Synduality: Noir – 24 (Fin) – Forward Together

Noir is the only Magus not shut down by Wiesheit’s order because she’s technically not a Magus, and never was. First inhabiting Mystere’s body and now the late Ciel’s, Noir was little more than data with no body of her own. But now she embraces her status as neither human or Magus, but … just Noir. And she’s not going to let Weisheit win.

Noir leads Kanata to where Mystere is located, and Tokio and Macht switch to manual mode to keep Weisheit busy. When he does manage to get a lase blast off, Mystere puts up a shield that protects Daisyogre, then shows up inside the cockpit to join the Dud and the Hack and complain about being woken up and then having to save their sorry asses.

Noir and Mystere team up, with the latter guiding the former to sense all of the nanomachines Weisheit has launched, and use them for their own purposes. A Dual Magus Skill ensues, firing off a beam that’s bigger and stronger than Weisheit’s Magus-less coffin can withstand. He’s first pinned to the wall of Histoire, then falls through it to float free into space.

Weisheit asks Histoire if civilization can be restored without Magus, and it replies that it can. However, when Weisheit calls Magus “unnecessary”, Histoire takes exception. Whether Magus are necessary or unnecessary is up to the choices humanity makes. In the grand scheme of things, Histoire makes clear that humanity can achieve a more efficient recovery with Magus by their side.

This is apparently a world Weisheit doesn’t want to live in anymore, so he drifts off and waits for his oxygen to run out, and remembers when Ciel first sang to him. For a brief time before his ideals became twisted and prejudiced, he didn’t seem to mind her as his Magus.

Mystere sends Kanata and Noir back down to earth in an escape pod, insisting she stay behind to send the signal to reactivate all Magus on earth, as well as to fulfill her master’s dream. Now that she’s here in Histoire, there’s much to do, but she has all the time in the world. Both Kanata and Noir promise they’ll return to her someday. Back down on earth, Ange, Dolce, and all the other Magus wake up, much to their partners’ relief.

With that, things return more or less to the status quo in Rock Town. Maria continues to test rockets of her own design while Ellie and Ange look on. Claudia and Flamme pay their respects to Mystere’s master, Pascale. Macht and Schnee become Drifters, rescuing Range and Dolce from certain death. Tokio travels the world with Mouton, confident the next generation of Drifters will pick up where they leave off.

And then there’s Kanata and Noir, who search for the materials needed to build another spacecraft that get take them back to Histoire and their friend Mystere. They were able to defeat Weisheit’s backwards, solitary, ultimately self-defeating philosophy. Kanata continues to strive to be the best damned Drifter he can be, while Noir is now aware of who and what she is and determined to stick by Kanata’s side.

Just a couple of bright-eyed dreamers, fixing their gaze to the starry sky, keen to return there and be reunited with their friend. Truly a Eureka Seven for the 2020s in style and scope, Synduality: Noir provided steady, consistent, slick-looking sci-fi entertainment brimming with heart and optimism. Not a bad deal at all.

Synduality: Noir – 23 – Flight to the Final Dungeon

With his boss having abandoned him and the rest of Ideal, Nacht believes Tokio comes to gloat, but he’s not. Instead, he offers his hand in friendship and alliance once more, so that Nacht can get the answers he seeks from Weisheit, and Tokio can kick the twerp’s ass. Both Schnee and Mouton seem relieved the old friends are back on the same side again.

On the eve of Kanata’s big spaceflight, Ange shoves Ellie into his room and she ends up landing right on his bed. It was her Magus’ intention that Ellie both show and tell Kanata how she feels on what may be his last night on Earth. Instead, he sits beside her just to pick up his space shuttle toy and spout some facts about space, like a total dweeb! Nonethetless, he’s her dweeb, and she entrusts him with her favorite doll for his trip, telling him to bring it along with himself back safe and sound.

Noir, who is now beloved throughout Rock Town not just for saving them time and again, but carrying on the late Ciel’s musical tradition, is given a hero’s godspeed. She asks Mam to take a picture of her with all her friends, and when she looks upon the picture she smiles warmly. She wants to get Mystere back so she can return to this place that has become her home, and these folks who have become her family.

The actual launch of the spare space shuttle actually goes off without a hitch; leave it to the arrogant villain not to destroy the good guys’ means of following him. While a bit rushed, there’s still some moments that convey the awe and grandeur of space, such as the sight of the sun rising over the horizon, as well as the gradual approach of the absolutely massive Histoire space station. Maria left out the fact that Kanata & Co. would have to crash land in the station.

Once there, Kanata is sufficiently impressed and amazed by Histoire, which is one massive archive of biological and technological information. The station is a means of reviving any species of plant or animal that goes extinct, as well as any technology lost to war, disaster, or other mishap. It’s also the ultimate base of power for someone to mold the world to their liking, and since Weisheit arrived first with the key (Mystere), Histoire recognizes him as its master.

Kanata/Noir, Tokio/Mouton, and Macht/Schnee confront Weisheit, who confirms that part of his Grand Cause is to eliminate all Magus, which he later declares “give him the creeps” and whose mere name makes his “skin crawl.” By working together, the three opponents manage to claim one of his formidable coffin’s arms, but by then Histoire has finished preparations to implement his dastardly plan: sending a shutdown signal to every Magus on Earth.

