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Of the many often-criticized scenes that plagued RWBY volume 5 like lice in a haircut you really couldn’t afford in the first place, few have been so unanimously loathed and rarely defended as the scenes regarding the “reveal” of Qrow and Raven’s bird forms. In a volume that animation slip ups that ranged in the hundreds for the Battle of Haven (I’ve written about it here) or the extended destruction of Adam’s threat-levels (again, here), the birds scenes still earn a place consistently as the worst-ranked scenes not just in Volume 5, but in RWBY as a show. I cannot say I have seen many people defend this on any level, be it execution, dialogue or context in the wider show. What makes it stand out is that Volume 5 is also a volume that had a decent plot-twist in it, and Miles Luna has, to his credit, executed effective twists in previous scripts before, in both RWBY and Red Vs Blue when he was the lead writer of the Chorus Trilogy. Today, I’d like to inspect the scenes in finer detail, and break down why the Bird Reveal fell flat from several different angles.

1) What’s the downside?

Raven sells the transformation abilities as a curse when she tells Yang and Weiss about them in Known By Its Song, saying:

“Well I doubt he (Tai) ever told you what Oz did to my brother and me.”



The audience was led to believe from Raven’s tone and dialogue that the powers were forced on herself and Qrow, and this… would have been a good twist. Volume 5 went back and forth several times on actually depicting Ozpin’s methods as flawed, with Raven and Hazel being the primary characters to question his actions. The problem, of course, is that these characters are villains and we are not likely to take a villain at their word, especially when Ozpin is subsequently given the floor so he can awkwardly provide exposition about the “truth” of the matter.

But of course Raven was either lying or oversold the idea that Ozpin forced her and Qrow to take the powers, because next episode Ozpin gets his yes-man Qrow to confirm that no, they chose to do this. Yang is still outraged at the idea of Qrow and Raven being able to become Animorphs, but… honestly, why? Qrow and Raven have no downsides to the shapeshifting power. They can freely transform at will and seemingly stay in whichever form they choose to without needing to shapeshift often. It doesn’t cause infertility (since Raven had Yang after getting the powers) or any other known disease such as shortening their lifespan. If anything, the power is more of a gift than a burden- glorified fast travel, put bluntly.

Does this look like someone who has been cursed?

In truth, Raven trying to spin it as a curse not only goes on to later undermine reactions to the shapeshifting (see the next point) but also makes Raven look pathetic. Instead of using something such as the mystery of Summer’s death or how Ozpin allowed Ruby into Beacon because of her Silver Eyes, she instead goes for… that time Ozpin gave her a completely voluntarily power with no downsides that she uses with reckless abandon. This definitely really does make Ozpin look shady

If Miles and Kerry wanted to sell the idea that the shapeshifting was unnatural (I’ll get back to that quote from the commentary) than actually giving a reason in-universe that this is an unnatural ability such as a dire consequence or negative side-effect would have actually sold the idea. As it is, there are no known downsides to the shapeshifting as of Volume 5, meaning Raven’s tone in Known By Its Song is either thanks purposeful misdirection on her part or poor vocal direction for Anna Hullum. It’s actually sad that for this supposedly unnatural ability, Chibi has shown more side-effects than the show proper.

2) The reaction is utterly nonsensical

Again, I’ll be referring to Miles and Kerry’s explanation on the bird stigma later, but again their own attempt at a twist is completely undermined by the way the characters react. Oscar’s “What?!” after Ozpin confirms he gave the Branwens shapeshifting powers reads more as a comedic reaction, and everyone else reacts like if Ozpin was that racist old Thanksgiving relative who just dropped the N-word. Yang acts like some personal violation has been admitted to, like Ozpin just said “I killed Summer Rose,” when in truth he gave the Branwens a power that as of yet still has no negative consequences. (I’m not letting this go) If there had to be a point for the characters to be unsettled at Ozpin over, why not use his possession of Oscar’s body? Ozpin basically spends Volume 4 pestering Oscar into going on a suicide mission and then takes control of his body in nearly every one of his scenes in Volume 5, and this is the moral injustice the show chooses to ignore over “BIRDS?!”

