RWBY Volume 4 Retrospective

INTRODUCTION:

Volume 1 was Innocence, Volume 2 was Maturity, Volume 3 was Fall, and Volume 5 was Choice. Volume 4’s core theme, in this strain of logic, is Grief. To deal with the pain of loss and trauma, whether that be in accepting reality and moving onward, or wallowing in the negativity and allowing it to fester til you resolve to repeat your mistakes. And for this volume in particular, it can be applied not only to the characters, but to CRWBY as well given everything they had to deal with at the time.

CINDER FALL:

During the first three volumes, Cinder didn’t have much character depth. She was essentially just your archetypal sexy villainess who desired power at any cost, but we weren’t keyed into her motivations or backstory. To this day, we still aren’t, but Volume 4 handled Cinder very well in showing her in a weakened state where that confident facade she’s kept up until that point completely fell apart.

It’s likely Cinder became part Grimm after using the Scarab to steal Amber’s Fall Maiden powers, and right after she gained this powerful magic—the magic she believed would make her powerful and feared—she was left devastated in the wake of Ruby’s powers. After brutally murdering Pyrrha, Cinder lost her left arm, her left eye, and her ability to speak beyond rasps and grunts, and was easily fatigued on top of all this.

After all the horrible things Cinder had done—conspiring to destroy Vale and hurting many innocent people, orchestrating the deaths of Penny and Amber, and killing Pyrrha—karma had caught at last caught up to her, and Cinder would presumably be forced to consider whether everything she’d done was worth it.

As Salem was cruel to Cinder during her recovery, Tyrian and especially Watts continued to disrespect her (Satisfyingly so–”You hear that? Silence. I ought to thank the girl that bested you.” (V4 C1) Black people react), and she was even seemingly left disturbed by the brutality of her fellow cabal members, Cinder would potentially reconsider her actions, and potentially see the light to redeem herself. But ultimately, that’s not the point of her story. Life isn’t a fairytale.

People have criticized Cinder’s character for repeating her mistakes, but I’d argue that’s entirely the point. Cinder is the perfect example of someone who, despite the setbacks they endure from the repercussions of their misdeeds, continues to act selfishly and cruelly, blaming others for their own errors. In Cinder’s case, this is Ruby, the girl whose wish to protect the friends Cinder stole from her left Cinder permanently scarred.

The real problem with Cinder’s character surfaces in Volume 5, as without learning of her full motivations and backstory, there’s no real reason given for Cinder to have pursued power so adamantly in the first place, leading her into this dark place. Volume 6 seems to try to fix this at first, only to continue this pattern of Cinder keeping up her boring facade rather than show her truly monstrous nature, born of a weak little girl clinging to her insecurity.

Still, Volume 4 did a great job in Cinder’s character, and though I wish we got more out of her, I still enjoy her story. One not of growth, but of regression.

WEISS SCHNEE:

Weiss’ entire character arc for the first three volumes was in finding herself at Beacon, outside the influence and control of her family. She went from a stuck-up, racist snob to basically Team Mom. But at the end of Volume 3, with the entire world on edge and suspicious of Atlas, Weiss was snatched up by her father and returned to her prison, presumably never being able to see her friends, her real family, ever again.

However, it’s clear her time at Beacon has changed her. Though at first Weiss instinctively tries to appease her father, when Henry tries to hit on her because of her family name, and when it becomes clear the Atlesian aristocracy is apathetic towards the people of Vale, Weiss is not having any of it.

Even when Jacques snaps and Whitley steals her title as heiress to the Schnee Dust Company, Weiss doesn’t grieve for long. She grabs Myrtenaster and gets right to training, and when she summons the Arma Gigas, a monster she was made to fight during her training to get to Beacon away from her father, it’s clear she’s become an entirely new people, much stronger and more courageous than ever before.

While there’s no confrontation with Jacques and Whitley as Weiss escapes, there doesn’t need to be one. Weiss is above their cruelty, callousness, and manipulation at this point. With the help of Klein, a servant who’s been more of a father to Weiss than Jacques could ever hope to be, Weiss escapes her prison and makes her way to Winter. She isn’t sure what awaits her, but she knows this isn’t her home, and that this is the best thing for her.

Weiss does grieve. She lets herself cry when she realizes her her family members are more wolves than actual family, but this doesn’t paralyze her. She knows that this awful place is filled with nothing but toxicity, and so she resolves to leave and find her own path elsewhere.

