RWBY Volume 2 Review

"Keep moving forward” this was Monty Oum’s favorite phrase. You have to learn from your mistakes, not dwell on them, and always keep the drive to finish. This is what RWBY Vol. 2 adheres to. Vol.2 does what every continuation of a show does: furthers the plot, introduce new characters, expanding the old characters, and improving on mistakes from before.

RWBY starts the season off with a Yang by introducing the new villains who have been pulling Roman’s leash; Cinder voiced by cosplayer Jessica Nigri has been using Roman to cause disorder in Vale, with the help of her two associates Mercury Black voiced by J.J. Castillo, and Emerald voiced by Katie Newville. The White Fang, a pro-Faunus civil rights group turned extremist, are also back. While at Beacon, team RWBY is still reeling and trying to figure out Roman's plot from the last season. There is a very fun food fight between teams RWBY and JNPR.

Meanwhile, Blake wants to investigate why the White

Fang are involved in crime sprees, and she works herself to exhaustion. In addition to that arc are the upcoming Vytal Festival, a dance (cause no high school show is complete without one), and their enemies gathering to unleash their evil plot; this season doesn’t really have a bad arc such as last season. Each episode is interesting, furthers the plot, and gives characters some development. This season did often seem like it was trying to setup for the next, but we were also completely engaged with Vol. 2's story arcs.

All the characters return from the first season as well as new ones. We have Neptune, voiced by Kerry

Shawcross, a cool looking guy who is trying hard to maintain his image. General Ironwood, voiced by Jason Rose, the headmaster and a general from Atlas who reminds me a lot of George Patton. Neo is a silent worker for the villains who is very skilled in what she does, which is kicking ass. We also get another new team introduced called team CFVY (coffee), who are second year students led by fashionista Coco, voiced by Ashley Jenkins, a purse wielder that transforms into a mini-gun. Velvet, voiced by Caiti Ward, a student who was bullied last volume for her faunus heritage. The addition of team CFVY makes Beacon more of a school because they are the first upperclassman that we really see.

I liked the addition of new characters, but they should have been given more screen time. We only see Neptune in one scene, ok maybe an episode to be fair, but we didn’t see him fight.

Team RWBY and JNPR have more of their backgrounds fleshed, especially Pyrrha, Yang, and Blake. Some recurring characters from the first season also come back such as Sun and Penny. Penny comes back for a

couple episodes, and reveals a pretty obvious secret. But we get no fight scenes with her, and that's a bit disappointing. We see Blake working diligently on trying to stop the White Fang, and Yang trying to make her go to the dance and relax. Yang gets so much more character development in the volume and it's well done; we see her not just as this party girl, but a motherly figure showing great concern for Blake.

Pyrrha gets more development as a fierce warrior, but we also see a more vulnerable side, as seen when she talks about her time before Beacon, and how team JNPR and RWBY helped her, especially Jaune. We even see a budding romance between Jaune and Pyrrha, though Jaune being dense doesn’t take any hints. At one point of the show every fan cringed as Jaune acts like an idiot, and doesn’t notice Pyrrha’s advances. “JAUNE NO!!!”

One of my favorite moments was when Dr. Oobleck, a professor at Beacon, voiced by Joel Heymen, asks team RWBY excluding Ruby, “why do they want to be huntresses?” Weiss, Blake, and Yang all explain their own reasons, which doesn't seem to satisfiy Oobleck. The trio soon realize that it’s not about their personal desires, but more about what they signed up for, which is to protect the world of Remnant. Although this scene is all talk, it is perfect because the girls learned a lot about themselves.

I would have liked more time on Sun and Neptune, they are very interesting. After the way Sun fought last volume, at least give us another fight scene with him at least. But once again due to the time constraints they couldn't get too much attention. I do like that the teams have improved in their fighting abilities, everyone feels like they have improved in someway. But the villains are the weakest part of the season so far with some of the most underdeveloped characters for the series. And these are the villains who have this evil plot but instead they look generic and bland, they probably get more time later in the next volume, but to introduce them and leave them lackluster? It’s a good thing the plot keeps things interesting because this could have easily ruined the show.

