Review: RWBY Vol.8 “War”

Overview

With the Atlas shields now having been breached, a grand war begins within the floating city when Salem unleashes a storm of Grimm creatures battling against a large number of Atlas armies which is not only a sight to behold, but I can’t think of a better way to visualize just how much Salem has played everyone than to show her conducting the invasion of Atlas like it’s a death-orchestra. This consequently motivates Ironwood to send a city-wide message for everyone to evacuate to the subway stations for safety. During the course of this, we also get equal screentime for other specific characters with Yang’s B-Team is arrested by the Ace-Op’s despite the legit distress call they made. While Ruby’s A-Team is still at the Schnee Manor along with May from Robyn’s happy Huntresses who proceeds to debate on what to do next despite Nora still being injured and heavily scarred, with May herself revealing something about herself that most of the audience probably doesn’t know about unless you’re a hardcore RWBY fan but to put it mildly, May became a new person when she left her old life in more ways than one…

While this is going on, Oscar/Ozpin attempts to further get through to Hazel which fleshes out a few of Hazel’s motivations, and goals which further delve into why he’d be working for Such a God-like Grimm monstrosity, but Oscar makes an unthinkable choice that he hopes would leave to Hazel to decide while Emerald overhears this and despite telling Mercury about what’s happening, Tyrian not only confirms it but still drags Mercury’s ass to Salem’s next mission in Vacuo leaving things open-ended for possible future episodes. Eventually, Ironwood gives an order for Winter to partake in an elaborate plan to destroy the Grimm Whale known as “Monstro” from the inside with a bomb.

Knowing that Oscar is possibly in there, Jaune pleads with them to rescue Oscar first leading to a surprising and significant moment for Ren who’s Semblance powers begin to develop an unexpected change that mostly can be visually seen, leading to Ren calling out the Ace-Op members and how flawed their logic has become when it comes to “replacing” people, along with their repressed they are on an emotional level, but eventually, Winter agrees with Jaune’s rescue mission with the stipulation that their time is limited since the Bomb isn’t sent to them yet but will give them a chance to get Oscar out before then. Cutting back to the Schnee Mansion, tensions begin to rise between what May wants and Ruby’s A-Team, while Whitley does something unthinkable that even surprised me. The episode ends when somebody unexpectedly has crash-landed at Schnee Manor’s doorstep…




Our Take

Compared to past episodes where Ren was a repressive emotional, hate-fueled mess of a person, I actually love what they’ve done with Ren’s semblance right now. From an aesthetic perspective, it’s also a very literal way of showing his personal growth as before this, he used it to hide emotions, but now this change gives him a moment of clarity. In speaking of clarity, we could see a bit of it with Winter as she goes from being a toy soldier blindly taking orders, to getting everyone’s shit together by doing things on her own terms and being the bigger person. Winter is even smart for not even trying to dispute with the irrational merkin for a mohawk known as Harriet as Winter also knows Ironwood has his grip so tight around Harriet’s mind that she doesn’t bother explaining why her bullshit “traitor” argument doesn’t work whatsoever. 

In theory, so much can go wrong after this considering Harriet’s impulsiveness and the fact that she doesn’t think before acting. I feel like she’s going to do something that puts everyone in mortal danger. Either she’ll report Winter’s ass to Ironwood which could get Harriet herself promoted and Winter demoted or worse. I just don’t see Harriet not causing any sort of self-sabotage within this particular mission because of her blindsiding, repressed emotions, and idiotic ideology. But then again this is why Ace-Ops is shit on a fundamental level. They may function like a well-oiled cog to Ironwood’s grand design, but their blind devotion makes them come across as suicide bombers who believe they can be easily be replaced as soon as they’re broken.  Just a machine, no heart or soul…

In speaking of other things that can go wrong or at least feel wrong, I find it weird that Ruby’s Team-A has the free time to sip tea in a Schnee Mansion while a literal skirmish that they’re arguably responsible for is going on. It kind of rubs the ‘save everyone’ idea the wrong way. Aside from Weiss’s brother doing something unexpected, I also did not expect the writers themselves to actually address what May supposedly is on the show, but I love the metaphor though. As for the ending, The guest who crash-landed in front of the Schnee Manor’s doorstep at the end could have consequences in later episodes given the implications of who it is, along with the possibility of seeing Cinder breaking Watts out of Jail, and the revelations that both Hazel, Emerald, and Mercury have indirectly discovered in regards to Oscar/Ozpin’s words. And of course Tyrian casually knows Salem’s true intentions and just cackles about like the anarchist douche-monkey he is, because if there’s anything we know about people like Tyrian, some men just want to watch the world burn.

Overall, despite the month and a half to wait for the latter half of volume 8, so much can potentially happen when February 6th rolls around next year. But, I look forward to seeing how the show will continue later in 2021 and hopefully beyond.