Even Mouton and Schnee aren’t immune from this signal, rendering Tokio and Macht’s coffins inoperable. The only Magus who doesn’t shut down is Noir. It isn’t explained why (at least not yet); perhaps it’s because she is from Histoire. In any case, she’s still awake and functioning, seething with anger, and vows never to forgive Weisheit for the terrible things he’s done. Hopefully she and Kanata will be enough to beat him, save Mystere, and throw his big awful master plan in the dumpster.

Synduality: Noir – 22 – For the Not-So-Great Cause

Weisheit wants Mystere’s black box in the worst way, so he sends a huge assault group led by Macht. Macht is eager to step out of Tokio’s shadow and believes in his boss’ “great cause”, but throughout all of this Schnee has seemed worried about her lord going down this path. She’ll never voice her objections as she feels it wouldn’t be her place, but it’s all in her facial expressions, and MAO’s pained, almost mournful voice.

Weisheit also wants the assault team to destroy the spaceship the enemy has rebuilt. Wait, what spaceship? The dang space shuttle Maria rebuilt from materials scavanged from Carthage. There’s also a brand new linear catapult. This strained credulity for me for some reason. To be less generous, it’s dumb as hell.

Building and maintaining coffins and simple rockets is one thing, but a space shuttle and catapult? With Maria’s fly-by-night team? It should’ve taken months, if not years. Instead, boom, here they are, ready for a test launch with Kanata as the space monkey.

But hey, this is a show that heavily features gussied up rock-em-sock-em robot fighting, so it’s fine. We get a big dumb battle that’s oddly bloodless; Ideal looks like a highly-trained and conditioned military force. You only show up to Maria’s base if you’re ready to kill some people. On the other side, Kanata & Co. have experience killing monsters, but fellow humans and Magus?

Say they’re not killing anyone. It still seems highly unlikely you’d be able to get off enough perfect shots that all of the Ideal coffins and carriers are simply disabled. The utter lack of visceral danger even with all this heavy machinery and weaponry flying around makes the whole enterprise feel toothless. Then again, this is not Gundam.

For all of their gumption and Home Alone-style traps, Team Rock Town doesn’t have anything that’s a match for Weisheit’s coffin once he joins the battle. He’s so fast even Mouton’s “Overclock” Magus skill that lets him virtually stop time for himself can’t track him.

He swoops right down the catapult and into the hanger, and Maria is just chilling in there on her rig with a machine gun (the cutaway to her is woefully under-animated for some reason; her mouth doesn’t even move as she speaks for part of it). Obviously, her attempt to defend the shuttle is futile against Weisheit’s top-of-the-line rig.

Weisheit looks ready to kill her, but Mystere saves her by drawing attention to herself. Weisheit launches a bunch of robo-tentacles (because of course) that string her up in midair and cause a great deal of pain, before he shuts her down and brings her aboard. He later tells Kanata that her ego has been purged, so now she’ll be an obedient marionette.

Weisheit then hops into the cargo bay of the space shuttle, hacks into it, and launches it, which is pretty gutsy, considering it hadn’t even been tested yet and a lot of Maria’s past rockets went boom. But in launching up to Histoire in orbit, he abandons his entire Ideal team, and they don’t seem particularly happy about it.

Macht is ready to obey Weisheit’s final order to kill Macht, but Schnee stays his hand by deactivating his cockpit, embracing him from behind, and asking him if this is really what he wants to do. In doing so, Schnee has finally defied her Lord, for his own good, and her’s.

He admits to her that the day Licht asked him to join him in leaving Ideal, he considered leaving with Schnee. But even if he had, that probably wouldn’t have greatly altered Weisheit’s grand plan. Macht just seems like one more sucker like the rest of Ideal, that their boss stepped on so he could reach Histoire all by himself.

There’s also the whole matter of Weisheit’s plan to create a world without Magus, which even Macht didn’t know about and doesn’t seem to be much of a fan of it. All of the other Ideal pilots seem to have Magus partners, so I doubt they’d want that world either.

He seems to be the only one who seems to hate and dehumanize Magus, while most everyone else considers them valuable companions, even equals. Unfortunately, he’s also the only one on a shuttle headed to Histoire, and possibly gain the means to make his twisted, prejudiced world a reality.

Here’s hoping that second shuttle that was behind the first works, so Kanata, Noir & Co. can go rescue Mystere. Heck, maybe Mystere will even stop calling Noir a dud if they manage to save her.

Reign of the Seven Spellblades – 04 – Comrades In Arms

Thanks to her new senpai Vera, Katie is able to interact with the troll from the parade, and even work to gain its trust. But Vera can’t shield Katie from the barbs and snide comments from other students. Oliver and Nanao are preparing for an inevitable duel against Richard Andrews, but the bullying of Katie by their classmates becomes so bad that Oliver rises to their provocations and starts a fight. Nanao and Guy have his back.

Unfortunately we don’t get to see the bullies get their just desserts, but Oliver, Nanao, and Guy end up in detention cells. When Katie blames herself for not standing up to the bullies, Oliver rejects that; he started the fight, so this is his fault, not hers. She did nothing wrong.

Nevertheless, Chela notes that their little circle of friends is on an island now, with the rest of the first-years (mostly hoity-toity, anti-demi conservatives) hating their guts. This is confirmed when they’re led to the site of the duel with Andrews, and it’s a coliseum packed with hostile students.

