RWBY Volume 8 Episode 10 Reaction
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Singlehandedly one of the greatest episodes in the show in my eyes. I wish we managed to see your thoughts on Cinder's scene more, it was SUCH a perfect scene. It doesn't just show how aware the writers are of Cinder's place in the story, but gives it genuine conclusion the more and more you piece each event following her failures, her flaws and her dilemmas. Playing herself strong, acting dismissive of others of others for the sake of her interests, rejecting the possibility of being proven another failure. But Watts' put the logic of deserving and worthy so PERFECTLY that you can see in what WAY it affected. She wasn't just sad, she was speechless. For once she did not fight back because she knew there was no point to it. He was right, and letting him drop would mean nothing because it wouldn't sustain her already fragile ego. Seeing the conclusion of that scene is so fascinating to think about that I did have to grab attention to it, even if I could talk hours on end on everything else.
Ender
2024-09-09 18:59:42 +0000 UTCI think he no longer has good intentions for the civilians. I think everything in this arc was 100% built on fear. In Volume 7 when he confided in Oscar he revealed that he has deep seeded trauma from what happened at Beacon so I think now knowing she is immortal makes him extra drastic
DeAnthony Potts
2024-09-09 06:59:20 +0000 UTCIronwood is the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz except here he proves that he in fact never had a heart (much in the same way that Leo [The Lion] never had courage).
Harley Johnston
2024-09-09 03:19:39 +0000 UTCMy issue with this episode is it makes Ironwood into an idiot. As you said blowing up Mantle isn't going to get our heroes to work with you. If I was writing this problem I'd have held the cargo ships hostage, still an evil act, but allows the ultimatum to be work with me and I let the ships go. That while still evil is smart. Instead we get a cartoon villain. Again from a storytelling perspective I don't have an issue with Ironwoods fall I'm just tired of dumb one dimensional bad guys.
Curtis Calvin
2024-09-08 22:40:03 +0000 UTCThat's the thing - we still don't really know how the meld shakes down when it is finally complete. Now, if it ends up that Oz completes his mission and his soul is separated from Oscar's to return to the afterlife, then yes, it would make more sense, but I see it as far more likely (and less damaging to Oscar) if they complete the meld, and then when Oscar finally dies, that's it. It's the end of the reincarnation chain.
Megan Saunders
2024-09-08 17:46:47 +0000 UTCMarrow is a good boy π And we don't like Watts, but it was fun watching him roast Cinder π
Bethany and Ken
2024-09-08 16:38:20 +0000 UTCWelcome to Team Ironwood is a Villain π€
Bethany and Ken
2024-09-08 16:36:48 +0000 UTC"The animation has gotten really emotionally nuanced by this point in the series" Totally agree! It's great. And yeah a What If version of this would be cool to see with RWBY and Ironwood working together. People can argue who's to blame for that relationship devolving, but would like to think that things could've been handled better with more input from a trusted inner circle....although, I don't think Ironwood would listen to Winter at this point and she has been his most loyal supporter.
Bethany and Ken
2024-09-08 16:34:28 +0000 UTCRight?!
Bethany and Ken
2024-09-08 16:31:06 +0000 UTCπ No notes π
Bethany and Ken
2024-09-08 16:30:28 +0000 UTCHadn't even thought that this was Salem's plan to turn Ironwood π― damn she is good
Bethany and Ken
2024-09-08 16:29:48 +0000 UTCNice Dead Rising 2 reference π
Bethany and Ken
2024-09-08 16:29:12 +0000 UTCagreed. But glad we are all on the same page about his demise π
Bethany and Ken
2024-09-08 16:28:29 +0000 UTCGood call π― love those little details
Bethany and Ken
2024-09-08 16:28:03 +0000 UTCGlad you got that. We messed up which one it was in relation to the body but the gist of what we were saying still applies π€
Bethany and Ken
2024-09-08 16:27:09 +0000 UTCYeah it sucks. But he's gone too far for justification, and he's too far gone to come back. There is no hope left for Ironwood. He is no longer the man he was. We can only take him as the man he has become, and that man has to be stopped, at all costs π
Bethany and Ken
2024-09-08 16:26:07 +0000 UTCNeed to start doing a Cinder getting owned count on this show π
Bethany and Ken
2024-09-08 16:22:31 +0000 UTCπ right?!
Bethany and Ken
2024-09-08 16:21:49 +0000 UTCThatβs more generous than what Iβd sayβ¦
SavvySpark
2024-09-08 15:12:50 +0000 UTCI love the theory that Ozpin's cane stores kinetic energy every time it taps the ground. It just makes sense for an immortal to have a weapon that slowly builds energy over lifetimes.
