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tonotbelionized · 6 years ago

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Volume 7, Episode 4: Pomps & Circumstances

Well, that was... an episode. I honestly had difficulty writing this review and needed a few days to think things through properly, especially with the ending and some important characters coming back. So, let’s just get into it!

The biggest thing that jumped out to me was the Monochrome food. I loved it, Monochrome is one of my biggest OTPS, and the small details during that scene with Jacques and Weiss, as well as the rest of her team’s reactions, they were just so good. Ruby seemed confused and upset, Yang was yangry, but Blake looked furious. She knows what it’s like to be in Weiss’ shoes, and the hand holding just shows that she’s there for Weiss, as well as the rest of the team.

Adding onto Ruby’s small expression changes with Weiss’ counter to Jacques. She’s sad when Weiss says they’re not friends, likely because not only is this coming off the revelation that Harriet doesn’t see her team as friends, but reminds her of her and Weiss’ less than great start in Beacon. Weiss wasn’t there to make friends, and she and Ruby clearly didn’t get along, so hearing her say that after everything they went through scared Ruby.

But that’s not what Weiss meant. Ruby isn’t her friend, because she’s her family. With that last bit, Ruby’s expression completely changes to happiness because Weiss is acknowledging that, yes, Ruby is not only a teammate, a partner, and a friend, but she’s Weiss’ family.

They’re all Weiss’ family now, and for someone who actually has the biggest family of the girls and yet felt the loneliest, that seemed like the best thing for Weiss at that moment. Jacques may be her father, but he’s not family.

It definitely makes up for the ballsup with Weiss’ “White Guilt” complex in the last episode that I really hated, and I’m just glad for more interactions between the girls that aren’t partners.

On top of that, the way Team RWBY is played off of the Ace Ops following Harriet’s confession is interesting. While I’ll note something that I didn’t quite like later on, I did enjoy that how Ruby views her team and how Harriet views her team sets the two kingdoms apart nicely. Ozpin believed in working together, that your partner was someone you would have to trust and work with, along with your team, for the four years they were at Beacon, and even after they graduate.

He encouraged the girls to be children, to have fun and not worry about the war that was going on in the shadows, and it’s clear that above all else, he wanted the teams to be ones that work together not only professionally, but emotionally as well. It fits into not only his personality, but his whole goal. He wants everyone to be united and that starts with the students under his care.

James is more practical and professional. He treats Ozpin and Glynda like close friends, and he’s nice enough to Ruby and the other students, but he makes no mistake in letting them know that he’s the general and that he’s not their friend. He pushes for the Academy to funnel into the military, and isn’t against Atlas’ push for unity and conformity regardless of what the individual might want.

It’s reflected in their teachings. While Ozpin wants his students to remain kids and not worry, Ironwood already pushed for his students to be ready for war, regardless of whether they’re still children or not. He told Penny in the earlier volumes that they were no longer at a time of peace, and that she had to be ready, and he was the most clinical and professional when telling Pyrrha their plan to take Amber’s remaining maiden powers. He isn’t as callous as Qrow, but he doesn’t try to soften the blow or show disapproval to the plan like Glynda and Ozpin.

So while Team RWBY have come to see their team as family that’s gotten stronger because of all the hardships they’ve been through, the Ace Ops just see it as part of the job. They’re a team, they are supposed to protect and fight alongside each other, but that doesn’t mean they’re family. Yet it’s interesting that the rookie of the group, Marrow, doesn’t seem to share that sentiment. It could be that he hasn’t been in the mindset for very long or his personality just doesn’t work with that ideal, but we’ll have to wait and see if anything comes of it.

The only downside I have to it is that it would’ve driven it home better if the Ace Ops didn’t act so chummy with each other. I never would’ve thought Harriet didn’t consider her team friends from her interactions with Marrow last episode, with teasing him over the fact that they have to “babysit” him. Or how close Vine and Elm seem to be. It just would’ve helped if they stayed professional with each other to counteract how close and personal with each other Team RWBYJNR are.

Moving onto the scene at Amity Arena, it was... there. I didn’t hate it, I didn’t like it. I’m just... meh.

I did like that the group were interacting with each other outside of not only their partners, but their teams. It was nice to see Yang joking around with Penny, or that Weiss was chatting with Ren before Nora came in. It makes them actually feel like friends that want to talk to each other, rather than having to be in the same scene because they’re the protagonists. However, I got annoyed because no one mentioned OSCAR. He’s once again been shafted from the group.

