A long time ago, on a blog not so far away, I wrote a post during the Volume 5 hiatus about why I thought the Scuffle of Haven didn’t work on… well, any level, and in hindsight I stand by a lot of that post. I still believe that many of the points I raised against the Haven Battle remain valid to this day, though I could have expressed my points more efficiently, and as a consequence, I’ll be wary of any big conflicts once RWBY reaches Atlas or Vacuo.

But one of the points I mentioned during that post was that I thought the Fall of Beacon was a far better example of not just a season finale, but the climax of an arc. I’ve talked before about why I feel Cinder’s plan in the Beacon volumes remains rather underrated, and while the first half has some… questionable… fights, Volume 3′s back half was a sign that the crew could make fights on par with Monty even after his passing, while the writing and technical work behind the scenes showed that when the crew were firing on all cylinders anything was possible.

So this week, I’d like to write about why I think the Fall of Beacon worked so well in Volume 3, alongside a few anecdotes about where in contrast, Haven falls flat.

1) It changed the tone and status quo, and put team RWBY into perspective

Up until Volume 3, RWBY played a lot of its tropes straight, especially when it came to the setting of the show. We got to meet the characters and see them interact in a collection of light adventures, eventually leading to the most classic of anime cliches, the tournament arc.

Long-time anime fans know that nothing of any real importance for wider plots happens at tournament arcs, so people went into Volume 3 expecting some popcorn thriller action- some light, breezy and fun fights to wile away the time. And while the early half of Volume 3 had some… less than ideal fights with the exception of Mercury and Emerald vs Coco and Yatsuhashi (RIP to the SSSN fans who wanted Sage and Scarlet’s only fight to be good), a lot of the character dynamics allowed the viewer to still derive some enjoyment. Weiss and Winter’s dynamic in the early episodes is a delight to see, to say nothing of Qrow hanging out with Ruby and Yang. All of this changes as we reach Chapter 6, Fall, but I have a separate point about how Chapters 6-9 build up to the Fall magnificently so we’ll get back to the current point we’re on.

“I suppose at least my fights can’t get much worse from here on out?”



“Oh COME ON!”



Volume 3′s first half set up a rather casual tournament arc after two volumes of it being built up in the background, and until Yang fights Mercury, that attitude sticks around. It’s after this that the back half begins to build up towards a disaster in the making. To take a quote from Ozpin:

There’s an energy in the air now. A question in the back of everyone’s minds. If this is the size of our defenses, what is it we’re expecting to fight?



After the Fall begins though? Nothing is quite so certain, and the status quo quickly falls to shreds as Beacon begins to fall. The show takes an immediately darker turn with only Roman’s jovial antics providing levity- and even that requires reaching to the gallows for humor. Soon everything the show and audience took for granted is kicked to the curb, as Grimm swarm the school that we had become accustomed to over the past two and a half prior volumes of antics. The breezy tone is completely gone, with Battle of Beacon having several scenes of the horror of the Fall in plain sight- my personal favorite is when Ozpin is watching Vale security feeds and he sees a rooftop with people on it, waving for help as a Grimm slowly climbs up the side. It’s almost harrowing in how much the image says. And that’s not even the worst of it, as the Battle stretches on and the heroes become more exhausted, everything begins to turn against them- first the initial wave of Grimm, then the White Fang, then the Atlas mechs turn on the Huntsmen and finally Kevin himself begins airdropping reinforcements. It’s a never ending stream of enemies and most of the Huntsmen can barely stand by chapter 12.

Perhaps the most drastic change that the Fall of Beacon episodes provide is how RWBY are put into perspective against the villains, starting with Mercury casually swatting Ruby aside like an irritating fly. He’s hardly even trying and he manages to distract Ruby long enough for Pyrrha to kill Penny, even managing to land a hit on Ruby while she’s speeding towards him with her Semblance- a feat no one else had managed beforehand. And even when Ruby slips through and gets outside in time just to watch Penny die…

You know what they say, if you love something, never do it for free.

After an entire volume of standout fights, from Coco and Yatsuhashi, to Yang, and even a full-fledged Maiden in Amber, Mercury was a constant standout fighting wise all volume and he earned the right to grin like a loon as he watched Ruby break down.

Similarly, Adam was a juggernaut when Blake ran across him, easily cutting her down to size and, when Yang came running, made short work of her too. Adam had already built a reputation as menacing from the Black Trailer, and Heroes and Monsters did its part in reaffirming that he was a dangerous foe who was not to be trifled with. He effortless dominates the “fight” and isn’t even winded by the time he has Blake and Yang dead for rights.

