RWBY Volume 9 Episode 8 Reaction
Added 2024-12-07 17:00:05 +0000 UTCEarly ad-free access for our reaction to RWBY Volume 9 Episode 8
Comments
I think somewhere Neo probably thought because she pin the lost of Roman on Ruby she thought maybe breaking her down emotionally and ending her would make her feel better about losing him. At the end of it all she came to the realization that she still felt empty.
DeAnthony Potts
2024-12-14 14:38:14 +0000 UTCThe screen cap of you guys at the Stomp (and *twist*) was perfect. :) But yeah, like I was saying a couple episodes ago (kinda setting this up)...just a time to remember that what we see as the audience isn't what Ruby et al. see. We see Little looking like they're asleep because no one wants to actually see or animate that Game of Thrones style, but I always think of shows, especially animated, as an adaptation of the in-world realism. It's horrible to consider everything these characters have seen and experienced, even going back to Volume 3, but it adds some perspective for why characters act the way they do; they're seeing their reality, not an animated version.
Callie Summers
2024-12-11 09:47:49 +0000 UTCAppreciate you sharing this. We probably weren't going to read that tbh. So it's nice getting these details
Bethany and Ken
2024-12-10 18:24:54 +0000 UTCYeah but that's what was kind of cool about what happened with Neo, you are so angry at her and are done with her and want revenge and then when that revenge happens you're like, "whoa?! Didn't want revenge that much. Damn!" 😜
Bethany and Ken
2024-12-10 18:23:05 +0000 UTCYeah, they are restricted by budget so get why they didn't do a deep dive in the show for Neo. Bummer for those of us that haven't read the books and what not. But at least they did flesh out her character to justify it all
Bethany and Ken
2024-12-10 18:20:43 +0000 UTCYeah wish patreon would fix that so you can hit enter and it won't finish your comment but instead add a paragraph. Happens to us too 🤗
Bethany and Ken
2024-12-10 18:19:33 +0000 UTCIt's always OK to shout out Weiss 😊
Bethany and Ken
2024-12-10 18:17:30 +0000 UTCI'm not sure if you'll ever read the RWBY novel "Roman Holiday" but just in case you don't (Some Novel Spoilers Below as it sheds some backstory to Neo) But if you do happen to have this itch to read then you can ignore the spoilers. It's just basically Neo's origin and how she ended up the way she did. Also feel free to delete the comment if it's something you want to avoid completely. Also some extras from the novel, that is connected to Yang (Not considered Spoilerly) (Hei Xiong - AKA Junior) - While Yang is not mentioned, we learn that Hei Xiong likes porridge. Hei Xiong is Junior's real name, the name of the club owner from Yang's Yellow Trailer and he connects to Yang's allusion of Goldilocks since Hei Xiong Guai is the pronunciation for "Black Bear Monster" in Chinese. He is the FIRST "Bear" that Yang (Goldilocks) Encounters. To complete the trifecta of bears, Yang later encounters the two Ursa during initiation but "Junio" is considered the first "bear." And in the original "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" Goldilocks encounters the bears' porridge. -------------------------------------- Here's where the Real Spoilers begin (Just some): - Neo came from privilege as she was the daughter of two wealthy parents, Jimmy and Carmel Vanille. Her birth name is Trivia Vanille, and she was born with heterochronic eyes. Her parents used to make her wear brown contacts because they wanted her to look normal. She was also born mute as well and both parents would constantly criticize her for both of her conditions. - When Trivia was young she had an imaginary friend named "Neapolitan." "Neo" is initially thought to be a figment of Trivia's imagination, only for her to realize that she is real and is a product of her own Semblance. - Her father unethically cybernetically enhanced her with Advanced hearing aids and a speech box. - When Trivia's (Neo's) father wanted questions from her he would dangle her from her ankles and out of frustration toss her onto furniture like a rag doll. - She eventually had psychotic breakdown and burned her house down killing her parents along with it. Or at least her father as her mother's well being is still ambiguous. - Her mother was connected to a crime organization that Miss Malachite ran (Refer to Volume 6, where we are introduced to Miss Malachite and her Spider organization. In fact her daughters are the infamous Malachite Twins that Yangs fights in her Yellow Trailer). - Miss Malachite was behind the partnership of Neo and Roman. Roman was the first person not to question her conditions (her muteness and heterochromia. He basically accepted her conditions and all. So that's why she was so attached to him.
