve to say anything all concisely present how he felt without a word being uttered. There was also a cute and endearing moment of him gently rubbing the red cloth besides him as he talked to the red-haired woman. Even his expression when he learned the woman already knew who he was only made his guilt seem more explicit which followed with him initially puzzled by what the woman meant by Pyrrha already standing there.

As stated, the character acting told so much and maintained great nuance, which is why I was especially surprised to find out that at least part of the scene may have not been animated by Asha Bishi, but rather by Alyssa Lisiecki. I’ve gone on record on how much the former’s character animation can feel snappy yet abundant and lively. So I really did believe at first it was Asha was the one who animated the sequence between Jaune and the Red-haired woman. But this isn’t the first time I’ve been tripped over between a sequence either her or Alyssa animated. In chapter 6, Alyssa confirmed to have animated, “Qrow being angsty”, which I responded through the production analysis for that episode by expressing uncertainty that she did the part where Qrow stormed back inside the house to drink and thought that was Asha instead. This was honestly due to not having a clear grasp on how Alyssa animates in general. While it’s still a bit unclear how she animates, it’s possible she conveys similar approaches in character movement that Asha does. Then again, it’s also possible that be it between the both of them or whoever else animated the courtyard scene, they were asked by Kerry to make the animation feel seamless. It wouldn’t be the first time that would happen as a noteworthy example of this was Jaune and Pyrrha’s scene at the Beacon Academy courtyard as mentioned again in the volume 3 blu-ray directors audio commentary:

Kerry: “This was a tough scene, this was uh, again, just the new style of animation, some of the rig challenges that we had this year just with having so many different characters built at so many different times. All of our new rigs are great! Some of the older ones are starting to show their age a bit.

Uh, this is the first scene that four different animators animated this scene. Kim (Newman), Paula (Decanini), Melanie (Stern) and Millie (Gonzalez), I believe, and ya can’t tell! I don’t think there’s a single scene where you can actually see the shift and I thought they did a phenomenal job working with each other and uh...

Koen Wooten (lead producer): “A lot of that, ya know, some of that goes to the leads as well. The animators did an amazing job, I don’t want to take away from that. But the leads also, they go around with you Kerry and they look at every single shot to give your opinions and everything else. there’s a lot of work from day-to-day that goes into that to kind of make it seamless.

Kerry: “Yeah, there’s a lot of, “hey, Melanie, you’re working on this shot right now. Millie was just doing the shot right before this, you should go look. let’s get the continuity right”, and there’s some things they had to go back and fix. But again, they wanted to fix it and they wanted to make it right because they realized that between Paula and Kim, the hand shifted.

At the end of the day, having to second-guess these things to such a degree makes things more perplexing, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, as it encourages examining some scenes between different animators more closely. The last part of this scene to cover of course is the visual direction. It’s simple, but the statue is focus of every shot composition. When Jaune meets the Red-haired woman, at first, it’s shots of just their own expressions with the only shot of the both of them together being the statue framed to stand between them. It’s not until the woman acknowledges Jaune as someone close to Pyrrha that we see a shot of both of them. Once she turns to face Jaune directly and openly expresses what she believed Pyrrha’s last actions meant. By the next long shot, Jaune turns to face her in a way that the statue doesn’t feel like it’s keeping them separate but is instead bringing them together. This is supported by the following shot of Jaune openly talking to the woman with the latter also being in the shot. Slightly later on, when Ren and Nora run into Jaune, we get the same kind of long shot of the three of them gazing at Pyrrha’s statue and then when Jaune attempts to apologize, the camera pans to Ren and Nora who try to be closer as well. By the end of the scene, Jaune looks up at Pyrrha’s statue one last time as a plane aptly flies by to probably hint at Jaune eventually coming up with a plan.

