Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-4141313-20181124081953/@comment-25936766-20181127194816

Ok, just saw the episode, but before I put my thoughts about it, I gotta say: Canned beans are not that bad, guys. Pretty tasty if done right, and it's not hard to do beans right. The salt just makes it better. Weiss's just an entitled bourgeoisie.

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1) I'm as happy as anyone would be about Neo returning, but....she's not like the one I liked. Back in Vol.2-3 she was pretty expressive and fun to watch. But in this ep she's much less expressive than she used to be.

I understand that she was in "Serious Modo" for 99% of her screentime here, so I can excuse it there. But at the end, when expresses annoyance at Cinder saying "let's talk", her body language is fine, but she keeps the same monotone u_u face she had for a good chunk of the fight, which kinda hurts the delivery of the joke.

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2) Speaking of expressions, on one hand the facial expressions for everyone else were pretty good in this episode. Cinder's look of disgust when she mentions Ruby, Yang's face of irritation after Blake proposes searching the warehouse with her, and even small bits like when Maria tells them to close the door and Oscar looks nervous, Yang looks mostly-normal, but Weiss looks quite irritated.

On the other hand, the body expressions are awful for most of the episode. There are some good moments but for the most part the motions feel slow and rigid and dull, like in Vol.4, not even Vol.5.

Now, with the heroes it makes sense to an extent, since the spirits are low. But even then the motions still feel stiff, not in a "I feel down" way but more like what you would expect from NPCs in an RPG.

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3) When Ruby and Weiss entered the cellar, and Weiss lighted up all the candles, my suspension of disbelief was quite hurt. I mean, she just lights up the tip of Myrtenaster and shoots multiple wisps that all land precisely on each candle.

Now, the thing is, since when is she that good at controlling Dust projectiles? She wasn't shooting them one by one and aiming each time, she just held the weapon up, and they were quite the number of wisps that she fired.

Every single time we've seen Weiss shoot projectiles, even tiny ones, she's had to use her Glyphs to fire them. So, since when is she good enough with them to shoot them without her Glyphs, in such a number, and with such good control and accuracy while at it?

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4) Speaking of abilities...remember when Merc the Kick-fighter suddenly decided to punch Ruby for no reason just so she could show off her "amazing CQC skillz" in Haven? I got similar vibes from Cinder and Neo's fight.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the fight, but Cinder's never fought with CQC, she's always using a weapon or two. But this specific time she decided not to, for some reason, and went full punches-and-kicks instead of the swords she seems more skilled with. And naturally, she got her ass handed to her and only got 1 close hit while Neo kept kicking her butt.

So....why? Why did she bother to go CQC against Neo? She went with swords later and did much better so why? It can't be to hide the powers, since she went full Maiden Tornado at Neo in the end, despite being right beside the establishment of an info-broker.

5) Speaking of Maidens, was their eye-flame effect in V5 2D or 3D? When Cinder's eye flames up, the fire looks pretty thin, as if it was a 2D image placed at an angle.

6) When it comes to the character interactions, my favorite part was Blake and Yang's scenes. When Blake takes such an initiative to searching the warehouse with Yang, Yang's face of utter annoyance at her sells it.

And on a more serious note, when Blake tells her "I'll protect you" and just pisses off Yang, since it's basically how I wanted their relationship to go post-Haven: Yang's still mad about Blake ditching her when she needed her the most but still willing to accept her presence.

........Which in hindsight makes me wonder. Blake acts pretty confused when Yang gets mad after the "I'll protect you" line. Is she that oblivious to how much her leaving-without-a-note hurt Yang, despite knowing about her abandomnent issues? ...Was she always that oblivious?

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7) You know, this ep makes me notice, Oscar really is kind of a Vernal now. His character was based around being Ozpin's new host. Now that Ozpin's hid inside their mental crying room, Oscar is just there. Just....there. He has no presence or adds any weight to anything, aside from keeping the fire alive so Maria can save the day and read our mighty heroes a bedtime story.

8) Speaking of Maria, at this point if she was younger I'd say she's best girl. I love how she's totally unwilling to give a damn about the heroes's melodrama and just focus on the present.

9) Something funny: Yesterday Embellem mentioned the meaning of Brunswick and it's connection to the Headless Horseman. Including this line: "a headless horseman called "the wild huntsman" blows a horn to warn hunters not to ride the next day, because they will meet with an accident"

My response to that was joking about how a random cowboy would show up out of nowhere. Then Ruby sees the portrait of the people of Brunswick, and right there at the right....is a cowboy.

10) Speaking of the people of Brunswick, I really wanna know what killed them. So far we just know they died in their sleep, and since their bodies haven't decomposed it wasn't so long ago either. Or it was but RT thinks skeletons are too spoopy.

Now looking at the opening and the locked wine cellar RW found, it's possible it was done by a Grimm. But then, why and how is it locked there? How did random farmers lock a Grimm down there? Or if it hid itself there, why do that instead of moving on elsewhere like any other Grimm?

11) Speaking of farmers, how can there even be a farm there? The place is utterly covered in snow, even when they're in early-to-mid Fall season. And the whole place looks old in design, lacking in tech that would make the place useable for a decent farm. So, how can there be a farm in the middle of a cold forest? It makes no utter sense.

It'd make sense if the place was from ages ago, when North Anima was warmer. But the portraits, the corpses, and the state of the buildings don't imply that. So now I'm just utterly confused, how can you have a farm in the middle of a cold snowy forest full of dead trees, just how?