Before their official duel begins, an “exhibition fight” commences, with Andrews demonstrating his prowess in the sword arts by slaughtering some kobolds (werewolf-like creatures). While our friends are disgusted by the spectacle, especially when handlers force a scared kobold to return to the arena, Nanao gives them a piece of her mind, calling the whole crowd scum. For this, she gets pelted by glass bottles.

When a Garuda, a high-level beast that Andrews didn’t at all expect to appear, appears, students are battered and bloodied in quick succession, to Andrews’ horror and panic. But it’s Nanao who finally stands up to the monster and crosses blades with it. She had no interest in fighting a rigged “duel” with Andrews, but this is a battle more her speed: one in which she must put her life on the line.

She does a decent job keeping up with the Garuda, the fact remains she alone is outmatched, so Oliver joins the battle…and quickly gets slashed across the midsection. When he retreats to heal himself, a cowering Andrews asks him how he and Nanao can fight the Garuda without fear. ‘

Oliver tells him he is scared, because he’s an ordinary person, but Nanao, a warrior, probably isn’t scared at all, so he needs to keep her from going too far and getting killed. As he gets up and returns to the arena, he tells Andrews that Nanao wanted to see how he fought too.

Back in action, Oliver tells Nanao he’ll give her an opening to make the kill, but things go a little pear-shaped. Oliver has to end up getting between Nanao and the Garuda, and very nearly meets his end, were it not for Richard Andrews, using his high-level wind magic to blast the Garuda away. It’s a triumphant moment, and I hope his new understanding of Oliver and Nanao will trickle down to the other privileged students.

This creates the opening Nanao needs, and she spares no voracity in beheading the Garuda. Once it finally falls defeated, Oliver is the first one to thank Richard, who admits that while he was scared of the Garuda, he was more scared of being seen as an embarrassment to his clan. Both Nanao and Oliver acknowledge the courage he showed by standing his ground, and when Oliver lends him a hand up, Andrews takes it.

From that point on, Richard is no longer Nanao and Oliver’s enemy, but they are all of them comrades-in-arms. Of course, Nanao was pretty badly slashed in her fight with the Garuda, so she needs to be patched up. But as Richard takes his leave, Chela also thanks her childhood friend, addressing him as Rick, and notes how long it’s been since she’s seen “how wonderful he can be”.

All’s well that ends well. I’m glad this wasn’t just as simple as the good guys beating the bad guys in a duel, but things going out of control and the good and bad guys working together to end the threat, resulting in a welcome face turn for Andrews.

As for the mysterious student who is loitering around the coliseum after everyone has left, I presume they’re the same person who sent Katie flying towards the troll, and perhaps the next significant threat to Oliver and his friends. The silver hair has me suspecting it’s Vera, which would certainly be a blow to Katie.

Reign of the Seven Spellblades – 03 – A New Way to Live

Ophelie and Cyrus could probably achieve terrible things together if they joined forces, but each finds the other’s methods (her promiscuity, his necromancy) repugnant, so they fight each other with huge summoned monsters. Ophelie actually gives birth to hers; judging from her ahegao she seems to get a kick out of doing so.

When Cyrus blocks the underclassmen with his wall of bones, Nanao arrives to give them cover to escape. She also makes it sounds like she’s been looking for a place to die, and has found one. Oliver is ready to follow her into battle when Ophelie and Cyrus’ duel is cut short by the student body president, Alvin Godfrey.

Backed up by school prefect Carlos Whitlow, Alvin orders the two villains-in-training back to the depths of the Labyrinth, and escorts our first-years to safety.

Once there, Oliver gets in Nanao’s face and asks her what all the suicidal talk is about. Chela pulls him away, but is just as curious to know what’s up with Nanao, so she asks her to please tell them all if she can. That’s when Nanao looks back to the last and worst battle she ever experienced.

Even with a seemingly hopeless deficit in numbers, Nanao is able to easily carve her way to the enemy general, and dispatches his son, who was purportedly one of the finest warriors in the land, before she even knew it was him.

When the general orders his armies to kill her without learning her name, their spears are suddenly stopped dead…by a western mage on a broom. He invites Nanao to Kimberly, and here she is. But ever since being plucked from that battle—and from her certain death—Nanao has felt like she’s strayed into a dream.

When Nanao fought Oliver in class, she experienced shiawase, a moment of clarity and shared admiration and respect when locked in mortal combat with an opponent. But the battle was cut short, and Oliver pushed her away. Attempting to join the battle with the upperclassmen was her way of ending that dream on her own terms, before it ended on its own, worse terms.

Oliver thinks Katie is speaking out of turn when she says that, basically, Nanao is saying she’s heartbroken after Oliver rejected her entreaty of love and happiness (i.e. shiawase). But Nanao admits that yes, whether she fell for Oliver the person or his sword, to a warrior like her, there’s little difference.

This is when Chela asks Nanao, as a friend, to consider living her life in a new and different way than she did before. One need not cover themselves in blood or glory to thrive at Kimberly. Chela wants to spend more time with Nanao, and all of the others feel the same way. Indeed, it was clear Oliver was only upset with Nanao because he thought she was being too reckless with her life.

When everyone else chimes in agreeing with Chela, Nanao bows her head in apology and vows not to put her life in danger again. She also admits she’s happy she has friends at this school, since she hasn’t been able to learn much of anything in the classes so far. They all agree to help and support one another. If any dangers cross their paths, they’ll face them together.

