User blog:Gundam Legilis/End of the Beginning In Depth (Season Finale)

''fatmanfalling style satire. Not a personal attack.''

Hello everybody! This is it - the big one.

We start off with the Ozpin vs. Cinder fight, where Ozpin is able to stand up to Cinder - but is still defeated. Alive, but defeated.

We then see everyone except for Jaune and Pyrrha regroup, who are still at the tower. And yeah, I saw Pyrrha's death coming - and we knew her fate was sealed the moment Arkos became canon. I was simply surprised it happened so soon.

I also love the callbacks, from the locker, to the wallrunning. And it's hilarious and at the same time confusing as to how Cinder can train a dragon - can't the population of Remnant do that as well? And what is it about the tower, communications capabilities aside, that makes it important to the Grimm? It's definitely not the spire, because nothing happened when it fell off. Plus the maiden is dead.

Now we get to the Pyrrha vs. Cinder fight. I will admit, it's nicely choreographed, but I also predicted that Cinder was toying with Pyrrha, who fought seriously instead. If Cinder decided to land those exploding runes on the floor, and/or shoot explosive arrows, Pyrrha would be a burnt skeleton. And she should've taken to account the visible gears that could potentially be used against her - and we see her get punished for it too.

I also loved the Pyrrhic Victory and the Achilles' Heel references.

And then there's the Ruby Ex Machina.

Yes, I know it only stopped the proverbial bleeding, freezing all the enemies and all. But still, this is a very bad trope to utilize - the Eleventh Hour Superpower through some genetic bloodline trait - it reeks of Ass Pull. Having near apocalyptic trouble? No problem, use this genetic trait to save the day! And it's mostly about the potential to use it as a cheap way to solve problems in the future - not to mention the amount of other related tropes, like Beam-O-War with the villain that just stands around, waiting to be annihilated into smithereens, Sailor Moon style.

So, we have Team RWBY split up. I'm a bit on the fence about this. Sure it opens up character development, yet at the same time, it feels kind of contrived, with the way they presented it, because it feels like they were trying to get RWBY split up by any means necessary, even if the process feels unnatural, in terms of storytelling.

Yang will become cynical, just like her mother before her.

Blake will have to deal with the guilt, Adam, and the WF.

And Weiss will have to deal with her father and the SDC back in Atlas. It would help if we knew his name, or got a 3D model of him. At least Kentucky Frozen Chicken isn't a total asshole - he isn't evil enough to let Weiss die in Vale, a smart and sensible parenting choice, though I question his totalitarian methods of parental control, to put it gently.

I hope that Weiss will learn the tricks and the trades of the SDC, so that when she inherits the company, she will subvert the "Inexperienced yet Popular Heir effectively runs the company" trope - I believe it best to use Daddy's tactics against him and the bigoted section of the shareholders, if she doesn't want to run the company to the ground - she needs the experience and savviness, like the CEO in the real world.

So Ruby and the remnants of JNPR will head on to Haven, and then we meet our bad guy - Salem. Salem, can you please do me a favor and look up all the legends of Remnant and find countermeasures to them? Starting with reducing visibility to zero so that Ruby can't instafreeze you with one death glare? I mean, you got this Dangerously Genre Savvy thing going on, that I would suspect that you, Salem, literally went into the real world, looked up TV Tropes and the script before formulating a plan.

And now I realize that this volume has provided more questions than answers, on top of the ones from previous Volumes. Is it too much to provide answers to some of the most basic questions about Remnant's history, technology, sociology, and any other worldbuilding topics that don't even remotely spoil anything about the plot?

Whatever. Volume 4 will provide exposition about Mistral. And I expect Miles and Kerry to provide all of the exposition about it and the individual Kingdoms, without resorting to the two characters talking in a room cliché.

Thoughts?

-Gundam Legilis