A Very Special EpisodeThis weeks episode of RWBY was apparently preempted by an after-school special focusing on the heartbreak of bullying.
...
...
Yeah...pretty much nothing happened except well, this...
I assume that the gratuitous bunny girl who was onscreen for 7 seconds is a continuing character because she gets a silhouette in the closing credits and a new name appears in the cast list.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Sat Sep 28 15:49:25 2013 (RqRa5)
2
Finally got caught up and saw this. Yeah, the end credit thing seems to feature whoever new was added. The previous episode's new guy... seriously, who stole his pith helmet?
I tend to watch it on Roosterteeth since I'm not a CR subscriber, so I get lower quality and commercial interruptions there.
Posted by: Mauser at Tue Oct 1 06:44:25 2013 (TJ7ih)
I was afraid there was going to be much angsty dialog, but instead the episode is a very long, frequently escalating and occasionally quite cartoonish airsoft duel...where everybody has a grand old time.
At one point bat thevend of the battle Yura alters reality
again, this time for everybody. Everyone except Kirishima is weirded
out. After a moment of confusion and fear Sonora looks at Yura and says
"YOU did this>" Well OK then." as if that makes it all completely
understandable...and they proceed to have the time of their lives until,
exhausted, they find themselves back in reality. It seems that Sonora is aware of what is going on and that it involves the shrine.
There's nothing deep here. Yura has gone from one extreme to another and found them both unpleasant. Now she's stopped being an asshat and is enjoying a hobby she has become quite good at....a hobby she now wants to share with other people.
To my utter astonishment this was a perfectly pleasant episode.
It did nothing to explain the metaphysical weirdness we've seen from time to time in the show, but it did establish that Yura has found her path and is happy as she learns where it leads her.
well Rento knew too, having been caught up into Yura's world before
Indeed and Rento's attitude is along the lines of "Oh. This again."
The interesting thing is that Sonora is NOT terribly freaked out and quickly figures out who is responsible.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Sep 24 17:23:58 2013 (F7DdT)
5
Remember, Yura told Sonora all about it after she saved that ancient warrior, and Sonora believed her, even though her memory is that the ancient warrior lived to old age.
Stella Women's Acadamy High {EXPLETIVE DELETED} Episode 11
The viewers who resisted the urge to get all cutty with a straight razor after last weeks episode are rewarded with a look at what the well adjusted characters are doing.
They've received some bad news...but they are determined to make the best of the situation.
Then we go to Yura...who is putting on a brave face, despite being beset by guilt, despair and zombies...
...shortly after this things begin to get weird.
Kirishima has a perfectly reasonable, fleeting moment of bitchiness which ultimately leads to this unexpected visual...
"I promise...It doesn't hurt"
Which is not nearly as weird as one might deduce from that image but was freaky nonetheless. As the show proceeds to follow Yura (whose funk is compounded by having a run of supernaturally bad luck), it continues to get a bit strange...
...AND CREEPY!
Holy crap! I cannot believe they did that!
After that throwaway moment of utter wrongness, the episode gets... odd...
Episode 4 is not the outlier we thought it was
Not a bad episode. It's not terribly upbeat, but then there is a lot of baggage to work through, and it does end on a rather hopeful note.
UPDATE: Good golly typos!Added some helpful punctuation and rewrote that third block of text to be more clear.
3
Kind of.
The part of the episode with Yura concerns her moping over the realization that she's screwed up. She's to ashamed to go back and is deeply remorseful that she's caused everyone so much trouble.
After Kirishima confronts her in a Video arcade and the meeting gets heated, Yura starts having her visions again but instead of war scenes its the faces of her friends in random locations. After the vision of Kirishima-puppy shown above she laments that there is no place for her and...sure enough she tries to go to a pachinko parlor, a series of convenience stores and restaurants but they are ALL closed for one reason or another. She then encounters a pervert who mistakes her for the young lady who he's been corresponding with online(!) She then finds hersel at the shrine and things on her end proceed get overtly supernatural.
