Review: RWBY “Alone in the Woods”

Apathy is the worst nightmare.

Overview:

The mood of the group takes a turn for a worse.

Our Take:

We meet a new kind of Grimm this time: the skeletal, groaning Apathy. The Apathy is by far one of the most interesting Grimm of the series, mostly because they have an additional effect besides just being scary monsters. The Grimm we’ve seen thus far have different forms and function differently, but what they all do is utilize and fight back with physical attacks. As fun as that is, it does get dull after some time, and some variety is necessary. The Apathy don’t attack physically at all; they cluster, feed off doubts, and swarm their victims with their presence. They don’t need to cut down the heroes, all they have to do is exist. Considering the group comes to the town affected by the harsh news about Salem and Ozpin withholding information, they’re prime victims to be taken in by the Apathy’s whispers.

Weiss and Yang to apologize at the end for saying extremely doubtful things, but to be honest, this shouldn’t be the end of it. It depends on how the series proceeds with this, but I sincerely hope they don’t just chalk up Weiss and Yang’s feelings to just ‘being hypnotized by the Grimm’. Doubt and disillusion from what seems to be a hopeless mission is something that should have been properly addressed by the series.

The episode leaves off on a few mysteries: one, that Ruby’s silver eyes can apparently be controlled, and are able to dispel Grimm at will. Two, that Maria has silver eyes herself, and that she knows exactly what to do in order to activate its power.

Maria having silver eyes is interesting because that means that it’s a rare trait, not one that’s been completely lost as we’ve been lead to believe. Also, one of the key things to notice about Maria is that she has goggles that function as her eyes, as we see in this episode. Do the use of silver eyes degenerates vision over time, or at the very least, does its power degenerate over time? Hopefully, we’ll find out in the coming episodes.

I do think that this episode, in particular, functioned as a good horror story, but I am a bit hesitant depending on how the doubts will be handled going forward. Hopefully, they’ll do a good job, but I am unfortunately always a little hesitant when it comes to trusting long-term storytelling in this series.