I don’t know about you, but Ozpin making some knock-off Animagus is a lot less morally shady than the forced takeover of a child who’s not even old enough to drink or consent. That everyone seems to be fine with that makes the heroes look far more worse than intended. “Oh, Ozpin taking over your body and soul, eliminating your entire sense of self is fine, but BIRDS?!”

3) Twists don’t work if we know the twist

I know I’m saying something really dumb up there, but this is a core tenant to a twist. If you see it coming, a twist isn’t a shock. It’s a delayed reaction. We’ve known that that Branwens have had corvid-themed ties since they were introduced- Ozpin even introduces Qrow as “a dusty old crow.” Volume 3′s final scene plainly shows Qrow shapeshifting into a crow, meaning that the audience had known that the Branwens had the power to turn into birds for over eighteen months between the finale and Known By Its Song.



Granted, on occasion, delayed twists can work. Thanks to a production accident, Penny’s robotic nature was spoiled in Volume 1 ahead of schedule, but the twist then became how Ruby would react to Penny’s secret and not the secret itself. Subsequently, Ruby’s acceptance of Penny was in-character and gave the twist a good payoff.

However, the twist falls flat. We saw the bird connection coming for years, wasting screentime talking about it was simply a waste of writing/animation/voice acting time that would have been spent elsewhere or answering one of the many questions the show annoyingly loves to skirt around.

4) Shapeshifting being “not normal magic.”

In the commentary track for Volume 5, Miles and Kerry actually speak for a short moment on the bird twist. From a summary of the commentary on Reddit:

Being able to turn into a bird is a big thing. In this world, transforming into an animal is not normal magic- it’s weird. Makes it seem like Oz was doing something a bit more shady.



Ozpin’s supposed shadiness is undercut, again, by the lack of negative consequences for the shapeshifting. It’s also difficult to understand what M&K mean by “normal magic,” given how vaguely written RWBY’s magic already is and how magic is far from normal in-setting (yes, Dust would be magic by our standards but in Remnant it’s a commercial resource). Weiss and Nora are both skeptical that magic even exists until confronted with the shapeshifting, Maiden abilities are supercharged versions of what people get up to with Dust, Silver Eyes… will get an explanation after the heat-death of the universe or Miles is taken to a CIA blacksite, and Ozpin’s curse is divine in nature, not magical. In short, there’s no baseline for what is and isn’t “normal” magic thanks to RWBY’s magic system being so poorly explained and having so many different magical styles. We’re talking about a setting where our protagonists can, in order: Turn into rose petals and move at super-speed, use glyphs to change gravitational pulls, summon the dead and alter the flow of time, create shadows of herself to take strikes for her, and use kinetic absorption to deal massive backlash damage that happens to light her hair on fire. And this is the run-of-the-mill “normal” stuff that comes from the soul (a resource that can be accurately tracked using percentiles and technology exists to exchange it from one body to another).

If all of that is “normal” magic, then how is being able to go “caw caw” the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Do you really expect the audience to believe that in a setting where all of the above is possible, shapeshifting has never been achieved as a Semblance and that it’s too out-there for Remnant? If Miles and Kerry wanted shapeshifting to be taboo, they couldn’t just say it one day and expect it to fly. By the standards of the show, the shapeshifting is just as out-there as any other Semblance. In fact, by the standards of the show- hell, compared to Qrow and Raven’s actual Semblances- shapeshifting is quite mundane in most magical settings. This, at its core, is poor writing. The bird twist is presented as a twist solely to generate an artificial conflict so that the writers can try to make Ozpin look bad and let Yang drop the ultimatum that she’s only there for Ruby. Keyword. Try.

