Link to Volume 4 Retrospective

Following the conclusion of Volume 6, I felt like writing about the past three years of RWBY, examining the ups and downs as well as the fandom climate during those weeks. This post is a little longer than the last, perhaps to be expected for the most controversial year in the show’s run.

A post for V6 will follow tomorrow, and a final one looking into the characters themselves will go up some time later.

VOLUME 5

RTX Austin, 2017. Everyone is eager to catch their first glimpse of RWBY Volume 5, and what a glimpse it is. Rooster Teeth released Weiss’s V5 Character Short shortly after it was previewed at the convention, not wanting the same situation as last year. It’s a beautiful action sequence that brings with it an all new Williams track. Maya’s teething problems with V4’s battle animation appear fixed. It even has Winter Schnee, a breakout character from the end of the Poser days.



Blake’s own Character Short follows months after. In typical Blake short fashion, she isn’t really even the focus. Ilia Amitola is, the colour-shifting member of the White Fang we were briefly introduced to last year. She’s got quite a bit more to do this year however, so it’s good that we’re starting out with some more grounding for her. Her backstory goes down well, more news on the Faunus racism subplot, which has been lacking for quite some time. It’s all told rather than shown though, and the fandom is never a fan of that (even if they don’t always know what that means).

Yang’s Short arrives late, much to the chagrin of her content starved fans. But that’s okay, because it’s really good. She gets a pretty great fight scene, a killer new theme song, and more depth on the sisterly side of things. Ruby apologises for not being of more assistance to Yang, having not known how, and Yang reassures her in turn.

The first episode of the volume releases the same day. But before I get into that: the opening.

Triumph is a massive improvement on all levels compared to Let’s Just Live. For one, the transitions are far more inventive, with bursts of petals and fluttering Qrow feathers. We get another look at the beautiful Mistral setpiece art from last year’s finale before moving to the four leads. And once more, CRWBY go for the “zoom through the eye” bit, as Yang charges toward the audience on Bumblebee (the bike), her eye flashing red at just the last second. It’s far cleaner than what we had with Jacques, and the great transitions don’t end there.



Oscar’s unsure battle pose with his cane forming Lionheart’s desk as Watts glares over him menacingly is a personal favorite of mine. Adam’s moment this year is genuinely threatening rather than jokingly so, a more muted sequence of him readying his blade. Blake and Sun despair at the docks of Menagerie, now far more lively and beautiful as a result of production improvements. We see two important dynamics for the volume, Fall Maiden Cinder versus Spring Maiden Vernal, and Yang’s long awaited confrontation with her mother. We get to see Ilia and the Albain Bros to remember they exist before we cut to our “hype” stage of the opening. And unfortunately, it’s rather spoilerly again. Ren and Nora are battling Hazel, which wasn’t as easy a prediction as another Blake vs Ilia encounter.



The animation itself remains strong regardless, and I have fond memories of literally leaping out of my chair at RTX London upon seeing Yang charge at Mercury. The opening ends on a determined, cheerful Ruby as she sees her teammates back at her side, ready to charge at the towering Salem. It’s no secret that the audience and CRWBY themselves struggled with keeping up with a separated team, and the suggestion of the band getting back together this year is welcome.

There are a lot of hopes riding on Volume 5. V4 was rocky, more or less so depending on who your favorite characters were. But as previously mentioned, that was their trial Maya year, their trial “no-Monty” year. By Volume 5, fans were expecting those sorts of issues to be cleaned up and were excited to continue delving into the main plotline of the show, past the prologue and past last year’s introductory season to the wider world of Remnant. Hopes are high for this volume, and the first four episodes more than deliver.

Welcome to Haven is the first opening episode to a volume that does not feature a fight sequence, but not many list that as a complaint. Not many list complaints with the episode at all, as it features all members of Team RWBY which V4 often failed to do. Intriguing dialogue in Leo’s office lays the foundation for our volume’s major conflict, and a battle is on the horizon for Weiss. Yang gets a fun moment to be a cowboy, but contrary to V4-V5 hiatus concerns, she’s not quite used to that arm. Meanwhile Blake is ready to get a move on and start a new revolution for her old revolution.



