Review: RWBY ‘No Brakes’ (Season 2, Chapter 11)

Spoilers Below

Holy Flaming Crap on a stick!

I was told ahead of time that this episode of RWBY was going to be amazing. Wasn’t told how or why, but that it was going to be a great episode.

That is an understatement.

“The shit hit the fan” is the best way for me to describe what happens in this week’s episode.  After Ruby accidently stumbled in on Torchwick’s secret underground base, the others go in after her. Seems the girls and Oobleck arrived just in time as the clockwork Orange haired crime boss is loading up a large train with a bunch of the security bots and weapons as well as the members of the White Fang who are helping him. This inside a sealed off underground tomb. This sets off a battle between the two sides aboard a train running full tilt towards what they think is a sealed off dead end.

This is where the fun begins.

What follows for much of the rest of the episode is easily the best battle scenes of the entire series. While the food fight in this season’s première was a mix of action and comedy, this strait up was just about kicking someone’s ass. We got to see what team RWBY is really made of and just how good everyone (even ZWEI!!) are in real battle. While Ruby, Ooblech and Zwei handled things up top, Yang, Blake, and Weiss had their hands full below on board the steaming train. We got to see a lot more of their fighting ability and although the focus wasn’t on character development, I couldn’t help but feel that the results of these battles were telling in their own way. I was especially impressed with Blake. Earlier she mentioned how her fighting style itself and her special abilities were so she could make duplicates of herself so she could run away. She certainly didn’t run away from this fight and with a little help from a cartridge of Dust given to her by Weiss, she was able to use the duplicates to her advantage in her fight with Torchwick himself.

Besides the kick ass action, the episode also left us on a note that I REALLY wanted to see more. Some things were obvious, like the mysterious stranger who shows up after Yang’s battle, along with the “Oh shit!” ending, but also there evidently appears to be some kind of relationship between Zwei and Professor Ooblech that has developed.  Was this a spur of the moment thing that popped up during the action or is there something deeper going on between the coffee drinking teacher and Ruby and Yang’s doggy.

Even though this episode wasn’t story driven, at least in its main focus, I think it still told a good story during the entire episode. At least for me, I thought I knew what Roman was up to with the train and what was going on, but they went in a totally different direction that REALLY works. It’s evil, diabolical, and at the moment when you see the look in Ruby’s eyes when she realizes what’s happening, you are hooked.

The animation worked great in this episode as well. Visually it looked just as good as this series can deliver, but it was the fluid motions and work done during the fight scenes that made this episode stand out. As evident in episodes previous, these guys know how to make a kick ass fight scene and in this case they did a bunch of them. There were some issues with the animation of the train itself, but that stuff was really minor, the rest of the show more than made up for it.

Character wise one could think that this wasn’t very much in building or defining a character. But I think it is one of those things that pay off in the future. With the way things turns out and the events that occurred during this episode, you just know this is going to weigh on these character’s minds about what happened. It’s episodes like this that make characters think, it make characters really look at themselves, and it’s that kind of thing that can define a character for the rest of the series. With the ending of the episode, it’s not something that is going to be forgotten and tossed aside, this was major and it’s going to lead to a lot more in terms of team RWBY in the future.

The pacing and the humor in this ep were top notch. The episode was well laid out and the way the pace was picked up for the fight scenes and then slowed down more at the very end got your heart racing and really made things work for what they were trying to do. There wasn’t a lot of humor in this episode, but it was there. Ruby’s answer to Oobleck on the train was perfect and even Yang’s approach to the fight with Neo was very much in character with themselves and the show. Even in a dramatic action episode like this they were still able to interject some humor into it without it being a takeaway of the over all story being told.

If the point hasn’t been made abundantly clear already, this episode was amazing. It was a great action episode and more than anything before it really got me wanting to find out just how in the hell are things going to work out after the fact. It had a build up and delivered quite a lot, but it wasn’t a resolution to things, just a gateway to a lot more to come. It’s like that episode midway through a series, like Sailor Moon, Bleach or Naruto, where things really take a turn and change things for the rest of the season. There is still more to go and I can’t wait to see where this next part of this season go from here.

And for the love of the Gods to NOT mess with that little dog!

Who’s a good little ass kicker? Yes you are! Yes you are!