BLAKE BELLADONNA:

Blake’s gotten a bad rep for running away at the end of Volume 3, but this was integral to her character arc. She’d had a problem with running away up until this point. In her youth, she ran away from her parents after they abandoned the White Fang, calling them cowards. When Adam showed his true colors as a monster and abuser, she ran. And at the end of Volume 3, blaming herself for the Fall of Beacon, and afraid of getting her friends hurt further, specifically because of Adam’s promise—Adam’s promise (V3 C11)—she isolated herself.

She likely chose to return home instinctively, as whenever someone experiences something horrific as she did, wouldn’t your first instinct be, in the heat of the moment, to return to the people you trust most. Especially after what she said to them five years prior, and given she hadn’t spoken to them at all in that time, perhaps she felt on some level that it was time to make amends now that she’d seen the ramifications of her choices catching up to her.

“I am done seeing my friends hurt because of me.” “I hope they hate me for leaving.” “You don’t mean that.” “Yes I do!” (V4 C11) Blake blamed herself for putting the people she cared about into danger, and though it’s clear Sun didn’t understand nor respect Blake’s need for privacy or boundaries, and that he immensely misunderstood her reasons for running, it’s also clear that she needed Sun to help her confront her demons and realize she’s doing more harm than good, both to herself and her loved ones. “You think you’re being selfless, but you’re not.” (V4 C11)

Blake’s story in Volume 4 is going back to her roots, to the place of her original mistake in going with Adam, and making amends and forgiving herself. In directly facing her parents and venting to them about her regrets, and to understand that she isn’t beyond redemption. Basically you could call this… “DaMAge cONTrOL.” You know, in the sense of acknowledging your mistakes from a pattern of insecurity, fear, and self-loathing and actually addressing that to grow as a person?

And at the end of the volume, once Blake realizes all of this, she forms a new resolve to save Haven Academy, prevent another Fall of Beacon, take back the White Fang, and return it to its peaceful roots. In essence, she is saving the White Fang from itself as her loved ones saved her from herself. “We’re not going to destroy the White Fang. We’re going to take it back.” (V4 C11)

YANG XIAO LONG:

Of all the members of Team RWBY, Yang was most certainly left in the darkest place. After being accused of hurting Mercury in front of all of Remnant, she not only lost her arm, she lost it defending her partner, someone she deeply cared for and trusted, only to have her run away with no rhyme or reason. Granted, we, the audience, know Blake’s reasons for running away, but Yang didn’t. And so, Yang was left broken and miserable, wanting nothing more than to lay in bed and give up.

And this is understandable. Yang needed time to process what she’d been through and sit with this new reality. After some time had passed, we see her in Volume 4 having mostly adjusted to life without her dominant arm, albeit still shaky at the mention of Adam on the news, and having phantom sensations leading to panic episodes at the slightest sound.

Now unfortunately, Yang’s abandonment issues and PTSD take a backseat to her getting her “groove back,” by which I mean her learning to fight as she spars with Tai with her new robotic arm. Ironically, these appear more in Volume 5, albeit still done imperfectly, but for what Volume 4 does, it’s a solid enough start to the beginning of Yang’s journey. She doesn’t end the volume completely cured of her trauma, because that’s not how the real world works. She still have demons to face, but she’s now back on her feet and ready to jump back in to help her sister.

And it is her sister who inspires her to take that first step forward. In perhaps one of the best scenes of the series, in one of the series’ best episodes, Yang feels right at home talking with her professors, who thank the gods are actually humanized when they stop to visit and catch up with Tai (Also sidenote, best realistic portrayal of dark familial humor). Regretting letting Ruby just head to Mistral on her own, Yang remembers her desire to protect her sister, having practically raised her on her own when both their mothers were gone, and works to get back into shape to help the most important person in her life.

This story also serves as a wake up call for Yang in her fighting style. As Tai states, she’d almost always relied on her Semblance to get the job done in a fight, only to have this result in her losing her arm to Adam when she didn’t have enough Aura to fully block his Moonslice. From here on, Yang would focus more on strategy than brute force, and only let out her Semblance when she absolutely needed to and she had the opportunity. Gotcha. (V6 C12)

RUBY & JAUNE:

Ruby and Jaune, both leaders of their own teams, have suffered great losses in the wake of the Fall of Beacon. For Ruby, it was the dissolution of her team, being unable to reach her sister emotionally, and the deaths of both Penny and Pyrrha, both of which she witnessed and was unable to stop.