The week passes and Weiss gets her first action scene in a while, not counting her short, a colourful chase sequence against Lancer Grimm, aided by the surprise hit character: Pilot Boi. Alas, our brave pilot perishes despite Weiss’s best efforts to stop the crashing airship before it lands at Raven Branwen’s doorstep. The battle itself has its pros and cons. There aren’t any poor moments of weightless animation like what V4 suffered from, but Weiss doesn’t really employ any impressive sword choreography like she had in her short. We get a beautiful array of her dust capabilities, an equally important pillar of her fighting style, as well as a strong display from her favorite new toy, the summoned knight. Tying all of this together is the second, far more action packed half of her V4 performance song.

Elsewhere, Cinder gets even saltier about Ruby. V4’s ending moments gave us an indication of just how much Cinder has it in for her, and this season continues to build on that. The most important thing to take in is that while Salem wants Ruby alive, her apprentice most certainly doesn’t.



Team Belladonna attempt to recruit a militia to travel to Mistral and fight the White Fang, and they appear to be getting somewhere before Ilia drops in and hijacks their speech. Cherami Leigh’s voice acting in this scene and the volume as a whole is superb, and Blake is left speechless in the face of her old friend’s angered retort. Meanwhile, Oscar begins interacting with other characters for once. Team RNJR are taking a moment to rest in a house after the stressful events of V4, and the audience is expecting a look at the brand new kingdom soon after.

Lighting the Fire airs afterwards, likely the most popular episode of the year. Yang tears apart a group of bandits, the animation isn’t perfect, but it is well directed. I think Volume 5 is where Kerry really hits his stride as a director, and this season and the next are full of beautiful camera movement that enhance several moments that would have been dull otherwise.

Yang continues onward and at last, gets to speak to Raven. The conversation is a little awkward, with the pair essentially shouting at each other from a distance. It harms the acting, but the writing saves it. Yang is bold, demanding only passage to her sister rather than ask questions. She knows the people she cares about, and it sure as hell isn’t anyone who would have abandoned her. Definitely not, regardless of any connection she may have had with them. She cares about people like her sister, and Weiss Schnee, who conveniently happens to be about 8 meters away from her.



The Freezerburn reunion is what few people expected to see first, but the moment is heartfelt and perfectly executed. The hug they share will remain a highlight for the year, and even the series as a whole. It also marks the start of Nice Weiss, a girl who went from a cold home to a warm school, finding things she didn’t know she could appreciate before being harshly thrown back into an environment she despised even more than she realized.

Meanwhile, Blake has the most pivotal conversation of her life. Once more over tea with her trusted ally Sun, she realizes how her faults have restrained her, and only through the help of her persistent friends has she managed to move past those demons. Sun was there for her in V1, and where he faltered in V2, Yang picked up where he left off. Now Sun has assisted her again, and Blake steels her resolve. She won’t be running away again, and she knows that if friends can reach her when she’s at her lowest, she can reach out to someone the same way too.



But not all of our heroes are enjoying victories. Qrow prowls the streets of Mistral in an excellent scene that sets a foreboding mood for the rest of the season. The audience knows Leo has sold them out, and Qrow already held suspicions. The tension within the city continues to build as RNJR prepares for their next mission, still not yet out of the house. Qrow’s sibling invites Yang and Weiss for tea, where we get into a major topic for the volume: magic. The Freezerburn pair teleportbike their way over to the rest of the team. Ruby apologises for not being of more assistance to Yang, having not known how, and Yang reassures her in turn.



Our slowest episode of the volume hits in the midseason, and a few cracks begin to show. We get some downtime, a lighthearted moment between friends who haven’t seen one another in months. In spite of this, Ren’s impromptu speech about their development doesn’t quite land with the audience. Jaune’s changes haven’t quite been as drastic as expected, though the episode will prove that his proverbial kettle continues to boil. Ren and Nora got depth but they’re still the same people, and Ruby is Ruby.



The kids confront Ozpin and demand some answers, and the in-world controversial response to turning people into birds is simply confusing to much of the fanbase. It’s hard to find it to be a huge deal when everyone can unlock their own superpowers anyway, and besides, turning into a bird is cool! Raven’s ominous message ultimately falls flat but perhaps worst of all, Ruby fails to ask any of the questions about her eyes and her mother the FNDM want her to ask. Patience for her has worn thin. Weiss, Blake and Yang have all had major defining moments, and yet there’s still little to Ruby that a V1 viewer couldn’t have told you. She hasn’t even had a cool song or action scene in a while, and if the story is faltering, those are elements of the series that always lift it back up.