Even our mightiest heroes fare poorly against the villains- Cinder with the power of the Fall Maiden is able to effortlessly kill Ozpin and Pyrrha, stripping the heroes of their mentor figure and their most powerful fighter in one fall swoop. Were it not for Ruby’s Silver Eyes, Cinder likely would have gone on to clean house with the rest of the Huntsmen barring some insane luck.

Volume 3′s final quarter is a sudden, horrifying and effective tonal shift that properly conveys the horror of the events unfolding, all while showing in the wider narrative where our heroes fall compared to the villains- and in every instance, the heroes come up short, with even Ozpin and Pyrrha themselves dying at Cinder’s hand. It’s a bleak image to end the Volume on as Team RWBY scatter to the wind while the villains get away with their pride and dignity intact, firmly setting themselves up as RWBY’s superior in direct combat for their next confrontation-

I’m not bitter.

Meanwhile the only status quo change that Haven brings to the table is “RWBY are back together and get a lamp.” That’s it. That’s the big change from this volume, since the only casualties are a bunch of one-off characters that are introduced in the same volume they die in. Much of the narrative stakes die in the first half thanks to Weiss’s impalement and many of the villains lose the intimidating credibility than they earned through Volume 3. It’s a joke of a climax that brings nothing to the wider narrative of the show and has far less of an impact than the Fall of Beacon, barring how it utterly destroyed the threat factor of most of the villains there and required for Adam an entire trailer insisting that Adam wasn’t a complete joke, the effectiveness of which still has yet to be seen.

2) It feels significant and carries throughout multiple environments

One of the smarter choices made about the Fall of Beacon was that the characters are split up across multiple different arenas to help create the sense that this is a large-scale battle. Ruby, JNPR and many of the students start in the Amity Arena where Port and Oobleck stay behind, before heading down to Beacon’s courtyard to hold that area. There, they meet with Weiss, Blake and Yang, before the latter two go to the food hall for the Adam encounter. Ruby herself goes to the airships to help take back the skies leading to her battle with Torchwick. We have frequent scenes of Ozpin in his office until he comes down to begin the Aura transfer with Pyrrha in the Vault. Meanwhile, Qrow, Goodwitch and Ironwood take to Vale’s streets (Ironwood not willingly) and fight the Grimm there.

Your token reminder that Ruby vs Roman and Neo has some of the best teamwork in the entire show and it’s being done by the villains who weren’t part of the original plans for the series

Breaking that down to its core components, we have the courtyard, airship, arena, food hall and streets. CRWBY use a lot of recurring environments throughout the Fall of Beacon episodes- the deck of the airship for Ruby vs Roman and Neo and the landing zone where Ironwood fights the Alpha Beowolf are the only wholly original fight arenas made for these episodes, while the courtyard, Vault, and streets were all areas we had seen previously. Not only did this save on area budget, but it granted a sense of weight to the fights- we had seen these locations before, had scenes in them that gave them an emotional weight. Scattering the heroes across these different maps spreads the Battle out, making it easier for the crew to work on individual scenes since it lessened the risk of having people just standing around doing nothing, but it gave each character an individual chance to shine in their own arena of combat. Perhaps most obviously, the different locals gave us new arenas to enjoy as well instead of just “a room a plaza and a cave.” Ironwood may not have gotten his two small but glorious mo,ments against the Grimm and mechs if he was sharing an arena with everyone else.

Here comes the general

Ladies and gentlemen

Here comes the general

The moment you’ve been waiting for

Here comes the general

The pride of Atlas

Here comes the general

James IRONDADDY

… Meanwhile Haven just stuck everyone in a bland open room and had people standing around doing nothing for most of the Scuffle, if they weren’t teleporting around the room like ninjas.

Uh hi Mercury. You wanna… do something? Just gonna let them have their thing? OK? You do you buddy.

I don’t think there’s much more you can add to that.



3) The build up to the Fall is superb

As I’ve mentioned, while the first half of Volume 3 until Yang vs Mercury has some of the show’s weakest fights until Volume 5, the second half more than makes up for it on a fight level while also setting the stage for the devastating final string of episodes. Beginning of the End, PVP and Heroes and Monsters are all in my top 10 episodes for a reason, folks. Chapter 7 in particular finally gave the audience some much-needed background on Team CEM, as we saw Cinder recruit Emerald and Mercury in moments of weakness and plant the seeds for the Fall as she meets with Roman and Adam (while presumably getting the virus from Watts that allows her to initiate Order 66). Destiny lets us see the fallout of Yang vs Mercury, Jaune and Pyrrha’s last quiet moment together, and is the last calm before the storm as the episode ends with Penny about to fight Pyrrha and Mercury staring Ruby down. All the while, the sense of unease builds up each episode, starting relatively tame in the premiere before the dial gets nudged up a little each more every week until…

“Polarity vs metal. That could be baaaaad.” Look I like taking screenshots of Merc don’t kinkshame me.