Mare
2024-12-09 10:14:51 +0000 UTCAs someone who dislikes ruby. Seeing neo beat the crap out of her was great
Reggielacey22
2024-12-07 23:24:38 +0000 UTCNah. Fuck little
Reggielacey22
2024-12-07 23:22:57 +0000 UTCMentioning the possession of Neo -- I really like how they started mixing "horror" style elements into the story starting in Season 6 (with the cellar Grimm) and then onwards... the whole feeling of dread leading to Salem's appearance in Ironwood's office, the Hound being a transformed faunus, etc. The Cat forcing itself down Neo's throat was the latest horrific moment, following all the tragedy that had just happened. I feel like the animation has been just gorgeous and provocative this season.
Jennywocky
2024-12-07 23:06:33 +0000 UTCThe Neo thing Jarred me too. Rwby relies alot on peripheral media like the soundtrack and in this case a book about neos life to fill in some of the gaps. They relied on it a little too much in my opinion, but animation is expensive so it was a choice i guess.
Rinnzu Rosendale
2024-12-07 22:42:00 +0000 UTCSooooo my thoughts were always that Ruby told little to stay away or little might die too. Ruby goes to that uhm…“tea party“? And gets beaten up physically and psychically by people who lost their life and even tho their deaths are not her faults, but she feels responsible for them. And the next time she see‘s little beeing around her again little dies. Another death she felt responsible for. The last drop to overfill the glass. That‘s what i believe made her drink the tea 0:
Lara
2024-12-07 22:39:00 +0000 UTCUsing Torchwick as Neo's mouthpiece was absolute genius writing imo. It links up the climax of Ruby's long running character arc to the very start by bringing back Ruby's original nemesis
Hi-Viz
2024-12-07 21:25:17 +0000 UTCThis episode always hurts my heart, but it ultimately makes the last two episodes even better. In regards to Ruby not helping Little, I genuinely don't think she could have. She was badly beaten, her aura was gone, she couldn't reach her weapon, she was emotionally shattered, and she almost got possessed by the Cat. And just like Neo stepping on Little caught all of us off guard, it noticeably caught her off guard too. No one thought Neo would do that until she did, I definitely didn't. I thought that Neo would kick Little away or something, not flat out stomp them. The loss of Little was definitely the final straw for Ruby and while it definitely wasn't her fault, she is still going to internalize it. Ruby didn't have much of anything to do with the other deaths other than witness them. The first time Penny died, Ruby got there too late, and the second time Ruby wasn't even there. Ruby showed up just as Pyrrha began to disintegrate. She didn't witness, or even know, that Ozpin, Lionheart, and Clover died until afterwards. And no one was there to witness the death of Ironwood. Not a single one of these deaths were Ruby's fault and would have happened regardless, but because Ruby has been made to feel that she is responsible for everything as a leader and she's just an empathetic person, she will believe that everyone dies because of her and she even told Little that. The kindest hearts break the easiest.
Lady RedShee
2024-12-07 21:23:32 +0000 UTCThis episode F’d me up when it came out. My emotions were jack up and I just could not handle these back to back depressing episodes. Big reasons why this is the depression arc
RetroBeastto
2024-12-07 20:19:43 +0000 UTCWell that went to shitstown VERY quickly. They really went and brought back the dead, huh. I don't even know how to process what has happened in this episode.
KeterLordFR
2024-12-07 19:34:20 +0000 UTCKinda puts Maria’s comment to Ruby in volume 6 into perspective. “You know you don’t give yourself enough credit”. I think she was being sarcastic more or less
SavvySpark
2024-12-07 19:21:41 +0000 UTCThis episode is so hard to watch, they broke Ruby & basically told her all the horrible thoughts she was already feeling about herself. Doing it in the forms of people she cared for that died, heartbreaking. Neo's story is a bit confusing without the reading Roman Holiday, which is unfortunate. The photos & mansion are all based on the book & Neo's parents & childhood. She was abused, neglected & resented by her parents. Partially because of her being mute & her "imaginary friend". Her semblance developed as a child to cope with it & "Neo" was this imaginary friend, the Neo we knows real name is Trivia Vanille. Her family was rich & she eventually went to a boarding school that trained her to basically become a spy & continue blending in with society. She actually went to this school with the 2 girls we saw Yang fight in her original trailer. On top of it, those girls are the daughters of the female mob boss we saw Cinder meet with in volume 6. She met Roman & he genuinely cared about her & always seemed to understand her. I won't spoil the end but we obviously know her parents aren't around anymore & that she had continued on with Torchwick. It's why her song is "One Thing" from volume 6, Roman was all she had & would've followed him to the end of the world. She did blame Cinder, she convinced her "let's kill Ruby together because she's the reason, not me" so Neo used that as her will to keep going. What happens when you have nothing left? Having to face all of that darkness inside with nothing & no one. The cat taking over Neo's body was amazingly horrific. I love how far they've come animation wise, it's beautiful. Neo stomping on Little gets everyone on the side of "fuck you Neo" 🤣🤣 I do think getting your body taken over by an entity that morphs it a bit of an overkill punishment 🤣
Chibi_Witch888
2024-12-07 19:08:36 +0000 UTCWinter and Cinder, both partially raised by metal men. Both having to turn their swords on them to finally breathe.