Back at the bandit camp, Cinder, Mercury and Emerald make their triumphant return, ready to cause havoc. For a pair of relatively unimportant villains who have become my longtime personal favourites, the fan response to seeing Mercury and Emerald back in action was a lot louder than I could have anticipated. We end on a thrilling cliffhanger of Emerald readying her weapons.

This immediately goes nowhere as we simply go back to the house in Mistral. Things have slowed down after V5’s initial sprint out of the gates. They stay slow as our new favourite pair Weiss and Yang have a gentle discussion about the issues that have resulted from their less than ideal upbringings, and the conversation loops back to Blake. RWY have reunited and are loving each other’s company, but B is still a very touchy topic for one of them. Speaking of B, she initiates one of my favourite moments in the show’s history. She travels alone to meet with Ilia and is caught in a trap. But this isn’t the Blake Belladonna of old, and it turns out she’s relying on her friends this time. The episode ends on another cliffhanger as the attack on the Belladonna household begins.

Next episode, we’re back at the bandit camp, the battle having occurred off screen. In fairness, it would have just been another bandit mook beatdown, and Yang did that already. But we haven’t seen a fight this volume since that bandit beatdown many weeks ago. The banter between the two antagonistic parties is lacklustre, though a more thorough look at Watts is welcome. He wants to stick to the plan, but Cinder is high on a power trip after her recovery. She wants blood, she wants Ruby Rose, and she wants to show this fool who the real maiden is around here. Volume 5 Cinder is not particularly popular. She was always one of the more controversial members of the cast, but her shattered confidence and ruined voice intrigued a fair few viewers, only for this to be seemingly reverted the next year. Some fans will argue that the Cinder we see in V5 is still quite different to how she was during Beacon, now a lot more desperate and eager to prove herself, but not everyone agrees.

It is also at this moment where an eagle-eyed and rather open-minded fan makes public his bold suspicion that Vernal might not be who we think she is.



And then, the Belladonna house. Blake and Ilia face off - and the episode ends. Our third cliffhanger in a row, and two of them are about the same event! The lack of action has resulted in a very antsy audience, and the dialogue we’ve had in exchange hasn’t been hitting the notes people wanted it to.

Episode 10, True Colours, is my personal favourite of the volume and it certainly makes it into my top 10 favourite episodes list if I had to make one. The opening is hardly interesting - Ruby asks some questions about the relics… And nothing else. Things pick up as Raven has a brief chat with Leo, two cowards doing their best to survive Salem’s machinations, but only one of them is being honest with themselves.



And then at long last, we begin the battle at the Belladonna’s. I care little for Kali knocking out the bat faunus Yuma with a tray, and the moments with Sun and Ghira suffer from some stilted animation. But the duel between Ilia and Blake is what we’re all waiting for, and it’s a tense debate over gunfire and the clash of blade and whip. Ilia’s chameleon camouflage is too much even for Blake’s intrinsic night vision, and she takes an extreme measure as to stay on the offensive. This fight isn’t overly popular in the fandom, but it’s got some brilliant moments to it nonetheless. The peak of the fight isn’t even from it’s action, but from Cherami Leigh’s excellent performance. The tearful admittance that this victimised girl knows no other path than violence is among the best acted in the series, and the spectacular VA work won’t stop there. Ilia isn’t quite ready to listen yet, and Sun leaps in to do what Blake can’t.

In a glorious display we haven’t seen since the halcyon days of 2013, Sun Wukong lays the fucking beatdown.

An Albain twin explodes in a rather hilarious mishap, and Ghira risks his life to save Ilia’s. It’s this fateful moment that tips her over the edge, and it’s written all over her face. The visual improvement on body language, face expressions and other smaller movements isn’t something I’ve touched on, but V5 truly brings the Maya standard up to a genuinely impressive level.

In what is my favourite moment of Arryn’s voice acting, it is Blake who delivers a speech to the citizens of Menagerie this time, not her father. While the “we did this” line is what most fans might remember on it’s comedic value, the speech itself is utterly brilliant. V4’s rocky Blake episodes set her up for greatness, and her arc continues to rise and rise as she becomes a proper leader for her people. It is simply fantastic to watch play out.



Unfortunately, this would not begin a trend of equally excellent episodes. The least popular arc of the show, tied only with Jaunedice, is to follow.