It’s the Oliver-and-Nanao making up scene I’d hoped for at the end of last week, but I won’t knock the show for interrupting it to demonstrate how dangerous the school can be when our first-years are fractured. The next morning, Nanao clings to Oliver, who is both embarrassed and flattered. I love the varied reactions from the others to what is basically a newly formed couple.

Back in Garland’s Sword Arts class, Richard Andrews isn’t done with Oliver, and wants to fight him one-on-one. Oliver agrees, but before they get started Nanao grabs his arm, sensing he intends to lose on purpose. When Richard hears this he gets even more angry. Thus Oliver needs to give it his all to satisfy Nanao, and not humiliate Richard into desperation.

Chela takes Oliver aside to tell him she and Richard were childhood friends, always compared to each other by their elders, hence Richard’s inferiority complex. She’s not entirely sure how Oliver should proceed, only that some kind of fight is inevitable.

This dilemma is interrupted by news that Katie has rushed to the defense of the troll who went on a rampage at the parade. It’s about to be executed by faculty member Darius Grenville, but she stands fast in his path. Unamused by her insolence, when he learns she’s a “civil rights activist” he mocks her parents.

When she refuses to step aside, he uses an extreme pain spell on her, cementing his status as a real sonofabitch. Her friends come to her rescue, and thankfully don’t have to fight Grenville, as he’s told to stand down by fourth-year Vera Milligan, backed up by Professor Garland.

They inform Grenville that not only is there an ongoing investigation that demands the troll stay alive for now, and that it wouldn’t do to anger the growing pro-demi civil rights political faction, but the use of pain spells by faculty were banned five years ago.

Vera formally introduces herself to Katie as a fellow pro-demi advocate, and tells her she’ll be happy to help her in her efforts going forward as they share the same cause. Even though she’s still feeling the effects of the pain spell, Katie leaves the confrontation with a big smile on her face, having found a strong, cool upperclassman ally.

While the good vibes are somewhat marred by an inevitable duel challenge from Richard to Oliver, I still enjoyed this episode immensely from start to finish. Oliver and Nanao made up and may be an item, and we learned that Kimberly isn’t just a school full of perverts and assholes outside of the friend circle. In Alvin, Carlos, and Vera, there are good seeds looking after them too.

It’s a testament to the character writing that Garland’s explanation of the titular Spellblades (there are apparently only six of them at the moment) is the least interesting part of the episode. I’m sure they’ll come into play soon and a seventh will emerge, but for now I care more about these lovable kids.

Reign of the Seven Spellblades – 02 – What Lies Beyond That Moment

The first years’ classes commence, starting with sword arts (the offline kind). I did notice that instead of wands, our wizard analogues are running around with little daggers. Thanks to Pete wanting to show off his knowledge, we learn they’re called athames.

Professor Garland decides the best way for kids to learn is by doing, so he asks for volunteers to have a little friendly duel. Nanao’s hand is the first to go up, followed by Richard Andrews, clearly one of the old money kids who is full of himself.

Oliver takes exception to Andrews dueling Nanao, and makes it known that he helped Nanao bring down the troll while Richard and others stood by and did nothing. Chela does Oliver a solid and volunteers to duel Andrews so Oliver can duel Nanao.

We know two things going into this duel: First, Nanao has fought so many battles she’s covered in scars (and kudos for Oliver’s gaze last week focusing on those scars and not the usual body parts). She killed before, and not just one or two people. Not even one or two dozen.

Second: Oliver is pretty decent with magic, and he’s also secretly a big deal, or his brother wouldn’t be having him tailed. Between his magic and her swordsmanship, the duel ends up being quite a spectacle. The episode does a really cool visual trick of having Oliver see Nanao in full battle regalia as she slashes at him.

When Oliver sees tears in Nanao’s eyes, he suddenly feels awful for even thinking about holding back against her. He decides to commit himself entirely to the battle, as she is. Then Garland stops them, because broke the anti-lethality spell he placed on their blades.

Chela retracts her challenge of Andrews, who is perfectly willing to not have his ass handed to him by an ojou-sama with drill ringlets. Oliver leaves class in a hurry, but Nanao catches up, elated over how exciting and fun their duel was. She just wishes they’d been able to finish.

Nanao wanted to see “what lies beyond that moment” when they were forced to stop, but to her shock, Oliver angrily refuses to ever fight her again. When she asks way, he says he doesn’t owe her a reason, but he doesn’t want to kill her, or be killed by her.

The next day, the gang is together for lunch after spellology (oy) class, whose instructor abhors athames as medieval. Notably, Oliver and Nanao are as physically distant from one another and not facing each other. But classes roll on, like magical biology with the shark-toothed Vanessa Aldiss

Aldiss makes it clear to all the bleeding-heart magical animal lovers in the class that in her class, living things are resources to be exploited to improve their magic. This sucks for Katie. The teacher provides them with live magical silkworms and tells them to create cocoons. If they fail, the cocoons turn black and deadly moths emerge that must be incinerated.

Once again, Chela, who is an ace at this, helps Oliver out by helping Nanao out with her magic, since she can tell there’s something going on that hasn’t been resolved yet. Poor Katie takes extra time to ensure her silkworms don’t suffer, but her final cocoon fails, and the moth bites her.