Jaune, meanwhile, was left hopelessly confused after watching Pyrrha tear apart Penny, presumably via the manipulation of an unknown enemy, and was even more confused when no one explained to him any of what he’d witnessed down the vault when Cinder killed Amber. Add on top of that Pyrrha finally mustering the courage to kiss him only to push him away, preventing him from doing anything to help or save her, and you get a recipe for his self-loathing born of the feeling he’s incapable of doing anything for the people he cares about.

Now sadly, this theme isn’t very deeply explored for either of them, especially Ruby. We wouldn’t get to have Jaune truly mourn Pyrrha and be confronted about his behaviors by Ren and Nora til Volume 6, while Ruby’s attempt to push down her feelings are glossed over. Instead of providing fuel for any kind of character arc or plot, it’s superficially mentioned while Ren and Nora take center stage. We’ll talk about them later, because their arc was genuinely fantastic, but it’s just a shame it came at the cost of Jaune and especially Ruby.

REN & NORA:

Now here’s where things get really good. Up until this point, Ren and Nora didn’t have much character depth, and all the information we had about them was how deeply they cared about each other, that according to Nora via a very quick joke in Volume 3’s premiere that they apparently had no families to go home to, and that Ren was incredibly vocal in going to a nearby village to protect it from the Grimm.

But here, Ren and Nora come face to face with the Nuckelavee: an old, highly intelligent Grimm that led an assault on Ren’s hometown of Kuroyuri, laying waste to it and killing both his parents when he was just a child. It was through this event Ren and Nora first met, and Ren unlocked his Semblance.

Ren specifically gets to shine when his hatred of the Nuckelavee nearly gets him killed, and it’s Nora who pulls him back and reminds him of what matters, and what he’s fighting for. With the help of his friends, Ren is finally able to slay the monster that’s haunted him for most of his life and avenge not only his parents, and not only the Nuckelavee’s other victims, but himself.

The one drawback, besides the lack of focus Jaune and especially Ruby have in this storyline, is that we still don’t know much about Nora, as the most we know about her is that she was an orphan who was present in Kuroyuri just before the Nuckelavee’s assault.

Given both Nora and the Nuckelavee are rooted in Norse mythology, I thought it’d be cool if the Nuckelavee wrecked Nora’s village and then followed her to Kuroyuri, so we could potentially see Nora blaming herself for what happened, only for Ren to reassure her that none of this was her fault. That would’ve been great. Also even more parallels between Renora and Bumbleby. I could always go for more of those. Oh, I love my kids being happy.

LET’S JUST LIVE (CRWBY):

In the wake of Monty’s death, there was a very real possibility that RWBY could’ve ended. But despite this, CRWBY kept moving forward. Though they stumbled, and made many, many mistakes, they did try to bring the rest of their friend’s creation to life, and that wouldn’t be possible without Miles and Kerry, who were more than just assistant writers. They were close friends with Monty, who helped Monty flesh out his ideas and sort through which ones would stick and which ones would need to be slightly altered or cut for the story’s benefit.

But during Volume 3’s production process, several attempts to streamline the pipeline and essentially make the show… ya know, more professional, like an actual studio production, bothered one animator in particular: Shane Newville. Shane learned practically all of his animation skills from Monty, but following Monty’s death, Shane butted heads with Rooster Teeth many, many times.

Whether it was due to holding a fair audition for Winter Schnee’s voice actress, or creating a specific process for animators to share files on the network, or even writing changes which honestly make sense or are so trivial they’re hardly worth mentioning, Shane continued to have problems with CRWBY. He was let go of in January 2016, and several months later, released a 36 page open letter as a Google Document citing his experiences and issues with the company, as well as his own personal struggles, including his battle with mental illness, and his divorce.

Now I’m going to be cover this entire letter and controversy in-depth in my upcoming sequel video to “We Need to Talk About RWBY,” which will probably be released within the next couple months (It’s probably going to be an hour and a half, maybe two hours, lord give me strength), but I do want to make it clear my own thoughts on the letter.