Lucifer_Crowe
2024-12-07 18:53:06 +0000 UTCI feel like Ironwood became a surrogate father of sorts to Winter -- he gave her life structure and purpose outside of her father's meticulously constructed reality. Winter became dependent on that structure, rather than just seeing it as a step on her ongoing maturation -- a journey she finally embraced again at the end of s8 by listening to her own internal ethical voice vs just "following orders."
Jennywocky
2024-12-07 18:41:37 +0000 UTCI thought it was a real tribute to Torchwick, this episode -- so true to the Torchwick we remember in both the writing and voice acting. It was really sad about Billy Kametz. As others said, I think it was about just tossing out all the characters that died along the way to help Ruby feel even more responsible overall, even if she wasn't directly involved. "I'm just trying to save everyone!" she cries here. None of the deaths were really "her" fault honestly, but she feels like she contributed to them somehow.
Jennywocky
2024-12-07 18:38:54 +0000 UTCYeah, "One Thing" is the perfect callback on this! :)
Jennywocky
2024-12-07 18:35:03 +0000 UTCI actually was saving some comments on this for next episode, but you are so right -- basically Blake understands more via "gut feelings," while Weiss can articulate her perceptions in more logical detail. I really resonate with Weiss here -- as soon as she realizes Ruby is pretty messed up, she starts working through it and piecing it together. She continues to be a great source of understanding and insight through the rest of the season -- compassion melded with rationality. We might not have expected this from her, the little snobby prejudiced rich girl from Season 1. Talk about growing up; she's amazing.
Jennywocky
2024-12-07 18:32:54 +0000 UTCEasily my favorite episode in all of RWBY as a writer I love how they broke Ruby down in such a brutal and heartbreaking scene This was a long time comming- this was EVERYTHING she has been putting off since the end of Volume 3. This is what happens when you don't unpack your trauma in a timley manner... This was the moment Volume 9 beat Volume 3 for me
MegumiMary
2024-12-07 18:29:41 +0000 UTCYour facial responses during some big moments in this episode were pretty much what I experienced the first time I saw it. Oh, I wanted Penny and Pyrhha back so much... but not like this (not like this..!) It broke my heart to watch Neo take Ruby apart, until Ruby admits, "I ... just don't want... to be me anymore." Ken's right in using the word "torture." Penny's comments about Ruby failing her, Ruby "killing Oscar" when she lashes out, then Neo stomping on Little in front of her -- hating Neo is so understandable right now. I have always appreciated RWBY trying to humanize its villains. "Roman Holiday" shows how Neo had literally nothing in her life except for Torchwick -- she's always been an outsider, he was the only person who ever valued her for herself, no strings attached. Neo is excellent at whatever she does, whether it's fighting or... destroying people she blames. Tragically, beating Ruby means she feels Torchwick's loss even more, because Ruby isn't around to distract her from how awful she feels. Two lives (more, actually) are now ruined because Neo couldn't work through her own grief. [Note: They condensed this season during production from 12 to 10 episodes, so some of the Neo explanatory material might have been lost to explain her responses better.] So much of RWBY is about how characters deal with loss. Every character has been deeply affected by loss. Some become heroes by working through it; some become villains and do terrible things, foisting their loss on others. And we have even seen a few "villains" (e.g., Ilia, Hazel) eventually rise to the occasion and find redemption. I resonate with Bethany's comments about feeling and understanding exactly how Ruby feels and why she acts as she does. They did a great job making us feel every blow with her. Little is the epitome of courage and devotion, never abandoning their friends. It's a shocking gut-punch when that boot comes down, hoping it won't happen. Meanwhile, the Cat has finally exposed its ulterior motives. What a twist! But this is interesting: "...I need to know everything, but more than anything... I need to know why my makers left me here, only to leave and make all of --" Hmm. And now Neo-Cat? A lot of awful things happened in this episode, but there's more changes to come in the last two episodes. Bear with it!
Jennywocky
2024-12-07 18:26:43 +0000 UTCIf you want to get a clearer picture of Neo's mindset, I'd relisten to "One Thing". "I was nowhere, I had no one, I felt nothing" I think Neo's no-fuck's attitude and apparent confidence, is literally just that she doesn't care about almost anything. It's made clearer in her book, and this episode hints to the book. Without spoilers, if you pay attention to the paintings it basically tells you what happened. Neo was always a broken person, and Torchwich was the only thing or person she remotely cared about. After he was gone, she had him in the sense of wanting vengeance for him. Once she felt she got that, she was just done. While there is an argument to be made that all of this should be apparent just from watching the show, it is there in the book and music.