Oliver and Chela kill the moth for Katie, and their teacher docks points for helping her. Oliver takes Katie to the infirmary to get her wound tended to. While he appreciates that Katie came from a wonderful, caring upbringing that respected creatures great and small, he also gives her a gentle warning that she can’t be an “angel” in a place like Kimberly.

That said, he also makes it clear she’s not alone in her struggle. She has him to lean on, and he then opens the door and all the others spill out into the room. I really appreciate how this show has so quickly endeared me to these characters, all of whom are good kids.

The fact remains, however, that we’re not quite sure what Oliver’s whole deal is. All I know for sure is that when Miss Carste informs him that she’ll be leaving his side temporarily to meet with his brother, it felt like a sign Oliver would end up in trouble with no covert ninja agent to back him up.

That night at dinner, Katie is just mentioning that Nanao seems out of sorts about something when Pete says he needs to go grab a book he left in a classroom. Oliver and Chela decide to go with him and brook no argument: the school, which doubles as a castle, isn’t safe after dark.

Specifically, the giant labyrinth beneath it starts to encroach on the upper levels. I like how subtly and suddenly the once cozy, opulent school halls take on the dark and sinister look of a dungeon. But Chela and Oliver insist that they’ll be okay: faculty and upperclassmen patrol the school at night.

Unfortunately, the trio comes across two of the less savory members of the upperclassmen, starting with fourth-year Ophelie Salvadori. Her body secretes pheromones that can put others in her thrall. Oliver and Chela are magically gifted enough to resist it; Pete can’t.

When they try to make a speedy getaway from Ophelie’s clutches, their path is blocked by a fence of bones summoned by fifth-year Cyrus Rivermore, who is in cahoots with Ophelie. I expected Oliver and Nanao would make up by episode’s end, but we end on a cliffhanger, with Oliver, Chela, and Pete having more pressing issues afoot.

RWBY: Ice Queendom – 04 – Her World, Her Rules

If you’re going to go three weeks between episodes (since the first three were available in week one) following with a character-centric bottle episode is probably the way to go. We don’t see how Weiss is discovered or how the rest of her team takes her before Shion; instead we’re right beside Ruby inside Weiss’ nightmare world as she tries to find her bearings and rescue her still-new comrade.

She arrives in a harsh winter wonderland with an psychedelic sky, but at least she can use her weapon as a snowboard, and spends coins in order to communicate with Shion, create shortcut doors, and bring up the map of where she’s been. Considering she only has a finite amount of coins, I’d say she’s actually way too liberal with their use early on.

After witnessing a Schnee-brand train being attacked and derailed by White Fang, Ruby follows the tracks to an Orwellian nightmare of a city, packed with statues and portraits of Weiss’ father. The city is populated by a bunch of patrolling robots who salute with “Big Nicholas” (instead of Big Brother) and laborers who might as well be automatons with their highly structured, joyless days working to fatten their boss’ pockets.

When blending in doesn’t work (I mean look at her), Ruby tries to climb the vast walls of the city’s central tower, but is pushed back by magical brambles. She then encounters a “Silly Prison” for “dummies” depicted as members of JNPR who meow kind of like cats a a pet shop. Ruby is a little disappointed Weiss sees their comrades like this.

As for Weiss herself, she’s been given an Esdeath-like makeover. Her sister is a bat who alerts her to Ruby’s movements, while her always-looming father orders her to take care of the intruder. Wanted posters appear instantaneously, and before long Ruby is cornered and finally comes face to face with Weiss.

As you’d expect, Weiss isn’t in any hurry to go anywhere, and in any case regards Ruby with nothing but disgust and contempt. Seeing all this trippy shit inside Weiss’ head, Ruby is compelled to believe that all the time Weiss was trying to make nice, she was actually harboring hatred for everyone else, including her.

Shion tells her it’s not that easy; that the Nightmare itself casts a sinister shadow over everything. Ruby is an intruder, and so the Grimm will use everything at its disposal from Weiss’ mind to throw Ruby off her game. But it’s clear that Weiss’ existence prior to joining the rest of RWBY has been harsh, cutthroat, and above all devoid of love and warmth. Hopefully Ruby can heat things up a little and bring the ice princess back from the brink.

RWBY: Ice Queendom – 01-03 (First Impressions) – Uncut Gems

01 – Dust to Dust

Based on a popular web comic I haven’t had the pleasure of ever seeing (probably true of a lot of viewers), the charmingly vowel-less RWBY blast out of the gate with not one or two but three episodes, giving us over an hour for the titular quartet to be introduced separately, meet, clash, and learn to get along. It’s not groundbreaking stuff but it’s well-executed and excels at details.

Our cheerful, bright silver-eyed co-protagonist is Ruby Rose, who is both proud and jealous of her big sister Yang getting into the illustrious Beacon Academy, where talented youngsters who have mastered Aura and awakened their Semblances are trained into Hunters and Huntresses to fight their worlds great scourge, the Grimm. (Hope you like proper nouns because there’s lots.)

While Ruby and Yang live modestly with their pops, aristocrat and heiress Weiss Schnee longs for the same thing they do: to become a Huntress. The only problem is she has to prove to her father she can do it by defeating a Grimm in her ultra-rich family’s great hall.

