The RWBY Thread

Looks like cinder is holding something~ possibly to snipe ozpin?

She saw Pyrrha and Ozpin together and got all glowy-eyed, which makes me nervous that now she knows (or at least suspects) that the rest of Amber's power is going to be transferred to Pyrrha. Why else would Ozpin seek out to protect this one student above the others? Pyrrha just got a huge target painted on her back.

Or maybe Cinder will just follow them to Amber to finish what she started with her, instead of trying to take Pyrrha out to get the rest of the power that way?

And okay, Glynda and Ozpin were not surprised at all by that dragon. How did they know? Had they tried to fight it before, failed to kill and were only able to trap it in the mountain? Was that one of Ozpin's mistakes? Or is summoning/controlling a dragon some kind of maiden ability, which was why Ozpin went for Pyrrha -- so he had someone on his team who could also control it? Or was Ozpin meeting up with Pyrrha pure coincidence, or was it to boost her power instead of help with the dragon? He WAS already on his way to leave before the dragon popped out of the ground like a giant daisy of doom, after all.

So, not even the safe characters are very safe right now:

Weiss is running around alone in a town overrun with White Fang members who all hate the Schnees.

Blake is on her own facing off against Adam, which is going to test her fighting skills and her emotions.

Ruby is alone with Neo and Roman, which is terribad, and also on a ship which is high on everyone's priority list of shooting out of the sky, which is terriworse.

Yang, who is at the top of everyone's "Most Hated" list after her fight with Mercury, is running around alone. If anyone wanted to teach her how NOT to fight fair, now would be the time to do it.

Pyrrha is on her way to undergo a potentially dangerous operation, which may or may not take her out of the fight, and Ozpin will want to oversee it which may or may not take him out of the fight, and Cinder might be perfectly well aware of what Pyrrha and Ozpin are up to, which makes matters at least 300% worse for them both.

And Professors Oobleck and Port don't seem confident in their ability to survive that pack of griffons. :-(

On the plus side, Emerald doesn't look too happy about what's going on. I think she may swap on Cinder and try to help the good guys. Of course, none of the good guys are going to trust her or help her, and Cinder's not going to tolerate any mutiny, so she's just going to get herself killed if she tries to help. So on second thought, maybe that's not such a "plus side" situation after all.

All in all, my heart cannot take this and if we get a tales of remnant next week I'm going to explode. I WILL EXPLODE, ROOSTER TEETH, DO YOU HEAR ME YOUNG MAN GO TO YOUR ROOM AND GIVE ME A PROPER EPISODE NEXT WEEK.

I think Jaune might get the powers as opposed to Pyrrha. He didn't know about it before, but now he does, and with her worried about doing it and Cinder right behind them, I can see him taking her place. He does care about her after all, and with her worries about it along with Cinder confronting them I could easily see him jumping in there instead.

Also, it would give him a much stronger role in their team. Up till now, Jaune has had no semblance shown nor has he been anywhere near as strong in a fight as the rest of the team. I feel as though his particularly strong aura would also serve to help him if he is the one who undergoes it as it would likely help him maintain who he is, as opposed to losing himself which seemed to be a concern for Pyrrha when it was first mentioned.

It was adorable to see Ruby beat Neo through her brains instead of her brawn. Who else would possibly have thought to pop open her umbrella and send her flying? That being said, since she just kinda Mary Poppins'ed away, I highly doubt that she's dead. She'll be back.

I don't know if I believe Roman's dead or not. On one hand, it was the perfect death for him -- having his last egotistical little monologue about his survival skills, only to be eaten by a beast that HE helped release. Hi Karma, welcome to the fight! Bye Roman, hope you were delicious! But he was swallowed whole, so he may have still been alive in the stomach when that Grimm disintegrated. That would be fine with me too, since as far as the villains go, he and Neo are my favorites. They're cool-evil, everyone else is just ***-evil.

