Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-71.1.235.131-20171022191243/@comment-4010415-20171027070615

After that episode came out, everyone was arguing about what exactly happened, and it was pretty much "Was the attack real and the whole crowd was tricked into seeing something fake?" vs "Was the footage real and Yang was the one tricked into seeing something fake?"

The second question was confirmed by the flashback episode, which came directly after that one. Emerald's Semblance is hallucinations. Beginning of the End showed this when she first used it on Amber. There was the same exact noise that we had heard before Yang saw Mercury attack her. Amber walked over to a little girl but didn't see Emerald, yet when the camera angle changed, Emerald was standing in the road and Amber was holding an apple out to absolutely nothing. That camera change was pretty much "What Amber sees" vs "Reality".

We saw it again in PvP when we heard that same exact noise, the camera showed Pyrrha's view of Penny's swords multiplying into thousands of swords, and the camera changed angles to show that Penny was still only holding up 8 swords in reality.

The directors commentary confirmed that Emerald's Semblance is "individual mental hallucinations" while Neo's is "physical illusions".

Emerald made Yang hallucinate Mercury attacking her because it was much easier to trick one person than it would be to trick millions of people and a bunch of cameras.