This is our first taste of RWBY’s battle action, and…it’s great. No notes. Creative, lyrical, fluid, bombastic, badass, awesome…it’s all of those things, and without too much reliance on CGI. While her first round with the Grimm gives her an eye wound that leads to a scar, Weiss gets her second wind and shows her father once and for all she’s Beacon material.

Our fourth co-protagonist is a Faunus (demihuman) and part of White Fang, a group she leaves when it becomes to radicalized and bent towards exacting revenge against full humans rather than building bridges. Her One Last Job with White Fang is another excellent demonstration of RWBY’s awesome production values and ability to stir up excitement for a fight.

Perhaps the most fun sequence is when some thieves try to steal aura in a store that happens to be open late (note to store owner: have a security guy on duty). Ruby almost misses the robbery due to her blasting metal on her headphones, but when she becomes aware of their presence, she wastes no time showing off her powers, not to mention her penchant for cool poses and beautiful rose petal-filled physical fluorishes.

The thing is, while Ruby has talent, she’s not trained and lacks authority and experience. She’s able to keep up with the thieves right up until they escape in their airship, which is when Professor Glynda Goodwitch from Beacon Academy, a full-fledged Huntress, steps in.

The baddies get away, but Glynda wasn’t there for them, she was there to bring Ruby before Beacon’s headmaster, Ozpin. The good cop to Glynda’s bad, he offers Ruby tea and cookies and, oh yeah, the offer for her to skip two grades and enroll at Beacon beside her sister with immediate effect. I guess Ozpin needs Huntresses and feels Ruby, while rough, is ready to be polished.

That night, having run from White Fang, Blake gets an acceptance letter from Beacon on her tablet, setting her on her own path rather than following the one she was born into. That’s how Ruby, Yang, Blake and Weiss all end up on the same airship bound for their Beacon Academy initiation ceremony.

02 – A Union of Colors

The first episode ably introduced our four main heroines, and the second expands the cast with four of their classmates and puts all eight into their first battle together. But first, Yang tries to heed their dad’s advice and wean Ruby off her a bit by encouraging her to make friends. Ruby and Yang first introduce themselves to Blake, who would rather read her book, and then Weiss and Blake clash over Schnee’s alleged corruption and the evilness of Faunus.

We also meet the unconfident Jaune Arc, who makes fast friends with the statuesque, famous Pyrrha Nikos, while Lie Ren and Nora Valkyrie seem to have been close friends all along. It’s trial by fire as Beacon literally puts the new students on catapults and launches them into the sky. The first person they meet is their partner, and two pairs will make a team of four for their entire four-year stay at Beacon.

The mission is simple: make their way through the forest to a temple where they’ll retrieve a chess piece. Naturally, the forest is full of Grimm. Also naturally, Ruby and Weiss end up encountering each other first, while Yang first runs into Blake.

Weiss doesn’t take Ruby seriously at first because she both seems and is younger and seems like a show-off. That said, when they start to encounter more dangerous Grimm, they have no choice but to work together. Yang and Blake don’t clash quite as much, but the former is more chipper and gung-ho while the latter more stoic and serious.

Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang end up working together to bring the aerial Grimm boss down—and with quite a bit of style, I might add. Jaune, Nora, Pyrrha and Ren also distinguish themselves while forming their team. Back at Beacon, the two quartets officially become RWBY, both pronounced and led by Ruby, and JNPR, pronounced “juniper” and led by Jaune.

03 – Bridges and Nightmares

With the two groups formed and enrolled, the third and final introductory episode starts throwing conflicts both internal and external at the groups. While the quartet has fun redecorating their dorm, when it comes time to class all of Ruby’s energy washes away.

Weiss is the first to volunteer to defeat a Grimm in class, and it rubs her the wrong way when Ruby, her “leader”, is cheering her on. When she skulks away and Ruby chases after her, both are found by teachers, who give both of them a pep talk. Ozpin assures Ruby that her being chosen as the leader was no accident, and that she’ll learn to grow into the role and inspire her teammates.

Even if we know Weiss doesn’t get everything she wants like the other professor presumed (she’s a middle child after all), she should worry less about who is leader and more about being the best teammate she can be, as it could make the difference between victory and defeat; life and death.

Starting with the welcoming ceremony and touched on here and there are the presence of two creepy things: weird branch-like marks on the backs of both Weiss and Jaune, and shadow-like doppelgangers of the two sneaking around, who only they can see.

Shortly after losing a battle with another dude and being shown his Aura by Pyrrha, Jaune’s condition gets worse, while after making an effort to be a good teammate to Ruby, Weiss’ marks also spread.

Jaune is the first to succumb, as one morning his teammates are unable to wake him. Shion Zaiden is brought in, since she specializes in hunting Nightmares—Grimm that take over the mind of their hosts and trap them in their dreams. She sets up an elaborate system to send the other members of JNPR into his mind to rescue him and draw the Nightmare out.

It works like a jiffy—indeed, he’s saved and the Grimm captured almost too quickly and easily. It was nice to see how well JNPR has gelled compared to the more dysfunctional RWBY. That said, I’m glad the focus wasn’t taken off of the main group of RWBY, as focus returns to them in the second half of the episode.

Jaune’s infection-by-Nightmare is foreshadowing for Weiss’, as like Jaune she’s going through some emotional conflict. While RWBY goes into town for an annual festival, it’s interrupted by news of a Faunus castaway on the run. Weiss and Blake get into it over human-Faunus relations and the nature of White Fang.