J
2024-09-08 07:16:18 +0000 UTCNeo is "okay"... blasphemy!
Alex Smith
2024-09-08 05:13:54 +0000 UTCMy favorite part is definitely the reunion between Blake and Yang, it was so well done. I love the body language between them. When Yang first sees Blake, Blake is hunched over like she's scared and anxious. Probably because of the trauma she received from Adam in the past. They care about each other so much, and they both said everything they needed to without actually speaking! Second favorite part was definitely Watts roasting Cinder, he was straight up spitt facts!! Cinder thinks that just because she has suffered, that she is entitled to everything. I love Watts called her out when he said that you can't just be deserving, you have to be worthy, and Cinder has done nothing to be worthy.
Bryan Forquer
2024-09-08 00:09:20 +0000 UTCHis samblace isn't helping. He is blocking his emotions and only leaves cold calculation and "Rational" decision for him. Add to it his paranoia and we have monster he become.
Moonas
2024-09-07 23:06:01 +0000 UTCIronwood as a character honestly breaks my heart, because in volumes 2, 3, & 7 he's absolutely an authoritarian already (he occupied another kingdom ffs), and now in volume 8 he loses the plot entirely to his paranoia and NEED FOR POWER JUST TO SURVIVE THAT PARANOIA, and becomes an absolute goddamn monster, and yet... AND YET... Just like with Headmaster Lionheart, in volumes 2, 3, & 7 you do see glimpses of the good man he ONCE WAS. You see glimpses, moments, PROOF, that just like Lionheart he was once a good man who gave into his worst instincts just because he was scared. That once upon a time he was a man worth trusting enough to bring into the Inner Circle. That once upon a time, the younger man he once was had a disciplined yet likeable core. But then he lost it. And when people who build their entire identities and moral codes around their discipline enter situations where their discipline isn't enough, they can become absolute terrors. In a lot of ways, a version of Watts' monologue can be applied to Ironwood as well, with everything he tried entirely on his own decisions absolutely failing, all because he believed his suffering justified it. James Ironwood is a tragedy of a monster, and it always breaks my heart when the moment comes where the viewer HAS to go "Yeah, he has to die, he's done." Ugh, volume 8, man...the Atlas arc in GENERAL, asking complicated questions about complicated characters. It's often hard to watch, and it leaves you feeling oil in your gut, but man do I love it.
PrimalInfinity
2024-09-07 21:52:51 +0000 UTCThe funny irony rn is that even if Ironwood did help Mantle, Penny still wouldn't be able to comply, or she'd likely terminate as soon as she opened the Vault thanks to Watts' virus/worm script. Which is Ironwood's own doing.
Lucifer_Crowe
2024-09-07 21:35:58 +0000 UTCThis episode is one of my favorites out of the whole series for many reasons, one of them definitely being Watts' rant at Cinder lol. Also, I totally understood what you guys were trying to say about the chakras and you were close. The chakra you were mentioning about divisiveness is the forehead chakra that "deals with insight and is blocked by illusion". The crown of the head chakra "deals with cosmic power and is blocked by earthly attachments". I'd say Ironwood definitely has some issues with his chakras lol.
Lady RedShee
2024-09-07 21:31:18 +0000 UTCOne of the best episodes. Neo's text messages. Watts' monologue. The explosion and the silence. I Have One Bombβ’. It's always amused me that Ironwood is giving Penny specifically the Ultimatum and she's literally snoozing. Another funny is that the 14/15 year old boys combined gave Ironwood the idea to bomb Mantle. Oscar gave him the potebtial to the bomb for something else, and Whitley drew attention to Mantle. Not their faults but just super amusing. And I just ADORE how terrified of Qrow Ironwood is.
Lucifer_Crowe
2024-09-07 21:24:03 +0000 UTC"I have always promised to defend this kingdom - its technology, its future - from those who would see it destroyed." It might be semantics since you could argue that "kingdom" implies that the people are included in that word, but I feel like it was a purposeful choice by the writers that he didn't list "its people" as one of his specific priorities in his ultimatum speech.
TXOT
2024-09-07 21:07:33 +0000 UTCB: Yeh, I want him dead K: yep! π€£π€£π€£ SAME!!! He became absolutely terrible. Sometimes I think they did too good a job with making him a villain
Marcel Hoyt
2024-09-07 20:42:34 +0000 UTCI mean Ren nailed them dead to rights on where their hearts were; all of them hated the situation they were in and they were fighting internally against the loyalty to the man who made them who they are vs the people they see themselves as. They care about people, they want to be protectors and saviors, but when the man who led you to where you are falls off, you lose sight of what made you who you are. As much as I hate Harriet, even she is torn between loyalty and doing what's right. Ironwood has lost any vision of anything; he is completely consumed by fear, which is funny, considering he said he would not fall like Lionheart. Not only did he fall like Lionheart, who by the way, felt incredibly shitty for doing what he did, Ironwood makes Lionheart look like a saint.
