Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-23988977-20131108010007/@comment-9090085-20131108032206

XDex wrote:

White Fang: I. Stand. Corrected. The masked guys are in fact WF members. It seems the war and the turn from peaceful to violent was relatively recently. Which also means that it would seem Weiss was stretching the truth a little with the "as long as I can remember" bit. Unless some of the radical bits were doing stuff even while the rest was peaceful. To be fair, "as long as I can remember" can be a "relatively" short time; I mean I can barely remember the time I walked across Spain 4-6-8 years ago(I can't even remember how long ago it was...). I probably doesn't help that White Fang had probably been boycotting the Schnee Dust Company long before they got violent(organized violent at any rate). Questionable business practices and all that.

Not to be smug, but I was one of the first people to express the belief that Roman was the "Starter Villain" of RWBY, and was really the pawn of someone else; "Crimson" being the obvious candidate.

And low and behold, this episode spells it out for us: Cinder is the one pulling Roman's strings. I wasn't expecting her to make veiled threat of physical violence, though. Guess his position is very precarious.

Given the sudden change in White Fang came from a change in leaders, it would not surprise me if Cinder is pulling White Fang Leader's strings too.

Zolnir wrote: Did you just see how dear Roman soloed down Blake completely by himself, and that it took Blake and Sun together to finally push one blow through his guard?

I was like, 'Dude, you may be the villain, but from today onwards you have one of my highest respect.' Like, seriously, his weapon did not look like it was made for close-ranged fighting at all, but he took down Blake like it was nothing anyway.

I was only half expecting that - I knew as the "Starter Villain" he has to be strong enough to give our heroes trouble, but I don't think I was expecting a "Retired Hunter" sort of fighter - he's rather clearly under-armed, but he overpowers the faster Blake with sheer skill; and I'm fairly certain, given enough time, he would have found some way through Sun's barrage. Of course, we also got to see his cunning when outmatched - he's not a generically invincible foe for the heroes, he has real limits to his abilities.

Of course, Like any good cliffhanger, I'm left hungry for more.

And a minor plus, but I suspect Volume 2 will be dedicated to the Vytal Festival, where we'll probably see what Roman/Cinder needs a full-equipped army for near the end.