Review: RWBY “Lighting The Fire”

A girl and her mother.

Overview:

Ruby trains in hand to hand combat with Oscar/Ozpin, and the team discusses Semblances. In the meantime, Yang visits Raven’s camp and confronts her mother.

Our Take:

While Ruby and Team JNPR are training and discuss Semblances, the majority focus is on Yang. She didn’t have much to do the last episode, so this time she takes the spotlight.

Yang ends up in Raven’s camp and is properly reunited with her mother this time. She confronts Raven and demands that she use her Semblance to bring Yang to Qrow— to Ruby. After an ensuing fight breaks out, Weiss frees herself from the cage and the two have a touching reunion. After the long season of the team being apart, it’s good to see two of them finally see each other again.

Also, it’s now pretty explicit that Vernal is the Spring Maiden- something a lot of us guessed already.

Raven’s Semblance is the ability to open a portal to the select people that she’s tagged, no matter where they are. Yang has spent all this time looking for her— and meanwhile, Raven could have visited her anytime. She had the power to, but she specifically chose not to and instead considers Yang’s ability to find her a test of true grit. While it may seem like tough love at first, it’s almost cruel for a young girl who’s had to deal with her absent mother. Ruby’s mother is dead, and death is hard but final. Having someone choose not to be in your life leaves no room for debate. No wonder Yang prioritizes Ruby, who actively loves her, over her mother.

Raven also makes it very explicit that she is not fond of Ozpin, and doesn’t trust him. Ozpin’s orders seem to have been one of the driving factors for her and Qrow’s relationship souring. She states that whatever Ozpin is planning is clearly outside of her control, and she wants nothing to do with it. Although she is relatively cold to Yang, she still decides to warn both her and Weiss about Ozpin.

A pretty solid episode this time around. Hopefully, next episode will come with some exciting reveals.