Review: RWBY Vol.4 – Chapter 8 “A Much Needed Talk”

The last RWBY episode of 2016 and it’s the 2nd longest episode in the series to reach 22 mins.

The episode begins at night time over a campfire with Qrow who thankfully isn’t dead from Tyrian’s scorpion sting, and wastes no time laying most of his cards on the table and brings them into the fold with a massive off-camera info-dump regarding all this Salem and Maiden business.

And Jaune, who finally knows what Pyrrha died for in Volume 3, isn’t too happy. But Qrow simply says she wasn’t forced to do anything, she chose to be a Maiden. And all of this is just the tip of the iceberg.

When Ruby asks why Tyrian was after her, Qrow explains that she has “Silver Eyes” and after what she did at Beacon in the last episode (when she cried at the sight of her dead friend releasing some sort of beam of light to stop the Dragon) it got the attention of Salem and her evil council who most likely see her as a threat. Ruby wonders why Qrow didn’t just tag-along with them in their adventure in which Jaune notes that he was using her as “bait” leaving to Qrow counter with the claim that it’s complicated and when Jaune demands more answers, Qrow then proceeds to tell a story about Ozpin that’s connected to the creation of their Universe.

The story goes into this weird series of Images with Qrow as the narrator, but Apparently, there were once two Gods who were brothers, one born good and with the power to create life, the other born evil and with the power to destroy.

The story itself is in very Caine and Abel-like proportions with the good brother representing creation in the form of the plants & animals on Remnant, while the evil brother thrives on destruction and created the Grimm just to dick with him by destroying life. But life always restored itself.

So the two brothers eventually made a compromise and created something they could both be proud of.

Beings who had the potential to be both good and evil, this became the creation we know as humanity.

He further explains that the two brothers also left behind four physical gifts/relics that were more than just metaphors before abandoning Remnant to its own devices: “knowledge, creation, destruction, and choice“. And like every cliche epic adventure story with a plot “Macguffin“, if you possess all four of these so-called “relics”, you’re basically the most powerful being in all existence.

Each headmaster of the four schools is each charged with protecting one, Using the schools as a Fortress so if anyone intrusively came for it, the place would be heavily armed with trained warriors ready to protect it incase Mankind would misuse this power against itself. And if Salem’s forces gets their hands on all of them, needless to say, their world would be supremely fucked beyond measure.

We cut back to Blake after the Menagerie episode, where Blake obviously feels uncomfortable being home again, despite her parent’s warm welcome.

Her mother, only wanting Blake to have an actual conversation alone with her father, gives her a pot of tea and throws her into the deep end. Way to go Mom! (I facepalmed at that moment.)

 

Ironically, for someone who has looked death in the eye, Blake is clearly afraid to be alone with her father. And like a total dad, comments on Blake’s revealing top, saying she should wear something that covers up more. But soon enough, Blake breaks down in tears and says he shouldn’t so easily forgiving.

Apparently, when he stepped down as leader of the White Fang and left with his wife, Blake called them “cowards” And proceeded to run away with her self-proclaimed revolutionary/terrorist leader/implied boyfriend Adam.

Huh, so that’s why she was so afraid to go home, she played the whole “rebellious teen girl who sides with her boyfriend and believes he’s the only one who truly loves & understands her!” card and disowned herself. Guess you can understand why she thought she wouldn’t be welcomed back with so much ease. And like any good parent, he tells her that his love for her is endless and unconditional, and he was proud of her for leaving the White Fang of her own volition.

Unlike Weiss, Blake is the sort of individual who is quick to blame herself. She knows that staying away from the conflicts of this season could have devastating consequences for those she’s left behind, but she thinks about what she’s been through and doesn’t see a way back in the condition she’s in. During this scene, the awkwardness of their tea session begins to fade, and a decent piano rendition of the Volume 1 RWBY song “Wings” is played so elegantly in the background.

But right before we could further delve into Blake’s deep seeded issues on why she left Beacon despite having supportive friends, Sun literally comes crashing through the door.

With Sun using the classic excuse of looking for the bathroom and he wasn’t in fact eavesdropping with Ghira further expressing his dislike towards him.

We cut back to Team RNJR at the campsite with Qrow and Jaune asks why doesn’t the world know the extistence of Salem?

You’d think with Atlas and Mistral with all their military power & resources would be a force to be reckoned with against them right? Qrow’s simple answer is that the villains are more cunning and shockingly well organized compared to the defense forces of Remnant and it could’ve taken them longer periods of time compared to the enemy who is somehow one step ahead of them.

And to answer Jaune’s question, keeping Salem a secret is the same reason they have to keep the Maidens a secret knowing that if the world knew the existence of the Maidens, Relics, Ect. It would be total chaos Also it could possibly lead to another great war where even children would be forcibly drafted.