5) We expected a better twist

Qrow (and Raven before Volume 5 turned her into a child-murdering hypocrite) are two of the most popular characters in RWBY, with great designs and interesting backstories. The mysteries surrounding the Branwen tribe led many a fan to await the day we’d learn more about where the twins came from. Some even speculated that Qrow and Raven’s shapeshifting came from the tribe itself, that it was a gift passed on by their parents or the tribe had access to ancient shamanic magics that made their own mark on the world. A third party, if you will, in the Ozpin/Salem conflict.

Unfortunately, the truth was quite hollow. The tribe were a bunch of no-good baddies represented by a gap-toothed man who dreamed of being a pinball, and whose plot relevance was minimal. The idea of the Branwens themselves having magic was tossed away and instead Ozpin became the sole source of magic (an idea I loathe since making Ozpin the root of all magic removes much of the mystery to Remnant).

Additionally, Volume 5 actually had a good twist in it- the reveal of Raven being the real Sping Maiden, with Vernal acting as a decoy. It was a cleverly plotted twist, with several key hints scattered throughout the season that became evident on a rewatch. This was an example of a good twist, one that the majority of the fandom did not see coming (to the point where RWBY Rewind for that episode specifically highlighted one person who guessed and congratulated them). Going from the Maiden twist to the bird twist just further highlighted how poorly the idea was.

And we know Miles can do better writing wise. In his previous writing credit, Red Vs Blue Season 12, Miles drops a stellar plot twist that Felix and Locus were playing both sides of the civil war (don’t look at me sideways it’s been like three years and the Mercs short openly spoils they’re bad guys). It was an effective usage of the twist as a writing tool, with the entire plot turning on its head as everything changed from what we the audience and the characters were thinking. It remains a good twist.

But as an aside, Miles has become very reliant on using twists and cliffhangers in his scripts; he freely admitted at RTX 2018 that he seeks out good places to drop cliffhangers. One of his more glaringly flawed ideas of using a twist is having the audience learn something through a character, which Jaune unfortunately was the brunt of several times in Volume 1 as he’s used as the vector to describe Aura. As an aside within an aside, I’m considering a post about why I can’t blame people who write off Jaune as a self-insert after Volumes 1 and 2, and part of the reason for that is how the writers use him as a tool to deliver exposition. Another form of twist Miles is reliant on is presenting information the characters already know as twists- see the existence of Blake’s parents and Whitley. It’s a poor habit writing wise since the characters knowing this information already undercuts the impact (you mean to tell me that Blake never once mentioned her loving parents to team RWY in nearly two college semesters or that none of them did a Google search for “Belladonna” and found the former White Fang leader?). Even now this can be seen with how information on the Silver Eyes, Summer and what broke up Team STRQ has been rationed out to make the sudden shocking twist all the more shocking to the viewer. Miles is essentially a dog over who sticks food morsels to the top of a stick to lure the dog.

Problem is, the dog eventually has enough and goes looking for a bigger source of food, and when they come back to find their owner still throwing around morsels, they’re not even angry. They’re just disappointed.

To surmise, the bird twist failed to work on several levels, chief among which being that we already knew Qrow and Raven had some form of shapeshifting ability since Volume 3. The idea of the bird magic being “not normal magic” is laughable by the standards of RWBY, and the lack of negative side-effects to the power undersells any efforts at making Ozpin look “shady” for doing so, especially when the show has Qrow say the twins gave consent. Additionally, that more focus is put on the bird twist than anyone being horrified at Ozpin’s forced takeover of a 14 year old child who never asked for this only makes the cast look poorly prioritized when it comes to how they react to Ozpin’s magics. Finally, Miles having written better twists before and subsequently after the bird twist only made it stand out more as a waste of time in the process, something that never needed elaboration on in the show while more pressing mysteries could have been solved. This is why I believe the bird twist to be one of the poorer attempts RWBY has made at a twist.

Thank you for reading.