Alex Smith
2024-12-07 18:10:14 +0000 UTCthe footsteps is a good point actually, there's some analysis to be made there that that's Cinder's motif and Neo's become more like someone she hates etc.
Lucifer_Crowe
2024-12-07 18:02:38 +0000 UTCProbably just to make up numbers
Hi-Viz
2024-12-07 18:02:24 +0000 UTCWhat's scary was that the writers were planning on making this more brutal than it ended up being. Some others mentioned before about a budget cut for this volume and because of that they had to cut a lot from this episode. I heard even Lionheart and Clover were going to have a few lines here. Which I would have like because while I kinda get Lionheart's appearance, WTF was Clover doing here?! He barley even spoke to Ruby. His connection was more with Qrow. Why is he here? (Sorry for the extra notification. I hit enter to go down a row and instead it posed the comment before I was ready.) Something else I should mention is the name you likely saw at the beginning of the episode Billy Kametz. When Torchwick's original voice actor Gray Haddock left the show Billy had been selected to replace him and was able to get some lines done. Unfortunately in February 2022, he was diagnose with stage four colon cancer and passed away that following June. Christopher Wehkamp (aka Clover's VA) finished up Billy's work and later voiced Torchwick in the dub of Ice Queendom.
Sasha
2024-12-07 17:56:45 +0000 UTCI love that they let Neo "win" just to have her go "Oh, didn't think I'd get this far... what now." And I think they did a great job making her overall likable until now given she'd never said a word. (Using the fake people to speak for her was definitely interesting.) I think overall the V8 theme of "without you I am nothing." is one of the strongest Nora didn't want to be part of a double act for all her life Neo never had that issue, at least didn't get the chance to question it before Roman was gone Harriet at least had her job to focus on, with "beating up children" as a side hustle. Hazel gave up his quest for vengeance and probably wouldn't have had much to do beyond be muscle either Emerald realised that maybe being nothing without Cinder was better than the something she was under Salem Winter is probably a stretch but I figure she stayed loyal to Ironwood so long because she felt she owed him something.
Lucifer_Crowe
2024-12-07 17:42:49 +0000 UTCLoved the reaction! Just a little insight to your Neo thoughts though! To be fair, Neo has been making Ruby her sole purpose since her return in volume 6. Since she can't speak, she came in with Torchwick's hat to make that known. I think the whole point is that revenge really did wipe away all the rest of her character from volumes 2 and 3. She had purpose back then, but when you lose the only person who has meaning to you. You lose parts of yourself. Especially when you're on a mission for revenge. There have been multiple other occurrences throughout the volumes after 6 that show she is ONLY focused on Ruby. You also have to realize that the vengeance she'd been waiting for had JUST happened. It couldn't have been more than a few minutes between Ruby drinking the tea and the cat jumping into Neo. It's not like she completely went catatonic for a lengthy period of time after. The cat just "pounced" on that one moment as an opportunity.
Ghost Tendency
2024-12-07 17:41:57 +0000 UTCCan I just shout out Weiss? Her nickname is Ice Queen but she absolutely is the most observant and emotionally intelligent character in the group. She always seems to be the first one to figure out what’s going on with someone and know the right thing to say. Even in Volume 2 when she was the first one to see something was wrong with Blake when she was obsessing about the White Fang. She instantly knew why Ruby left and why she didn’t feel like she could talk to them.
SavvySpark
2024-12-07 17:40:04 +0000 UTCWhat’s even more crazy to me is that, of the six people that Neo conjured to taunt Ruby, it’s arguable that some of them weren’t even her fault. Lionhart made his bed. He was entirely responsible for his own choices. Ozpin was fighting a battle that Ruby didn’t even know about, so there’s no way his first death could’ve been put on her. And I think with Ironwood and Clover, it could be argued that she was also not responsible for that. But the point is that, for Ruby, who has taken so much into her own shoulders, reenforced by behavior as described by Weiss, any death is directly caused by some kind of failure on her part, and now she believes that anyone near her will die at some point. She feels responsible for EVERYONE’S safety. What a terrible thing to experience mentally as a 17 year old.
supasaiyajin jay
2024-12-07 17:32:04 +0000 UTCI always called this episode, "The Passion of the Rose"
CMDRZero
2024-12-07 17:26:06 +0000 UTC"Are you ready to admit the truth, that the world would just be better off without you" Those words haunt me to this day.
Joaquin Benally
2024-12-07 17:16:43 +0000 UTCThis is the reaction I have been waiting for, this was a heavy episode.
Sol-Edge
2024-12-07 17:07:09 +0000 UTC
