The RWBY RPRT: PvP

Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back again with The RWBY RPRT! And what an episode of RWBY to Report. Let's not waste anytime and dive on in!

Episode nine of Volume 3 is titled "PvP" and it starts off with Ozpin in his office with his usual mug of coffee as he watches the pairing for the next match in the singles round: Pyrrha vs Penny. The two huntresses in training stare off against one another and share a little banter, at least Penny does, Pyrrha is still reeling from the everything that's happened with her in the last few episodes; and they engage in battle and at an early stalemate with Penny using her wired controlled swords and Pyrrha avoiding and deflecting each of the strikes. 

As the fight's going on, Ruby and Mercury are outside the arena themselves. Ruby attempts to get past Mercury, but he ain't having none of it; the leader of Team RWBY tries to super speed her way from him, but he puts a stop to that with a swift kick to the gut; and when she tries to call for help, Mercury shoots her Scroll away. You know, you'd think after the situation in Volume 2, or at least with a brawler of a sister like Yang, Ruby would've had the foresight to learn some hand to hand fighting (Although I doubt how much that would've helped her in this case). She eventually manages to give Mercury the slip and rushes off as fast as she can to do anything against the match transpiring.

Back to the fight, Penny is keeping Pyrrha at bay with sword strikes and lasers aplenty. Even with her Semblance of Polarity, Pyrrha is meeting her match against Penny and is even disarmed by the robot girl. As Penny preps for her next attack, shenanigans take place as Emerald uses her Semblance to make Pyrrha see Penny's weapon multiply into ridiculous numbers; with all of these blades aimed at her, Pyrrha sends them back using a very powerful pulse of her polarity Semblance. The force she puts into this pulse not only pushes Penny's blades back, but it causes the wires attached to the blade to cut through her body, revealing to the world that she is...

...A robot...who is also now dead.

The audience in the arena and watching around the world are mortified at the graphic imagery of this girl's destruction. Among this crowd we see an old white haired man watching the events play out from his television screen.

It's obvious from the picture that the man watching this is the man who built Penny. But I've also heard an interesting theory that the man who built Penny could in fact be Weiss' father. Now this one I don't think is true, but it does spark the idea that Weiss' dad might have been involved in Penny's creation, most likely via providing the funds for the process to happen. After all, the unidentified man was watching the scene from Atlas and we know the Schnee Dust Company headquarters is in Atlas and often collaborates with The Atlas Military. Maybe with The Schnee Dust Company's war with The White Fang, Weiss' papa decided he needed something stronger than simple Huntsmen or the Military, something that he knew could protect the Dust The Company had (Especially after the train incident in the Black Trailer) and he allowed Ironwood and Penny's father to go through with their experimentation. 

Whether that is true or not, only time will tell. All I know is that with the introduction of This Mysterious old man, Penny won't be gone for long. But the thing I'm curious about now is whether or not Penny being rebuilt will actually scramble her memory and if she'll have any recollection of the things she's gone through since her introduction in the series. In short, It's obvious the body can be fixed, but is the soul gone for good?

The crowd's distraught nature baits the Grimm to come over to the area, and they manage to break through Vale's defenses; and Professor Port and Oobleck try to shut off the broadcast, but they have no luck doing so. It's then revealed that Cinder has hijacked the broadcast and uses Penny's death as a means to paint both Atlas and Vale as horrible kingdoms: Atlas for creating a robot and disguising it as a innocent girl, wondering just how that's going to help in fighting Grimm. And Vale for teaching students to be merciless and lacking honor and respect, as seen from Yang's fight and in Pyrrha's battle with Penny. She ends her rousing speech with note that peace within the Kingdoms is very fragile and that they are on the brink of war. 

As this is going on, hell is breaking loose in Vale. Grimm of all sizes and shapes are running rampant, the Atlas military is trying their best to fight them off, but they aren't having much luck. Even some of the airships Ironwood brought with him in the beginning of the Volume are being taken out by some of the Grimm. But that's not the worst of it as you can see in the picture above. In one of the airships, Neo, disguised as a Atlesian officer, takes out all of the other officers and frees Roman Torchwick, who we haven't seen or heard very little of in this Volume. And the episode ends with Adam and his squad of both White Fang Soliders and Grimm going straight for Beacon Academy.

"PvP" should be renamed the episode where stuff starts to hit the fan. Now that I think about it, it's an episode one could argue has been built up since Volume 2 where Pyrrha and Mercury faced off; and we're seeing that build up (despite how sloppy it might have been) pay off in this episode. Without a doubt, the best in the Volume to date as the animation, tone, and soundtrack were very "On point" as the kids like to say. There's no new episode of RWBY coming out this week as it's replaced with the last World of Remnant segment of The Volume. So it'll definitely be intriguing when the last few episodes of RWBY Volume 3 make their way.

Til next time folks, I'm The Shaman of Animation.

Take Care...