Review: RWBY Volume 4 “Remembrance”

Hey, ‘member the White Trailer? Yeah, I ‘member!

SPOILERS AHEAD!

The first thing we should probably talk about is the new opening animation since that’s now the first thing we get, as it usually is after the first episode of a season. This is the first season moving over from Poser (which they used for the first three volumes) to Maya. I don’t really have an eye for animation, but what I can tell you is this definitely looks different. Sometimes for the better, in terms the cel-shade effect and the fluidity of the fights, and sometimes for the worse, like whatever the heck Blake is doing with her hands when she’s fighting Adam here. Looks like the Neil Degrasse Tyson meme but with more panic.

But in terms of what a typical anime opening is known to do, I think this pulls it off better than the previous three. The first volume kinda skimped on the details, basically just saying “hey, there’s these four gals, plus these other two girls and two guys, they fight monsters and are at a school”, so pretty bare bones. Volume two was essentially that, but with more characters, including villains…even if a fair amount of those new characters didn’t end up doing jack in that season. Volume three took a drastic tone change to something more…well, grim, considering it basically beats you over the head with how everything’s going to fall apart by the end of that season. THIS opening, meanwhile, is considerably more optimistic in comparison, which makes sense as the start of a new arc. We’re still reminded of how dire things are with the titular Team RWBY being split across the globe in a striking visual, followed by check-ins to where each of the members will be, likely for at least the remainder of this season. Ruby is traveling with the remaining JNPR members, Weiss is dealing with family life, Blake is traveling by sea with some hairy people and Sun (where’d his team go?), and Yang is going to train with her dad and give justification for pulling Burnie Burns into this mess…and maybe run into the White Fang? Then we meet our new villain team, who got a few speaking lines last episode, and so far they don’t seem to have much to them beyond their appearances, which aren’t very inspired. We have the quiet muscle Hazel, murder-stab-death-kill Tyrian, posh-stache Watts, a new outfit for the now mute Cinder, and our apparent major Big Bad for maybe the rest of the show Salem, who almost seems to be compensating for her evil look because of how dull the other three guys are dressed…and then some Grimm fly by as if they were thrown out of a catapult. Ruby fights crazy guy and Blake fights Adam, which they’re probably saving for the last few episodes (although if they don’t, it wouldn’t be the first time an opening has shown a fight that never happened or had to wait until a year later), then JNR fights Grimm and a couple group shots to close us out. Pretty good idea of what we’ll be getting this year. Now, the episode itself!

Weiss shyly walks down the hallways of the Schnee home, continuing from the end of the last episode where she was called to see her father. Weiss’ relationship with her family has been hinted at a few times since her first appearance in the first season. We know she came to Beacon to prove herself to her father, as well as to find a way to take over his company and repair the bad reputation it has for apparently having slave labor and being targeted by the White Fang, the Faunus based terrorist group that is meant to show how the Faunus are an oppressed minority, but then only ever show them to be heartless terrorists. But I guess that sort of explains why Weiss enters the story as kind of a brat…and then stays that way until the halfway point of V1, where she spontaneously decides to become nice, then back to being a brat about being the leader, then back to nice, then is suddenly a racist, then is just as suddenly not, and then neither of those qualities show up ever again. Then Weiss’ character arc past V1 is basically being around for fights, being in the pointless love square with Jaune, Pyrrha, and Neptune, and then her getting a brand new super move without much on-screen effort. But now, she’s back home to finally pay off all the subtle hints about her horrid family life, which would be easier to get excited for if we didn’t have to see her walk past multiple backgrounds that obviously look like they were painted in, making her 3D model look ridiculously out of place. The second to last one is a light fixture that looks like it’s made for the ceiling, but the camera is at Weiss’ eye level, making it look more like it’s jutting out of the wall.

Weiss continues poignantly trudging through the halls, only to run into her brother Whitley (get it? because it almost has “white” in it?). He tells her that their father has been yelling at someone in his study, and Weiss asks if it might be their mom, but Whitley says it sounded like a man. Which begs the question of whether Weiss expected her brother to have forgotten what their own mother sounded like (even though he’s been home this whole time she’s been gone), her parents fight often enough for it to be a regular occurrence, or if she just has that three-pack-a-day  voice like Dr. Mrs. The Monarch from Venture Bros. She’s apparently a day drinker, so it wouldn’t be too far off. They also discuss Winter, the oldest Schnee child who we met briefly last season, who Whitley apparently doesn’t care for, but admires her resolve and strength. Whitley, being the youngest, doesn’t seem all the strong based on looks, to the point that he can barely keep his own chin together.

We cut to a black void with a muffled voice…Pyrrha’s voice, speaking her last words about destiny and then calling for Jaune. Turns out this was all Ruby’s dream, but that doesn’t explain how she’s hearing things she wasn’t around for. Something else must be going on, likely related to Ruby’s Silver Eyes ex Machina from the last finale. Later that day, Ruby and her team (which seems to waffle between RNJR and JNRR, but I will refer to henceforth as RRNJ) are cheerfully traipsing down a sunny road looking for the next town on their path to Haven Academy. Their current destination is Shion(?) Village, which Jaune says was a frequent camping ground of him and his seven sisters, which Nora says explains a lot…a lot of WHAT, though?

