anybody know the title of the song used during the fight scene
Warning: The following is speculation and not considered canon.
After re watching the credits, I can conclude that “Raven” is in fact Qrow’s sister, and definetly Yang’s Mother. Source: Credits label her as Raven Branwen and Qrow has that same last name, and we know that Ruby and Yang’s father’s surname is Xiao Long, which Neither Qrow nor Summer Rose have in their name’s. And science Qrow is their uncle, it must be because of this. Either that or they had another sister who is Yang’s mom.
This raises the question of why Raven had a Grimm mask however. Is it possible she is a Faunus? Monty confirmed that there are such things as Half-Faunus, and that we may or may not have seen them so far.
worked for me
I hate to do this considering how much I love this show and how awesome the volume’s been thus far, but…
I wasn’t too big of a fan of this finale. HERE’S WHY (long, very critical rant inbound):
First, I’ll start with the positives!
-CFVY was pretty cool. Coco was quite epic.
-Emerald’s weapons are best weapons.
-Ren character backstory??!?! open_mouth
-JNPR in general was great. Seems like Jaune’s a very capable fighter nowadays, he just needs self confidence.
-OMG ADAM
The negatives? Well…
This episode was a perfect representation of every single problem that RWBY suffers. I’ll have to break this down.
There’s no risk or danger in these elaborate fight scenes because there’s no chance for the characters to take damage or get hurt. There’s no chance for the characters to get hurt because the show’s entire cast is ridiculously overpowered. The characters are ridiculously overpowered because the creators value flashy weapon demonstrations over actual substance or storytelling. The storytelling sucks because there’s no payoff. A bunch of time was killed, villains did… things… and the status quo has remained exactly the same.
Why did anything happen? What was the point of stealing all that dust back in volume one? The train bombs? Why did they put the bombs on the train and kill a bunch of people instead of placing them at strategic points in the tunnel and detonating them once the train moved past? Why did Cinder and Co. feel the need to infiltrate the school? To plant that one bug or whatever they did at that one place? Why? What’s the point? Why were they putting students names on lists? WHY GO THROUGH THIS ELABORATE PLAN TO LURE THE GRIMM TO THE CITY IF THEY CAN BE THROWN AROUND LIKE RAGDOLLS AND ARE COMPLETELY INEFFICIENT?!?!?!
THE GRIMM ARE A JOKE
Anyway, yeah. There was a lot of setup and no payoff. It’s very evident to me by the somewhat jumbled finale that a lot of stuff was cut out and/or pushed back to volume three (like Scarlet and Sage, amirite)? I’d bet my life CFVY was dangerously close to being cut out of the volume and their sudden (and overpowered) entrance was purely out of fear of fan backlash if they didn’t appear.
That’s another thing; there’s way too many characters and not enough screentime for any of them. Half of SSSN never appeared and half of CFVY never even spoke. Mercury and Emerald were absent for half the volume, and Neo appeared in two episodes.
What really sucks is that as cool as a lot of these characters’ fighting styles, designs, and weapons are… they’re really not needed. All it’s doing is making the cast more bloated and making it more difficult to tell a consistently good story. I suppose if your main investment in RWBY is the epic character designs and awesome fights that will be of no consequence to you, but while I love those things… I’ve been holding out hope since the start that the show could be something more. I mean, the same team worked on RVB and the last season of that was FANTASTIC. Hopefully in volume three they’ll take some of the criticism to heart and make some changes to how they tell the story.
I’ll state one more time how ridiculous it was that what I thought was basically the Grimm apocalypse was able to be tied up so neatly in eight minutes or so.
TLDR; I thoroughly loved volume two, it’s just a shame that eleven awesome episodes filled with buildup and promises of things to come had to have such a poor resolution.
-Mesonak
OH YEAH ONE MORE THING:
I laughed quite a lot at the post credits scene. The mystery woman is literally just a palette swapped Yang. Reminds me of Shadow the Hedgehog from Sonic. Completely absurd.
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I’m going to start off by saying: I loved this episode, however, I agree that it wasn’t the best of endings. It could have been much better, but I would still probably give it a 7.5, or perhaps and 8, out of 10
You’re right that the characters are overpowered, and that the grimm were ridiculously weak in this episode. It took an entire team to beat one Nevermore in the first volume, and now, ONE GIRL with ONE SUPER POWERFUL GUN takes out three in three seconds.
The grimm were virtually pointless.
I also agree 1000% with the problem of characters not appearing enough. I was very disappointed that Neo didn’t have more screentime, considering she is among my favorite characters (she’s certainly my favorite villain). It also bothered me that Neptune and Sun were completely useless in this episode. They appeared, showed their shiny junior badges, and were never seen again. >:|
It didn’t bother me that Raven was so similar to Yang visually. If she is Yang’s sister or some other relation, I think it is actually pretty cool.