Meanwhile the team is dealing with the fact that Sonora has been accepted into an overseas study program she had long since given up on. She's leaving in a few days. Haruna visits her to see her off and the two discuss....Yura.
It was odd, and a tad mopey, but much less depressing than the last three and as I said it ended on a hopeful note.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Sep 18 08:55:36 2013 (F7DdT)
..I mean she has people ears, right there on the side of her head where they belong, so that thing on her head must be a bow, and yet...the bow...it emotes.
*****
Perhaps as part of a concerted effort to maintain balance in the universe, episode 9 followed up on last weeks breakneck pace and thoroughly satisfying battle with...the girls re-arranging their room. Next week looks exciting though.
1
The first episode revealed a magical substance called Dust that provided magical energy inthis world. I assume that their weapons are powered by that, sometimes in the form of expendable cartridges,
Posted by: Siergen at Sun Sep 15 00:43:27 2013 (Ao4Kw)
2
Yeah, I'd thought about that, which is why the Lorenzonni came to mind but I think these are a blending of tech. I got the impression that Ruby doesn't use magic or at least dust.
Weiss certainly does and it's clear that Nora's grenades are dust based, but as to what propels them? The show's made in Texas...so I'm guessing propane, which makes the weapons propane accessories.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Sep 15 00:52:43 2013 (F7DdT)
3
OTOH, Ruby WAS in a Dust shop in the first episode. On the gripping hand, she seemed confused in episode 2 about the stuff, when she ran into Weiss.
Posted by: RickC at Sun Sep 15 01:27:34 2013 (swpgw)
4
It looked like she was loitering in a 24 hour Dust, drygoods, magazine and music store.
I could be way off, but I get the impression that she doesn't use Dust and may not be a magic user at all.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Sep 15 01:33:59 2013 (F7DdT)
I mean she has people ears, right there on the side of her head where they belong, so that thing on her head must be a bow, and yet...the bow...it emotes.
The Message
The Message behind Stella Women's Acadamy High School Division...I'm sorry...where was I?
Oh yes. I think I've figured out the theme behind this show.
We at Gainax hate you.
Our childhoods were miserable because
we were a bunch of
geeky, socially inept otaku who grew to hate our hobby (which we blame
for all our lost opportunities). Nothing makes us sicker than seeing
those who watch and enjoy anime for they remind us of our selves and our
many personal failures. We hereby dedicate our lives to making you hate
the medium as much as us, for we are transgressive and enlightened
hipsters who understand the nihilistic futility of
everything...Well...everything except
the cruel pleasure we derive from getting you gullible fools to first
enjoy something we create and then watch helplessly and despair as we
dismember it without anesthesia before you. That is the greatest joy in
all creation.That we are paid to do this is icing on the cake. It's an
ephemeral joy though. Your innocence thus defiled, you can bring us
little amusement from this point on, but there are always others that
follow the likes of you. Now get
thee along, Aokigahara beckons you.
I could be a bit off there, but there's a better than even case to be made for that theory at this point.
Bad personality matchups, maybe? Yeah, yeah, Yura never had friends and thus never had the opportunity to learn consideration for other people, she got a few hits of approval and she got hooked on the feeling, that's her lookout and bad on her behalf.
But it also represents a pretty massive leadership failing on both Sonora's and Haruna's behalf. Sonora screwed up initially when she bawled out Yura for not following etiquette that she hadn't bothered to tell her about... and clearly she's never sat down with Yura to tell her "hey, you don't have to be Rambo to play with us." She definitely noticed the problem (i.e. that Yura conflated winning with having any kind of self-worth), and she made a few offhand comments about it... but that's all. To the extent that Yura's relationship with the team deteriorated, it was clearly a problem that Sonora could have and should have nipped in the bud early on.
Haruna, same song, second verse. Haruna clearly recognized the same problem, and in her own way tried to get Yura to come to that realization... but because she didn't tell Yura "you know, I want you to value the team" rather than just trying to force her into the role without explaining, the lesson didn't take.
