Hah. The subreddit thread for this:

"Not Okay! THIS IS NOT OKAY!"

 

I have no words...

 

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So I dug this episode lots, also Animagus confirmed a thing! is that Qrow's semblance then?

Does anyone think we'll ever see the characters of the show as normal students again? I really hope they never are.

On the stream yesterday Miles said that Monty had heavy notes/plans ready through Volume "like, 20" and time will truly progress, to the point that the show will cover Ruby's adulthood.

Kerry confirmed this means Ruby will get boobs at some point.

I'm glad everything is in good hands

 

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RWBY's greatest strength has always been its inexplicable ability to build and maintain hype, even when it doesn't deserve it. Like, Season 1 was pretty turd at everything except the fight scenes. The most of the writing was super clunky. The characters were fairly bland or stock or both. The pacing was so bad that they had to change the release schedule midseason. And of course, there was the horribly low rent production value. Like seriously, animate the goddamn hands. And somehow they still had hype despite the show being D grade at best.

The animation is now finally at a good point (although please no more awkward 2D stills), and there's some improvement on everything else, but it still has a good way to go. RWBY's always had issues with filler, and balancing it with the overall Torchwick/Cinder story. This season was better than the previous two, as the filler was the tournament and, even without Monty, fight scenes are still a strength of the show. If you're going to have filler, it needs to be engaging while your main story builds up.

Team RWBY really took a back seat this season as the main plot was taken out of their hands and put squarely in the adults' and Pyrrha's. They were certainly involved, but it was more incidentally rather than them being the primary motivators. Which is for the best, because Qrow, Ironwood, and Ozpin all handled it better than RWBY did in the past two seasons. Even Pyrrha stepped up to the plate, and was kindof the main character of this season. It sucks that they killed her off just as Pyrrha was hitting her stride, but I suppose the focus of the story did need to go back to the title character. Plus there's the effects it has on Jaune. Overall though, the true A plot of what went on in Ozpin's clock tower office was just far more interesting than RWBY bumping into Torchwick's operations ever was, and it made the season all the stronger.

Aside from the RWBY plot struggling to be interesting in the past, there's also the fact that those four characters just really need work done on them. They're also lacking in chemistry. Ruby and Weiss have found a dynamic, but Yang and Blake not so much. That's a real problem considering that there are multiple scenes that fall flat because they depend on a strong relationship that was never built up well in the first place. Not all viewers are part of the shipping fandom.

But on the brighter side, there's some potential going forward by splitting them up. The writing always had trouble balancing Yang's two sides of the cheerful bimbo and the rage, and of course the serious desire to find her mom. Three different sides to a girl but you could never find her center. Losing her hand and the associated trauma will help that because of how it changes her character and sheds her cheery side. If the writing takes another step forward for Volume 4, then they could pull off Yang's adjustment and new mopeyness pretty well. Her last scene of this episode is in the right direction, and now her outbursts of rage will actually fit better with her as a character.

Speaking of angst, Blake being on her own could improve the whole being such a miserable pessimist. Or, better yet, help her evolve from it. But I dunno. She could use scenes that focus on her that don't revolve around whining about Adam and the White Fang. After three volumes of it, it'd be nice if she could move on from whining to a focus on taking action or something. A solo quest could do that.

Weiss has been fine ever since they dropped the bitchiness, but being dragged back to Atlas by her father could finally give her a real arc to follow. They kinda tried with the whole summoning thing, but it wasn't executed well for a lot of reasons. It was just kinda like "oh, that's a thing now". Tension with her father and a closer look at her creator could be proper meat for a Weiss-centric plotline, and she could really use that considering she's supposed to be one of the leads.

Then there's Ruby. The problem with Ruby isn't that she's not enjoyable or compelling, embracing her inner spaz worked well. But she's just very simple. I get that that's kinda the point, that she's a simple good honest person, but man does she need more in order to be a good main character. But that's okay, because she's traveling with a new team now, and could very well be overshadowed by somebody who really could be our new lead: Jaune Fucking Arc.

Jaune easily became the most compelling of all the non-adult characters in the back half of this season. We've moved past Jaune as the comedy relief guy who is a pathetic fighter with confidence issues. He's still not as good a Huntsman as the rest of the cast, but he's not an embarrassment. He's become comfortable with himself, he's become stronger (not just as a fighter, but as a person), and he can lead. Losing Pyrrha has given him a cross to bear, and a clear and focused drive. Whenever Cinder breaks out of her frozen state (because let's be real, that's gonna happen), Jaune better be the one to put her down. I mean, he doesn't do as well compared to outside metrics, but among the cast of RWBY he's definitely the one who can best carry the role of the main character. The show can try and find a depth in him that Ruby, by design, doesn't have.

