Overactive Imagination[1][2] is the Semblance of Neopolitan.
It allows her to create "physical illusions that can be seen by everyone".[3]
After falling into the Ever After, her Semblance evolved,[4] becoming capable of creating numerous tangible clones of herself or others and even replicate the abilities and weapons of those she copy. She can also grant her clones the ability to speak with the voices of the original.
Overactive Imagination could also be used by the Curious Cat after they possessed Neo In "Tea Amidst Terrible Trouble" with a similar level of mastery over the Semblance as Neo herself.
Description[]
These illusions are highly convincing and shatter like glass when she dispels them or someone breaks them. In battle, she uses it as means to fool her opponent, creating openings for her to exploit. However, her illusions seem to be limited in their range; they typically only cover Neo herself, and either a short distance around her or something she is touching, such as an Atlesian airship that she disguised in "Our Way". However, as seen in her later battles, she can maintain an illusion after moving away until something makes contact with it, after which the illusion will shatter.
Most of the time, she uses her Semblance to disguse herself, as seen in "Round One" where she changes her hair color, eye color and skin tone with illusions, or in "PvP" where she was disguised as an Atlas Soldier. Neo also uses her Semblance when communicating with others in lieu of talking, as seen in "Out in the Open" when she transforms into Ruby when arguing what to prioritize with Cinder, showing that Neo can completely transform into another person and not just alter her own physical appearance.
Neo's apparent ability to teleport, as seen in "No Brakes" after Raven Branwen appears, may be faked using illusions.
During "The Enemy of Trust", Neo displays that her transformation allows her to even increase and decrease her body mass depending on who she transforms into as seen with her added height upon changing into Nora Valkyrie and her decreased height upon transforming into Oscar Pine.
Neo has shown a certain level of cunning with her Semblance when impersonating others by taking advantage of her opponents emotional attachment, as seen when she mimics Nora's facial expressions in order to emotionally attack Lie Ren into giving her an opening to escape.
As shown in "Witch", Neo herself has showcased the ability to create a camouflage illusion across her entire body in order to hide in plain sight. She altered her physical appearance, completely blending in with the dark crimson colors of Monstra's walls. As "Meat Neo",[5] she was able to observe Oscar, Emerald, and Hazel accessing the Relic of Knowledge.
Evolution[]
In “Rude, Red, and Royal”, after landing in the Abandoned Acre of the Ever After, Neo’s Semblance evolved, gaining the ability to make multiple copies of herself. These clones are semi-autonomous, able to either copy movements of Neo or perform commands given by her. She can also control them at will and the clones themselves retain the ability physically attack others, such as the Jabberwalker.
In “The Parfait Predicament”, Neo was later implied to now be able to not only clone herself, but also other people/beings. As shown where Neo had apparently created a clone of the Jabberwalker to attack Team RWBY in the Gardens Acre Market. Later after it was destroyed, numerous other Jabberwalker clones appeared, revealing that Neo had made more. As seen in “The Perils of Paper Houses“, her Semblance can seemingly replicate another being to the point of copying their unique abilities. This is implied when the Jabberwalker clones attempted to devour Ruby, suggesting that the clones also possess the original’s ability to permanently kill a Afteran by eating them. Though this is currently unconfirmed.
In "Tea Amidst Terrible Trouble", Neo created clones of Penny Polendina, Pyrrha Nikos, Ozpin, Leonardo Lionheart, Clover Ebi, James Ironwood, Oscar Pine and Roman Torchwick. Her clones were able to perfectly replicate their voice, facial expressions and even to a degree, their personalities and fighting styles. She could also construct complex constructs such as appliances and even entire buildings, having replicated a copy of the Vanille Manor, complete with functioning lights and furniture and portraits of her memories. She could even create functioning weapons using her Semblance, as shown where she recreated Miló and Akoúo̱, Floating Array, The Long Memory, Stalwart, Melodic Cudgel Due Process, had Milo and Akouo, Due Process, Melodic Cudgel and Stalwart fire rounds, and Milo and Akouo change forms.
Furthermore, as implied in "The Perils of Paper Houses", Neo could project her psyche through her construct. As first shown where she remotely transformed one of her Jabberwalker clones into herself to send Ruby a message of her targeting her, implying that she was able to see what the Jabberwalkers were doing. Later during their confrontation, she projected her thoughts through her constructs of Penny, Pyrrha, Ironwood, Clover, Ozpin, Roman and Lionheart and spoke through them. This is notably seen in her construct of Roman, who acted as her main voice as she vented and expressed her hatred for Ruby and later became an outlet for her subconsciousness thoughts and desires. As shown, Neo's clones have become so life-like that she could even make them bleed blood, as seen where she made it look like her clone of Oscar had been slashed and killed by Ruby's scythe.
After Neo's was possessed by the Curious Cat, they gained access to her Semblance. As shown, due to now inhabiting her body, the pink particles of Neo's semblance are now combined with the electric light blue and purple diamond shapes of the Curious Cat.
In “A Tale Involving a Tree”, the Cat would showcase its mastery of Neo Semblance in its fight against Jaune, Yang, Blake and Weiss. As shown where it would use it to partially transform Neo’s body, such as conjuring cat arms and claws to fight. Later they showed creative use of this Semblance by using it to conjure several distorted clones of Ruby to upset Yang. And later showcased the ability to completely transform into Penny to upset Jaune and create a clone of Pyrrha to ambush him.
