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With the Volume 2 series finale to be posted this week, now seems like a good time to start off RWBY Tuesday on this new Volume. Does it make up for the disappointment on how Volume 1 ended? If you haven’t seen it here is the YouTube video embed of the first episode of Volume 2 entitled Best Day Ever.

The scene starts off in Vale as we see the Dust merchant from Volume 1 getting ready to reopen shop. As he’s coming down from his ladder, he accidentally bumps into Emerald who we saw at the end of Volume 1 with Cinder. Emerald apologizes for bumping into the old man and asks for directions since she is new in Vale. We see her later thanking the Old Man for directions as she makes her way down the street. Here she is met by Mercury who we also saw at the end of Volume 1 with Cinder. It turns out that Emerald picked the Old Man’s pocket (possibly) for she tries to offer the ill-gotten gains to Mercury in exchange for him in shutting up. We learn between their interactions that they are thieves as they make their way to a local bookstore. Once they enter they begin to grill the bookstore owner about various books he might have in stock. But when Emerald ask if he has “Third Crusade” the tone of their conversation changes dramatically from curiosity to underlying concern. As Mercury turns down the lights in the store, Emerald speaks of how his brothers in the White Fang would not be too happy with him trying to leave town. This prompts the bookstore owner to admit why those two have visited him, revealing himself as a Faunus as he tries to attack both Emerald and Mercury. Emerald dodges the bookstore owner’s attack but takes a hit from Mercury’s shotgun blast kick. The scene ends with the mysterious trio leaving the book store with Mercury taking a comic for himself, leaving the impression that the owner of the store is dead.

The next scene has us in Beacon Academy’s dining hall as Blake continues to go over notes from last year. Yang asks her what she’s doing and upon finding out proclaims it’s lame as Nora flings food at Yang for her to eat. Ruby then appears with a big binder full of ideas on how they should spend their last day of freedom before classes resume. Blake suggests that she might step this one out but Weiss suggests that despite what they do, they should do it as a team. As this conversation progresses, Yang and Nora’s food flinging slowly turns into a small food fight till Weiss accidentally gets a pie to the face.

The next scene has us being introduce to Monkey boy’s friend (yes I’m still sore over him and will continue to call him suck) Neptune as he explains his first encounter with Ruby and the gang. He even let’s slip that Blake is a faunus though he tells Neptune that he has to keep it a secret and not like "tell Scarlet when Sun's back is turned secret." As they’re talking we see from the dining hall windows that the situation is slowly falling into chaos inside. Just as Monkey Boy and Neptune enter the hall we see all the students inside make for the door as Team RWBY and Team “Phantasy Star” take part in a food fight that makes the food fight in the movie National Lampoon's Animal House look tame in comparison. Upon the fight’s conclusion Glynda Goodwitch appears and cleans up the dining hall with her abilities and chides the children that they shouldn’t “play with their food.” Ozpin then appears and tells Glynda to let it go and let them be children for it is a role they won’t have for long.

The next scene has Emerald and Mercury arriving at a warehouse where White Fang troops are offloading cargo. When Roman Torchwick notices them he sarcastically replies that “she brought the kids this time.” As he makes the two feel uncomfortable he pickpockets Emerald to see that she has an address and demands where she got this. The duo then say they were merely taking care of Roman’s problems. As the trio get into an argument over the bookstore owner, Cinder appears and criticizes all three of them in regards to Roman not taking care of the issue sooner and Emerald/Mercury disobeying her in wanting them to keep their hands clean while in Vale. Emerald and Mercury apologize while Roman justifies his inaction with being so busy stealing every speck of Dust in the kingdom. This prompts him to demand of Cinder the details of their plans though Cinder will only tell him that they are merely moving on to “phase 2” as she gives the order for the warehouse to be cleared out. The scene ends with Roman trying to smoke a cigar only to find that Emerald had pickpocketed his lighter when he pickpocketed the address off of her. She sticks out her tongue at him as she taunts him with this lighter. Run new RWBY intro as ending credits.