Adam is officially on my list of worst-hated people EVER. First going all King Creeptastic with Blake, then slapping her around like an abusive boyfriend, then STABBING her through the stomach (oh we are so done you shiny red assbonnet perched atop a warthog's wrinkly back-end!) And THEN hacking off Yang's arm when she tried to defend Blake, and that's not even mentioning that he tried to legitimately decapitate Blake. WHAT. I had a heart attack before I realized that her semblance-clone took that hit. Please never terrify me like that again!

Speaking of Yang, hopefully she gets herself a kick-*** robotic arm, but unless Blake managed to get both Yang AND her dismembered limb, she's short half her weapon.

Cinder has all of Amber's power. Great, just great. But I am relieved that Pyrrha didn't have to give herself up, say goodbye to her dreams, to become the Fall Maiden.

Velvet's weapon! What a babe. So the theory that the pictures she was taking weren't JUST pictures was right! Sounds like she can only use each weapon once, though, if we consider Coco's talks -- "You've spent all semester building that up, don't waste it here." and "Make every one count." Hopefully if she takes another picture, she gets access to the weapon back, instead of being truly a one-time deal per weapon. What I find the coolest about that is that it doesn't just mimic the weapon, it actually gives Velvet the full ability to use it. When she had Crescent Rose, she wielded it just as well as Ruby, with the same form and everything. When she had Myrtenaster, she didn't just have it -- she had it exactly like Weiss. And then they had to have her pull out Penny's swords and perfectly mimic her stance. Way to re-break my heart, RT!

Speaking of Weiss, not only is her summoning finally getting there, but the theory that she fought the knight in her trailer so she could call him later was strengthened, if not confirmed. But my question is, can she call anything like that that she's defeated? Or is that particular knight her Familiar, and she had to fight him to make him see her as his mistress? Winter didn't call a knight for her summon, so perhaps Weiss will be able to call anything she's killed in the future?

I really, really hope that Oobleck and Port are okay. Please?

And seriously. WHERE is Zwei?!

This episode! Holy mother of crap!

Adam is completely OP. I saw this because so far as I can tell he just cut through Yang's aura and her arm in 1 hit. There's not a single time in the entire series we've seen any character go down in a fight from a single blow that I'm aware of, until now. The closest thing I can come to as an excuse for this would be her aura being low due to the fight with Mercury since it was at 1/100 after that fight. Still, it seems like quite the long shot.

Also... given Ember's final words in this episode, wonder who she's talking about and if she has some sort of connection to Ozpin. With her new power she's definitely going to be a threat more than ever and with Ozpin calling for 3 others to back him up? I can't imagine what kinda damage she's gonna do before backup arrives, especially now that we see limbs coming off.

At least on the whole Adam cutting through her in one slice... That's pretty standard Anime/video game stuff, really. Characters get punched through a tree and are fine but when the story requires it, they're paper thin. It's the same with Torchwick. He was getting beat to a pulp in a few episodes by characters that aren't as capable as Ruby then he's whooping her in this episode.

When was Torchwick easily beaten?

The only fights I recall with him being even close to easily beaten was his very first fight with Ruby(where he was trying to get away rather than push the attack) and when Blake fought him on the train(where she was much stronger due to dust usage). But outside of that... I don't think he's had a 1v1, has he? He fought Blake & Sun at the same time in the season 1 finale, then fought RWBY, Sun, and Neptune all at once, albeit with a mech, and now he fought Ruby with Neo at his side. Also, while Neo was gone Ruby didn't have Crescent Rose so~ I don't think that's necessarily true. He's never really been easily beaten, nor was he particularly strong in this episode more so than in the last few fights. But perhaps I'm overlooking something? :x

As for it being a common thing in anime/video games. I agree, but it seems kinda dumb for them to overlook since it's seemingly the only thing that allows people to take a hit in this series and they mention it quite a bit. It's the reason the tournaments are able to be done without deaths after all. So to just ignore it would be kinda... well, dumb to me. Up till this, nothing has seemingly broken the rules of the universe it's set it so far as I've seen. For it to become inconsistent now would kinda bug me. But, I suppose you're right, it's possible. Just, if he's not OP for that reason, I'll probably stick to the "Yang had 1 aura point left" excuse just to help it remain consistency within my mind since it at least makes some sense.

