RWBY S6E6: “Alone In the Woods”
Let's see if this one measures up to the previous episode's quality (ignoring the business-as-usual nonsense fight scene with Cinder and Dulce de Leche, I mean). From what I went into these episodes knowing, I feel like I should rewatch Serenity before giving my final assessment on these four episodes, but for the time being S6E5 was unusually good for RWBY and I'll be happy if E6 "Alone In the Woods" manages to keep it up.
The gang are camped out in the living room of the abandoned house. Fire still burning. Granny Cybereyes still using her namesake to read through some documents they found in the house. Creepy music still quite good. Outside, the blizzard seems to have let up, so they should be able to set out again in the morning. Unfortunately, Qrow managed to find the booze Ruby and Weiss hoped to keep from him, and he's starting to get even edgier and more gravelly-voiced than usual.
I suspect the alcohol and the effects of whatever's locked in that sub-basement are having a mutually reinforcing effect. Sort of a "The Shining" type deal, perhaps? Could be. That would actually make me appreciate this sequence more rather than less; mixing influences from multiple sources in a sensible, coherent way to produce something new is the good kind of imitation.
Ruby asks Qrow if he's alright. He unconvincingly tells her that he is, in a way that sounds glaringly sarcastic. You know, with the way they've been veritably wallowing in negative emotions this whole time - with Qrow in particular seeming to almost gleefully encourage the others to do so - it seems like there really SHOULD have been a grimm attack by now. If there actually are enough grimm in the area for them to be worried about. And if grimm actually are attracted to negative emotions.
Or...maybe the thing in the basement is scaring the grimm away? That could be. That would make sense. And it would explain the feeling of "wrongness, but not the usual kind of wrongness" if this place is in the grip of a completely different kind of supernatural threat that the characters don't know about and the grimm themselves aren't fond of.
Then the camera cuts to a close-up shot of the fire, which was an absolutely TERRIBLE idea on the directors' part because the fireplace looks like this:
Seeing the fire in motion makes it much worse.
Like, seriously, have a look at that image in totality. You've got the typical cell-shaded looking stone fireplace, but then a fucking pseudorealistic grate and what looks like the cut-and-pasted-off top of an ash pile that look like premade videogame assets or something, and then the fire is just this two-dimensional SHEET that would fit in a low-budget hand-drawn cartoon but in context looks like someone holding up some orange construction paper. Also, WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK is going on with those shadows?
I wouldn't expect an animation team to put much work into a background detail like a fireplace. This would normally be exactly the place to save time by kludging together some odds and ends; the audience isn't going to be looking for imperfections in a background detail like a hearth. But then they decided to do a completely unnecessary extended close-up shot of the fucking thing! WHY???
I guess this is nothing new. "Going far out of your way to call attention to the warts of your own visuals" is basically a time-honored RWBY tradition at this point. Like, this barely even rates compared to the copied character models in the pre-foodfight lunchroom season in S2E1.
While the others stare morosely into the flames, clearly dismayed by this affront to the visual medium, Granny Cybereyes reports that she's found the diary of Bartleby, the founder of Brunswick Farms. An enterprising, foolhardy sort, as one would imagine, and always coming up with new and bizarre ideas on how to make the wilderness hospitable.
I like how Granny's cybereyes have little shutters that open and close partway to express emotion. Very Valve sort of aesthetic, and it works. They're honestly MORE expressive than the way the eyes of the other characters are animated.
In the middle of her story, Ruby comes in and tells everyone that Qrow says to get some sleep, because they're leaving early in the morning. They all immediately lay down and start trying to sleep at this, as if they'd been waiting for the order to do so. Blake says "oh thank goodness." What, did she not think they were leaving in the morning, now that the blizzard is very clearly over? Eh, maybe she's just stupid. Granny Cybereyes gets all pissy about some young punk like Qrow trying to order her around.
Suit yourself, lady.
By the time dawn comes around, the group are all asleep with blankets levitating comfortably at awkward angles over their bodies. Cozy.
More importantly than bedding physics though, are they not taking shifts?
Really?
Like, set aside for the moment that the people in this town all mysteriously died in their sleep and that concern has already been expressed about whatever caused that still being active. What if grimm came?
Hell, forget the plural grimm. What if a single, undersized, three-legged grimmberwolf that was exiled from its pack for being bad at killing people happened to come staggering into the village while the entire party was asleep?
Qrow and GC are asleep in their chairs where they'd been getting wasted and reading, respectively, so I guess you could infer that they were taking shifts before the sleep effect claimed the two adults who were standing watch together, if you were feeling generous. But that's really not what it looks like. When they wake up, no one acts shocked that they'd all been asleep simultaneously, or expresses wonder that they survived that.
...