Team RNJR, now two members stronger, finally leave the house. They’ve spent all 11 weeks of the volume so far cooped up in there, and the community isn’t particularly happy about it. But they’re out at last, and they walk headfirst into a trap they suspected was there. Community isn’t too happy about that one either. The pre battle conversation with the heroes and villains is chilling, and things only get worse and worse for our protagonists. A White Fang contingent led by Adam himself is outside planting explosives, Hazel bars the doors, and they’re flanked on the other side by two maidens. All hope seems lost, and the metaphorical kettle that is Jaune Arc finally pops off. He charges at Cinder after a brilliantly delivered rant of anguish which kicks off the battle.

Here’s where things get even messier for the episode. Everybody splits off into individual duels, which isn’t a bad thing in some cases. The Branwen siblings long awaited battle begins, as does a highly anticipated rematch between Yang and Mercury. But Ren and Nora choosing to fight Hazel instead of go after Pyrrha’s killer the way Jaune has simply divides the amount of work to be done even further, and CRWBY do not have it in them to animate all of these fights to the hyped up standard they ought to be.



The best fight we see in the episode is Oscar Pine vs Leonardo Lionheart, hardly characters the fandom wants their eyes on in a room like this. Weiss vs Vernal is particularly touchy, as Weiss’s stubborn, repeated attempts at summoning falter against an opponent above her level. Her display is hardly competent - frustrating Weiss fans by having to watch her lose yet another battle. Ruby’s silver eyes trigger involuntarily, the first we’ve heard or seen of them since Volume 3. Cinder and Emerald’s careful planning prevent them from being much help, and she’s quickly knocked out. The fact that Jaune almost stabs Cinder in the face and then falls over isn’t a particularly welcome moment either. It alleviates concerns that Ruby’s eyes are going to be an automatic win condition, but only reinforces the notion that she should have inquired about them earlier in the season, or even the season before this one.

The episode ends on our fourth cliffhanger in a row: Weiss has been impaled by a javelin, and begins to slump over just before the episode cuts.

It’s a busy week in the fandom. A clear majority maintain that Weiss will be fine, she’s a lead character. But the topic that dominates the wait between episodes is that “what if”. For seven days, there was some amount of genuine curiosity over whether or not CRWBY was willing to drop one of their titular characters. But because of her obvious safety, the wound being the result of Weiss’s terrible performance, Cinder’s shifting priorities away from Ruby and it being our fourth cliffhanger in four weeks means that the community aren’t overjoyed with The More the Merrier.



Vault of the Spring Maiden proves to be less controversial - but only slightly. Hazel discovers Oscar is Ozpin’s next host, and the stoic giant, the most reasonable and level headed of Salem’s cabal we’ve seen so far goes absolutely ballistic. He embeds crystals of dust directly into his body, a technique revealed by a V2 World of Remnant but never before seen until now. The action is thrilling, but the reveal of Hazel’s backstory and motivation doesn’t sit well with many.



It’s understandable that he’s distraught over his sister’s death, but she’d chosen a dangerous line of work and besides, that’s hardly an excuse for working for Grimm Satan! Ozpin doesn’t seem to be in the wrong at all. And what’s happening with our longer running protagonists?

Jaune finally unlocks his semblance, spending his own aura to amplify another’s. It’s been a long time coming, and the scene’s score is beautiful. Seamlessly shifting from Jaune’s theme to Weiss’s This Life is Mine before moving to a touching rendition of the Arkos leitmotif, something we haven’t heard in quite some time. Team RNJR get an unofficial sendoff as Ruby moves to help her sister, but we don’t actually get to see the heroic sibling pair fight against the villainous adopted-sibling pair, that happens off screen. As did Qrow vs Raven apparently, as the evil team makes the bold decision to send their most powerful combatants down to the vault.



After a clash that both parties were readying themselves for, Vernal is killed, and Cinder begins to drain her powers. Only there’s nothing there, because Raven Branwen has been your Spring Maiden the entire time. The reveal is perfect - you can go back and watch every scene Raven has been in, even her small V4 appearance, and the hints are all there. From the tiniest of animated hand gestures to the on and off usage of her mask, CRWBY have masterfully foreshadowed this surprise twist.



We don’t follow through on them straight away though. Blake’s faunus militia arrives to confront Adam’s White Fang, and while Blake’s character moments are strong, the scene absolutely demolishes Adam’s reputation both in-world and within the fanbase. Many consider the simple manner in which he was dispatched to be a nerf, another example of RWBY’s poor power scaling. And then, maiden time.

