Pyrrha V.S. Cinder Combat Analysis
Alright so with this post I'm going to be reviewing the fight between Cinder and Pyrrha, so let's get this show on the road.
In my opinion Pyrrha should've won the fight but just barely given that cinder has the fall maiden's power. Now what we know about Pyrrha: in volume one when we're being introduced to characters and such Weiss goes on an exposition dump talking about Pyrrha and how accomplished she is as a combatant "Pyrrha graduated top of her class at sanctum... she's won the Mystral Regional Tournament four years in a row, a new record." That's pretty damn impressive, so much so that Pyrrha in volume two says that she's on such a high pedestal that she's unapproachable.
Then later we've seen in multiple seasons, most notably volume three, of how well she fights holding her own very efficiently against two fighters (volume 3 episode 2). Her main advantage over all of her opponents has always been polarity which we've seen her use minorly when she fought Mercury and then majorly when she fought Penny (R.I.P.) but when she's fighting Cinder she can't use her polarity with Cinder's weapons because their made of some sort of stone/glass, I like to lean towards obsidian (obsidian comes from a volcano so does cinders from burnt wildlife, not all that important though). While Pyrrha can't use her polarity against her weapons she can use it on her environment which we saw, which I thought was very effective. That's enough about Pyrrha, we're gonna now focus on Cinder which may be a bit more difficult to talk about seeing how we have limited information about her.
So we know that Cinder is working with Salem who has some control over grimm, so Salem could've taught Cinder how to fight or how to think through a fight (though I'm a bit reluctant to think that because I think Salem is just using Cinder as a pawn) so there's that, we also know that she is very cunning in the way of planning out the Fall of Beacon and recruiting people to her cause (ie, Mercury, Emerald, Roman, the White Fang) again adding onto her tactical experience which is all said and good but tactics can't win a battle alone.
Combatively she has taken out a lobby of Atlas grunts, which I'm sure any huntsman can do so, eh ok that happened, then she has the successful mugging of the fall maiden which is definitely impressive though she wouldn't have been able to do it on her own, so for the most part she excels at guerrilla warfare, hit and runs. As for her fight with Ozpin, idk what to make of it there was no body to be found and we only saw them clashing so Ozpin could've slipped away via some magic bullshit or she did kill the body Ozpin was using but then jumped hosts we don't know, but I will give her this: from what we did see of the fight it seemed like she had to go all out to at least keep up with Ozpin which can lead to exhaustion.
Now to the actual fight itself, finally. So the overall fight itself was good, it was exciting, both dishing out damage pretty evenly throughout but there were two moments, maybe three, where Pyrrha could've ended the fight or kept on fighting.
So this moment was perfect to continue on fighting rather than being at a stalemate. Pyrrha obviously is overpowering Cinder in this position even if she can't finish it with her sword she can still turn and throw Cinder into the ground with a hip toss and at that point from that point she definitely has dominant position with Cinder on the ground she can stomp on her head, summon her sword and stab her and then get interrupted by the dragon and then we could continue onward.
Then there's this scene. God I hate this scene because it goes against all those years of fighting and practice because for me and my three years of fencing there are five tenets of swordsmanship and the number one tenet is protect yourself and when Pyrrha gets up she has plenty of time to see that Cinder is winding up her shot and she should've just raised her shield and let her shield take the shot AND NOT FALL INTO THE ACHILLES ARCHETYPE. That character archetype felt so forced, but let's say it's the heat of the moment and she doesn't notice that Cinder is winding up her shot and she does throw her shield WHY WOULD SHE BE TURNED AROUND WHEN THE ARROW HITS HER, IT LOOKS SO WEIRD LIKE WHEN I THROW A BALL, OR A FRISBEE AND WHEN I THROW IT I DON'T THROW IT WITH SO MUCH DRAMATIC FLAIR THAT I END UP TURNED AROUND. It really bothers me because she's a renown combatant and that's just a silly mistake for someone of her class to make. If she wasn't turned around she might have had time to see the arrow fall apart and then reform and potentially roll out of the way and keep fighting. And even if the arrow did hit, it shouldn't pierce the armor (though that's been under much debate).
And final moment that I think that Pyrrha could've kept fighting.
This scene. At this scene when Cinder is all touchy with Pyrrha spewing out her monologue that would be a great time to grab her arm and leap off with her good leg using her adrenaline to keep going and taking cinder to the ground and do some ground wrestling and hold on until Ruby gets there which wasn't very long. I just remember a comic someone made where Pyrrha asks cinder if she believes in destiny then suplexes cinder which was just hilarious, I loved it so much. But as I've been told before Pyrrha was probably going into this fight expecting to die but at the start she went in fighting for her life, at least that's what it looked like and I also know it was decided before this volume that Pyrrha was going to die it just seems like it was set up poorly hence this post.
Hope y'all like it and I'll see you on the next post.