While trying to chase the castaway, Weiss bumps into Penny, a very robotic-seeming girl who is the cast’s newest member. But when Blake can’t handle Weiss’ prejudice anymore she runs off, and eventually the castaway finds her without the black bow that covers her cat ears and knows he’s with his brethren.

The thing is, Weiss isn’t a 100% racist monster, she’s just never contemplated the possibility someone like Blake could have once been in White Fang. Yang is there to see Weiss finally break down and cry over her frustration with how things have been going, but it’s a cathartic cry, not one of hopelessness.

When the same criminals who robbed the aura store in the first episode try to pull off a heist at the docks, it ends up being Penny who shuts it all down all by her lonesome, once again indicating she’s not human either. But when RWBY reunites, Weiss tells Blake she’s ready to look past her prejudices and see Blake for who she is, a classmate, a teammate, and hopefully one day soon, a friend.

But as had been heavily telegraphed, Weiss was eventually going to fall into the same briar patch as Jaune did, the product of being infected by a Nightmare. This leads to some creepy but also eerily beautiful final moments of the episode as she’s trapped in those brambles.

The big question for the fourth episode is, will Weiss allow Ruby, Blake and Yang into her mind as easily as Jaune let his teammates in, and will she prove harder to rescue from her dreams?

There’s an adage that three episodes are enough to know whether you want to continue with an anime. Honestly, it’s takes me everywhere between one and twelve, but one thing I can say for sure is that I’ll be sticking with RWBY. 

More often than not it looks and sounds fantastic, the character dynamics and conflicts sufficiently compelling, its world is elaborate and whimsical, and the Grimm are a multifaceted, credible threat. Finally, with a cliffhanger like this I await the fourth episode with great anticipation.

 

Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut – 12 (Fin) – Moonlight Dreamers

Having watched Irina and Lev risk their lives so many times for each other and their country (very much in that order), Anya has decided it’s her turn to put everything on the line. And boy, does she ever, drugging the guards and sneaking off to the ceremony in the Zirnitran equivalent of Red Square.

There, a seemingly obedient Lev is giving the speech he was told to give…until suddenly he’s talking about how he actually isn’t the first cosmonaut, but the second, after a 17-year-old vampire girl! As he gives her her proper due by describing everything he loves about her, she breaks from the crowd, and with help from Anya (using herself as a missile!), manages to reach Lev before the sun knocks her out.

I expected there to be some bittersweet way Irina and Lev would be reunited. I did not think it would be in front of 200,000 Zirnitrans, Chairman Gergiev, and a TV and radio audience of 3 billion. In front of the largest audience in human history, Lev decided that lies wouldn’t do. He made his estranged parents, and more importantly Irina, proud. He told the truth. Then he hands the mic to the true Hero of Zirnitra.

A lot of the crowd is not initially open to listening to what they perceive as an evil monster to say, but the more Irina talks, the more she sounds like just a young girl who dreamed of reaching the stars, and frikkin’ did it. Later, Gergiev uses Lev’s and Irina’s modifications to the ceremony to tell the world that, actually, Zirnitra is the progressive, tolerant nation of the future, and these two crazy kids are proof positive!

Lev makes a stink about being used as a pawn by Gergiev and Harlova, but it ultimately doesn’t matter that much because a.) somehow, Lev and Irina (and presumably Anya) escape any kind of consequences for basically committing high treason—at least in the country that had been portrayed to this point—and b.) they’re both alive, together again, and the twin faces of hope for a better world, and a future where they travel to the moon together.

Did this ending strain credulity a bit? Sure. But is it a cold Monday, the second-shortest day of the year, and this was exactly the fun upbeat ending I both wanted and needed? ALSO SURE. All it was missing was a first kiss…though their first “bite” a few weeks ago arguably already achieved that!

Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut – 06 – Moon Shot in the Arm

Traumatized by what she saw at the crash site, Irina has a nightmare about suffering the same fate as all those poor test dogs. But as usual, she keeps her troubles within and tries to power through them, training as if nothing is wrong. But her mental anguish results in physical ailments: fatigue, loss of apetite, and anemia. With only days before the launch, this is no time for her numbers to be dropping.

Remembering what Irina told him about drinking the goat’s blood, Lev arranges some blood to drink. Not knowing where it came from, Irina refuses it, saying she’d rather die than defile her body. Unwilling to let her dream die, Lev offers an alternative: she can drink his blood…from his arm.

Irina agrees, and not long after digging into that arm, the light is back in her eyes, and the color back in her flesh. It’s also the equivalent of this particular couple’s first kiss…a vampire’s kiss. As such, both of them act bashfully and nervously before it happens. Once it’s over though, Irina looks and feels so much better, Lev is glad he had blood to offer. Still, Irina seems to feel a bit guilty for taking it.

With Irina back on her feet, the two enter the final stages of her training, including the harrowing parachute spin. Her first such trip to the ground is in tandem with Lev, who keeps her calm when the g-forces start to rattle her. Once they land, Lev tells her that her next jump will be solo. Who knew then that meant he wouldn’t be around for it!

Due to what looks like some shenanigans from Franz, the centrifuge goes haywire. Lev basically breaks the machine in order to stop it, enraging the old asshole researcher, who then decides to start beating on Irina. Lev doesn’t lose his temper, but it doesn’t matter.