So yes, is Yura a jerk? Yeah, but she's not someone who's a jerk because she likes being a jerk - it's just that she's running scared that nobody will like her, and nobody's sat her down and said "hey, we like you already!" (Doesn't help that she's awkward enough not to pick up on the clues from context.)
But both Sonora and Haruna were confronted with an unbelievable rookie talent, who picked up on the mechanics like a duck taking to water... and they both dropped the ball. Both of them recognized that Yura had an attitude problem, but neither of them realized what they needed to do to straighten her out.
This falls on Sonora more than Haruna, who is frankly at least a little bit of a cold fish; I don't know that Haruna herself was equipped to give Yura a heart-to-heart talk. But Sonora? She's an oddball in a group of outgoing, active oddballs, she's used to dealing with some in-group personality conflicts, and as Yura's sempai and roommate, she had the opportunity to know her better than anyone. She ought to have managed this better than she did. For that matter, it stretches believability that she didn't, and at that point this is the major problem with the show. I don't buy it, that's all it is; they needed to have the problem develop to make the plot work and didn't think about what that meant for Sonora as a character, and it's just bad writing.
On top of that, the supernatural bit now feels totally out of place. I wanted to watch -that- show, not this one...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Wed Sep 11 18:43:14 2013 (pWQz4)
3
All good points.
I didn't go into detail about Yura's transcendental asininity in part because I kind of feel for her even as I would blame no one for hating her. She's a very awkward person at an awkward age who has (as you point out) been terribly socialized.
I think your point about Haruna is spot on. She's not equipped to deal with this as she's not terribly sociable herself. She does seem to be decent, particularly with regard to her team.
Regards Sonora, yelling at her about the surrender was tin eared, but perfectly reasonable given the embarrassment the team suffered. She did then walk back and start mentoring Yura......she then ended up in the hospital, which set a lot of this off. Remember even Sonora is only 17 or 18.
As to "that other show", yeah, I agree wholeheartedly that I'd rather be watching that one.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Sep 11 19:03:48 2013 (F7DdT)
Bakunyumorion
..is one of those songs where it's important to know know what the lyrics actually mean, because having this just pop up on ones playlist in earshot of a native Japanese speaker could be awkward...
Admittedly it's less awkward than a bad kanji tatoo in that the embarrassment does not stay with one for life and one wont be banned from bathouses in Japan.
The realization that the song is about gigantic boobs is similar to the creeping cognizance of the fact that the text in the title of the video is not Cryillic, but rather some asinine font...
..which means...
...those sprites are....
PANCAKE GIRL!
She has abilities other than stalking!
...and she really likes her job.
Episode 8 displays some of the best and the worst of RWBY.
The usually good voice work seemed a bit off this time around. However, that, a moment of somewhat forced character development and a patch of exceedingly cheesy dialog is rather compensated for by 13 minutes of absolutely kick-ass action...which is further enhanced by the completely unexpected awesomeness of Pancake Girl (Nora Valkyrie).
Even with the rough start, this was easily the best episode since the pilot and the first where everyone (even Jaune) got to shine.
This show is not just a collection of random anime tropes. This episode actually has much more in common with early '90s Hong Kong martial arts flicks...
...also Chuck Jones, (but the less said about that the better).
I laughed. I winced. I cheered. I groaned. This is an odd and uneven show but it is amusing me thoroughly.
1
If you've watched Oum's "Dead Fantasy" series, you know that it's in fantastical battle scenes like this where he's in his element.
They're worth finding (Oddly, they're not on HIS YouTube channel).
Posted by: Mauser at Fri Sep 6 03:42:00 2013 (TJ7ih)
2
I think Pancake Girl needs to cut down on the caffeine a bit.
Posted by: Siergen at Fri Sep 6 21:57:01 2013 (Ao4Kw)
3
Not necessarily.
It could just be a sugar rush.
That pile of pancakes was bigger than her head. That's a LOT of syrup, so ingested the equivalent of a whole BOX of Apple Jacks.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Sep 6 22:54:22 2013 (F7DdT)
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