Review: RWBY “A Perfect Storm”

The villains are in cahoots.

Overview:

Cinder, Watts, Mercury, and Emerald, meet with Raven and Vernal to strike a bargain. In the meantime, the Belladonna household is under attack.

Our Take:

There are a few key parts to Raven: her strength, her unwillingness to get involved, and her fierce protection of those in her tribe. Her motivation this time is a combination of the latter two; sticking to her resolutely not wanting to get involved. Raven is absolutely determined to not get caught up in any of Salem’s plots, but she has no choice now. She schemes to steal away Spring’s relic before Cinder (and Salem) can get her hands on it, and use that as a deterrent to keep Salem away. She’s definitely smart, although things are probably not going to go as planned.

Times like these make me really wish we were introduced to Raven earlier. Sure, we saw her in earlier seasons, but this is the first season where she is introduced in-depth. Her motives, I feel, could have been kept to this season, but I think it would have been better if information about her tribe had been more consistently dropped in previous seasons. She is incredibly protective of keeping their way of life undisturbed, enough that she is willing to bargain with evil and stand her ground while doing it. She’s an impressive, imposing figure, and I wish that had been shown more, instead of keeping her a powerful mystery.

Then there’s her relationship with Qrow. They were never on the best of terms- speaking terms at best, with Ozpin’s alliance sending fractures between them, but she hasn’t really expressed any desire to straight up to see him dead. It’s unclear if she is merely using Qrow’s life as a distraction, or if she really has malicious intent towards him. If it’s the latter, it wasn’t nearly set up enough as it should have been. Overall, Raven’s willingness to sacrifice the well-being of others for the wellbeing of those she cares for is interesting and ruthless– but I do wish that it could have been better built up.

Either way, both sides are scheming, and I look forward to seeing what happens next.