Shane had immense respect for Monty, that much is clear. He held Monty’s talent and unique workflow in incredibly high regard, and Monty’s death hit him hard. I feel for Shane, I really do, because life had not been kind to him. He clung to his love for animation to keep himself grounded, and Monty served as his mentor. A person to inspire him to keep moving forward.

However, Shane also admits his own struggles with his mental health, and his marriage woes with his wife Katie, the voice of Emerald Sustrai. Just reading through the letter, I got the feeling that this was a guy who was badly hurt. Who was suffering from immense pain. And in that pain, he painted a narrative in which he was the good guy. The hero in the shining armor, defending Monty’s legacy from the dumb, stinking dragon of corporate mandates and callous writing decisions by… certain unnamed individuals.

Yes, it is quite interesting that most individuals go unnamed as Shane cites his many, many issues. Kerry isn’t mentioned at all, and the only mention Miles ever gets is in Shane reminiscing of having Penny split apart an airship in Volume 1 with her lasers, which was somehow a “tease of Miles.” Supposedly this is because Miles advised against such a show of power which could potentially lead people to guess Penny was a robot way ahead of time, which… yeah, that seems fair in hindsight.

But this tease seems to almost serve as a microcosm of Shane’s issues with CRWBY during the development of Volume 3. CRWBY requests something or makes a change to the pipeline to make the process more professional and much easier on their part, or Miles and Kerry make an alteration to the story because they feel it works better than what was originally planned (Or in some cases, is just pointless and impossible given the workload CRWBY was already dealing with), and Shane’s response is: “You monsters! None of you care about what Monty wanted! How Monty did things! None of you care about him the way I did!”

And that sentiment is probably my biggest issue with the letter as a whole: this idea that CRWBY are cold, uncaring deviants forsaking the memory of their friend. When Shane discusses Monty’s last days in the hospital, he describes himself at Monty’s bedside, while people from “The office” (INSERT AN OFFICE JOKE HERE) kept their distance and discussed how RWBY could continue if Monty were to pass away. He doesn’t name these “people from the office,” but… we know he means probably is including Gray, but he’s definitely including Miles and Kerry, at the very least.

But it’s very clear from not only production diaries and interviews released before Monty’s passing, but from their social media at the time, this idea is completely absurd. To put on this charade that only Shane knew the truth of Monty’s plans, and that he was the one who truly cared for Monty, when really Monty was among many friends during his time at RT. Friends who helped him shape his ideas, and friends who were undoubtedly hurt when he passed.

People point to Barb asking someone at a convention panel not to bring up Monty as this “Tremendous betrayal” and “middle finger to Monty” to serve their own narratives, but it’s important to remember people deal with grief differently. Some people cry, others put on a brave face; some are willing to talk about who they feel, others would prefer not to.

And also keep in mind that Barb is the head of social media at RT, and so while Miles and Kerry take most of the fire from toxic shitheads, it’s Barb who has to look at that garbage on a daily basis. It’s part of her job. It’s very likely that she’s just developed a defense mechanism where if someone brings up Monty, she understandably instinctively reacts to interpret this as a veiled insult, where the question “How’re you sticking to Monty’s vision?” is code for “Are you ashamed of betraying your friend?”

Even trying to paint her as exaggerating this and being overly defense is a dick move, because it’s gaslighting. You take someone’s genuine concern and use it to turn the tables on them, making them the bad guy instead of the actual assholes they have to deal with.

And on the note of executive meddling and corporate consolidation, yes, Rooster Teeth was bought out by Fullscreen in 2014 - note, a year after RWBY’s first volume came out - but they started out as a bunch of dumb friends going “Yo dude… let’s make some shit.” And build shit they did, and from that sprung a pseudo-professional environment where people just kinda did… whatever the fuck they felt like. And I kinda dig that. Correction, I very much dig that.

When it first started out, RWBY definitely was indie animation, and at the time, I very much looked up to that, cuz I wanted to do shit myself as well. I didn’t wanna relinquish control to some cold, corporate entity who’d police what I say cuz it wasn’t brand-safe or advertiser friendly. I wanted to tell dumb, epic stories for people of any interest, any age, that were gay as shit. And I still do.

It’s just that as Rooster Teeth has grown and been caught up in a chain of corporate ownerships - seriously, it’s insane, the ladder leads all the way up to AT&GoddamnT - the company has undoubtedly stumbled as its grown, and RWBY is probably the perfect example of that clumsy glow up.