No one even asks where he is, no one even thinks about saving him some cake, or sad that he couldn’t join. It just makes it seem once again that the group just don’t care about him, and after all the bullshit they put him through last Volume, I’m beyond annoyed anymore. Please CRWBY, stop shafting my son.

I like that once again, Ruby is isolated herself from the group, just like she did in the Brunswick farm and after the fiasco with Jaune and Oscar in the last volume.

She seems to shoulder all her negative feelings by herself, but this time, rather than her just happening across Maria or Qrow busying himself with a drink, Qrow extends help out to her. Ruby is finally able to talk about what’s bothering her and Qrow isn’t thinking about his own problems without a care for anyone else like last volume. I was so happy when we finally got Summer lore after like seven volumes of hardly anything about her, and we see under the surface about how Ruby truly feels about her deceased mother.

It’s not much, but I’m glad it’s there. It was interesting that she kept secrets from her team and even Ozpin, and that the mission she died on wasn’t one that Ozpin sent her on, so the annoying ass theory that he’s somehow responsible is taken out back and put down like Old Yeller. Though I do wish it was Taiyang and Ruby talking about her, just because there’s barely any interactions between them despite Ruby also being his daughter, but it was only a mild thing for me. Overall, a very cute scene.

That being said, the topic about it... wasn’t. It was trash.

I’m tired of the whole “Ruby lying is totally different to Ozpin lying!” because it’s really not, and Qrow trying to spin it that Ozpin was keeping the truth from everyone while Ruby is letting people in is... bullshit?

WHO has Ruby let in? She couldn’t control whether her team, Qrow and Maria knew the truth because they were there when Jinn told her. She told Team JNR not because of any practical reason, but purely emotional reasons. She told them not because “Oh they’ve proven they can be trusted so they can know now.”, but “They’re my friends and I have to tell them.”

She hasn’t told anyone else. She hasn’t told Penny, the Ace Ops, Winter, even Ironwood. When should she tell them? What do they have to do to prove to Ruby that they can be trusted? What about Penny sharing the very classified information about her being a robot to Ruby, or Ironwood telling them about his plans that only a hand selected few know? Is that not enough for Ruby to think “Okay, they trust me with this, so I should trust them.”

And Ozpin trusted the Pod Squad with way more than anyone else. They knew about Salem, the war, Maidens, Magic, the Gods, everything that Ozpin himself knew except that Salem can’t be killed. And what would be the point of saying? Tell them that, freak everyone out, and just have them more likely to leave because there’s no point, even though they can still do some good by protecting the people from the Grimm that definitely won’t leave even if they could kill Salem? Or keep it from them and have them continue fighting because otherwise what else could you do? Roll over and let everyone die?

And the worst thing is? Ruby lying wasn’t a bad thing. It was interesting, I wanted to see how she’d cope with knowing that maybe Ozpin had a reason to lie, that being betrayed over and over and over again for centuries has a way of fucking up someone’s ability to trust, and that now she’s in the leadership role without Ozpin to fall back on like in her Beacon days. It’s a complex issue, and if this scene is just Qrow saying this and now feeling like the show itself is pushing it, then I would be fine.

It’s how a character sees a problem. Just because Qrow believes that Ruby’s different from Ozpin doesn’t mean it’s actually right, but Ruby isn’t being challenged on that. Oscar isn’t there to give that counter argument, and the rest of the team is so hypocritical that it would just annoy me if they did. Blake’s kept secrets, Yang’s kept secrets, Qrow’s kept some pretty big secrets, and now with the latest episode, Weiss has a secret to keep as well.

That doesn’t mean they’re horrible people, and Ozpin keeping his doesn’t make him an asshole like the team, and by extension some of the FNDM, likes to think.

I hope Team RWBY and Ozpin can reconcile, and not just have one or the other be the only one in the wrong. The way the show is going, however, I’m worries that only Ozpin will be shown as in the wrong and have to apologise.

Moving on to the final scene, I’m so happy that Whitley came home. I missed my son.

But more seriously, I’m glad they actually showed that, yes, Whitley is being abused just like Weiss is, and without Weiss there for him to keep his walls up, we’re finally able to see him as the vulnerable teenager who scared and alone. His voice actor did great in portraying the nervousness and fear that Whitley was clearly feeling, and we know it’s not because of Watts because Whitley just sorta glares at him when he finally appears.

It’s Jacques that Whitley’s scared of. Even as the “Golden Child”, Whitley isn’t exempt from the same abuse that Winter and Weiss went through. Here’s to hoping they don’t throw yet another male abuse victim under the bus by making Whitley evil or something.