Finally, RWBY actually had a good season finale. The first two volumes had just really underwhelming finishes. Volume 1 had Blake and Sun find Torchwick raiding some dust and there was a fight. And that was it. No resolution or closure or fuck even a cliffhanger. Could've easily been the end to a regular episode. Volume 2 had the Torchwick plot end with Grimm invading Vale... which was squashed in all of five minutes after some action spots by various characters and the Atlas Fleet.

But Volume 3? Excellent. There's a part of me that wishes Vale was still occupied for a reclamation arc (also because deus ex silver eyes had fuck all foreshadowing except for one mysterious remark by Ozpin in the first episode), but this looks to be better. Team RWBY is split up and has a chance to breathe, and strengthen themselves as characters in a way that they couldn't as an ensemble. They've left the pit of filler known as Beacon and will be committing to the main story. RWBY has wrapped things up and is moving forward in a big way.

This season, RWBY finally managed to deserve some of the hype that surrounds it. But now it's really time to step up, because you'll need to surpass everything you've done so far to make good on your promises for Volume 4. I look forward to it.

Stray Notes:

-What the fuck was with Pyrrha's last words? "Do you believe in destiny?" What does that have to do with anything? Like, she said that and I expected Ruby to be there to the rescue. Or Ozpin climbed up the tower to bail her out. Or fuck, maybe even Jaune finally unlocked his semblance and it somehow was able to affect the battle despite him rocketing off. But nope, nothing. Just death and disintegration.

-Torchwick's death was kinda bullshit. He was the most entertaining villain, and was really hella fun. Then deus ex machina ignoble demise by a Grimm who's strength is then undercut by Ruby immediately kicking it into the ship with no effort whatsoever. Like, I get that you need some skill inconsistency to maintain the drama, but this is excessive.

-Relatedly, what the fuck is going on with Adam that he can apparently ignore aura? Also Adam in general was weird. The voice acting and writing really didn't sell the jealous love thing. Like, a "nobody betrays the White Fang" thing could've been okay, but the bad breakup thing didn't.

-There were some directional miscues this season. There's a shot in the first episode where Blake reacts to hoverboard girl falling on her ass, but the way it's edited makes it look delayed. Too many medium single person shots, especially in fight scenes. Stuff like that. I also worry about the dialogue being able to handle the heavy shit next season, but RWBY has been consistently getting better here.

-The Cinder episode was okay, but I kinda wish that they restructured and spaced out the flashbacks over the course of the season. Would've helped with the pacing issue of "oh great now we have to wait another week to see the fallout of that cliffhanger". I mean, it's not like it spoils anything. We already know that Emerald can fuck with perception from the Coco fight,

-Seriously, group fighting. Get better at this. I mean, I get that losing Monty who was the lead and genius choreographer is gonna cause the fight quality to go down, but you can still do a better job than this to have people combo like when they took down the Nevermore bird. I mean, off the top of my head there's Neptune using his electric spear to charge up Nora. The avengers style tracking shot in episode 11 would've been far better if it wasn't everybody shooting at things while roller skate girl and hoverboard girl just rode around them.

-Yang losing her forearm sucks but is undercut by Mercury's prosthetic legs (which are also his weapon, much like Yang's new arm would be), and Ironwood literally being half robot. Seriously though, what the fuck happened to that guy that he had to have half his body replaced with mechanics.

-Expect a harsh divide in the smut fandom about whether Ironwood's package is robot or flesh.

-Qrow was great. Winter wasn't. Qrow is better off as a prominent supporting character, and I hope he remains as such. While Winter... Winter really needs to remove the ten foot pole from her ass. Like, yeah, be formal and whatnot when dealing with Ironwood and official business, but Weiss is your sister. Have some chill.

-Anytime they have people jog, it looks really weird.

-The writers still struggle with exposition. It gets really blatant and they'll need to fix that.

-Seriously, why is the big communication system set up so that if one tower falls, they all go offline. What a ridiculous design flaw.

-Emerald Semblance OP pls nerf.