And about them not explaining what is going on with Emerald, Mercury, and Cinder at Beacon, and the dust robberies, etc. These events are probably all part of a bigger plot, which probably is just not ready to be revealed yet. Also, story of Volume 2 took place over the course of like a week. For us, it is a long time to go without revealing the plot. But for the characters, it’s just getting started.
What they need to do to fix RWBY is to pay more attention to storyline execution than to fighting style and insanely powerful weapons. Also, they should try to make the series a bit longer: perhaps a minimum of 15 minutes per episode rather than 12 minutes, and/or put more episodes into a season. That would give them more time for character development, and to execute the story better.
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These are my final thoughts on RWBY’s second Volume as a whole, as originally posted on r/RWBY, edited for language.
It only recently occurred to me that Rooster Teeth has a tendency to make underwhelming “setup seasons” in Red vs. Blue, where a lot of plot elements are set up, but not necessarily executed. These seasons, namely seasons 7, 9, and 11, are not necessarily bad, because enough is accomplished in their own story arcs to justify the setup for the big, overarching story. Volume 2 had a lot more time than most of these seasons (approximately 3 hours vs. 2 hours, 2 hours, and 2 hours, respectively) In this regard, how is it that Volume 2 accomplishes LESS than all of these RVB seasons? And how is it that barely anything interesting happens in the season itself? The writers can’t just trust that people will stay with the show to wait for the payoffs, they have to be entertained by what’s happening on the screen in the present day. If people are bored by the events happening in a season, they won’t necessarily stick around for the grand reveals and payoffs that the creators have planned for further down the road.
The most prominent plot setup by Volume 2 is Roman’s plan which is to bomb the tunnels and unleash the Grimm, and that’s taken care of with little to no effort in less than half of the finale. Then he’s thrown into a cell (where I think Ironwood forgot to shut the door in one of many continuity errors), but you know that he’s just going to escape because of popularity armor.
Cinder doesn’t have a plan at this point. Okay, she does, but the most we ever see of it is a compiled list of students that she MIGHT want to render powerless. Nothing is made of this in this volume, instead, she breaks into the Comm tower to…change the wallpaper of one of the computers. Cinder and Co. never appear again until the finale, at which point Cinder says that her lack of plan is still active even though she didn’t execute ANY part of it yet. Wouldn’t it be more beneficial to any sort of domination plan to hold Emerald and Mercury back and let the Grimm tear the students apart so the city will be left defenseless? No guarantee that it would make a difference given that the Grimm are so easy to defeat, but why would you make your plan harder by keeping your opponents alive? With all of this said, any sort of menace that the trio held at the beginning of the volume is lost at this point, because they don’t do anything. Emerald and Mercury killed Tukson and Cinder killed some guards. Hooray. These are not compelling villains.
Going back to the Grimm for a moment, how is it that a species that almost drove humanity to extinction is so easy to defeat? While shades of this issue were present back in Volume 1, Volume 2 really cements them as being nothing more than a nuisance. The most infuriating shot of the finale was seeing Team RWBY surrounded by Grimm, but none of them jumping up to attack. Don’t give me any “it’s building up tension” nonsense. If I encounter a bear in the woods, it’s going to start charging at me before I start running. It’s not going to politely wait its turn until I say “Hi Mr. Bear” or something to that effect. It’s an ANIMAL. Animals are hungry. Hell, look at the last World of Remnant for a second. It’s implied that the Grimm enjoy devouring humans. Why are they hesitating? Why are they waiting until backup arrives to start attacking? Also, why aren’t Team RWBY even attacking? If they don’t want to attack them because they need reinforcements, why don’t they escape the circle? WEISS CAN MAKE GLYPHS THAT CAN MAKE THEM FLY! I didn’t even see any Nevermores in that crowd! Going back to Search and Destroy, Team RWBY has absolutely no problem taking out all the Beowolves. Now, I’m not going to bring up the “how did the Grimm kill humanity” thing here because now we know there were a lot more Grimm underneath Mountain Glenn, so that’s understandable. It still doesn’t excuse how Team RWBY can just kill a bunch of Beowolves without breaking a sweat. For a rather successfully genocidal species, the Grimm have become pathetic. They are not a threat in the slightest, and the show never remembers that they’re supposed to be the biggest threat that humanity has ever faced.