And on the topic of Watts, he’s just becoming more and more of my favourite villain. Hazel and Tyrian still outrank him, but these past two episodes have done more to endear him to me than the past three years he’s been in the show. Only downside is that “have your cake and eat it too?” line felt kinda cheesy and didn’t really bring home how intimidating Watts as a villain could truly be.

Given that Jacques knows him enough to call him by his first name, I’m curious to see what’s more for our Lorax Hacker Man.

So that’s it. Definitely the best episode of the volume so far given that I couldn’t find any BIG problems with it like the last episodes, and even though it was definitely slower, there was still tension in it without there being any fighting. Eddie did a great job with this episode and I’m looking forward to more of his works.

Episode Rating: 8.5 / 10

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 7 spoilers #episode review #crtq #I put all these points in a doc last week and with the newest episode out #my thoughts on some things have changed #it'll be elaborated in the next review

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tonotbelionized · 6 years ago

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Volume 7, Episode 3: Ace Operatives

I’ve now resigned to my fate of pushing out reviews a week after the actual episode came out. Still, at least other fans will have watched it before reading, so let’s just jump right in!

It seems that the episodes are gradually declining for me this volume. I didn’t expect the third episode to be as good as the third episode of Volume 6, as that was my favourite out of the entire series. The bar was too high, so I didn’t hold out too much hope to avoid being disappointed, and it seems that I made the right choice.

Onto the positives first, the biggest thing that I liked in this episode was the whole arc surrounding Ozpin and Ruby lying to Ironwood. The girls are moving away from the hive mind they all had in the previous volume, with different sides and views being taken. Yang and Oscar are not all that happy with Ruby lying, while Weiss and Blake acknowledge that they couldn’t trust Ironwood with how far mentally he’s fallen.

Like I said in my previous review, Ruby isn’t really in the right or the wrong for this. It’s certainly hypocritical given that they were quick to demonize Ozpin for lying yet deciding that lying and withholding information is actually a good choice to make, but you can understand why she thought she had to do it.

Yang is really interesting in this scene. I’m not angry with her, she’s my favourite character, so I’m more intrigued why she was the one to pipe up about Ruby lying. Yang is one who has a secret too, Raven being the Spring Maiden. It’s a serious secret to keep given that Raven is essential to Salem’s plan, and with Cinder still kicking around and knowing Raven’s secret, I’m sure it’ll come up eventually.

Even if the information can’t be used right then and there, it’s not really Yang’s secret to keep, and she can’t get angry at others for lying when she’s lying by omission. Eventually, the group will have to learn that Raven’s the Spring Maiden and that Yang knew, but I’m not mad because this is an interesting flaw for Yang to have.

And Oscar’s question was amazing. Isn’t that exactly what Ozpin did to us?

By Ruby’s reaction, she seems to know that she’s doing what Ozpin did, what the group shouted and derided him for, and this is the perfect thing for Ruby to grow. She can’t be naive anymore, she has to realise that being the leader means that she will have to make choices that aren’t always what’s right, and that she will make mistakes.

Moving on from that, I can safely say that CRWBY has bumped the Ace Ops in my list of favourite characters. I especially love Marrow, he reminds me more of Louis from The Walking Dead Game, and his and Harriet’s relationship is funny and cute. The fact that the Ace Ops clearly outrank the protagonists very much drives home that, no matter what they did to get there, they still have a long way to go before they can match the older Huntsmen, and Salem’s group.

A bit of world building in this episode is nice. The implied connection between the mine explosion and the explosion that killed Ilia’s parents make it feel connected, and that Ilia isn’t just thrown into the void now that she’s no longer useful.

Also, I will admit that some of the outfits don’t look so bad in motion, compared to still images. The first one would be Jaune’s hair. I don’t know what happened, but the person responsible picked the most unflattering angle for him when they first showed the models, but now that he’s moving around and showing it in different angles.

The same could be said for Weiss’ braid. In some angles, it looks fine, but then when you see it when she’s looking straight ahead or showing more of the right side of her face, you can see just how awkward and clumsy it looks. It’s too far from her head, it’s rendered poorly, and I still don’t like it. Overall, they are still my least favourite outfits in the series and CRWBY really dropped the ball on them.

The final positive I can say is that Tyrian continues to be my favourite villain in the volume. I missed him and was happy when he was in Volume 6, so now that he’s given more screen time and room to move without the surplus of villains bogging the pacing down, he continues to be up there in character and writing.

