The Problems With V6E9, in a more coherent post.
Alright, so the latest episode was…a string of problems, one after the other. In the order they were introduced, the episode brings up:
Pyrrha’s “pointless” death. Jaune speaks with what is obviously Pyrrha’s mom.
The “adrift” plot status.
I’m…gonna have to admit to being overwhelmed by this, so let’s just take it one at a time.
Emerald’s character is an extremely dissatisfying one. More and more, the writing is pushing her towards being a tragic villain, a sympathetic one. Every time she opens her mouth, she expounds how much Cinder matters to her and oh, whatever will she do. Aside from the fact that I’ve posted before about how Emerald being so dependent on Cinder doesn’t make sense, there’s also the fact that Emerald is every bit the monster that Cinder is. She is a predator, an assassin, a remorseless killer. Cinder’s orders did not put Emerald under an irresistable hypnosis and force her to kill Penny Polendina–Emerald chose to do that. There is simply no way to reconcile what Emerald has done with a tragic villain. Period.
The best way to summarize Mercury’s backstory and semblance reveal is “he doesn’t have one”. This seems to have been another area where the “fix it” train of Volume 6 went off the rails. They’re still trying to fill in blank semblance spaces when they don’t need to, and we’re never going to know how or why Marcus “stole” Mercury’s semblance because he’s dead. This is a pointless scene. Only Mercury fans will gain anything out of this scene, and they won’t gain much. Mercury was interesting enough, there was no use in trying to give an in-story explanation for why he hasn’t shown off any semblance (the out-of-story explanation being that Monty never gave him one).
Then, Tyrian comes along. I have to say, this is one of the most aggravating characters to listen to. Gleeful violent psychosis is a personality trait, not an entire personality. If that’s all we ever see of Tyrian, it’s going to get stale, and it got stale a while ago. The persistence in playing him up as a creepy, “laughing mad” villain just annoys me because Tyrian never does anything particularly villainous. He goes after Ruby only on Salem’s orders. He does laugh and show obvious hysterical glee at the idea of injuring other people, but never actually does so and his actions never impose any long-term effects on anyone. Hazel has had more of a lasting effect on the heroes, and he nosedived in Volume 5. There’s the fact that he harasses and offers thinly veiled threats even towards other villains to make him stand out…
…Except for the fact that there is no reason for Emerald and Mercury (his chosen targets) to be afraid of him, least of all Emerald. As I pointed out in this post, it’s like if Bellatrix Lestrange cowered in fear of Fenrir Grayback. It doesn’t make sense. Tyrian could not threaten Emerald in a thousand years.
Ah, yes, the random Pyrrha statue in the middle of Argus which no one knew up until now was Pyrrha’s hometown and where Sanctum is, and where she trained. Hoooooo, boy, do we have a problem here. The first problem is that they are finally addressing the “pointlessness” of Pyrrha’s death….from an in-story perspective. Which is destined to fail; there just isn’t a reason for Pyrrha to have gone into a fight she knew would end with her death, even though Jaune and her mom try so hard to make it seem like there wasn’t a choice. Pyrrha’s actions had absolutely no effect in slowing down Cinder and thus there was no point in trying. She had no plan, no hope of winning, and nothing to gain by fighting–and the only difference made was, out-of-story, confirmed to be a last-minute decision not even cleared by Kerry, and in-story, was only even discovered once she was already dead. In-story, Pyrrha wasn’t ‘fighting the good fight’, she was just throwing herself onto a sword. Jaune and Mama Nikos (and by extension Miles and Kerry) in this scene aren’t fixing anything, they’re just telling the audience of how a visible problem isn’t a problem. I really hate scenes like this because they reek of a show trying to be way more deep than it actually is.
Oh, yes, and Mama Nikos herself. This is the clearest evidence that the writing staff are making honest attempts at fixing things fans have complained about without actually knowing what the complaints are. People that have brought up the Nikos parents in the past did so in the process of saying that Pyrrha’s shield and circlet should’ve gone to them, not been melted down into an addition to Jaune’s gear. The important part of that complaint revolved around the gear, not the parents. Nobody was really clamoring to see the Nikos parents just like nobody was really clamoring to see Jaune’s sister–they were aggravated that Pyrrha’s personal effects went to Jaune over their rightful inheritors.
One thing that instantly enraged me was that, despite every flag pointing towards Volume 6 being the “fix it” volume, the mistakes of the past are still being repeated as though they haven’t been yelled about thousands of times. The scene above only happens immediately after Ren and Nora leave, so that the focus can be on Jaune’s feelings about Pyrrha.