After stealing jokes about ponytails from Avatar (and DBZ Abridged last episode), the four arrive at the village…or what’s left of it. Finding the only apparent survivor, a Huntsmen (that’s rare!) who’s bleeding out. Turns out bandits raided the place, and the panic from the villagers attracted Grimm that finished everyone off. Wow, kinda makes you wonder how it lasted THIS long if this was all it took to wipe everything out. OR why the job of being a Huntsman is so idolized when this is pretty much the first one we’ve met out in the wild and he’s already on his deathbed. Aside from that, the other noteworthy point is Ren and Nora seeing a symbol in the dirt, which might point to their collective backstories that we haven’t gotten more than a handwave since the show began.

Back at “Keeping up with the Schnees” Weiss finally makes it to the study, only to find General Ironwood (now sporting a five o’clock shadow) in a heated debate with Weiss’ father, Jacques, whose name is surprisingly not a color! And, not so surprisingly, is a total douchenozzle who is more concerned with profits than however Atlas’ reputation was hurt in the big battle the last volume. After Ironwood leaves, we learn that the impact of those events has now kept their Dust company from exporting to other kingdoms (which hasn’t really seemed to be much of an issue, so far) until it’s clear that no one’s about to start a war. Although, wouldn’t removing access from other countries to the biggest supplier of this world’s main fuel and ammunition only make them MORE LIKELY to want to go to war just to take it over? Maybe my “Ironwood is evil” theory is right after all…

But in the meantime, Jacques plans to hold a charity auction to get the people’s trust back, along with having Weiss sing for them. However, that proves to be a touchy subject. We (sort of) saw Weiss sing before in the White Trailer years ago, but it’s never really come up in the show after that point. Not even in a setting like a school dance, where it would probably fit perfectly. But from the way it’s being talked about, it’s implying that this might be something Weiss is good at, and maybe even likes doing, but is more often something forced on her by her father, especially in this case. Guess we’ll see where this goes in later episodes, but typically a politically charged charity event rarely spells anything better than an absolute disaster.

We then meet the Schnee’s butler Klein, who has mood changing pupils, and then back to Ruby having weird Pyrrha dreams about crying out for Jaune. She wakes up hearing this, albeit with a calmer voice and wanders around the campground to find Jaune practicing in front of a recording of Pyrrha instructing him on sword moves. In the first two seasons, their sessions were in person, and there’s never been any reason for teams to be separated that we’ve seen…aside from having the school being blown to hell, so when and why did she record this? Guess we’ll have to wait a week to find out.

Well, that episode certainly set some things up for later: Weiss’ issues with her father, Ren, and Nora running into the people who probably killed their family, an upcoming event to quell unrest in Atlas (which will probably go poorly), and Ruby having dreams about Pyrrha. Plenty to fuel the way for future episodes and volumes to come. The new cast members do a fine enough job considering a lot of them are in pretty small roles, aside from Jason Douglas as Jacques Schnee who will likely be a much bigger factor now that we’ve finally met him.

That said, since I only have one shot at this, I’d like to talk about something that’s bugged me a bit since this volume started and opened my eyes a bit about the show so far: Ruby  has been stuck at square one for…I dunno, about three years now? If you don’t believe me, think about her character in the first episode compared to now. At the beginning, she was chipper, idealistic, and eager to jump into battle, while now she’s…pretty much exactly the same, with very little pointing to that changing anytime soon. She seems to be almost drifting into the supporting cast of her own show, demonstrated this and last week by having Jaune “spotlight stealer” Arc take up the focus of both Team RRNJ appearances thus far. In the rock Grimm fight, it’s about him learning how to communicate tactics while Ruby, who was also a leader of a team, just kind of flails and acts randomly until getting instructed. Then we have this episode, with all dialogue devoted to Jaune’s background, Jaune losing everything, and Jaune missing Pyrrha. Those who watched the last season know that Ruby saw THREE PEOPLE (or two and a robot) DIE in front of her while also finding out she has some ancient anti-Grimm power and that her sister was maimed. If they wanted to show how Ruby was trying to take all of these events and continue on despite the struggle, now would be the time, but she barely seems phased by any of it. Meanwhile, Jaune’s getting new armor, feeling all the angst, and having meaningful mourning of his sorta-girlfriend, despite the fact that he has two other teammates he’s not sharing any of this with. This happened before with the bullying storyline in Volume 1, where Jaune was the focus and Ruby became a side character, and then again in V2 with the dance stuff. Ruby seems to just need to be around for whenever a fight scene shows up, but all the character work goes to her teammates or, if not them, Jaune.

If you’ve stuck with me this long, my point is this: If you have a show called RWBY that is pronounced “ruby” and stars a girl named Ruby, you should really be prepared to make some space to develop that girl. You want a good story about another teammate in there too, that’s fine. You want a story about a different team or even just one member of that team, that’s fine too. But none of that should come before your lead, who should be LEADING everyone else in character growth. We’ll see how they manage in the coming weeks, but it’s hard to expect much at this point. This show has a vast, complex world and equally vast potential in its main cast, so as we continue into this new scope, I hope our main character doesn’t get left in the dust.

Hope you’ve enjoyed getting bored reading my post! Your regular reviewer will be back next week.