Onto the negatives, and there were plenty that lowered the overall quality of the episode for me.

On top of her design being my least favourite of the group, Blake’s change being the only one to be acknowledges is... ugh. I actually think that Yang’s flustered attempts to compliment her was cute, but I don’t like that Blake’s change was the only one to be acknowledged, and that Yang was the only one who noticed. Weiss and Ruby changed their hair too, they’ve all changed their looks, it’s stilted and awkwardly done when it could’ve been a nice scene between the girls.

While I enjoyed the dust mine exposition, there were a few things that annoyed me.

Firstly was Weiss blaming herself for what the Schnee Dust Company, and therefore her father, did. This becomes a problem when we’ve had a whole song and dance in Volume 4 about how Weiss isn’t responsible for her father’s crimes, that she isn’t a bad person just because she was born a Schnee, but now she feels complacent in the company’s subjugation of the Faunus when she was just an abused child with no real power?

And Blake just doesn’t say anything. She puts her hand on Weiss’ shoulder and comforts her, but she doesn’t actually say that Weiss isn’t responsible for what the SDC is doing.

On top of that, the two Faunus that were actively affected by the discrimination and the SDC in Atlas are not there.

Ilia lost her parents in that dust mine explosion, becoming an orphan, and had to hide who she was in a deeply racist society, even more so than Beacon. Her friends weren’t like Blake’s friends, they actively badmouthed the Faunus, calling them racist slurs that Ilia had to join in on or risk being outed. This is her home, her experience, and she’s not there. She’s instead shoved out of the show because there was no room for her, even when CRWBY continued to add one off characters that ultimately take up space.

Adam was branded. He was enslaved by the SDC from when he was a child, likely has no parents of his own, and it ultimately cost him his sanity. This Volume could've had a villain who was personally connected to the SDC and the Faunus racism, but instead he was killed off just after showing that he was horribly subjugated, and now we’re floating around with no real villain to tie this all together.

All we have is Blake. A Faunus who isn’t from Atlas, who lived on an island surrounded by her own kind, in a mansion, has two loving parents, and has never come into contact with the SDC until she fought them in the White Fang, meaning that she never met them when she was in a position of vulnerability. Her abuse at Adam’s hands had nothing to do with her Faunus heritage, her friends are all understanding, even after Weiss’ racist gremlin tendencies in Volume 1 which she grew out of, and now she’s the only Faunus that’s in Atlas and connected to this arc.

CRWBY really wrote themselves into a corner with this, and it’s telling that Miles and Kerry wrote this one given this wildly out of character moment.

Moving on, the scene with Qrow and Clover was alright. Up until the talk about his Semblance.

It’s so awkwardly worded and clunky, and it’s strange that Qrow would tell Clover straight away when it took him seventeen years to tell Ruby and Yang. People try to say that it’s because he was on a mission and Clover needed to know, but that’s still wierd given that it paints Qrow as someone who would rather keep his Semblance a secret from his niece, who’s put herself on this dangerous mission because he told her that Cinder was from Haven and that’s where he’s going next, and stay away from her even when she was in danger.

Ruby nearly died when she was attacked by Tyrian, Qrow barely reached her in time, but if he was honest and stayed with her throughout the journey to look out for her, and tell her his secrets like he expects Ozpin to do, then he would’ve been there from the moment Tyrian attacked.

But he tells Clover immediately. Sure.

On the topic of Clover, I have to say this. I don’t like him. He’s really boring and I find myself caring for the rest of the Ace Ops way more than him. His weapon is dumb, his personality is just meh, but the positive is that his design is pretty cool. He has the Ace Ops uniform to tie him to his team, but with his own twist. I like all the good luck charms on his person, even if it does scream in your face that he’s meant to be lucky.

I’m sure no one was surprised when he said his Semblance was Good Luck. It’s as obvious as Qrow “Bad Luck Charm” Branwen and Leonardo “He’s the Cowardly Fucking Lion” Lionheart.

So that’s it for the episode. It’s certainly my least favourite of the Volume so far, given that it’s full of really annoying scenes that pull down the good, the fight with the Giest was over pretty quickly given how menacing they made it look in the trailer, and character moments that made me roll my eyes to the back of my skull.

Still better than “So That’s How It Is”, though.

Episode Rating: 6 / 10

#rwby #rwby volume 7 spoilers #rwby spoilers #crtq #episode review #me: the review will be out tomorrow #me a week later: I know what I said but LISTEN

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