While Qrow didn’t always agree with Ozpin’s way of doing things, he did understand that they can’t cause a panic with this knowledge. He’s also aware that Salem is usually the type who works behind the scenes having people do her dirty work and the first phase of her plan is to have the world to be at each others’ throats placing the blame at one another and further dividing their nations which so far is working in the worst ways imaginable.

When Ruby asks what they’ll do next, Qrow doesn’t have a valid answer for that but knows Ozpin has entrusted the other headmasters knowing that the schools are their only line of defense to stopping Salem from further achieving her goal with Atlas on high alert after the shit that went down at Beacon and Vacuo is the closest thing to a Tortuga in their universe pointing out that it’s hard to hire “thieves and scoundrels” to battle against one another.

And now Qrow decides to tell them his Semblance and why he didn’t want to travel directly with Ruby. His semblance isn’t turning into a Crow but instead It’s the power to bring misfortune to others.

Which is good if you’re fighting an enemy, but when all you want to do is any kind of social interaction we take for granted like making friends or falling in love, it can be a pain when there’s no way to turn it off. So for that valid reason, He kept his distance so as to not hurt his Niece Ruby or her friends.

The kids take it well except for Jaune who’s still boiling about Pyrrha’s involvement and Raven shows up in her bird-form before he can go any further about Yang’s mother and decides to tell them another time.

We cut back to Blake & Sun with Blake delivering a barrage of bitch-slaps to Sun for his lack of boundaries or concept or privacy.

But apparently Sun had a legit excuse for seeking her out, as he saw and took a picture of a masked ninja-looking White Fang member in the market place and according to Blake’s mother, members of the White Fang aren’t allowed to wear masks in Menagerie.

Blake is growing frustrated with Sun while saying to him that she is only here to figure things out for herself but Blake decides to be an Impulsive cunt with zero fucks to give, by throwing Sun’s scroll at a tree. Damn! Blake is making it really hard for Sun to keep loving her like he does. But it’s a blessing in disguise because the scroll hits a White Fang ninja spy who was hiding in the tree out of sheer dumb luck.

Blake chases after the White Fang Spy who has the obvious silhouette of a woman with Sun following close behind. And of course, neither of them thought it was a good idea to fucking arm themselves with weapons in advance?

Our well-trained huntsmen/huntresses folks! Hope you have fun being kidnapped, victimized or killed. (Or all three)

And in a series of gifs, the episode ends in predictable cliffhanger-fashion when it cuts to Daytime with Team RNJR waking up and as they go to check on Qrow, who is hacking up and secreting purple venom and the episode ends with Qrow sarcastically saying “Well… that’s unfortunate!”

Overview.

Blake bitch-slapping Sun was a bit much for me, whenever they did that it would be played for low-brow cheap laughs which annoyed me to a point but this time, he was being intrusive and broke up a moment that clearly meant something to Blake and her anger towards him for once was justified even if she went a little overboard. I mean, the first hit after the sea serpent fight was small and felt like a cheap laugh for the rabid fans on Tumblr, or when Winter slapped Weiss in vol.3 But this? Two slaps back to back while unleashing verbal hell at him? It felt like badly-written fanfiction at that point and I really hope it later gets addressed.

If you haven’t guessed already, I really don’t like the double-standard bullshit of making it ok for women to abuse men and write it off as a joke at the male character’s expense. I even disliked it in anime shows like Prison School and Inuyasha for those same reasons.

This should NOT become a running gag for Blake’s character that we should just blindly accept. You’re better than this RoosterTeeth!

It took me a while to figure out who the brothers are supposed to represent or be a reference to since Monty’s writing style often involves characters being named after books, colors, animals or fictional fairytale characters, but since one of them is responsible for creating the creatures of Grimm it started to hit me that these two are a reference to the titular “Brothers Grimm“.

Just so we’re abundantly clear, these dipshit writers have already taken away Pyrrha and Penny as of last season. If they kill off Qrow, 2017 is gonna start off on a rough note because a bunch of RWBY fans are gonna begin rioting in the social streets like they did on Tumblr and Facebook after Phyrra died to the extent that two petitions were made.

For a twenty minute long episode, it somehow still felt too short. On this New Year’s Eve, episode eight simply gave us a lot of “breathing room” at least enough for the story to pick up before the next action scenes that will most likely be followed in episode 9.

For the last RWBY episode of 2016, I also had a lot to say about this one but we now have four episodes left and while we managed to catch up with what Blake is up to, there’s still no “breathing room” for Yang yet. Seriously, I was looking forward to seeing some father-daughter training and we can only hope that we see what she’s up to in the next episode or at least devote one entirely on Yang’s development just to balance things out.