When the old coot trips and falls backwards, it’s all the pretext he needs to have Lev hauled away for assault. Irina is now left without a protector…and her capsule will indeed be fitted with explosives in case it lands near the borders. In other words, just as Lev and Irina had their closest and most tender encounter, things couldn’t be worse. The only bright side is that Irina does indeed seem bound for space in just a couple of days.

Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut – 05 – Free Falling

A military bigwig arrives to inspect the training facility, and to also tell the two dozen or so candidates that only six of them will make the cosmonaut cut. When one of those candidates screws up their parachuting drill, Lev is suddenly back on the active roster. He might end up in space after all.

Meanwhile, Irina is in the anechoic chamber, which she basically treats like her coffin, only larger and most likely quieter. While in there, she’s left alone with her awful memories of when her village was massacred and her parents torched. At one point she softly calls Lev’s name, and can’t help but grab his sleeve when he finally comes in to release her from her solitude.

Irina probably figures she can’t hide the fact that she doesn’t hate Lev’s guts, so she comes right out and says she considers him the only human who isn’t bad. I’m not sure what that pink-haired researcher did to her! All joking aside, we get another great skydiving scene with Irina ending up in the unenviable situation of having to stare at Lev to keep her head up, even if it means being unable to hide her blushing.

When the two are up in the air they can forget about all the awfulness that surrounds them, but they come back down to earth literally and figuratively when they witness an aborted space capsule flight and the corpse of one of the experiment dogs. Those horrible flashbacks come roaring back, putting Irina in a state of shock.

Lev’s superior picks them up, and tells him that no one was supposed to see that. Back in the command room, the mission commander battles both his ailing heart and the political reality of having to self-destruct Irina’s capsule should she land in another country. You can tell he’s way more in this for the science and discovery, not the patriotism.

Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut – 04 – Fly Me to the Moon

With Lev being told Irina will launch in three weeks and her finally trying on a real spacesuit, shit is starting to get very real. If the higher-ups are to be believed, she may not live a long life even if the launch is successful, but Irina doesn’t seem to mind at all, and continues going through the training with nary a complaint (though she does remark that the suit is really heavy).

While Irina is changing out of her sweaty clothes into a fresh jumpsuit, Lev encounters Rosa in the hallway. Rosa is, so far, a completely one-dimensional racist bitch who is a waste of time. But when she lays into Irina to Lev, Irina overhears, and bids that Rosa say what she wants to say to her face. Rosa slinks off, warning Lev not to get his blood sucked. Even though, if we’re honest, it’s Rosa who sucks here!

When Lev and Irina get some free time before she has to enter an anechoic chamber (where you can indeed go mad quite quickly listening to nothing but your body make noises), Irina kinda prods Lev into taking her to a jazz bar. She gets some soda water, natch, but one sip of Lev’s dark red concoction has her slightly tipsy. No matter; she’s never heard jazz before, and she quite likes it.

Later that night Lev and Irina head out to a frozen lake to skate. While last week’s animation really shined with the airplane ride and skydiving, here Irina performs an elegant performance while an insert song plays. It’s really quite something to behold, and the latest demonstration of why Lev should really try to prevent her from being “disposed of” if he can.

Irina and Lev have never been closer. He tells her how he’s wanted to go to the moon since he was five; she told him how her parents were burned alive while she watched…pretty standard date stuff!

As for the whole post-launch disposal thing, Irina volunteered to be a test subject because it meant she would be going to space, and possibly the moon, before the humans defiled it. Even if the Zirnitrans off her afterweards, they can never take away the fact that she danced among the starts before they did.

Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut – 03 – Freedom, Not Fear

After a scene involving the pudgy, scheming old men who run Zirnitra from the capital, Sangrad (some who want to kill Irina as soon as the mission is over, some who want to wait and see), we see Lev get his first R&R since taking on the job of Irina’s handler. His former candidate comrades are a mix of curious, pitying, and superior.

It’s clear that due to his time with Irina, he’s no longer one of them…and that might not be the worst thing. As for “things”, it’s clear Anya doesn’t consider Irina one, but a fellow person. As a scientist, she knows the best way to overcome fear of something is to understand it better. She understands vampires to an extent she doesn’t fear them in the least. On the contrary; she adores “Irinyan”.

Lev ends up applying this axiom to Irina’s acrophobia, by exposing her to the most extreme heights so she can eventually realize how goddamn awesome it is when you’re flying and thus overcome her fear. Their moonlight flight is a series highlight in terms of visual panache; it really draws you in, like the great Miyazaki adventure in the sky.

Lev’s experiment on his “test subject” works like a charm, as Irina’s fears are replaced by wonder and a thirst for freedom unquenchable by even the fizziest lemon seltzer available. But the flight doesn’t just change Irina. It continues a gradual but inevitable change in Lev, from a soldier carrying out his duty of handling a test subject, to a young lad developing feelings for Irina Luminesk as if she were an ordinary human woman.

Lev isn’t training Irina in order to achieve the mission anymore; he’s training her so the government won’t dispose of her for not measuring up. Fortunately Irina excels at pretty much everything they throw at her, and once she’s over her acrophobia, flight and parachuting (another bravura sequence) is no exception. One of Lev’s colleagues warns him not to develop feelings for Irina, but it’s clearly already way too late for that!