Volume 3′s third quarter does an excellent job in setting up the immediate stakes of the Fall of Beacon, and separates Team RWBY so they’re scattered and confused once the fireworks begin to go off. Pyrrha’s arc continues and prepares itself for the conclusion awaiting her atop the Beacon tower, while Ruby gets to display some street smarts and quickly puts together some dangling threads after her talk with Velvet and spotting Emerald among the crowd. The major pieces are set up well in advance and given time to breathe ahead of the tidal wave that’s about to hit the shoreline.

Meanwhile in Haven: RNJR sit around a house for a month and wait for the plot to invite them over to the climax, Blake just invites herself and most of the “stakes” are either set up in A Perfect Storm (AKA one of the two worst episodes in the entire show) or come up out of nowhere with little foreshadowing (see: Jaune being suicidal). I don’t know about you but I’ll pick one approach to seeing up a climax over the other every time and… I think it’s clear which I’ll side with

In conclusion, The Fall of Beacon is an expertly put together string of episodes, with the back half of Volume 3 wrapping up with a neat little bow and remaining the peak of RWBY (Heroes and Monsters is my personal favorite episode in the show). Barring the finale timeskipping after Ruby uses her Silver Eyes, depriving us of countless emotionally gut-wrenching scenes- that we never saw JNR reacting to Pyrrha’s death is the one massive black mark over the finale- it’s a near perfect collection that encapsulates what RWBY can be when firing at all cylinders. And that is a fact that becomes more amazing when one considers how Poser was actively fighting against the crew as they made the episodes due to not being ideal software for the episodes. In the midst of these episodes the villains reign supreme and firmly show how much stronger they are than RWBY. Their victories are ash in the mouth in the moment, but any writer worth their salt knows that villains winning now only makes their downfall and defeat that much more of a reward for the heroes when they come out on top.

It concludes several character arcs, sets up countless others as everyone recuperates from the Fall (most predominantly Ruby, Yang and JN_R), and set the seeds for RWBY to move beyond a generic high school battle anime and become its own beast, worthy of carrying Monty’s legacy with it to greener pastures.

The Battle of Haven meanwhile, only looks like more of a bad-taste joke when put alongside the Fall of Beacon, looking flatter and having a lot less color and visual range, alongside consistently weaker animation in all regards except facial. It’s all just the same open room for four weeks straight, mixed with a courtyard and a cave, all of which were locations we didn’t care about due to not spending any time in them or Haven at large thanks to being locked up in a house all season. It was a climax wrought with animation errors, a climax that destroyed the credibility of most of the participating villains and forgot that people watch RWBY to see fight scenes, not see them standing around watching offscreen fights or not doing anything at all. It was a climax where the heroes only won because the theme song was called “Triumph” and because the script said they needed to win.

I linked to it in my Haven video, but FloofArtist’s breakdown of the animation errors in the Battle of Haven remains an almost harrowing experience to watch. Information such as storyboard dates shown in some of the CRWBY episodes show that the Battle was still in storyboarding during December and early January, just a month before it was set to air, and… it shows. Painfully. The Haven episodes reek of being rushed out the door to satiate deadlines, less a product of passion and more a frenzied product of getting the last essential renders done before being sent out like a sacrificial lamb.

While Volume 6 has so far managed to move past the failings of the Haven Battle in that it’s actually good, we’ll need to wait and see for if the Battles of Atlas and Vacuo retain the flaws seen at Haven, and the fans will constantly have Haven hanging overhead like a specter, forever wary that such a sudden and sharp downturn in quality could happen at a moment’s notice. Based off the reaction in-house, between the sudden changing of the writing system, Conner Perkins becoming a co-director and the numerous shots taken at Volume 5 in pre-release for Volume 6, it seems CRWBY themselves have that specter overhead and are desperate to avoid a similar calamity. Only time will tell, and while I have hope based off the stellar execution of the Fall of Beacon, we’re one for two on good climaxes involving Academy wide battles so far.

But in the defense of the show, the Fall of Beacon remains the high-point of RWBY on a narrative and character level. The back half of the season makes up for the weak fights of the first half and allows for an emotionally gripping narrative that collects elements from all three prior volumes and combines them into an emotional gut-punch. The finale may have several black spots over it, but the ride to it contains RWBY at its absolute best, and certified that I would be an avid watcher of this show for years to come.

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