Time for you weekly dose of Team RWBY courtesy of the guys over at Rooster Teeth.
Episode 6
This week’s episode is a really big improvement on last week’s. Although completely devoid of any action other than a slightly awkwardly animated shoving match between Blake and Yang, the character stuff really hits home and doesn’t feel at all forced while also actually advancing the stories of these characters in a meaningful way. The nature of the episode, however, means that the review will be slightly shorter than usual because I don’t want to get into super spoilery stuff.
Episode 6 is much more of a character based episode and that certainly doesn’t harm it. Now, I can’t talk about this without talking about last week’s and clarifying a few things. My problem with last week’s wasn’t that it was character based but that it never felt like it was going anywhere. This episode definitely doesn’t suffer from the same problem. The change of pace to a more relaxed atmosphere really works this week and the humour and sense of familiarity and warmth really comes across well. It’s very, very enjoyable to watch these characters interact on screen and the voice acting is back up to scratch this week.
The scene with Yang and Blake is probably the highlight. Apart from the fact that these two have great chemistry, we’re treated to some real backstory for Yang and Ruby and it’s actually really interesting. I won’t get into specifics but it really is emotionally relatable. I must comment on the art in the flashback too. It’s probably my favourite moment all season. As a comic book fan, the art here brings out some feelings of familiarity as it looks similar to the style of many manga in its lines but it also evokes the likes of JH Williams III in its colouring and pallete and if you don’t know who that is, look him up now and thank me later. Again, this scene adds huge amounts of depth to Yang and it bodes well for the future as the pasts of these people had never really been explored and in the last few weeks we’ve got hints about Weiss and now about Yang and Ruby and it’s making these characters much deeper.
After some more awkward Jaune-ing, which is quickly becoming one of my favourite parts each week, we finally get to the dance. With one or two stories wrapped up nicely with a bow on top, we get the ominous ending yet again, with Mercury and Emerald showing up and giving a cheesy but still entertaining final line.
Overall it was one of the best episodes of the season and everything that happened felt as though it happened for a reason. I’d definitely recommend you go watch it now, it’s the perfect episode to highlight the writing in the show which has been really strong this volume.
Check back next week to see what happens at the dance and you can see this week’s episode here.
