Talk:Kuroyuri (episode)/@comment-2.220.76.31-20170130162348/@comment-4010415-20170130193232

Like Arkantos said, this is literally the only time in RWBY that a female has died in a "passive" manner. Amber and Pyrrha went down fighting. Amber fought three people and kept getting caught off-guard by Cinder because she was too focused on Mercury and Emerald. Pyrrha fought Cinder head-on and never gave up, even after she ran out of Aura. When Pyrrha threw her shield, that was an attempt to escape. She expected her shield to shatter the arrow permanently, giving her time to run, but she didn't know that Cinder could melt it back down into lava and then reform it in obsidian on the other side. Penny also died in a fight, due to a setup by Cinder.

Compare Amber and Pyrrha's deaths to Tukson's and Torchwick's... Tukson attempted to defend himself, got shot in the face, and died. Torchwick got swallowed by a Grimm while monologuing. They kinda went down like wimps compared to Amber and Pyrrha.

To be fair, Ruby needed help because she chose one of the most difficult weapons to wield. Scythes are highly impractical for battle. We don't actually know if Tai is the only reason Yang is any good at fighting. He may have taught her the basics, but hey - he's a teacher at Signal, which is the combat school Ruby and likely Yang attended. Depending on what class he teaches, there's no reason he wouldn't have taught her about fighting. And she could've sparred with him to improve her skills. As for Yang's reason to fight, she wants an exciting life - nothing to do with Tai, though Ruby said "My parents taught us to help others" so Summer could've had influence there. Pyrrha being the reason Jaune is getting better at fighting could be the start of balancing things out.

You're partially describing Yang with that "needs a mentor to hone her skills against enemies who don't hold back and fight dirty" thing. Yang was fighting her own way, overusing her Semblance, and when that didn't work and she got a reality check, Tai (her father, mind you. Not some random man) comes in and tells her that she needs to learn how to fight smarter because of enemies that her Semblance won't help her against. She realized he was right, and rather than him telling her outright "Okay, now do this and this", instead they started to spar again, and she used her own intelligence and decision-making to do something similar to what he'd done earlier, which he actually didn't expect her to do.

As far as Nora goes... I'm gonna reserve judgment until we see her story. Remember, she came from somewhere else. She wasn't from that region. The bullies pointed out she was dressed funny, so she came from a region with a different style of dress and thus a different culture. How in the hell did she get there? Did her parents die while they were near that village for whatever reason? Or did they die somewhere farther off, leaving Nora to somehow manage to survive on her own and travel to Kuroyuri? For all we know, she could've been a survivor even without Ren.