Review: RWBY Beyond “Jr. Detectives”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Sun Wukong and Neptune Vasilias return to their semi-canon personas as Jr Detectives to get to the bottom of where Team RWBY (and Jaune) disappeared during the transportation to Vacuo. They interview several witnesses (Ren, Qrow, and Nora), but get no closer to figuring out. Finally, they eavesdrop on a meeting between Oz/Oscar, Winter Schnee, Raven Branwen, Headmaster Theodore, and an unnamed cloaked girl, who Neptune speculates is the Summer Maiden, but Sun refutes this. They’re soon throw out by Qrow, but haven’t given up yet.

OUR TAKE

RWBY Volume 9 Beyond begins its four episode stint of side material that was meant to tide them over…but now has the unfortunate honor of being the last bit of official animated RWBY material before Rooster Teeth shuts down. So, even for a handful of shorts of only a few minutes each, there’s now a LOT to talk about what they add to the story and where we’re leaving things off. Also, it’s RWBY, so I was going to find a way to talk about way more than necessary somehow anyway. In a way, I don’t envy those who had to rush to make these as the last bits of content that will be coming out of the company. But I also can’t help but respect that, despite its many pitfalls along the way, that the people making these are using all the time and resources they have left to get out something before they lose the ability to. I hope they get a chance to make more someday, but in the meantime, let’s take a critical look at a monkey man and a blue haired guy with pronouns wear fake mustaches and look for missing people. Should be fun!

The “Jr Detective” bit comes from a recurring joke from RWBY Chibi, that other series of shorts where the characters got boiled down to a couple personality traits, which oddly enough made them feel like they had more personality than their main show counterparts. Considering these Beyond shorts are meant to kinda the same level but with a bit more canon importance, it makes sense to bring it back for this. As for HOW it’s used, and how it relates to the intention of these to check in with what other characters were doing while RWBY was in the Ever After, it handles that fine, though in a limited way. Having Neptune do low-effort impressions of Ren, Nora, and Qrow while wearing their clothes is at least…something? I never really got much of enjoyment out of the Jr Detective bit in Chibi either so I didn’t really expect to be laughing my ass off at this either, but given that it may be the last time Michael Jones and Kerry Shawcross play these characters, at least for the foreseeable future, it’s nice they got to do a bit they probably liked. Makes me wish Sun and Neptune had a more interesting dynamic, though.

As for story-relevant stuff, there’s actually some interesting details that were tossed in, hinting at future plots that will have to wait for now. Seems that some important characters have been meeting together a lot, though about what we don’t know, and among them are a new Mystery Girl and Shade Academy’s Headmaster Theodore. Unlike the Austurius twins seen briefly in the Epilogue Animatic, Theodore is a character we would’ve met at some point anyway, so even though he has a prominent role in one of the books, those aren’t required to know who he is and why he’s here. Glad we FINALLY have a design for him, at least. What little we got about him from Before the Dawn does make me interested in seeing him be part of the main plot and get a voice, but a design is nice. As for the cloaked girl, Neptune thinks she’s the Summer Maiden and Sun shoots that down, so THAT could mean a lot of things. She’s with Winter and Raven, the latter of which apparently having been in Vacuo for awhile before she picks up JRWBY in the Epilogue, so it would be weirder if she WASN’T a Maiden. The Summer Maiden is the last one we haven’t met, which intrigues me as much as it annoys me BUT…also not going to get much on that now. All I hope is that it’s not Ruby’s mom Summer somehow still alive. Anywho, three more Beyonds to go!