I'm a pro-dungeon master for schoolkids aged 10-12. Multiple groups of THEM were able to independently figure out that you need to take shifts when the party is camping in a dangerous wilderness.
...
On a positive note, the awakening is triggered by a bottle falling out of Qrow's hand and startling Ruby awake, who in turn wakes up the others. It sort of implies that if it hadn't been for that sudden, loud noise, they might all have never woken up and died just like the villagers. That's effective, and kind of spooky.
Qrow has a number of empty bottles beside his chair. Ruby asks him about it, and he kind of snidely deflects her question, which leads Ruby to shatter one of the bottles against the wall in disgust.
He looks like he's about to say something dickish, but then folds and apologizes. Ruby embraces him, and tells him that he should really talk to his nieces instead of letting the booze just reach out and claim him when he gets stressed or nervous or bored.
Once again, the tone and framing here are serious, and Qrow's reactions - both immediate and after admitting fault - ring true to me. Qrow's drinking problem is being taken as seriously as it should be, both by the characters and by the work as a whole, and there's no humor or facetiousness anywhere to be found.
This is good. It's actually good. Like, no reservations here, the subplot about Qrow's struggle with substance abuse and Ruby's reactions to it are legitimately good material that I would - if not praise - than at least appreciate even if you transplanted them into a show that wasn't RWBY. The irony of it revolving around Qrow - one of the characters I had the least tolerance for during my original LW - doesn't escape me either.
Though, that makes sense really. My biggest problem with Qrow was that the show was framing him as the most awesomest thing ever and making light of his (often really despicable) behavior. Now it's NOT doing that. It's treating his flaws as flaws and taking him to task for them, while still trying to show him some empathy.
To be fair, his baseline unpleasantness is also nowhere near as bad as the season 3's to begin with, aside from that one moment with Oscar a couple episodes ago. Maybe it's just that the circumstances don't give him as much opportunity to be awful in this sequence of episodes, but either way, looking at this stretch in isolation, Qrow actually more or less works as a character.
...
...I just realized that some of what I just wrote about Qrow also applies to Ozpin.
I guess that brings me back to the question I raised in S6E4 regarding the story's intent. Was the intent all along to put these characters on a pedestal for the purpose of later dragging them down? The handling of Qrow is much less extreme than what the story did with Ozpin, and it encourages the audience to sympathize with him quite a bit more, but still. Ozpin. Qrow. Qrow's voice actor. There's a common theme here.
I know, I'm tempting imminent disappointment by considering the possibility that anything in RWBY has intention or vision behind it. But right now, more than it has since I was early in season 1 and hadn't yet run out of goodwill for the show, it FEELS like it does.
Again, I'm tempting fate, but. If what I'm seeing in season 6 actually was part of the plan all along, then that retroactively makes the early seasons significantly better. The story would still have been badly handled, but just knowing that there was a story being handled at all is an improvement.
...
The gang slowly drags itself out of the house and gets the flatbed hooked up. Hmm. It just occurred to me that that trailer will only be useful if there's still a clear road to drive it on, which there didn't appear to be when they discovered the village. Maybe there is still one after all though? As I said earlier, the corpses all appear to be relatively recent, so this place couldn't have been abandoned for THAT long, maybe the road does still exist. Anyway, they're mostly sitting around complaining at each other about everything, as if Qrow's hangover has somehow turned contagious. Those most effected by whatever enervating thing is buried under the houses are even proposing that they stay here and rest longer, even though they've all been hating the place since they arrived.
Also, apparently they haven't had breakfast yet and are getting out the flatbed with the intent of leaving immediately on empty stomachs. For some reason. Maybe this is just to show how muddled and out-of-it they are because of the tiredness effect, or maybe it's just RWBY being its baffling self.
It's always hard to tell this type of thing, when a show with a history of questionable character writing does a behavior-modification episode. It's hard to say what's meant to be caused by the in-universe mental effect and what isn't.
They finish attaching the flatbed, only to discover that it has a flat tire. Not surprising, but disheartening. In the state that they're in currently, it proves to be *very* disheartening. Granny Cybereyes chooses that moment to come out of the house and comment that "you people are just beacons for bad luck, aren't you?" which Qrow takes personally due to his poorly defined bad luck curse. Qrow sulks hungoveredly in the snow. Yang starts whining about how it seems like the universe itself doesn't want them to get to Atlas. Ruby seems to be proving more resistant than the others, probably because her body naturally produces caffeine. I wonder if that's a semblance-adaptation keep her blood pressure high even when she's spraying flying clouds of it out behind her.