DevilJynx
2024-09-07 19:49:32 +0000 UTCHe even made Cinder cry too π
Joaquin Benally
2024-09-07 19:45:43 +0000 UTCI thought it was great! Well done haha
Frost Prince
2024-09-07 19:19:33 +0000 UTCI'm assuming by the end of the show Oscar will keep his mind and Ozpin will be gone
Lyle Alsop
2024-09-07 18:36:30 +0000 UTCAlso can we talk about Watts roasting cinder? Man that was a good monologue...
Hayden Morris
2024-09-07 18:24:17 +0000 UTCIronwood's "do what I say or Die" mentality reminded me of a scene from Dead Rising 2 where a group of hillbilly snipers basically said: "Only way to save our country and set it straight is to kill everyone, if you're not with us, then you're against us", those guys were depicted as psychopaths and Ironwood's logic is not far off I'd say. To sum up: Ironwood has lost his bloody mind.
Knoppis
2024-09-07 18:08:26 +0000 UTCI believe that his Semblance was a double-edged sword and Salem used that against him, turning him from a person who did truly want to save people to someone who is a twisted version of who he is and is willing to wipe out a whole city of people and became a petty General, that his decisions are the right way and collateral damage is acceptable no matter if it means killing thousands. Yaw both pretty much nailed who Ironwood has become.
Sol-Edge
2024-09-07 17:45:06 +0000 UTCHe also is just kind of the character who whereβs his heart on his sleeve and voices his opinion with really worrying about the consequences as opposed to Winter who very much keeps a mask on. Itβs one of the reasons this Volume made me ship Marrow and Winter. Their interactions are adorable and they just seem to compliment each other really well. Plus itβd be kind of poetic for the original Schnee heiress to end up with a Faunus.
SavvySpark
2024-09-07 17:41:07 +0000 UTCAlso Salem can fly.
Serpent King
2024-09-07 17:40:28 +0000 UTCI mean at this point it's basically "fly away" But that only helps you escape the ground-bound grimm
Erimgard13
2024-09-07 17:34:11 +0000 UTCLet's take a moment and remember that the plan was to use the staff to raise Atlas into the atmosphere, and use the hard light shields to sustain life in the otherwise inhospitable environment. Those shields are GONE so what is the plan? If Ironwood continues on this plan everyone is dead. In other words, unless Ironwood has some other purpose in mind for the staff to get atlas out of danger, there is no need to involve Penny at all.
Serpent King
2024-09-07 17:27:48 +0000 UTCJames Ironwood? More like.... um... Lame Irondud. Nailed it.
Pyrodragon3993
2024-09-07 17:17:04 +0000 UTCMarrow is such a great contrast point to the other Ace Ops and Ironwood. He voices what most viewers are thinking.
Jennywocky
2024-09-07 17:08:38 +0000 UTCItβs shows how off the deep end Ironwood is that he thinks by destroying Mantle the others would just automatically decide to work with him instead of it making them despise him even more.
SavvySpark
2024-09-07 17:08:09 +0000 UTCThis is one of my favorite episodes in the entire series. Just about everything is memorable and perfectly done. Probably one of the haunting explosions I've seen in a film, with the visuals and music. And I love how Neo just skips away with the relic after -- such a reflection of her personality. CRWBY has been creating resonance in repeating some visuals throughout the series. For the shot of Emerald's hands as she looks down and says, "Hazel," there's a shot a few episodes back of Hazel looking down at his own hands in the exact same positions, describing how he killed Salem over and over again until he gave up in futility... until he decided to give his life for a final time. (Ironwood lives long enough to become a villain; in Hazel's case, a villain lives long enough to become a hero.) I love how the Watts and Cinder scene is tinted amber from all of the debris in the air, and how the disintegrating whale sits in the background. This is also one of my favorite scenes in the series -- Watts knows he's pretty much dead and just tells Cinder exactly what he thinks of her ... and BREAKS her. While afterwards we see him collapse in surprise at having survived, the big thing is that there's still something deep within Cinder that is human and vulnerable. Despite how confident she acts, she still feels inadequate, incapable, and ...not quite worthy enough. Her entire life feels like a fight against her history of abuse and being devalued. That LOOK on Winter's face, as she hears Ironwood's plans, is burned into my mind forever -- the horror of where things have gone and what she's been supporting. The animation has gotten really emotionally nuanced by this point in the series. The CCTV transmission feels ripped right out of Zod's communication to earth from Snyder's "Man of Steel" film. [Bohemian Rhapsody, lol! Awesome!] With Ironwood, it's like EVERYTHING has become a chess board game for him -- everything is about strategy/leverage to enact his plan (which is basically to get the Winter Maiden to deliver the relic, so he can lift Atlas out of Salem's reach forever), and the cost (the people of Mantle) is simply the price of victory. He doesn't see people anymore; he just sees a game he has to win or the world ends. His decline has been a series of small slips downward that suddenly becomes horrific when you see how FAR down he has sunk. Bethany brings up a great point about how Ironwood has become the worst of humanity. The whole deal with the relics is that when brought together, the gods will come back to judge humanity and either save or destroy them forever. But in trying to save humanity, Ironwood has ensured humanity will be deemed wanting. He fails to see that even if Salem "wins" and the gods return to judge humanity, he can still win by being setting an example of humanity's goodness. Instead, he's just added another weight to humanity's ankles if Salem gets all the relics. Ken is right in that with Salem being gone, Ironwood could have brought so many Mantle folks to Atlas -- but he seems to be tunneling and the thought didn't even cross his mind. It would have been interesting to where things could have gone if he had worked with RWBY rather than trying to beat them into submission.
