RWBY: Doubles Round

I know I said Delta Episode on Wednesday, but this week’s RWBY episode is giving me a lot of material. Plus, I feel like instead of just the Delta Episode, I should take a shot at a series of reviews of Pokémon post game and legendary discussion. I love Pokémon.

First of all, looks like there are two errors in my previous posts. I guessed that Qrow’s semblance was teleportation like Raven’s. It looks like Qrow’s semblance is similar to Yang’s, which means that Yang could’ve inherited it from Raven. Second, I missed that Nora lightning around a charged Nora is pink, it could be her aura altering the color or Neptune and Nolan may have blue auras that affect their lightning attacks.

Anyways, Cinder has now revealed almost all of the named characters who are fighting in doubles. They are:

Weiss and Yang for RWBY
Sun and Neptune for SSSN
Emerald and Mercury for Cinder
Coco and Yatsuhashi for CFVY
Russel and Lark for CRDL
Penny and another girl

The only unknown is who represents Team JNPR. Although, Pyrrha is the most experienced tournament fighter, so she’ll probably be one of them. Granted, there’s a chance that she won’t to keep her from being put on a higher pedestal for her various tournament wins, but I find it unlikely. I’m interested in seeing Ren, since he’s the one who has worked with Pyrrha the least out of Team JNPR, and all the other teams where we know the team spelling are using the member with the last letter (Yang, Neptune, Yatushashi, and Lark).

Weiss and Yang have had some off screen bonding (searching for Blake, setting up the dance). Weiss and Yang’s previous combos mostly focused on turning terrain to the team’s advantage, and the Amity coliseum’s battlefield is very conductive to Dust attacks. I feel sorry for anyone fighting them on the icy or volcanic fields, since that’d play to their elemental advantage. Strategy wise, the duo would probably work with Yang drawing fire while Weiss sets up Dust attacks and keeps enemies from doing too much damage at once. Yang with her semblance and Weiss’s haste spell would be dangerous.

It looks like with Team SSSN is going by rule of main characters. Sun and Neptune are a decent combo, although the robot fight and the battle against Team NDGO wasn’t good for showing team combos for Team SSSN, because of Sage’s early defeat and Neptune’s fear of water.

Team CFVY seems to have gone to doubles with the plan of eliminating people with sheer force. Yatsuhashi can break the ground with a sword smash and is willing to act as a human shield for Velvet, so he has strength and his aura can provide a strong defense. Also, his sword is interesting. A lot of the weapons shown are variations of silver, gray, white, and black, plus when he draws it, there is a high-pitched sound, which also accompanies Dust attacks, so maybe the blade is infused with a kind of earth Dust. Coco can do good damage with the handbag, but her real strength is shredding Grimm with the gun. I hope as a DVD extra we see their team match, because I want to see how Velvet works in an arena that can be Dust heavy.

Russel and Lark were not what I was expecting for Team CRDL. One of them with Cardin or Dove seemed the most likely. Lark and Russel were the first to flee the big Ursa and the first for Pyrrha to knock out. There weapon builds also don’t seem that great. Russel has a low reach, and since he doesn’t use Dust against Pyrrha, the only ranged attack he has used will leave him short a dagger. He does rush Pyrrha, so maybe he could retrieve the dagger fast, but then why not charge while equipped with both daggers? Lark has a perfectly functioning pole-axe (wiki calls it a halberd, but it doesn’t have spear point, just the axe part), but it looks like if there’s a gun feature, the muzzle is by the axe end. The same is true for Crescent Rose, but the scythe can dig into the ground and the weapon would still be at a height for Ruby to fire while standing, while that isn’t the case with Lark’s weapon. Someone would have to be laying down or squatting to fire. Also something I feel like noting, with Lark’s fair ground cameo, the images of Russel and Lark for doubles, and Dove’s stadium appearance, Cardin is the only member of Team CRDL to not appear, in spite of getting the most speaking lines of the group. Their teamwork is really terrible, so maybe there’s been a falling out between Cardin and the rest?

I went over all three of the Volume 3 episodes, and this is the first appearance for Penny’s partner. She is probably a Haven Academy student who Ironwood asked to put Penny on her team (either because they were short a member or in place of a member). Penny was excited about Ruby calling her “friend” back in Volume 1, so I don’t think that Penny had a team until shortly before the Vytal festival, or if she does, she doesn’t get along with them.

Well, CFVY is going down. I’m sure that Emerald and Mercury are going to have to put in a good deal of work, since both seem to rely more on speed than strength. I think Mercury is the only male character shown to propel himself with gunshots like Ruby, Blake, Yang, and Nora do. Russel and Lark will probably also be knocked out. While Cinder is playing with the tournament brackets, Russel and Lark are shown matched with Penny and her partner, then Sun and Neptune. Maybe they’ll be taken down by one of those two pairs, and the rest of the teams will take on new teams.

RWBY: Dust 1, the basics

Okay, rewatching “New Challengers” did reveal that I did get something I wanted. More Dust use. Dew’s Spear, like Cardin’s Mace, is a weapon with a Dust gem mounted on it. Dew uses wind Dust, which gives her the ability to create small twisters. Octavia’s blade seems to have Dust forged as part of the blade, which gives her the ability to augment slashing attacks with flames. There also may be something with Gwen’s knives, seeing as they had some small, colorful explosions when dropped.

On this note, the people who read my RWBY posts are probably getting tired of me babbling, “I want more Dust. Velvet, Russel, more Dust,” so, I’m going to do some theorizing of my own. This will be a series because I'd like to hit this topic from a lot of different areas. Also, I'm trying to do shorter posts, so I have an easier time updating.

Basic Properties
The RWBY Wiki lists the colors red, blue, green, yellow, cyan, white, purple, bright orange, and dark orange as confirmed colors. Confirmed elements include lava, fire, ice, wind, stone, lightning, gravity, steam, water, and energy.

The main place that Dust is seen is when Weiss uses Myrtenastar. She has yellow, red, cyan, blue, white, and purple Dust loaded in the weapon. Weiss is shown using ice (accompanied with cyan), fire (red), and a yellow speed buff (maybe it’s energy). When Weiss gives Blake some dust vials to use with Gambol Shroud, they’re the same colors that Weiss uses. Stone is used, as well as a shadowy haze, when Blake fights Torchwick. The haze is probably purple. This would leave stone to be white or blue. I think blue would make sense as water since ice dust is a shade of blue, and ice is the solid form of water.

Dew demonstrates that wind is green. Cinder’s attacks have an orange glow, but Weiss, Cardin, and Octavia’s weapons, as well as the red glow around Yang when she initially activates her aura, have established fire Dust as red, so unless it’s an aura related color change, Cinder is using a type of orange Dust instead of the red fire Dust. This may mean that she uses lava as her main Dust type instead of fire. There’s more known elements (after RTExtraLife) than known colors. The lighting attacks that Nolan and Neptune use are shown to be blue in color, so lighting might be a different shade of blue.