Intimacy is the theme of the storyboards in this sequence. It’s similar to Yang and Blake’s scene in the Brunswick farms shed, but with a nice, slight variation. Now some may notice the persistence on referring the the character Jaune spoke to as simply “Red-Haired woman” as displayed in the ending credits and not whoever various fans think she really is. While I and others have our respective guesses, I'd rather keep the speculation out of this analysis. All there is to go on is that according to the voice of the character, Jen Brown, there is a particular identity behind the character. Beyond that, she has no idea when or even if he identity will be properly revealed and that apparently, a lot of fans have theorized wrong. As frustrating as that may be to some, the lack of confirmation shouldn’t be seen as hindering how the role of the character was crafted into the scene in all the ways it was.

Moving on to the next scene, there’s one more thing to talk about regarding environment designs, that being the Cotta-Arc home. Rooster Teeth’s twitter account released the set designs themselves and with it, came a few interesting notes. One of which stated, “the Arc house is slightly wider than main modular buildings. This is to account the interior floor plan.” One educated guess to make is that since Saphron and Terra’s living room would be a setting for the main cast, making their house a bit wider would help make things more believable to viewers. Then there’s the note that says, “metal Atlas tech shutters and heating”, which help indicate to what Atlas contributes to Argus right down to an individual home. Honestly, given the whole, “Atlas and Mistral”, collaboration, it wouldn’t be wrong to compare the cultural-fusion design philosophy to Republic City from Avatar: The Legend of Korra. A couple of other notes aside, there is finally the note of the choice of flowers sitting in front of the windows. Apparently, Terra has blue rose flowers while Saphron has yellow pansies/primroses. What these choice of flowers are suppose to say about the two characters beyond their relationship is something I won’t go into here since it may invoke endless speculation (even the matter of what the flowers the Red-Haired woman carried were suppose to represents varies from one fan to another).

With that said, now is the time to address the elephant in the room: Oscar’s scene. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that every fan who took issue with it, did so for the same reason. Whether everyone agrees on the sense of scale regarding the conflict of Oscar’s agency, the fact he is bound to carry on a seemingly hopeless burden all of his previous incarnations were tasked with had definitely made him anxious. When he got accused by Jaune in the previous episode, the end of that scene combined with the cliffhanger implied more would be centered on Oscar’s concerns before moving on to the next phase of the story. So to have that conflict that would otherwise be addressed and resolved, be instead glossed over in a manner comparable to how Weiss got over the fact Blake was once a White Fang member by not caring, it would definitely rub a lot of viewers the wrong way.

Back on October 10th,2018, Miles Luna posted a Tweet expressing how he had to commit a “darling massacre.” This amusingly led to a misunderstanding of what he meant, but basically, there was an idea for a story he worked on that ultimately had to be cut out of the script. This is far from the first time a narrative beat had to be either pushed out of the current scripts or be cut entirely, as trimming a script is a necessary process for various reasons Miles spoke of before like allowing time for home video authoring for a scheduled release. It could be argued that maybe Oscar originally had a scene written where he managed to transition his state of mind more positively but that had to be cut. The only problem is that it would be inconsistent with what was said about where Miles and Kerry were up to with the script for volume 6 back during one of the RWBY panels at RTX Austin 2018. Now it’s possible that he was really referring to having to cut something for the next installment of say, Camp Camp and not RWBY. But assuming another scene dedicated to Oscar was cut, maybe it was something that got to the storyboard stage but had to be cut then due to whatever the circumstances were. This wouldn’t be the first instance of something having to be cut altogether as oppose to be reserved for a later volume. To summarize an extensive anecdote from the volume 3 director’s commentary, there was supposed to be a comedic fight between Sun, Neptune, Pyrrha and Nora during the double rounds of the Vytal Festival tournament that had swamp and anti-grav biomes. While the former two characters would lose, Neptune was given an opportunity to overcome his insecurities after being made fun of by Weiss and then the whole audience for showing off his “water wings” to help out Sun. had storyboards and even an animatic, but it had to be cut to avoid putting a strain in volume 3′s scheduling and production. 

