Review: RWBY Vol.9 “Rude, Red, and Royal”

Overview

Team RWBY journey’s to the Red Kingdom and tries to appeal to the better nature of a spoiled prince with a chess game in which the rules of the game are broken…

Our Take

Team RWBY arrives at the royal birthday party and discovers the King has been succeeded by the Red Prince as ruler, who throws away Penny’s sword for disliking its color. I already hate this fucker. He seems to give off Lord Farquaad vibes, but he not only turned Ruby’s pawns against her after shrinking her friends, but he also discarded one of Penny’s emerald swords because it WASN’T red. And the worst part is… they didn’t let Ruby “try” to get it back.

Though angered, Ruby suggests a game to cheer the Prince up and he elects a chess match where her friends are shrunk to serve as chess pieces, but they overpower the Prince’s forces with their Semblances – terrifying the Prince and his court upon revealing they are following Alyx’s path. Forced to flee, Ruby and her still-shrunken friends are aided by the Curious Cat, who previously helped Alyx reach the Tree. Meanwhile, the injured Jabberwalker is cornered by a newly-arrived Neo, whose Semblance has evolved in unexpected ways…

Overall, this episode seems to imply that Team RWBY has to write their own story and do more than follow what the storybook protagonist has done. As a character, this “Red Prince” asshole, was so dramatic that I kept expecting him to break out into a Disney villain musical number every time he had a moment. You can really feel Ruby trying to mentally hold it together, while the rest of team RWBY’s reactions to this world, from Weiss trying to cope with the nonsense to Yang getting to punch things, have been interesting as well. The music cues and the fight song were great. As for Neo, I hope we get some clarification on the order of events here as well as what the Jabberwalker is doing and why. But with Neo now present and accounted for, that just leaves Jaune, he’s probably not going to be hanging with Neo based on what Neo can do now, but where could he end up?