Ah, the creatures of Grimm. Humanity’s greatest enemy in RWBY, the Grimm present a threat that any one hero could never hope to match. A sheer endless horde controlled by a singular eldritch entity, the masses of darkness that have beaten humanity back to a few controlled kingdoms, and make travel dangerous and wrought with peril at the best of times, all capped off with some thoroughly impressive designs that make them look like something Sauron would make in his off-time. On paper, these things are terrifying hunters, tracking you through your own negative emotions.

On paper. See, despite the undisputed claim they have over much of Remnant,, the Grimm don’t seem to be taken that seriously. The show pays lip-service to this concept, but often the execution of showing the real dangers of the Grimm falls flat on its face. The main characters of the show often steamroll through the threat that the Grimm as a race pose, and it’s only in the last two volumes that we’ve seen a concentrated effort to make the Grimm scary. But even then, I feel like it hasn’t really been enough to convince RWBY’s fans to treat the Grimm like the threat that they really should be.

Therefore, today I’d like to examine why the fanbase aren’t scared of the Grimm, using three core reasons for this. As usual, this essay is under the read-more for the sake of mobile users and people on data.

Reason 1) The Breach

In a previous post, I discussed why Cinder’s plan in Volumes 1-3 was quite brilliant in my opinion, and during it I brought up that the Breach was meant to be a failure. So in advance I’m not complaining that RWBY held back the Breach. I’m more going to criticize how the Grimm are treated during the Breach- less of an apocalyptic danger, more of an inconvenience.

Chapter 11 of Volume 2, No Brakes, set the Breach up as a disaster. There’s no music, no sound except for the Grimm rampaging as people begin screaming. RWBY are distraught as the Grimm surge around them, pouring into the city. The music is entirely absent for this scene and while Ruby looks determined as we cut to black, the odds aren’t in RWBY’s favor. Especially considering how they were just in a train crash, and half the team are fresh from losses (Weiss vs Banesaw and Yang vs Neo).

Skip to 14:30 if this doesn’t automatically go to the timestamp:

Things are looking bleak going into the finale, and as someone who ranks most of Volume 2 as a high-point of the show, it’s quite exciting to see a moment where despite RWBY’s efforts, they lose. After two volumes of build-up, the Grimm have breached Vale and things are about to go to hell in a handbasket.

… and then Breach aired.

On the surface, I should stress Breach isn’t a bad finale. It’s entertaining and it is fun to see RWBY scrape out a victory against all the odds, and again, it was never meant to work outside of the very early drafts of Volume 2 that would have had the Breach lead directly into the Fall of Beacon. From a character showcase it’s one of the only times we’ve really seen Best Girl Emerald get to fight so I can’t complain on that end.

The exact problem with the Breach kicks around around the point Jeff and Casey start singing. See, I think most of the other teams made sense in their entry- barring Sun and Neptune who really could have been cut for time, especially since Junior Detectives became such an awful gag in Chibi. Ultimately the human response would be too much for the Grimm and the Breach would have been unsuccessful. But CFVY’s introduction crosses the line and goes from humanity pushing back the darkness to just a mook slaughterhouse.

I’ve seen un-sourced claims that Monty had an agreement with Miles and Kerry that he would be let “off the leash” for volume finales of RWBY, that he’d be allowed to do whatever he wanted to wrap up the season. Monty was someone who knew how to make a good fight, but was also someone who needed to take a few lessons on power scaling. The Grimm served a purpose in Monty’s version of RWBY as mooks for the team to take down and look good doing it- that was the entire selling point of the Red trailer, for Christ’s sake.

But CFVY’s fight debut is what happens when you take that point too far, since I believe that the Breach killed a lot of the Grimm’s threat-factor. Don’t get me wrong, I adore CFVY’s debut, it’s set to one of the best songs in the soundtrack and it’s easy to see why CFVY have become such a popular team despite this really being their single big scene, but on a wider level it’s hard to deny that it does a lasting blow to the Grimm’s threat-factor.

I’ll get into this point in more detail later, but note how you never see dead civilians. Given how fast the Grimm were moving it’s likely that yes, people died off-screen, but we never see any bodies. As far as what’s on-screen shows, the Breach was closed without any human or Faunus casualties (yes, RWBY were in the perfect place to make a chokehold position but a lot of Grimm are still seen running past them in No Brakes), and CFVY then proceed to steamroll over them without even operating at peak performance (”You spent all semester building that up. Don’t waste it here.”). Coco’s minigun ripping through Grimm that previously took entire episodes to kill was just the icing on the cake, and it’s no surprise that in all of her future appearances, her weapon isn’t even half as powerful as it was.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, hot, but as much as this builds up the heroes it also does a number on de-legitimizing the Grimm in my opinion.

That said, I can admit that the Breach has several extenuating factors- the rapid response of the Atlas military and two fully rested Huntsman teams along with several faculty members quickly turns the tide, while RWBY bottleneck the Grimm and effectively contain them in the plaza they burst through. Had RWBY been forced to yield ground, this could have gotten a lot worse. But thanks to that lucky placement, the Grimm’s first real chance to back up those claims about how dangerous they are feels… a little like a wet fart to be honest. On its own, Breach doesn’t really have the problem of not caring about the Grimm that RWBY’s future volumes would have, but the seeds of that apathy can be found here.