I think Adam's sword can cut through auras. We saw some of its power in the Black trailer, when he disintegrated the spider with one hit. The spider of course didn't have an aura, but when you consider how it didn't even react to being shot several times with Gambol Shroud but was completely destroyed with ONE swipe of that sword, I mean, we knew back then that Adam was capable of some serious damage.

And, this is just me crackpot-theorizing out my ear with no evidence to back me up whatsoever, but I think it might be something like with Yang's hair. Every hit she takes she gets stronger, and she gets mad when her hair is hurt. Either A.) she just loves her hair or B.) the power from the hits she takes is stored in her hair somehow. I mean it does get all fire-glowy and super-saiyan, particularly when she activates her semblance, which makes me think her hair is somehow connected to her semblance. Plus we've just never seen anyone else's hair do that. (Or C.) I just love the smell of my own cracked pot in the morning!)

So if (IF) Yang can store a hit (or more accurately, the energy from a hit) in her hair, I wonder if Adam can store a hit in his sword. When he had Blake down, before he kicked her gun out of her hand, she shot at him twice. I thought those shots were absorbed into his sword, given that they didn't deflect off. How could he block, but not deflect, unless he was absorbing? This is also referenced in the Black trailer, when just before Adam does take down the spider, he clearly absorbs its laser ray with his sword. In case anyone missed or forgot about that scene, it happens around 3:50 into the video:




Also, in this last episode, we saw his sword sparking when it was clashed with Blake's weapon, and nothing was moving at all to produce those sparks. So maybe his sword vibrates (so minutely that we don't necessarily see the vibrations) at a frequency attuned to that of the aura of his enemy (in this case, Yang's aura, once he fixated on her) so he can just slice through or bypass the aura, or maybe he was absorbing Blake's strength and that's how he was able to so quickly get the upper hand on her. (Although she was in no way prepared to see him, let alone fight him, which could also account for how quickly she went down.)

Also, his weapon is very similar to Raven's, and even Neo is afraid of Raven. If it was the weapon she recognized, not the wielder, then it would make sense for even a great fighter like Neo to run from a weapon that she knows will destroy her aura in a single hit.

Okay, I KNOW that Taiyang is Ruby's father, but I swear it feels so, so much like Qrow is her father. She looks just like him (except for the eyes,) he's fond and protective of her (more so than he seems to be of Yang,) and that talk he had with her when she woke up? That seemed very much like a father-daughter talk. He even said she wasn't special in a "daddy loves you" kind of way, which was to further the point of his explanation, sure, but he could have used any example. What if he just wanted to tell her "Daddy loves you" because he is her father and he does love her and he can't straight-up tell her because he's off on missions too much to be a dad so he gave her to Taiyang so she'd have a good life and and and!

Okay. Okay. Taiyang is Ruby's father, Qrow is her uncle, and no matter how much I suspect it of being vice-versa, it's just not. Okay.


Weiss being taken away by her dad is one thing. I can see how that would happen. But Blake running away? What the truck, Cat? Maybe she's trying to make sure she leads Adam AWAY from what she cares about, which seems doubly likely after her crying apology to Yang's passed-out self, but she must see that she and her team are both weaker this way. They are stronger together, they are ALWAYS stronger together.

Pyrrha... :-( Well I guess we all saw that coming. We all knew she was inspired by Achilles, the Greek warrior who disguises himself as a red-haired girl named Pyrrha to avoid fighting in the war. Achilles was wounded through an arrow to his heel, just like Pyrrha took Cinder's arrow through her heel. After Achilles' death by arrow, he was cremated and his ashes buried. After Pyrrha was killed by Cinder's arrow, Cinder burned the body away. So if we expected her story to parallel Achilles' story, her death was a given. Doesn't make it any easier to take, though. :-( Poor, poor Jaune. I'm at least glad that she gave Cinder some trouble before dying. At least she didn't go down easy.

