User blog:Baylaust/RWBY Episode 9 Review

Video review:



Written review:

Episode 9, The Badge and the Burden, sees the girls all adjusting to school life. After the events of episode 8, all the teams have been finalized, and Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang are all gonna be sticking together for the remainder of their time at Beacon. However, now that they’ve traversed the Emerald Forest, found the artifacts, and slain the Nevermore, they are faced with their most dangerous opponent to date: schoolwork.

 Okay, so after episode 8, which was multiple levels of awesome, I wasn’t exactly sure what direction RWBY was going to go into next. Well, it seems that things are gonna be slowing down for the next 2 weeks, and reminding us that Beacon IS, in fact, a school, which means these girls will have to be dealing with each other and schoolwork on a daily basis, not just fighting monsters 24/7. And this is a reasonable direction for things to go in, after initiation. And overall, I did like this episode, but I do take issue with a few things, which I’ll get into as we go on.

 Now, as you might expect given my description a few seconds ago, this is mostly comedy driven episode, and for the most part, it works. This is by far the most comedy driven episode out of all of them so far, relying on both visual cues as well as dialogue to drive the humour. And while not every joke hits home, a good portion of them DO. In particular, the girls setting up their rooms is probably the comedy highlight of the episode, and I loved the quick little nod to Achievement Hunter they threw in, with Yang posting a picture of the guys as a fucking boy band called the Achieve Men. Or, I guess I should say the TWO little nods to Achievement Hunter, because we get to meet a new character: a teacher of Beacon, responsible for informing students about the Grimm. And this teacher is voiced by none other than Ryan Haywood, also known as The Guy Who Sounds Like Jack, also known as The Mad King, and also known as the guy who uttered the now famous phrase, “No, you don’t understand, Edgar is the one in the hole!” What I liked about him in this was that he wasn’t just playing “Ryan.” He was doing a legitimate voice, and did a well enough job of playing a different character, given how distinct his voice is. So props to him.

 I don’t usually comment on the animation, because there’s usually not much to talk about in the animation department in my opinion. But there was both something I liked about this, and something I disliked. First, their outfits. I like how they don’t just wear the same clothes 24/7 in this. As of now, the girls (as well as Jaune) all have 3 distinct outfits: casual wear, their pjs, and now their school uniforms. It’s a small touch, but an effective touch, nonetheless. However, there was one animation error that I noticed. In the scene where they’re all listening to Professor Port ramble on about stuff, there’s one shot that pans out to show everyone in the class. In this brief moment, all the girls switch back to their casual attire, but for the next cut, they’re all back in their school uniforms. I’ll consider this just an animation glitch, but it was a small error and inconsistency that I found.

 And now, we get to the fun part of these reviews: looking at where the characters are in terms of development. And once again, there were some things that I liked, and other things that I didn’t.

 There’s a bit to talk about here. I guess first off, I’ll talk about all the girls, because that’s what a good portion of the episode focuses on. Now that these girls are all a part of team RWBY, they’re gonna be interacting with each other all the time, and we’ve gotta see at some point just how they get along. And the truth is, these interactions drive the first half of the episode, and it’s very entertaining to see. Ruby is obviously having a lot of fun with her role as leader, and is mostly concerned with just having a good time with her friends and her sister. Yang, ever supportive of Ruby, is having just as much fun as her sister is. And hell, even Blake, the riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma, is joining in on the fun. Despite being the quite and distant member, she jumps right in with Ruby and Yang with their team shenanigans, and it’s nice to see her fitting in with these girls.

 In terms of the characters, this episode seems to be driven, once again, by Weiss and Ruby. Now, I realize that in all my reviews, I keep bringing up Ruby and Weiss and spending a lot of time on them. I know, I’m sorry, but there are a couple reasons for this. First off, back when the trailers were being released, the White trailer was, and is, my favourite one, and Weiss was the one I was most looking forward to seeing, so by instinct, I just keep a close eye on how she’s progressing in each episode. And second, I didn’t know that the core relationship that’s explored in almost every episode would the one between Ruby and Weiss, so I just have to keep coming back to them.

 Anyway, then we get to Weiss, and this is where the stuff I like and the stuff I don’t like really begin to come into play.

 Despite her still not being fully lightened up to Ruby yet, she does try to take part in what the other girls are doing, but despite that, she’s still clearly the odd one out. And this is what I like about this episode. In the trailers, Weiss was depicted as this sad, lonely girl, and so far in the series, we’ve seen none of that in her. Now, if you look closely (and I mean closely), you can see that now. I mean, you sure as hell don’t see the sadness in her. But you do see the loneliness. Weiss is the most serious of the girls, and with the girls constantly going against her wishes and joking around, she’s constantly left out from them. And she does try to take part in their fun for a while, but ultimately, it’s just not in her. And then we see it again, when the girls are all goofing off when Professor Port is doing his lecture, while Weiss is the only one trying to listen to him. Weiss just doesn’t fit in with team RWBY, and I have no doubts that this is going to come into play later.

 However, how Weiss is portrayed is one of the things I didn’t really like in this episode. In episode 8, she began to grow up, she started working with Ruby, she started to try and be nicer. This episode, though, it feels like all that is gone. Especially her outburst at the end, I wasn’t a fan of. I mean, yeah, I know, they’re not just gonna be best friends immediately, and I did find Weiss’s growing anger towards Ruby at the end pretty funny, but it feels like there was no growth in this episode. Weiss seemed jealous that Ruby was the leader, and I was REALLY hoping that they wouldn’t go down that route. It just feels like their relationship has gone BACKWARDS from the progress it made in the last episode, and that’s really a shame to me. Though, in her attempt to prove herself, she accidentally ended up challenging a Grimm to a one-on-one match, so who knows, maybe this will prove to be a learning experience for her. But overall, this episode was really the story of Weiss not being able to fit in with the group, and I both liked, and disliked, how they went about doing this.

   So in summary, this episode provides a cool down from the high octane action of last episode, and it does work for the most part. A lot of the comedy is good and seeing the girls interact with each other in a normal setting was fun to see, but it feels like Weiss’s character hasn’t made any progress, or rather, she took a step back. In my opinion, this is one of the weaker episodes. But keep in mind, weaker =/= bad. I did like this episode, I really did. I just think that there were a few things that could have been done better, and hopefully, we’ll see them next week.