-Kinda disappointed that Ozpin's weapon wasn't his coffee cup for the sake of absurdism, but what little we saw of him fighting was incredible.

-More Flynt Coal jazz remixes please.

 

This Volume has moved Jaune up from "completely intolerable" to "tolerable" for me. I wouldn't be able to stand it if he became the main character.

---------- Post automerged at 11:56 ---------- Previous post was at 11:55 ----------

I want to do a long reply but I shouldn't be procrastinating other stuff right now.

 

I saw it posted that RT had notes from Monty on up to 20 volumes of RWBY, taking Ruby to adulthood.

This season finale makes me believe it.

 

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I've been waiting three volumes to see Ozpin in action.

We only got about 30 seconds of it, but I was not disappointed.

 

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The time manipulation theory is likely confirmed too, with some of the moves he did.

 

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Not ashamed to admit that I spent a good chunk of the episode leaning my chair back and silently squeeing. The Ozpin/Cinder fight was really nicely done, Pyrrha went out with a bang (and a nod to Achilles), and the reveal of the big bad (along with the implication that neither her nor Ozpin are human) was glorious.

Felt like the silver eyes thing came a bit out of the blue, some more foreshadowing could've helped a lot, but overall might just be my favorite RWBY episode, and definitely renewed my faith in the series.

Also agree that this splitting up might just be what Weiss and Blake need to get some good character arcs in, and that seeing what Pyrrha's death will do to Jaune is gonna be great.

 

Spoiler your post dude! Most people aren't sponsors, so while I was safe, you could end up ruining the finale you liked so much for other people

Not cool

 

I was watching the Yellow trailer last night and noticed the opening quote became a little more clear:

"Scathing eyes ask that we be symmetrical, one sided and easily processed. Yet every misshapen spark's unseen beauty is greater than its would be judgement."

 

Wow, was that quote always there? Well played RT.

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It seems like Weiss, Pyrrha, and Velvet got huge powerups in the last couple episodes, while everyone else except Ruby got nerfed to hell. When Weiss and Blake are running together, Weiss zooms by and does all of the work, and a group of enemies that are giving Blake trouble are smacked aside by Weiss in a second. Then literally everyone from the tournament taking part in the big scene at Beacon is suddenly completely ineffective no matter how badass they had been before, leaving room for Velvet to step in and save the day partially with weapons used by the people who were standing right fucking there being useless. And, of course, Pyrrha took off the kid gloves just in time for her tragic loss to someone even more OP.

I did still really like that finale, even though the death of Pyrrha made me wanna cry. Can't wait for vol. 4

EDIT: Got in my car today and the first two songs I heard were "Shine" and "Dream Come True"...fuck. Speaking of which, if either of those songs had been played during the final scene between Jaune and Pyrrha, I would have totally lost my shit, I'm a bit disappointed that didn't happen.

 

Spoiler

Holy shit, really loved the finale. Finally moving away from Beacon to explore the rest of Remnant. Some potential new interesting character interactions with team RJNR, supervised by Qrow heading to Haven, Yang maybe flocking to Raven (I guess the Branwen siblings can both turn into birds, crow and raven respectively, makes me wonder why Ruby and Yang have such different Semblances as siblings then. Maybe because they are only half?) Blake roaming the fallen Vale, maybe with Glynda, maybe on her own, hunting the white fang while Weiss is in Atlas.

Was I right with calling that Ozpin has some for of time accelerate like Kiritsugi?

So, when Pyrrha throws down, she seriously throws down. Heck, Cinder was maybe the worst opponent for her to fight since she is the one person who doesn't fight using metal and she still needed her Maiden powers.

Not a big fan of the silver eyes thing. Whether it is Maiden related or not, both are possible, but still. It worked, I guess, but I dislike this type of destiny related powers.

Since Pyrrha got her arrow in the Achilles heel, am wondering whether or not Jaune will die being burned to to death.

Am a bit concerned for next season though. The relatively short episodes were already annoyingly short when the main cast was mostly in the same place. If we have to follow 4 different locations for all for main characters, not counting all the side characters, could imagine episodes getting really annoying if they stay at around 15 mins.

Damn, looking forward to the fanfics now, though. We got pretty good material and story hooks and some excellent "what if" points.

 

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Volume 3 is officially the Empire Strikes Back of RWBY. The heroes at their lowest, someone has lost a hand, one half of the main romance is gone, etc, etc.