Blake comments that it feels like they're always having to fight just to get by. This makes sense; she's had a privileged and sheltered life as the princess of Australia and in the past has only had to fight when she felt like it, so being forced to struggle is something Blake would have trouble getting used to. Ruby comments that a lifetime of conflict and struggle was what they signed up for to begin with, so it's dumb to start complaining about that now. That's a surprisingly on-point and insightful comment to come out of Ruby's mouth of all people's.
Unfortunately, it's immediately followed by the reply "I signed up to save the world. Not to just delay the inevitable."
From Oscar.
The kid who never "signed up" for any part of this whatsoever, is only here because he was randomly cursed with Ozpinitis, and who very clearly wasn't who Ruby was referring to.
Like, that could have been an effective comeback, and a punch to the gut for Ruby when she realizes she's discounted part of the party. Something like "Speak for yourselves; I never signed up for anything!" coming from Oscar would have both made a hell of a lot more sense, and also showed that - like Qrow with his alcoholism - the enervating force is acting on weaknesses and doubts that the characters already had within them. As it is, this line would have been a better fit coming from virtually any member of the party BESIDES Oscar (Granny Cybereyes is totally an ex-huntress who took an arrow to the eyeballs, it's kinda obvious).
Then they all start whinging about how their quest is pointless because Boston is immortal again, which...well, honestly, it would make sense if this scene was the FIRST time they started acting like that's actually a problem worth getting bent out of shape over. Like, if originally they were like "the enemy ringleader can't be killed? Well that sucks, hopefully we'll never have to fight her face to face," and only now are acting like Boston's immortality is an obstacle to them re-securing the lamp, it would show the effect working on them really well. Distant, longterm problems suddenly becoming imminent catastrophes that make them lose all hope even in the short term. But, that start long before their arrival at Brunswick Farms, so it's not that.
Then Yang suggests that instead of trying to continue to Atlas to seal the relic, they should just hide it here in the wilderness. It doesn't appear that the enemy knows exactly where they are, after all.
...
Notably, Yang doesn't mention the possibility of the ubiquitous grimm potentially acting as enemy scouts. It's not clear how much control Boston has over the grimm, or how much the characters KNOW about the extent of her control, but if we assume that she *can't* just have any grimm in the world ping her when it happens on the lamp then this would make sense.
Do the characters have reason to think she can or can't do that? Qrow did refer to her as the "mistress" of the grimm in season 4, but no one has ever defined what all that entails, and I don't know where Yang would have learned more about this in the meantime.
So yeah, I really don't know how reasonable of an idea this is. Maybe Yang is actually proposing a really good course of action here. Who can tell?
...
Ruby holds the lamp in front of her, considering. The enervation effect is clearly starting to chip away at her too, despite her innate biological countermeasures. She steps up to the well, thinking about the wisdom of just tossing it down there and hoping it sinks into a silty aquifer floor or whatever.
She's startled back to the present when a pair of red grimm eyes glare up at her from the bottom of the well.
That was a decent jumpscare. I'd been half-expecting it, of course, but it still gave me a nice startle.
It also gave Ruby a nice startle, causing her to drop the lamp, which tumbles down into the darkness as the eyes vanish.
Ruby's eyes go wide, body language going from exhausted to alert, as she informs the group that there's something down there. They...don't believe her. Insist that she's just seeing things.
I'm sorry but WHAT?
Unless the spell that they're all under is outright mind control rather than just depression/enervation, I am calling total and complete BULLSHIT on this.
She saw a pair of glowing red eyes. A trait shared by all grimm seen so far. The very first sighting of the grimm within the show proper, back in the forest test arc in early season 1, was glowing red eyes looking out of the darkness. What she saw and described looked like a grimm. They've been actively talking and worrying about grimm for this whole Brunswick Farms arc. Grimm infesting underground spaces in particular has been an established part of the lore - established FOR THESE CHARACTERS SPECIFICALLY - since season 2.
Why would they not believe her?
Again, if this is mind control or telepathic suggestion at work and Ruby just happened to make her will save here, then it could make sense. But I can't imagine mere tiredness or depression causing these people to disbelieve a teammate's grimm sighting unless it was severe enough to also have them all literally writhing on the ground crying. Which they aren't.
Then, Ruby babbles desperately about how they need to get the lamp back, now! There's something in the well, they can't just leave it down there with it!
...o...but
Ruby, you were considering Yang's suggestion before.
You know that the wilderness is crawling with roving grimm swarms.
You knew that tossing the lamp would mean exposing it to grimm sooner or later.
Why does there happening to be a grimm in the well at this particular moment change anything?
...
Once again, how am I supposed to tell if this is explained by the Brunswick Farms mindfuck effect or not, when the characters in this show are often written like they're being mindfucked just by default?
...
Ruby insists that they need to go down the well and get the lamp back before they leave. Qrow is reluctant. And tries to convince Oscar to go find a spare tire, since he's too exhausted to. Ruby says that she's going down to recover the lamp no matter what. After a moment, Blake agrees to go with her. Then Weiss. Then, with more visible reluctance than any of the others, Yang. Nice protective big sis as always.