When Ruby's eyes did their thing, I thought we were finding out that she had been a Maiden all along. If Summer Rose had been a maiden, (which we have NO proof of and NO reason to believe, but hey why not) and if Summer Rose died (we know that much anyways,) then it would make sense for the last person she thought about to be her daughter, but Ruby was so young that the powers might have had to lay dormant for awhile until she grew into them. That, of course, proved not to be the case. Silver-eyed warriors are just the most dangerous warriors. It's nice to see Ozpin's comment about her silver eyes from Season One come back.

Poor Yang. That girl. First she's wrongly accused of senselessly breaking Mercury's leg during the tournament, which makes people who don't even know her hate her. Then she's called either crazy or a liar by her own uncle. Then she finds out that her mother knows all about her and just doesn't seem to care, doesn't WANT to be found, and that she shouldn't expect that her mother will ever come help her again. Ouch. Then she fights hard during the Grimm invasion to protect herself and her school, giving it her all, doing nothing wrong. She finds her best friend and teammate getting stabbed through the abdomen, tries to save her, loses an arm (and half her weapon,) and wakes up to find that the friend she lost a limb to protect has bailed on her and all her fighting to protect Beacon was for nothing. Sulking in her bedroom seems like honestly a perfectly reasonable reaction, but it's gone on just too long. Sulk it out, fine, but finish sulking and then go get your life back, girl! Hopefully she comes around, realizes Ruby went on without her, gets her butt in gear, and goes after her sister to help. She can stop by Ironwood's place along the way and get a prosthetic arm. Maybe Raven will come smack her darn kid into action and prove that she's not such a terrible person and mother after all.

And oh my gosh, the Opponent. It is so cool to finally have a face to put to the title, a name to put to the title (Salem, according to the end credits,) a face to put to the sound of her voice. We've heard her talk so calmly with Ozpin so many times, it's kinda crazy to finally see her! And she seems so reasonable! Not like a psycho murdering evil nutjob. For someone so not-crazy to be so bad, something terrible must have happened to her. I wonder if that's what Ozpin meant when he told Ruby he'd made more mistakes than any man, woman, or child? That he did something that hurt Salem so badly that she became the Opponent? It does seem kinda personal. She is out for revenge against specifically Ozpin. What on earth did he do to her?

All in all, ARGH! The teams are scattered, arguably the strongest student ever is dead, the adults are being kinda useless, and I don't know if all the characters are ever going to be able to come back together!

And, um, what happened to Cinder? The look of total terror on her face just before Ruby froze everything on top of the tower makes me think she was too shocked to run, so is she frozen up there too? If so, then why wasn't that mentioned? The dragon is frozen up there, sure, but still spawning Grimm. Is Cinder up there too, frozen? How will Emerald and Mercury react to that? Will she survive being indefinitely frozen? She has control over heat, at least enough heat to destroy Pyrrha's weapon. Can she not then melt herself and her dragon out?

I'm spoilering within the spoiler in case anyone didn't watch the scene after the credits:

Ozpin is 100% definitely alive in my mind, because Salem was talking directly to him at the end. It could be a flashback of sorts, but I don't think so. I think Salem has him.

Cinder, though? She looked terrified when she realized what Ruby was capable of.



It looks a lot like she got frozen, same as the dragon. But then why would Qrow tell her that Cinder was frozen up there, too? And is "frozen" the same as "dead?" Or just held in stasis? Another dimension like you mentioned might also be a possibility!

Kind of a mind-F on this one, but I'm going to assume that they are actually dead. If that's the case, more than likely, Ruby is now the Fall maiden. Silver eyed warrior and maiden, look out if she gets mad enough to harness it.

What Liela said about Summer Rose possibly being a maiden is also intriguing, as it would explain why Qrow is even part of that circle.

That last episode felt like kinda a let down to be honest. I wanted to see a big end of the world fight with Qrow, Ozpin, team RWBY, etc. They setup Adam and Cinder to be the big unbeatable badaases and then there is zero resolution. Adam isn't even in the episode. The whole finale felt like setup for next season. I like that they are going darker and not afraid to kill characters but other than Pyrrah dieing nothing actually happened in that episode.

Why did Qrow have Ozpins staff at the end?