Speaking of lack of urgency, let’s talk about B-plots. I understand that even in a post-apocalyptic society, people are going to want to preserve leisure time and some idea of having a normal life. But there’s a difference between having leisure time and living in a freaking fantasy world. We are never reminded that the Grimm have destroyed most of humanity until Field Trip, episode 8 OUT OF 12. Cinder and Co’s actions take about and episode or two’s worth of screentime. Roman’s schemes only appear in Painting the Town, Mountain Glenn, No Brakes, and Breach. The ENTIRE REMAINING TIME IN THE SEASON is dedicated to dances, a tournament that might never happen, and Arkos. The most that got accomplished before Field Trip was that Team RWBY destroyed a Paladin and had Roman cornered, only for him to be bailed out by the poorly written loophole named Neo, so we’re back at square one. Now, B-plots are good for character development. We finally learned more about Yang in Burning the Candle. We learned more about Team RWBY as a whole in the Field Trip arc, which starts getting into A-plot territory, but still, character development nonetheless occurs.
Learning more about Neptune in Dance Dance Infiltration would have been interesting if the character served any purpose outside of fanservice. It’s worth repeating his only important actions have been stabbing and shooting Roman’s Paladin in Painting the Town. I don’t count him tagging along with Yang’s part of the investigation as helping, because all he did was ask stupid questions and not get any information. He does nothing in the finale. All he does B-plot wise is act as a piece of a love triangle. At least Sun was important back in Volume 1. Neptune is not. He’s more useless as a character than CARDIN, of all people. As much as I hated Jaune’s story arc in Volume 1 for being so cliche (and pointless in that Pyrrha basically solved the problem herself), at least it gave Jaune character development in the form of a confidence boost against Cardin, who did the whole bully routine. Cardin, in this regard, served a purpose, which resulted in the death of an Ursa. Take Neptune out of the plot, nothing changes.
I’ve been told in the past to wait until the Volume ends before I start making anymore judgments about Jaune. The volume’s over. In the finale, during Jaune’s bit with the Ursa, I ended up putting down a very vulgar version of “ARE YOU KIDDING ME” in my notes about that part the episode. This isn’t exactly the same as the time “he” killed an Ursa in Volume 1. In fact, I have to give the writers credit in making who killed the Ursa rather ambiguous this time. I honestly don’t know if Pyrrha helped him again from offscreen or if Jaune really killed it by himself. I’m really hoping that it was the latter, otherwise the moment would fall into the category of retreading old ground. This moment still doesn’t escape sin because instead of demonstrating that Jaune has become a better fighter by simply having him kill the Ursa without hesitation (it could take a while, but less time than what actually happened), or slice up some Beowolves. Here, it shows just how static his character still is. Sure, he sounds a lot more confident at the beginning of the episode, but he immediately goes back to being a wimp when the Ursa shows up. Jaune is ultimately no different than he was in Volume 1. He did the whole “trying to win Weiss” thing in Volume 1, and he had the “fateful encounter with the Ursa” thing in Volume 1. All of his bits in this Volume are rehashes of Volume 1. I made peace with the idea that someone with this much screentime probably has a lot of development ahead of him, but all bets are off now. All of his screentime this Volume has amounted to WASTING TIME. We don’t learn anything new about him beyond him having seven sisters. He doesn’t do anything important. He doesn’t have any life-changing experiences. I’m really, REALLY hoping that this is supposed to be an intended audience response a la Madame Bovary, deconstructing this sort of annoying character. I would have understood his prominence if he was a dynamic, important, character, but he isn’t so it still bugs me that this person, who FORGED HIS WAY INTO BEACON, by the way, is still getting so much attention. I’ve had it with this character. I’ve waited until the end. Nothing has changed. It’s arguably gotten worse.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have non-characters. I originally had something written about this, but the finale changed a few things. The original rant was a lot more hostile, and I was originally going to include CFVY in this group, but the finale did give each character a bit of a personality, which will probably be looked into next year. Coco is a sort of hard-boiled leader, Fox might be blind, Velvet is the reluctant one, and Yatsuhashi is a zen, gentle giant type. Neo, despite her apparently huge following, has no personality. Being evil is an alignment, not a personality. She doesn’t say anything, and we don’t know anything about her. She’s afraid of the Woman in Red/Raven, but honestly, who wouldn’t be? She’s mute, but no reason is given as to why. The main concern I have about characters like this is that the writers seem to prioritize inserting more characters into the show with little personality over developing the characters they already have. Then, through positive reinforcement through praise and fan-art, they keep doing this because people like the cool character models. This is making the show way too crowded, and we end up not learning anything about the main characters.
So after all of this, it’s probably clear that I despise Volume 2, right? Well, that’s not true. I think that it’s ultimately just as good or bad as Volume 1, but trading off what’s done better or worse. I like the longer episodes, especially how they’re at least more equal in length. Some Volume 1 episodes were about three minutes long, while others are almost ten minutes long. Here, they’re at least 12 minutes long, as promised, and they feel like complete episodes.