Jennywocky
2024-09-07 17:07:54 +0000 UTCYeah - so Oscar basically set off a tactical nuke in Salem's face last episode. And we learned the mystery of Long Memory - every time Oz used it - as a weapon, as a walking stick, whatever - each time it tapped the ground or impacted something, it stored up a tiny bit of that energy as kinetic energy. Add that up over hundreds / thousands of years... that's a lot of stored up energy. This is really the point where even I have to say I really started to see Ironwood as a villain and not just an antagonist. I think the problem is that he never really saw Mantle as anything really important, and he believes that Atlas has a better chance of surviving because they have the best technology and the best chance of escaping. He does have trauma from what happened at Beacon and he's really realizing how much Oz has lied to him over the years. Ironwood is a masterclass of a character arc - they foreshadowed this from his first introduction in Volume 2. Ironwood could literally have become a true hero, but savior complex is a good explanation, when combined with his Semblance. Glynda said it in Volume 2: "You're a good person. You've always done what you think is best for the people. It's admirable. But it's high time you stop talking about trust and start showing it." He could never really let himself trust that anyone else could have more knowledge or better strategies than he did, since he was a general. As soon as Beacon fell, he went back to Atlas and started making his own plans, bringing Winter and the Ace Ops in on the full story, etc, even though he KNEW Oz reincarnates and that eventually Oz would resurface somewhere. Then when it turned out to be a kid (Oscar) instead of an adult, I think Ironwood lost even more because he was thinking that Oscar couldn't possibly know what he was doing, and he forgot how many millennia Oz has been around and that Oscar would have access to all of that experience. Oz's silence for so long didn't help things, but Ironwood was already on a slippery slope at that point. It was a bunch of factors - some in his control and some out of his control - that brought him to this point. When you also factor in Salem and Cinder's manipulations and the way they used Atlas against Beacon, he was worried that he would be facing a 1 vs 3 war if it became Atlas versus Vale, Mistal, and Vacuo, with Salem still lurking in the background. Harriet was never one of my favorite characters in this show. She's whiny and self-righteous and quick to anger. This was not a good showing for her. I'm not big for shipping characters, but if I had to ship anyone, it would be Oscar and Ruby, even if the idea of Oz being there is a little weird.
Megan Saunders
2024-09-07 16:43:16 +0000 UTCAlso, I've always thought thar James has come off as kind of a Nationalist since season 2.
CMDRZero
2024-09-07 16:27:09 +0000 UTCAnd...... THAT was the last shread of any sympathy anyone had for Ironwood. Also, Watts dressing down Cinder was something she needed to hear for a long time. "It's not enough to be strong, you have to be smart."
CMDRZero
2024-09-07 16:21:18 +0000 UTCIronwood is just being petty at this point. Even if he lifts Atlas up, Salem will just reform on it. Winter is clearly starting to see him for the madman that he is. Ironwood is effectively acting against his own interests, with this threat he makes, he's done for me. Man needs to go. He is not fit to hold a seat of power. Edit: The piano song playing as Monstra is killed by Ozpin/Oscar reminds me of the end of Mass Effect where it plays a piano tune(that also plays at the beginning of the third game) Edie 2: I also love how Marrow is concerned for Jaune and the others. He genuinely wanted them to survive. Watts also cooked Cinder... Like damn that was a meticulous breakdown of her consistent failures. XD
DevilJynx
2024-09-07 16:08:13 +0000 UTC
