It's a good thing RWBY took a break last week, or I'd be behind a week for the rest of the duration of the volume...
The episode is titled "New Challengers, and starts off right where the first episode picked up from with Team JNPR taking on the opposing team Team BRNZ. The fight doesn't start off well in JNPR's favor as Team BRNZ has a sniper that keeps them on the defensive and pulling back to think of an idea to combat them. Jaune makes the plan to have the team spread out and keep moving so the Sniper can't reach them. This soon leaves Ren alone with one of the members of the opposing team and that altercation ends with him getting violently shocked.
Seeing her best friend getting taken down causes Nora to spring into action against the same person that attacked Ren only for her to get shocked as well. Although Nora getting shocked conveniently works in her favor as it triggers her semblance: the ability to channel, absorb, and produce lightning; and her main use of the ability is to channel electricity to her muscles for enhanced strength. Nora then strikes back, knocking the unsuspecting opponent through a stone. Once again, it's very convenient that Nora was fighting against someone that used electricity and not fire or something like that. Another thing of note is that during the fight, the announcers, Professor Port and Oobleck (Teachers at Beacon), take time to explain Nora's semblance. During this, Port calls Nora "One of his favorite students". This line in particular has no significance to the plot of the episode, but it did make me realize that an Alternate Universe story that covers the adventures of Peter Port and Nora Valkyrie would be pretty awesome. Like Doc Brown and Marty McFly, except instead of time travel, they'd beat up monsters and go on other wacky adventures together.
Anyways, back to the actual review. Something I failed to mention last time was that the arena the Vytal Festival Tournament took place in was capable of changing its environment into two separate biomes for tournament matches. Team JNPR's happened to be a stormy mountain. Upon seeing it, Jaune orders Nora to climb the mountain to absorb the electricity from the top of the mountain. All the while, Team JNPR is keeping the rest of Team BRNZ at bay while she goes and does this.
Fully charged with lighting, Nora morphs her hammer into its grenade launcher mode and rains missiles down on the sniper and then drops down with her hammer and smashes it to the ground. The one, two combo causes all of Team BRNZ to bunch together, vulnerable for a finishing blow. And that's when...the show decides to make a poor attempt at humor.
The joke is essentially Jaune calls for Team Attacks and attempts to initiate "Flower Power", the Team Attack name for Nora and Ren; and no one on the team seems to understand what it is Jaune wants them to do. Here's why the comedy here is a bust for me personally. One of the big internal conflicts with Jaune as a character, especially in Volume one of RWBY, is that he's nowhere near as good as...anyone in Beacon really as far as combat goes; and one of the goals of the character is to become strong enough to lead his team and not be seen as a goofball; and one of the problems Team JNPR had going in their match is: "Was Jaune good enough to hold his own in the matches?"
So fast forward into the match and it plays out pretty well in my opinion. We see Jaune in a slight state of panic very early on in the fight, telling his team to retreat from the current stand off and now he has to think of something else; and while he didn't make any big moves combat wise, the team trusted him enough that they listened to his orders. It seemed very minuscule, but it actually was something very substantial for Jaune as a character as it showed that while he still isn't the best fighter, he could come up with a plan that led to success. It could've done something good for developing Jaune as a character.
But then the show goes around and screws that up with the "Flower Power" Scene. Because it shows that Jaune as a leader failed to get his Team to understand his plan of attack in the middle of an important tournament match. A plan that mind you, they apparently had gone over prior to their match, but again, the team didn't understand it. RWBY in my opinion, had a good opportunity to further the character of Jaune as far as his role of leadership went, but they sacrificed that for the sake of comedy.
And to make matters worse, Team BRNZ, for no other purpose than for, once again, the sake of comedy, were such idiots that they just stood still and let JNPR have this conversation instead of taking advantage of them with their guards down. So then the show not only killed the opportunity for development, but they also killed the conflict of whether or not Jaune was actually ready for this kind of competition.
And my final complaint of this scene here is that if I wasn't aware of the shipping in RWBY, I wouldn't find the use of Ship names as Team Attacks to be nothing more than just annoying pandering. But I AM aware of The Shipping in RWBY, so therefore I find the use of Ship names as Team Attacks to be nothing more than just annoying pandering. RWBY, here's what I have to say to you doing this kind of stupid stuff...
I'm sure many of you will fine that long wall of text to be me just complaining for no reason, and that's fine. After all, we're all entitled to our own opinions so what are ya gonna do? The fight finally wraps up with Nora knocking out Team BRNZ with a mighty swing of her hammer proving that the moral of this fight is that Nora Valkyrie is awesome.
We take a quick cutaway from the fight to a Bar called, I'm not kidding, the Crow Bar where we get our first full, in show look at Qrow Branwen, voiced by Vic Mignogna. It's nothing too big of note, just Qrow watching the tournament and getting boozed up.
Back to the tournament, Team SSSN are about to do battle with Team NDGO. Weiss tries to cheer good luck to Neptune, but is soon seething (Or at least she's supposed to, her voice actress could've done a little better with the delivery there) when she catches the blue haired boy trying to flirt with the all female team NDGO. The environments for the match is chosen: The desert and the ocean. But there is a twist! Neptune, is afraid of the water. So you can bet before and as soon as the fight starts, Neptune freezes up and he's running as far away from the water as possible. Neptune! Who's an allusion to the God of The Sea Neptune, is afraid of the water!
Okay, here's why this whole comedic side of this fight scene doesn't work for me. Neptune, since he was introduced has only been in one fight; and in that fight, he got taken out within not even thirty seconds of said fight. So, with that in mind and this scene in particular, Neptune is the biggest tool in RWBY, I don't know why anyone would want this guy on their team; and like the JNPR "Flower Power" Scene, this fight makes Team SSSN's leader Sun look like a gigantic goof. In the early stages of the fight, one member of his team immediately runs away, one is taken out quickly, and when it's two on three, advantage enemy team, his one remaining teammate was reluctant to help. Way to go Sun, I can tell you put a lot of effort into whipping your team into shape for this tournament... Long story short, Team SSSN beats Team NDGO via Neptune shocking the water they were standing in; and they celebrate with silly dancing.
Meanwhile, back at The Crow Bar, Qrow channels me and calls the fight a mess. He then spots a ship flying by and drunkenly stumbles out the bar. That's right folks, Vic Mignogna's character is drunk as a skunk. If there were any girls around, he'd probably throw up on their boobs (If anyone gets that totally dated reference, you get an internet point...which amounts to nothing really...)
The episode ends with Weiss at the arena catching glimpse of the same ship that Qrow did and with a smile (?) on her face simply says "She's here". She, of course, is her older sister Winter, and because this is a RWBY review and I feel it's an obligation to say it: "Winter is Coming..."
New Challengers was a goofy episode; and considering what the upcoming episode of RWBY is going to entail, it's probably for the better that it was a sillier one. Even with my complaints, there was nothing terribly wrong with this episode, just a bunch of stuff that I would personally change but then again, I'm not the writing this show. I just only complain about the stuff I don't like. The next episode is where the true test for RWBY Volume 3 begins as it's where the plot starts to pick up and then we'll see what will ensue from there.
Till next Time Folks, I'm The Shaman of Animation.
Take Care...
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