The voice acting is great! There aren’t any stilted performances here, and everybody gets a chance to shine, special mention going to Joel, Barbara, Shannon, and Kara for amazing, dynamic performances!
The fight scenes actually varied a lot more, to be honest. While I can say that all the scenes in Volume 1 were really good, Volume 2 tends to swing more on the scale. When the fights here are good, they’re absolutely amazing (Best Day Ever, Painting the Town, No Brakes), but when they’re boring or bad, they’re excruciating (Extracurricular, Search and Destroy, Breach).
As much as I complained about misplaced screentime, I can safely say that I loved all the Team RWBY-centric scenes. The Field Trip arc is my favorite set of episodes because of how much we learn about what makes them tick. Burning the Candle and the post-credits scene really made me like Yang a lot more, and I hope that her story gets more attention next year. I legitimately enjoyed the attempts to make Jaune interact with Ren and Nora. I wish this would happen more often, but it was very refreshing to see. I also liked the increased focus on the adults, and the political tensions that came from the Ozpin/Ironwood storyline. And of course, A Minor Hiccup holds a special place in my heart for giving some more development to my favorite character, Weiss.
Despite having more visible errors, the animation in this Volume is absolutely beautiful to look at. The shadow people are gone, we see a lot more varied, colorful environments, and shading is given a lot more detail. I kind of wish that we saw more of RWBY’s alternate costumes, or maybe give JNPR an alternate set for the finale, but seeing all the character models with more detail and more facial expressions was a pleasure to see.
Maybe it’s bias, but in terms of music, I only thought “Die” was the only truly memorable song outside of the theme song (which blows “This Will Be the Day” out of the water). That’s not to say that the music in this Volume was bad, but there’s no addicting, show-stopping song like “Red Like Roses Pt. 2” here. I enjoyed the music in Volume 2, I had no problems with it, but I’d be lying if I said it was as memorable or more so than Volume 1’s soundtrack. Maybe I just need to listen to the new soundtrack all the way through. Speaking of “Time to Say Goodbye”, I think that’s part of why I think Volume 2 was sort of a letdown for me. You have this bigger, faster, more frenetic song saying how the world is falling apart, and you have to take action now or else people will die, and none of that urgency seemed to show itself in the actual show.
TL;DR: My final verdict on Volume 2 is similar to my perspective on Volume 1. It’s a heavily flawed show, but I love the snot out of it. While there were aspects of Volume 2 that I liked a lot more than Volume 1, I think Volume 1 is a more satisfying package as a whole. All things considered, and with everything that’s been set up at the end, I have high hopes for Volume 3.
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So I’m just uh… just gonna put this here. (Not the same link as @Shadezy’s posted earlier.)
So yeah, I do enjoy RWBY. It’s got it’s goodies, and badies. But just like me with the Transformers Movies, I don’t care for the bad parts so I don’t rage about it.
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The teachers’ first dance was the best.
It had to be Shakira 
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How do you hide posts? I have some thoughts, but I don’t want to ruin anyone who reads them and hasn’t seen the episode.
There you go 
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And don’t make the mistake I made. The “/” is only in the last one.
@Shadezy Thanks!
Overall, this episode was disappointing. I had such high hopes for the finale, but almost none of them came to fruition. There was almost no story other than ‘Lets all fight Grimm, and have appearances from characters just to keep the fans happy’. The fight was really useless, because Grimm are absolutely horrible at fighting. Yes, CFVY was entertaining, and yes, it was nice to see previously existing characters actually use their weapons.
The part that actually contained some story was 12:00 onwards. And that was enjoyable, although I don’t understand why Emerald and Mercury captured Roman. They could have just said, ‘Oh no! He got away!’ He wasn’t even seen in the fight! He easily could have slipped away! Yes, I am not ruling out the option that he was trying to get captured, but either way… Adam. FINALLY. I don’t know where he was, but I am glad that he is back. And then we have Raven. I hope to see more of her in season three, because I’d love to learn more backstory about Yang/Ruby’s family.
In conclusion, I wish it had been more story-based, but I am even more excited for season three.
I can’t wait for the RWBY vol 2 to come out
You mean Volume Three? This was Volume Two.
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On DVD? Or do you mean you can’t wait for volume 3?
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Volume 2 comes to Aussie this month and Vol 3 comes out next November
… No. That’s not how it works. Volume Two is out right now, al, episodes on the RT website. Volume Three has no release date.
Can’t you just use Youtube to watch Volume 2? I’m sure there isn’t any region blocks on them.
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There aren’t region blocks anywhere. All people have all episodes anywhere, unless you don’t speak English, and even then, people are dubbing both volumes in Chinese and Japanese.
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