Review: RWBY Vol.7 “Out in the Open”

 

With Jacques now brought to justice and the truth finally out within the council about the existence of Salem along with the reveal of Dr. Watt’s who really pulled the strings of the election in combination with the chaos outside, It’s not only our heroes who take notice with everything at stake but at this point, it’s all hands on deck to protect the City of Mantle as the city is under Grimm attack due to Mantle’s massive blackout caused by Watts’s hacking. And to make things worse, Cinder & Neo are revealed to be there, but given how vague the writers like to keep Cinder’s motivations, their goals outside of whatever Salem wants at this time remain uncertain. What follows is a series of excellent character moments inter-cut with scenes of all the hero-characters kicking Grimm ass as they make a valiant effort to evacuate the people from Mantle to Atlas, while Robyn & Ironwood give a speech of hope as they raise awareness regarding their real enemy at work, Salem which leaves me to wonder if everyone within Mantle simply knows Robyn’s semblance powers to just blindly trust her word? It’s not like the functionality of Wonder Woman’s magic lasso that compels people to tell the truth, so this only raises more questions than answers.

 

Together Tyrian and Neo seeks to take the Relic in possession of Oscar and judging from her words, it’s a clear indicator that she wishes to extract the Winter Maiden’s powers knowing that she’s theoretically unprotected given that everyone’s attention is focused at the chaos outside. Also during the Robyn & Ironwood speech, what gets Watts’s attention the most is the Amity tower project that Ironwood felt the need to make public is “completed”, while Tyrian has a plan to take out Robyn, which of course he later hilariously underestimates. I also didn’t expect a pay-off of sorts from Jaune’s earlier sub-plot from previous episodes regarding the assigned job he had as a school “traffic cop” but I commend the writers for making Jaune’s subplot matter in some way for later episodes.

 

For some reason there’s a scene that felt the need to build up to Ruby possibly using her silver-eye powers, yet that doesn’t happen, but at least we get another decent action sequence out of it thanks to the combined efforts of her, Harriet and Penny whom together leads to one of the most brutal take-downs on a Grimm I’ve seen in while which excels as one of the highlights of this episode. Watts is now within the Amity Coliseum but as it turns out, Ironwood expected him there and simply baited him with his public speech knowing that the tower isn’t finished but wanted to take-on Watts by himself. After a cool “superhero landing” scene from Ironwood followed by some fun banter between the two, the episode ends when we see that Watts is also packing heat which could lead to a bad-ass gun-fight in the next episode.

 

Our Take

As the characters split up to take care of their business, the action scenes along with the team-ups during the course of this episode did a decent job in attempting to give everyone some level of equal screen time to see them going all out against the grim (because there are civilians behind them and they’re down to being the last line of defense) was stunning. And people’s real anger and fear that it was only a stopped before the announcement was heartbreaking because at their core they know help’s coming but they don’t and have very real reasons to wonder if anyone in power actually gave a shit about them, but thankfully their worries were sort-of put to rest.

In terms of strategy, Cinder always seems to see the bigger picture and attempts to make smarter decisions to hit the good guys where it hurts, either because she’s quick to learn from her mistakes or because the writers always push her to be more of an active threat compared to the god-like Grimm Monstrosity like Salem who’s ironically more upper-tier than her and despite not knowing Cinder’s origin story at this time, we understand that Cinder believes in making pre-emptive attacks against any possible threats Compared to Salem who time and again seems to underestimate humanity too much, and arrogantly refuses to listen to anyone who points out the resourcefulness, willpower and good that humanity is potentially capable of.

Now that all these potential match-up’s setup such as Clover, Robyn, and Qrow vs Tyrian, Ironwood vs Watts, the possible sub-plot of Oscar/Ozpin vs Neo and the Winter Maiden stuff with Cinder, we are now down to 3 episodes left for this season. Regardless of the outcome, I’m curious to see what spectacular twists & turns the show may have in store for us in the coming weeks.