More resources have flown in, more animators, more hands on the project, and more fans are involved in the community than ever before, but with all of that has also risen this disdain for CRWBY. This toxic notion that hating RWBY no matter what it does, overblowing its mistakes or just things you personally don’t like, gives you the full reigns to antagonize CRWBY, the people making the show.

Even going so far as to not only harass them on Twitter and then complain about being blocked (For the record, though, if you’re blocked after not engaging with them, there’s a very strong chance you got caught up in some list where the block echoed down to you, in which case please blame the platform not the blocker), but to accuse them of exploiting the creation of a dead man, not even their friend, and using that accusation to portray them… as monsters.

And that… is kinda gross.

No, RWBY is not perfect. Very far from it. If you believe I think that, then honey, you haven’t been paying attention. You probably only stuck to my content because it seemed to be another crest in a long wave of this toxic way of thinking, so much so that you view my positive attitudes towards the end of Volume 6, or even Volume 6 as a whole, as me being… “brainwashed.” Yes, someone actually said Volume 6 had brainwashed me. Lovely.

But what I say is how I feel. My views change as my perspective changes, and as I learn more about the context of that which I observe, and as I find new perspectives I find intriguing. Ironically the point at which I was most heavily influenced by outside perspectives came not from recently as I praised Volume 6, but in the hiatus between Volumes 5 and 6.

I wanted to fit in with the rest of the critic community. I wanted to be a diplomat, trying to bridge the divide within this insane fandom, and I met some cool people, made some friends. I don’t regret that. It’s through what I do that I met my boyfriend, after all. But it’s become clear to me that while there are indeed pockets within the shipping communities who will cut out your throat and lynch you for not liking the right ships, they are still that - pockets.

No. The real crowd that’s become most vocal and intolerant in dissent lies within what I like to call… the hatedom. And the difficult thing is that it’s often very hard to identify members of said hatedom, minus the occasional hobgoblins in the YouTube comments or in my Twitter notifications / block lists. There is, however, a prevailing attitude that unites them all together, from the hapless enabler to the radical dicknugget: that CRWBY can do no right.

Yet despite this, the show is continuing to move forward. Whether you like that direction or not, CRWBY has done their best, and while they still have a long way to go, I will support them on that journey. I believe in the earnestness, and I believe Miles and Kerry, if they had to embody a single word - despite how stupid I still find that notion to be, but let’s roll with it because it’s kinda cute - they would be… earnest.

That little tangent’s just a glimpse of what to expect in my big We Need to Talk About RWBY… Again video. I wanna do this right, and so I’m consolidating all of the topics I wanted to discuss in my Volume 6 video essay theories. At this rate, and ideally if I’m able to get some new equipment to try out a new style, it probably is not going to be out for another couple of months at the very least, but in the words of Shigeru Miyamoto himself: “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed one is forever bad.”

No, this isn’t a video game technically, but hey, ain’t life a game? No. The answer is no, but in service to my thesis, please shut up. I mean the hatedom taught me that, so… cheers, ya fucks.

CONCLUSION:

Volume 4 I find gets more flack than I deserved. Honestly, I’d argue it’s the best of any RWBY volume, tied with Volume 6. It’s got pretty solid to strong storylines for all of its character, aside from… one (Oscar). But I think the soundtrack reaffirmed to me why I love this volume so much: it has the strongest connection its theme. Every single… sigh, MOST of the stories feature dealing with grief and loss baked in, and all the songs in the soundtrack do the same.

When I originally watched the end of Volume 4, I felt hopeful. Optimistic. It left a smile on my face, and when Volume 4 came out, it was perhaps during one of the darkest times in my life. When I felt uncertain about myself and my future, and I didn’t know where to go. I felt lost, and RWBY helped keep me anchored. And I suspect many others can relate.

And so, whenever I watch Volume 4, I can’t help but enjoy every minute of it. It’s not perfect, but it’s got a lot of heart. Some may paint it as the beginning of RWBY’s demise, but I view it as the start of a new era. Not better necessarily, but not worse. Just… different. And I’m honestly okay with that.

Anyways, if you enjoyed this video and would like to support the channel, you can check out my other videos, pledge over on Patreon, and / or check out the links to my book in the description below. I’m the Unicorn of War, and this has been a shit show.