2) We rarely get to see the Grimm from a civilian perspective

As the title says, we don’t often see the Grimm from the perspective of people who can’t fight them. The sole exception to this is, not by coincidence, the one time the fanbase has been dreading the arrival of a Grimm in the Nuckelavee.

This is actually something that has been fully admitted to in the commentary tracks- the crew are readily aware that the Grimm aren’t a serious threat, and attribute this to how we always see them through the eyes of people who are trained to kick their ass. I kinda wish we got something like this for Oscar in volume 4 before he just become a vehicle for Ozpin exposition, but it likely would have felt redundant given the RNJR plot. A small example of what I’m talking about is Yang’s flashback in Burning The Candle. Yang’s all of five or six when she’s attacked by Grimm, and while the fear is undercut by her telling the story, it carries far more dread then when Yang is attacked by an Ursa in her character short.

“There we were: A toddler sleeping in the back of a wagon and a stupid girl too exhausted to even cry for help. We might as well have been served on a silver platter.” I love that line.

This is why Ren’s flashback in Volume 4 to the fall of Kuroyuri is so effective. For the first time, we’re seeing the Grimm through the eyes of 99% of the world and the Nuck is terrifying as a consequence. The Nuck remains one of the most popular Grimm seen to date specifically because we see it as a child saw it, adding in how we never get a clear look at it in this episode to heighten the fear factor through fear of the unknown. It makes young Ren’s bravery in this episode, saving Nora and using his newfound Semblance to keep them alive, all the more emotionally stirring. Volume 4 has its share of dud scenes, but the fall of Kuroyuri will never be one of them. It’s one of the most well-shot scenes in the entire show.

Also can I just say that even when I’m expecting it, that moment where Ren’s mom is trying to assure him everything’s fine right before the house comes down is a brilliant jump-scare? Kudos to the team for that. Also Ren’s father’s attempt at a heroic sacrifice that, when you cut to Ren afterwards, you realize how little it did to distract the Nuck? Great way to show how much the Nuck doesn’t give a shit.

But getting back on topic, if RWBY in the future shows us scenes of the Grimm through the eyes of a civilian, their threat will be more palpable. As I’ve said, the crew themselves have said that we don’t really fear the Grimm because we always see them through the eyes of people trained to kill them, but having Grimm scenes where we see what a danger they really are would go a long way to show not only why Huntsmen fight, but why they are the minority when it comes to being able to kill them. Hopefully, Volume 6′s new Manticore Grimm will get to prove itself a fearsome challenge, I hope.

Oh, and for God’s sake, now that the Adam short had blood can Volume 6 finally have a scene where a Grimm kills someone on-screen? I want some dead bodies already.

No, this doesn’t count

Long story short, more scenes of civvies running from Grimm would go a long way towards making them more scary, something that was actually proven by Volume 4.

3) The Grimm need a solid victory of their own

You remember how I said that the Grimm don’t really feel on-screen like a big threat despite the whole “forced humanity to push back to the Kingdoms” at the start? Let me elaborate on that further.

By “solid victory” I mean that RWBY has yet to show the Grimm winning many fights on their own, without outside aid such as the White Fang and the Queen Virus back at Fall of Beacon, or the Branwens depriving a town of resources as seen in the Fall of Shion. In fact, there’s only two real instances where the Grimm flat out win and destroy a settlement in the show thus far: The fall of Mountain Glenn and the fall of Kuroyuri.

To quickly explain other technical Grimm victories: Ruby likely saved the town in her character short after she took out the Beringal, Weiss still got shot down in Volume 5.

This does weaken the Grimm on an instinctual level- their biggest victory at Beacon was because of outside forces. Haven, had it worked, would have been another Fall reliant on outside forces in the White Fang. Outside of Kuroyuri, it creates the idea that the Grimm just can’t really win unless the plot stacks the deck.

Which, again, is likely intentional, the Grimm are meant to be cannon-fodder, and it would make sense in-setting that by this point Humanity has a good idea on how to take out the Grimm. But taking something down always feels more satisfying when that foe is built up as a threat. If Banesaw ever came back and Weiss beat him (I know, Weiss winning a fight is a stretch but hear me out), it would feel impactful because he beat her last time, so it shows how far she’s grown. Same for if Yang took down Neo, or Blake defeating Adam-

… ok never mind that last one.

Regardless, cases like the Nuck show that when the Grimm are built up, they can become a serious threat and it induces catharsis when we see them brought down.

To conclude, I feel that the primary three reasons for the Grimm’s lack of awe-factor for most of the fans is due to three reasons. The first being the Breach, and how in the Grimm’s first real chance to cut loose on the show, they fail to properly intimidate the audience and serve as fodder to be torn to shreds by Coco’s minigun (coco op plz nerf). However, when the Grimm shine are when the narrative slows down and lets us see them through the eyes of civilians who can’t fight the Grimm. When we therefore see RWBY, people who can take them down, ripping them to shreds, it’s much more satisfying. Finally, we need to see the Grimm claim more victories without outside aid of any kind. We need to see this endless horde live up to its reputation and win more battles without relying on outside factors.

I don’t believe the Grimm are irredeemably doomed- the show does need the Grimm to be a serious threat or else Salem loses a lot of her own fear-factor. But I think their handling can be much better done, as when the Grimm set out and get a chance to put the fear of God in you?

They’re not half bad at it.



Thank you for reading.