The production in the new volume has gotten an upgrade; the production also stepped up its game and gives the show some great scenes. The buildings and streets in RWBY look better designed, and much of the background colors have

been muted, not to the point to make it look bland, but just enough to make the people stand out more. And now all the people in the background aren’t just silhouettes, now they are actual people; it adds the feeling of this being a living breathing city. The animation also has improved to the point where many of the noticeable quirks from the last volume are 90% gone. The dance had some of the best animations I had seen in this series. Most anime or cartoons would usually leave the background of the dance just that, background. They would only animate the main characters and leave everything else as a still; here we get the entire ballroom dancing. The animators animated every single person in the dance, whether they were dancing or sitting they were all moving in some way. Its felt like an actual dance with people. They are little animations quirks and mistakes that can be bothersome. But they are not as numerous or as distracting unlike the last volume. The fact that most of it was cleaned up and the rest of the animation looks beautiful is a major improvment. The lack of fight scenes from last season is not a complaint I have now. The first fight we get is a massive food fight with team RWBY and team JNPR fighting each other bread, swordfish, and watermelon turned into hammers that would make Gallagher confused and excited. We get a cool clean up scene as well when it’s all over (yeah never thought you would hear that before); with Glynda barges in and takes the war torn lunch room and puts it back together is awesome. Each table, seat, and food is put back to where it was and that must

have taken a lot of time to animate and it really pays off. And every fight after this just gets better and better, we see team RWBY fight as one team, we see more of team JNPR fighting, and we see even the professors and a dog fight. There are still mobs of enemies coming at them and the teams taking them on in huge waves but the fights I like the 1v1 fights. These fights shows how skilled both combatants are and I like the change of tactics for the characters. You are used to them fighting waves of Grimm or White Fang, but to deal with a single opponent you have to change your mindset and I saw that in each one on one fight. Honestly everything in the production design this volume was just awesome, they put a lot more work and time into this and it certainly shows.

The voice acting also stepped up to another level with the past lessons learned and experience from the first volume. I really didn’t have a problem with the second volume voice acting except for Junior. There were a few more serious moments in this volume, and the voice acting really drove those moments in hard. Whether Blake and Yang arguing about not letting something control you, to Pyrrha giving love advice and pouring her heart out, to Dr. Oobleck and Weiss, Blake, and Yang all talking about what it means to be a huntress. All of the moments are given a lot more emotional depth because of the voice actors, even the newer voice actors such as Jessica Nigri who hasn’t had any prior experience, gives a sinister, calm, calculating voice and it really gives Cinder the look and feel of a villain. Blake’s voice actor Arryn Zeck has improved a lot and she has no problem delivering the more serious lines. But let's talk about Junior's voice actor Jack Patillo. He is from Let's Play the same as Michael Jones, but his voice actor was weak. We heard him as Junior in the Yellow trailer, I thought he improved but he did not. He still read his lines in an awkward manner and this surprised me. With everyone else who improved since the trailers release I thought at least it would be ok. Granted we only see him in a couple scenes in one episode. But the music once again stole the show for me, this soundtrack blows the last volume’s soundtrack out of the water. The opening just feels epic, Time To Say Goodbye just sets this great tone and mood that follows the episode and just gets that hyped feeling ready and waiting for whatever RWBY has to offer. But my favorite song on it is Dream Come True. Which is about someone who you like, likes someone else and just hoping and waiting for them to notice you. And I know we have all been in that situation at least once. Honestly there a lot of great songs on this soundtrack as well and the scores for all of the episodes are all beautifully done.

RWBY Volume 2 keeps the mentality of “Keep moving forward” in it with every episode, with each episode and arc being better than the last one. While the villains may have been lackluster and some of the animation hasn’t been entirely cleaned up all the way, the way they executed the volume was almost perfect. I still would have liked some more scenes with Sun and Penny. The focus was on team RWBY and JNPR was great and I did like learning more about them. With all the set-up it gave us and all the buildup for the next volume it should be a great pay off for the upcoming Vytal Festival!

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