English Dub Review:RWBY: Ice Queendom “A Nightmare Comes”

Overview

Based on the test results, Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang form “Team RWBY”, and their school life beings. However, the four are not able to open up to each other just yet. Weiss, unaccepting that Ruby was chosen as team leader, appeals to the professor that she is more capable of the role, but is advised to “be the best teammate”.



Our Take

 The previous episode introduced a new anime-exclusive character named Shion Zaiden whose importance is now revealed in this episode, calling herself “The Nightmare Hunter”. I guess this is the main deviation that was talked about. Much of this is told from Weiss’s perspective during the events of Volume 1 as it covers another chunk of events including her apprehension in trusting Ruby as a leader, to the subplot of Blake meeting Sun Wukong and explaining who the hell the White Fang is, to even Ruby meeting Penny for the first time, which all seemed rushed at this point.

Thankfully it starts to slowly do its own thing with the weird-ass but jumpscare-worthy nightmare sequences which are sprinkled throughout the proceedings of characters such as Jaune. And with the way Shion’s powers work, It’s like they’re entering the Matrix only in somebody’s mind with some sort of magical dream thread shaped like VR goggles. And much like Pennywise, It feeds on conflict and turmoil to propagate itself.

This last third pushed through a lot of content so I hope it won’t feel that big of a letdown in the later episodes, and things seem to be established and set up. Upon research, The first three episodes were released in Japan concurrently before picking up this new original plot and judging from how the mid and post-credits ended things, things are about to get more interesting…