Upside

Fully animated NPC’s

Though I originally liked the idea of other people in the world of Vale being displayed as black silhouettes, it’s nice to see fully animated people this go around. It shows that the world is indeed inhabited by people instead of just black cut outs of individuals. Whether this was done because the show needed to emphasize that there is a world needing defending against the creatures of Grim, or the black silhouette thing was done in Volume 1 to cut animation time remains to be seen. But this is still a welcome change just the same.

Longer episodes!

This was one of the complaints that hampered the series back in Volume 1. Despite the best efforts of Rooster Teeth the shorter episode runs for most of the series was just too short to be enjoyable. Whether this was done due to time constraints or internally planned just didn’t help the series in the long run. It left you wanting more in a bad way when the episode was finished. RWBY does benefit with a longer run time between episodes and it seems that the makers got the message with over 14 minutes in episode one alone. Hopefully this is a trend that will continue and not just be like how Volume 1 was handle with only the first, middle and last episodes being this long.

Epic. Food. Fight.

Nothing more needs to be said really. That scene alone was enough for me to be interested in the series once more. It was cute, funny, over the top and playful all at the same time. It just shows the team dynamics of Team’s RWBY and JNPR as well as the individual team’s interactions with their respective groups. Plus it shows how far Rooster Teeth has gone in trying to animate fight scenes

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Better character development of Roman Torchwick.

Aside from some cute one-liners we haven’t seen much of Roman than just being the bad guy “twirling his evil mustache” for bad guy sake. Despite what they tried to do with him in Volume 1, I felt he was just too one dimensional in his character. All we knew was that he was a master thief and was working with the White Fang, that’s it. Here though we get to see him interact with his fellow co-conspirators and even get some great moments with him dealing with Emerald and Mercury as well as Cinder Fall herself. That scene alone shows how he doesn’t care much for “the kids” but has some respect for Cinder. Which does make you wonder how they get along, especially when we first saw them interacting together back in Volume 1, episode 1. It’s good to see that Roman isn’t going to be sidelined as Cinder and company begin to take center stage.  

Downside

Intro was too spastic.

This is a major change from how the Volume 1 intro was shown. It was slower and better paced. It tried to tell a story, it tried to gives us as much as it could in developing the themes of the story in tandem with the theme song. Now it’s trying to shove so many images into our faces that it’s hard to keep track. I actually had to go back and pause some scenes if only to see who was portrayed in some of the split second cutaways. It’s as if the intro was made for ADHD people in mind, can’t focus on one scene for too long for we got a story to tell! I’m sure it’s something I’ll get use to but a dramatic change in introduction to say the least.

Animations still needs a bit work.

Though not as noticeable in the non-fight scenes, you could tell that there were some short cuts taken during the epic food fight scene. Environment breaks can be seen during character collisions to inconsistencies between fight scenes. The end result of Blake’s fight scene were she’s assaulted by soda cans is an excellent example of this. Again could be because of time constraints but it could’ve been cleaned up better in post-production. Still it doesn’t take away from the overall scene but something that could be noticed from those who have an eagle eye for detail.  

Odd Side

Are the school uniform skirts shorter now?

I know they were short from what we saw in Volume 1 but they didn’t seem THAT short. Now I’m all for short skirts me being a big Tifa Lockhart/Sailor Moon fan but this change seems rather odd to me in between Volumes. Am I just seeing things since we’ve never seen them fight in school outfits before or am I right in them being much shorter than before? Just an odd change and I hope this wasn’t done because of the “international deals” that RT stuck with overseas distributors.

In the end this first episode of Volume 2 makes up for the ending we got in Volume 1 and paints a better picture of what we hope to expect in future episodes. It could still use some work to improve overall but regardless it’s a great start overall. I just wonder if Rooster Teeth can keep this up. See for yourself with episode 2. Till next week we’ll see how things shape up as Volume 2 comes to a close. Will we learn more about Phase 2? We shall see!