Cinder and Raven’s explosive duel is well received at first, but its standing will drop in later weeks. The presiding opinion is that many are happy to see actual swordplay rather than just a sequence of magical visual effects, but it’s not quite as impressive as it could have been in a few places. It alone cannot hold up the volume as one of the very few dedicated action sequences it has. The fight ends with Cinder Fall being tossed into an abyss, and a major topic of the coming hiatus will be regarding this fate.

Up top, the battle of Haven continues to be something of a mess. Yang makes a desperate run to the vault, and Mercury and Emerald do absolutely everything in their power to stop her. Yang’s arm gets caught, her eyes flash crimson, but she keeps a cool head. Her prosthetic detached, Yang dives into the vault while the rest of her friends clean up the remainder of the villains.

Blake then triumphantly rejoins her team and a battle kicks off that, in now sadly expected Volume 5 fashion, we cut away from. Thankfully, the scene we’re cutting to is truly excellent. Yang has entered Haven’s vault, being the only one who could make it in time without being impeded by a villain. Going down, she knows four things:



That she is in no fighting shape

The three people in her way are extraordinarily powerful



They are not on her side

The relic of knowledge is down here



And so, like Pyrrha before her, Yang knows she has to try.

Luckily for our blonde hero, only her mother is left standing after the battle. Said mother is aiming to pick up the relic and run for safety, to survive as she always has. But Yang needs that relic to stand and fight, though taking a direct battle to obtain it is out of the question in this instance. And so, Yang finds another path around the obstacle, directly calling Raven out for her hypocrisy, her flawed view on life, for being a terrible mother and really just all sorts of things she had coming. Raven isn’t strong, she’s just afraid. Yang’s afraid too, but she’s actually got the strength to deal with it rather than run until the road gives out. Raven leaves having been utterly murdered by words, and Yang manages to secure the relic.

I’m going to take a brief moment to gush about how cool the relic vault is. The interlocking panels of the intricate door sliding back piece by piece to reveal a downright surreal, alternate dimension(?) into a desert with only a mysterious lamp floating in it at the end of a path is nothing short of incredible. Yang appreciates it so much she takes a moment to have an emotional breakdown at the end of a long day while she’s there.

Leonardo Lionheart gets a spike through the face. The death was apparently going to be shown on screen before CRWBY figured it’d be spookier if you caught shadowy glimpses of it instead, and honestly they’re right. It’s a sad end for this Cowardly Lion, no moment of redemption where he finds his courage. Yang comes back on up and Emerald puts two and two together and realizes that Cinder Fall might not be quite as cool as she realizes, and has an intense breakdown that gives a pretty damn good impression of just how scared she is of Salem. Additionally, it’s the first time the protagonists get a look at the big bad, another piece building toward their inevitable confrontation.

The rest of the episode is a rather hastily conducted epilogue, the most focused on moment of course being the proper reunification of Team RWBY. Blake only feels comfortable joining the group after Yang gives the okay, Ruby and Weiss’s work to mend her view on the resident catgirl paying off. Meanwhile, Oscar stammers something out about heading to Atlas for reasons unknown so the audience knows what’s even going on next season.

Volume 5’s theme was Growth, and CRWBY generally had a good handle on that this year. It wasn’t quite perfect - Ruby seemingly hasn’t budged an inch and she’ll get to spend a hiatus being heckled for it. Ren and Nora’s focus last year doesn’t seem to have gone much further. Adam, Cinder and Hazel won’t be looked at positively for quite some time.

But Nice Weiss is received well, doing her best to care for her friends as best she can in stark contrast from those early days. Blake has had a terrific year, even earning the credits song of the season with a second take at From Shadows. Yang’s training pays off, ultimately winning the day at Haven when all could have been lost. Not quite as “go with the flow and see what happens” as she was back in the day, now focused and wary.

Unfortunately, character growth might be all they got right. To say RWBY’s signature action was lacking is an understatement, and the endless chain of cliffhangers in the middle of the volume were far from appreciated. Nothing I can write here will be anything you haven’t read before, because the V5-V6 hiatus was undoubtedly one fuelled with concern compared to the quiet hope V4-V5’s had. It would be unfair to say Jeff, Casey and Alex had a poor year on the soundtrack, but a delayed Spotify release means that not everyone in the community is even listening to their V5 work during the long wait.

A shining light of it will be Reddit’s first AMA with Miles and Kerry, where they confidently address difficult questions and outline their goals for next year, but that’s all the fandom has to tide them over for a dreary off season.

Screenshots all taken from the RWBY Wiki. Gifs made by GLQ.