As they descend, Qrow yells at Oscar to find a spare tire and hitch it up while he goes to get more booze. Granny Cybereyes glowers disapprovingly at him, and then sits down on the front porch and keeps reading.
Ruby drops into the well first, and...um.
So, this well. It goes into a, um.
...mine?
...subway tunnel?
What the actual fuck?
I guess Bartleby and his crew unknowingly built their village over a long-abandoned...um...whatever this is?
This is more like the well dungeon from Ocarina of Time than anything else.
Worryingly, none of the characters act surprised at finding whatever the hell this sprawling underground facility is supposed to be at the bottom of a three-family-farm's simple handwell. Like, no one comments on it. No one raises an eyebrow. Suggesting that the writers themselves didn't realize that this is not exactly typical rustic hydration.
I was actually starting to get psyched for team RWBY to uncover the mystery of the underground tunnels, but they're not even acknowledging it.
They walk along the giant underground mineshaft or whatever, using their cell phone lights to scan for the lamp. Either the current or the grimm must have moved it away from the well entrance. Blake advises them to turn off their lights so that they can more easily see the lamp's glow, seeming to forget that she's the only one of them with darkvision, but they all do it. Because I guess not even Ruby is worried about the grimm she saw a few seconds ago anymore.
Meanwhile, on the surface, GC finds something in the journal that makes her face grow concerned and her eye-shutters narrow. DUN DUN DUUUUN.
After some trudging forward through the tunnel (I just noticed that the water isn't even deep enough to draw from using this sort of well. Maybe due to most of the water table being frozen at this time of year? Or...I don't even know what to guess about how this well is supposed to have worked), Blake spots a glow coming from around the corner of a side passage up ahead and points it out to Ruby.
Either the glow is actually a monster, or its from the lamp currently being held by a monster. One of the two.
And...Ruby runs ahead and turns the corner out of sight of the other three, alone, while they just stand back in place doing nothing. Lethargy effect hitting them even harder all of a sudden? I CAN'T TELL, BECAUSE THIS IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF STUPID SHIT THAT RWBY HAS *ALWAYS* HAD ITS CHARACTERS DO!
Back upstairs, GN flips open to a big labeled article and illustration of the monster they're dealing with. It's a legitimately scary picture. The musical accompaniment also does it justice.
If nothing else, the atmosphere of these few eps is still doing really well.
Back in the tunnels, dumb stupid idiot Ruby has eagerly rushes ahead and turns the corner alone, despite knowing that there are grimm down here. Now, to be fair, Ruby's an experienced combatant at this point, and even before the series' start she was able to carve through small armies of the most common grimm variants with little trouble. So, you could read this as Ruby being confident that if she runs into grimm down here, she'll be able to deal with them for as long as it takes her companions to hear the sounds of battle and catch up. Okay. That's something a (perhaps slightly overconfident) fighty character might do, sure.
...except that after picking up the lamp and seeing the group of grimm standing a few meters ahead of it, Ruby's eyes go wide in panic, and she screams in shock and abject terror while cradling the lamp to her chest like a teddy bear, her gunscythe - despite visibly hanging from her back - seemingly forgotten.
Also, the illustration of these things was so much scarier than the real thing holy shit look at these derpy Halloween decorations come to life:
I'm somewhat pleased to see grimm that aren't just a monster version of an animal or a generic monochrome reskin of something from classical mythology. These humanoid "apathy" grimm would probably be getting a much better reception from me if they hadn't been preceded by their own, much more intimidating, in-universe illustration. It's just that I was primed to expect something really creepy looking, and these look like some dorky haunted house animatronic.
These things are very slow moving, at least (wait...how did that one get away from under the well entrance so fast, then? How long exactly did the girls wait before dropping down there?), so the screaming Ruby is able to escape them and round the corner to the other three. As the grimmpathies shamble around the corner into her view after her, she remembers that she'll literally been professionally trained to kill these things and draws her gunscythe, but bullets don't seem to work very well. The others start to draw their weapons as well, but then the closest grimmpathies open their mouths and let out a high pitched scream that causes the four girls to slump forward, losing even more strength and willpower as they wince at the sound...
...
.....
........
Redeads.
They're literally redeads.
They went into the dungeon at the bottom of the well, and they're fighting redeads there.
...
So, remember earlier in this review, when I said this?
“That would actually make me appreciate this sequence more rather than less; mixing influences from multiple sources in a sensible, coherent way to produce something new is the good kind of imitation.”
I was wrong. Completely wrong. Ignore everything I said back there. Never do this.
I'm splitting the review here.