So that could’ve happened or maybe something else occurred behind the scenes. Either way, the execution behind Oscar’s resolution definitely felt a bit clumsily handled and maybe in a more ideal situation, what may have been cut could’ve been kept as is. Then again, something may not have cut at all. Without more concrete information, all there really is to do for now is speculate. One thing that doesn’t need to be speculated though is who did the animation for the cast hilariously dog-piling on Oscar, which was Vince Cappelutti. His name has been mentioned before, having been credited for doing part of the Adam Character Short and doing the first scene and the tunnel chase scene with fellow animator, Nicole LaCroix in chapter 6 of this volume. But this is the first time he confirmed to have done something by himself. As a result, there’s not much to comment on regarding his style, but if nothing else, it’s likely that his sequence extends to Weiss, Ruby and Nora asking questions towards Oscar since the quirky animation is carried through, albeit presented differently. Moving on to another sequence is Jaune telling Qrow his plan, which was confirmed to be animated by Hannah McCravy. Her name has been credited in the show since chapter 2 of this volume, so she is among the newer recruits. Regardless, she nails the right reactions out of each character, including when Adrian giggles. Though beyond that cut, it’s unclear if she animated anything afterward. My best guess is that when comparing to the timing of the animations of the scene between the main cast and the Nubuck guards, Nicole LaCroix animated Jaune explaining how he didn’t think of the details to the plan yet before Qrow shut his idea down. But that part is once again, left to speculation.

One last thing to go over in the scene is Ruby’s character. As mentioned earlier, there was something from the CRWBY Reddit AMA that directly connects to this episode that Miles Luna answered. Among the things he and Kerry believed they could improve on was “ More attention and meaningful conflicts for Ruby.” Seeing the titular character be given the kind of focus she has been is definitely considered welcoming to many fans of the show. But to give Miles and Kerry some credit, they have been conscious about giving Ruby a sense of conflict before. There are a couple of interesting quotes from the volume 4 blu-ray directors commentary that demonstrate this.

Chapter 6:

Miles: “Oh, this is another fun little moment too where we really are kind of pointing out the fact that Ruby... she’s very idealistic and optimistic, but not always super practical and really, he’s (Tyrian) putting her on the spot like, “y-you really don’t know what you’re doing out here kid, do you?”

Chapter 7 (when Ruby stepped in to fight Tyrian):

Miles: “Ruby you’re optimism is gonna... really bite you in the butt here, girl. There are things at work that you do not know about.”

Chapter 8:

Kerry: “So this is um, another good example of what happened a second ago (when she asked Qrow “what should we do”) and what’s coming up in a second (when she asked Qrow about not trusting her) about Ruby’s... ya know, like, her naive nature being both a good and a bad thing. She’s hearing all this stuff, she’s starting to learn what she’s wrapped up in and the consequences of everything and she’s still like “alright, what’s next?” Ruby, like... Tyrian just wrecked y’all. You shouldn’t, like she shouldn’t want to be badly into this, but she is and it’s just a really important thing to her character.”

Similar to Mercury’s character, there is a forward momentum with Ruby’s character and it seems that in her case, it has a lot to do with exploring when her decision making can be a benefit or a detriment and why. Volume 6 can be seen as a juxtaposition of her character in volume 4 where she criticized by Maria for not giving herself enough credit. Speaking of Maria, if the character/sub-plot that was taken out of volume 5′s script was actually her, then given what role her character played into volume 6 so far, it’s possible that more focus to Ruby’s character was planned at the time but ultimately had to be reduced.

That marks the end of a rather lengthier production analysis this time around. This was the episode where some major story ideas expressed via audio commentaries or Q & A’s in hindsight are being presented explicitly here and more attention to design notes for the settings in this episode helps provide insight as to what kind of thought goes into helping make scenes have a bit more going on than just be aesthetically pleasing. With the main party having a plan to go on, it’s safe to say that volume 6 is entering its third and final act in the story which will doubt result in potential action sequences and hopefully more interesting analyses to touch on.