History[]
Neo's Semblance first started manifesting during her childhood when she went by the name Trivia Vanille. This manifestation took the form of another version of herself called "Neopolitan", who acted independently of Trivia's control. This projection was the closest thing Trivia had to a true friend. One night, Trivia accidentally broke a vase in the Vanille Estate while playing with Neopolitan and when she tried to explain this to her parents they interpret it as Trivia shifting the blame away from herself.
As Trivia got older, Neopolitan began appearing more frequently and became increasingly visible to other people. Trivia's Semblance eventually evolves and gains the ability to create illusions that Trivia could control herself. Neopolitan proves to be somewhat tangible as the illusion is able to break a girl's nose with a punch, but Neopolitan shatters as a result of this. Trivia uses these developments to great effect to ruin a party that her parents were hosting.
After setting her bedroom on fire and finding herself with low Aura, Trivia's mother shatters the projection of Neo and breaks Trivia's Aura. After this Neopolitan never manifests as an independent projection again, and Trivia discovers that Neopolitain was actually a manifestation of the parts of herself that her parents had been trying to supress. After meeting Roman Torchwick, Trivia begins to identify herself as "Neopolitan", and later abandons her birth name after her parents are killed in an explosion that she had caused when using her Semblance to draw an enemy's fire.
Her Semblance is first seen in "Painting the Town...", where she creates an illusion wall bearing images of herself and Roman Torchwick as a distraction for Team RWBY as she and Roman escape to a nearby Bullhead.
Later in "No Brakes", she used it to escape from Raven Branwen before she could kill Yang Xiao Long.
Throughout Volume 3, she used it to disguse herself. In "Round One", she changed her hair color, eye color and skin tone in order to enter the Vytal Festival Tournament. Later in "PvP", she disguised herself as an where an Atlas Soldier in order to free Torchwick.
When she fights Cinder Fall in "The Coming Storm", the illusion around herself did not dispel even after taking some hits, indicating that they have become a bit resilient to damage.
In "Our Way", Neo proves her worth to Cinder when she shows her ability to disguise an entire Mistral airship into an Atlesian one so the two can sneak into Atlas.
In order to steal the Relic of Knowledge from Oscar Pine, Neo disguised herself as Nora Valkyrie to fool him long enough to take it. She later used Nora's form in "The Enemy of Trust" against Lie Ren to create an opening to escape.
In "Witch", Neo used her Semblance to create a full body camouflage to blend in with the walls of Monstra.
While Team RWBY was fighting Cinder in "Worthy", she disguised herself as a civilian in order to get close enough to kill Ruby. However, she was prevented by Yang, who noticed in time and pushed Ruby out of the way, taking the hit and falling into the void.
In "Rude, Red, and Royal", after Neo landed in the Abandoned Acre of the Ever After, her Semblance evolved due to the rage she felt from Cinder's betrayal as well as her failure in getting revenge on Ruby. Now able to create multiple clones of herself, she uses her newfound power against the injured Jabberwalker after she notices them.
As shown in "The Parfait Predicament", Neo can also create clones of other beings as well, such as the Jabberwalker. They are fully capable of operating separate from herself and can also mimic the original’s speech and sound of voice. Additionally, these clones are much more durable than her previous constructs, requiring multiple hits and the use of Yang's Semblance to destroy one.
In "Tea Amidst Terrible Trouble" Neo would make extensive use of her Semblance to emotionally break Ruby and convince her to drink tea made from a leaf of the Great Tree. First by creating a copy of the Vanile Manner to lure her in. Then creating several clones of Penny, Pyrrha, Ironwood, Ozpin, Clover and Roman to express her hatred of her and torture her.
After having her body possessed by the Curious Cat, they gained access to Neo's Semblance, and is capable of using it alongside their own powers.
In “A Tale Involving a Tree“, the Curious Cat in Neo’s body would make extensive use of her semblance to fight Jaune, Yang, Blake and Weiss.
As shown in ”Of Solitude and Self”, Neo would use her semblance to kill the Curious Cat by conjuring multiple Jabberwalkers to eat them. Later Neo would subconsciously use her semblance to create a clone of Roman, who vocalized Neo’s realization that she never wanted to kill Ruby because of Roman’s death, but was in truth jealous of her having so many people in her life who love and care for her while she has none.
Neo would later dispel this construct of Roman, finally accepting his death and that he was never real in the first place.
Image Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Neo's Semblance was created because Monty found her and Roman escaping in "Painting the Town..." too hard to animate.[2]
- "Meat Neo" was one of the worst assets Kerry Shawcross has ever had to review.[5]
- The name for Overactive Imagination might have originally came from what Neo's mother, Carmel Vanille, thought and expressed about her daughter's behaviour.
- In the Volume 9 commentary, it was stated that due to the nature of the Abandoned Acre as an experimental ground of The Gods, its unique properties were responsible for Neo's Semblance evolution.[6]
- The animation for Neo's Semblance has improved over the course of the show, with three different versions. The first version appeared as a line of light moving over Neo's body while spitting out small fragments, then became a more complicated line made up of pink fragments in Volume 6. In Volume 7, it changed drastically, appearing as an amorphous pink shape and losing its glasslike properties.
References[]
- ↑ Volume 1 Directors Commentary "Players and Pieces"
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 The World of RWBY: The Official Companion
- ↑ Volume 3 Directors Commentary
- ↑ Kiersi Burkhart on Twitter
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 RWBY Volume 8 Directors' and Writers' Commentary Chapter 9
- ↑ Volume 9 Blu-ray Crew Commentary
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