But, you cry, that doesn’t remain the case for long. They come back, they see the statue, and Jaune spills about how terrible a leader he’s been. And yes, he has been a shit leader, it’s nice to hear him acknowledge it. But Ren and Nora immediately comfort Jaune and tell him that they love him and that he can’t keep angsting like this. And while I agree (Jaune’s angst has been grinding my last nerve for a while now), that wasn’t what fans had been complaining about. The fans had been complaining that Jaune was the only one to show his distress over Pyrrha’s death, not that he did so at all. What we’d been waiting two years for was some sign that Ren and Nora, two teammates and presumably friends of Pyrrha’s, were mourning her death the way they seemingly should be. Instead, this scene is merely them comforting Jaune over it.
Oscar comes back and everything is fine. And that’s it. Well, that’s not entirely it. Jaune shocks me yet again when yet another pattern of his is shattered–he actually apologizes for his shitty behavior. And of course, it’s totally fine. But…Oscar wasn’t even in this episode before it came time for him to forgive Jaune. We don’t see any of his actual resentment or distress at being treated so horribly for the simple crime of being a victim of Ozpin. We only see him when it’s time for him to sweep under the rug Jaune’s bad behavior. This pattern–the one of the writers trying desperately to fix past issues and missing entirely–remains unbroken.
Qrow is finally called out for his own shitty behavior….except that he isn’t, at all. Ruby finally does something we’ve been waiting for her to do since Volume 6 established Qrow as being drunk off his ass and as unhelpful as humanly possible–she puts her foot down. But she only puts her foot down with Qrow’s pessimistic attitude, not the actual problems, which are his sorry, shitty attitude towards everyone around him, his refusal to actually lift a finger to help when it’s needed, and the fact that his alcoholism is proving to be a serious liability to the rest of the team. Qrow’s myriad of personal flaws are seemingly just answered by Ruby as a particularly brusque “stop being such a downer, dude”. The actual problems aren’t addressed even though the somber music and look on Qrow’s face seem to imply that they were.
And in the process, Ruby gives yet another tiresome speech, to ill effects regarding the people they’re supposedly about. In Volume 5, Ruby preached to Raven about how she and her friends have accomplished seemingly impossible things by working together, which I pointed out was completely untrue and this show has never set up any such impossibilities in the first place. This time, she preaches to Qrow about two particularly bothersome and untrue things:
“Oz hasn’t been here to tell us what to do but we’ve managed to get this far anyway.” Ozpin has been gone for six episodes. In that time, the team has survived a Grimm attack, gotten to Argus, met Jaune’s lesbian sister, and…that’s it. They have accomplished no goals or objectives whatsoever. They have “gone far” only in the sense that Yang drove them a few dozen miles. They haven’t actually “gotten” anywhere at all.
“We’ve been in bad situations before, and we didn’t need adults to save us or tell us what to do.” This one reeks with falsehood. The team’s efforts have been directed entirely by Ozpin since he died and became the de facto leader of the heroes. Ozpin’s directives have controlled the flow of Volume 5, in which he directly intervened to keep Hazel from killing Oscar via possession. Before that, RNJR absolutely needed Qrow’s help in keeping Tyrian from wrecking their shit. By comparison, the Nuckelavee was handled relatively with some difficulty, but was also an isolated incident that stood in their way rather than chasing them down as Tyrian did. In Volume 6, the team would’ve died if Maria hadn’t helped Ruby trigger her silver eyes properly. The team has always depended on adults for help and advice, seemingly to highlight the very tiresome and annoying tract of “this is the real world now, a few kids aren’t as prepared as they think” that’s been going on since Volume 3.
Finally, it bears repeating that Qrow’s pessimism is absolutely logical and as far as this show goes, he is still presenting a very valid course of action. And that’s because the “hopelessness” of RWBY’s plot is fundamentally different from the “hopelessness” of other plots. In other series, there would be a general course of action aiming towards an overall goal that would be marred by the loss of a valued team member (such as Pyrrha or, in this case, Ozpin). The group wonders if they should give up, but opt to power on instead, refusing to give in to despair even though things look bleak. But RWBY adds in the fact that the overall goal has been confirmed impossible and the process towards getting there has been confirmed to be pulled out of a dude’s ass with no real coherency or structure to secure a chance at making the goal possible to pull off. In short, there was no plan. There was no process towards the goal to begin with. The heroes not only have no idea what to do, they have no idea what to do about something that can’t be done! In the face of such a mire of pointlessness, there is literally no reason for them not to abandon the quest. This has been pointed out several times by several characters: just leaving the relics to rot and letting Salem bang her fists against Ozpin’s doors is a valid option. Ruby’s rejection of Qrow’s desire to quit doesn’t inspire me or make me root for her to win, it just makes me tired. She’s being the designated “heart” of the team without any semblance of brain…just like her uncle before her.