Also, I was expecting Qrow to tell Ruby that she's the Summer Maiden or something at the end there, not give her some spiel about having "special eyes". Got enough of that bullshit in Naruto.

I was worried, with the way things were going, that someone was going to end up back in the first episode via time travel ex machina, but I see my fears were misplaced.

Overall, awesome ending. It's a nice change from the last two volumes. Can't wait for Vol. 4.

 

Sigh.

Fuck Ryuugi and fuck Lungs.

 

Funny that you mentioned the Empire Strikes Back because I had very strong A New Hope flashbacks on this one. I think that one of the reasons some characters feel awkwards at times is that we are looking at the show in seasons. I mean, the Breach felt anticlimatic back on season 2 when it was fought back but with the plan revealed in Season 3 and that the whole point of it was for the Atlas military to take over security to put their droids in place for what would happen then it makes sense that it wasn't near as bad. Similarly, a lot of people go about how Adam's characterization felt odd but we hadn't really seen a lot of him before and what we did was in very different circumstances. The problem there would be that we saw him in normal moments before instead of charácter defining ones.

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Going back to what I said at the begining, Phyrra's death reminded me a lot to Obi Wan's. The last words for example. In ANH Obi says his death would make him stronger tan Vader could ever imagine, then he diez, Luke sees that and that sets him against the empire and eventually become the chosen one. Here, Phyrra speaks of destiny and just at that moment Ruby sees her death and it causes her to unlock her power. Then there is her body disappearing. With Obi Wan it was because he became one with the Forcé. In the previous chapter of RWBY, when Cinder kills Amber, it was after the transfer started and Phyrra disappeared in a flash of aura similar in color to Amber's.

Then we have the silver eyes thing. Qrow and the other guardians were all about secrecy about the maidens. So it is posible that Ruby is a Maiden but Qrow lied and said the thing about the silver eyes because he doesn't want her to know about that or think that it is her job to go after Cinder. It would also make sense for him to watch over Ruby (beyond the reason of her being his niece) if she is a Maiden. Considering that Ruby's eyes flashed like Cinder's do when she used her powers, it makes sense. It could also be posible that Summer was the previous one in that case.

We weren't shown Ozpin's death either and Cinder didn't mention killing him so I am not sure what that means. Cinder wouldn't just leave but it is posible that he escaped. Now, Qrow had his cane at the end, which means that he either found it or it was given to him by Ozpin. If it was found, since they say that Ozpin is missing, he either escaped or Cinder disintigrated it like with Phyrra but since I already mentioned it looked like Amber's aura...

Can anyone with good hearing tell if the Grimm lady at the end has the same voice of the woman speaking with Ozpin in S1Ch1?

Blake running away is probably her putting some distance from her team because of Adam's comment about destroying everything she loves and that he cut her arm especifically ecause she knew Blake.

I am kind of worried about Glynda given what we saw of her near the end. She seemed to be obsesively repairing what was broken of the área still dominated by Grimm and that is not normal behavior.

We've seen some tensión regarding secrecy between Taiyang and Qrow, which would make sense if Summer was a Maiden since Taiyang is not a guardian as far as we know. Or if he knows about the maidens then about him meddling with Ruby being one. Which now makes me think that Qrow might have been recruited into the guardians because he was her teammate.

Adam cutting through aura in the previous episode, I am not really sure. On one hand, the petals tht appeared are the same as when he used his semblance with that slash that disintegrated that Schnee security robot which could mean that it is simply a disintegrating semblance that trumps aura. On the other hand, when he clashed blades with Blake there was that buzzing sound in the background...

Fight scenes with group looking awkward is probably an issue with the animation but it could be that most of those time those involved were not using to work together (since it was a mix of several teams) so they stopped midway to make sure they didn't hit each other.

Finally, I get the feeling that Jaune is going to be the normal guy who survives the whole conflicto and ends telling the story of all these incredible people he met. Never badass enough to be the Hero but recognized because he was there.

I am probably forgetting something but that is an start for an opinión I guess?

 

Yea Salem is talking to Ozpin in chapter one.

 

There's already cosplay of Salem. The RWBY fandom is truly not one to be underestimated.

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Also I actually kinda doubt they're even going to bring back Penny now. Think about it, this is the creative team that lost Monty. They might not want to pull that gimmick.

 

Guys, what would team RJNR even be? it's clearly RNJR/Ranger

 

Or RRNJ => Orange.