Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-4830106-20131108040231/@comment-82.12.156.248-20140107164242

Sun - Still wondering where he learned to fight the way he did alongside Blake. Roman is clearly more skilled than we were led to believe in Ep 1 and still Sun put in just as good a performance as Blake did. Nice to see though that he's just a wise-cracking kleptomaniac. As for SunxBlake... I'm not actually THAT fond of it. The two personalities seem a little mismatched and Blake's opinion HAS to have dipped a bit following her statements about his complete disregard for the law AND Sun's statements about the White Fang. Personally I'd prefer BlakexAdam to be a thing with Adam finding out about Roman using WF for his own goals and aligning with RWBY, JNPR, Penny and Velvet.

Yup Penny is a badass. Can't help but feel like the person she was talking to in the car at the end is using her for his own sinister goals. It always happens like that in anime.

I have become very fond of Weiss recently. Though that always tends to be the case with the cold-hearted anti-heros in anime. She's showing growth as a person throughout each episode (seen most in Players and Pieces, the Badge and the Burden Part 2 and Black and White) and clearly has her own personal demons that she needs to sort out. I also still can't figure out if her becoming a huntress is a result of the White Fang attacking her family's company or born from her hinted at rebellious nature.

Roman is a very well done antagonist, a perfect mix of style, comedy and badassery. Hopefully he sticks around past Volume 2. Also I did find it weird that people scoffed at Blake's fight against him as showing how weak Blake. Personally I think having him easily fend off BOTH her and Sun is more of a testament to his skill rather than Blake and Sun's lack of.

Penny's situation to me strikes similar to a commonly used anime archtype - the shy child who is dangerously powerful and yet is being used by their parent/guardian/creator to do their personal bidding. There are clear parallels between Penny and Akiza from Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds as well as between Penny and Chrona from Soul Eater. That's all I've got right now, but I'm sure our questions will be answered in Volume 2... likely at the Vytal Festival.

The orphan theory is about as close to home as you can get with Blake. There has never been a reference to her parents and, whilst it's true that she may have been the daughter of two White Fang protesters it's unlikely since there is no explanation of WHY Blake left her parents behind as a distant memory. A more depressing idea is that it could be possible that the leader of the White Fang asked Adam to kill her parents and then pin it on the humans to try and get Blake to take up arms against them and that it worked (it would explain why she was fine with the first 5 years of service which likely required her to kill at least one human) only to refuse to watchas the innocent civilians on the train die.

As for Adam I'd still love for Adam to find out about the WF working with Roman and retaliate, teaming with Blake. They could have so that both Blake and Adam fall for one another only for the leader of WF to reveal to Blake that it was actually Adam who killed her parents and NOT the humans (though this only works in my more extreme theory detailed above) and THAT causing them to split. We need a Tauros and Blake fight scene afterall, hopefully with neither dying.

As for Cinder... well she looks fucking awesome. That being said we still know absolutely nothing about her apart from the fact that Roman is her pawn and what she looks like. It's possible that she could be related to the Creatures of Grimm in some way, her name does literally mean remnants of a dead flame, possibly hinting at her desires to usher in the darkness (and with it the Creatures of Grimm) against humans and faunuss alike.