The previous episodes continuously gave the audience more action and drama, but ‘Amity’ proves to be the best of this volume so far. As Penny and Cinder were sure to meet at the Amity Communications Tower, the anticipation for the next episode was at an all time high and the team at Rooster Teeth were all too eager to deliver.
‘Amity’ opens up with Pietro and Penny making the final preparations to the Amity Tower along with Maria. There’s some nice points to this opening: the shot of the tower hovering as the approaching storm grows ever closer is beautiful, and the visual of Penny arming a bomb in a large deposit of Dust with Pietro telling her “Well, there is a difference between a good idea and a best idea” is pretty funny.
There’s a big exposition dump, going over what the audience already knows about what they plan to do with the Communications Tower, but there’s also some better bits of dialogue where Penny continues to struggle with her sense of purpose. Additionally, she refers to Pietro as Sir instead of Dad at the conclusion of an argument they have, which is a small way of establishing a rift between them.
As the trio go to launch the tower, Cinder breaks in with her companions, which starts off a rather impressive battle. It’s a stunningly animated extended fight sequence with a few strong notes to pick out from. Opening up with Cinder summoning dozens of swords to throw at Penny is visually stunning and a strong note to start the fight on, there’s a funny pop culture reference shortly afterwards as Maria goes to confront Cinder in a walker before being attacked by Neo’s airship: “GET AWAY FROM HER, YOU B-!”., and Maria still being able to put up a fight against Neo without breaking a sweat despite her old age is simultaneously badass and hilarious.
As the fight keeps going, Cinder damages the Amity Tower’s support beams, which she uses as an opportunity to try and steal Penny’s Maiden powers as she goes to fix them. Just as it seems the villains have the upper hand and steal her powers, Penny is able to throw her off and eventually severely injure Cinder in the fight, forcing the villains to flee.
This is an interesting two sided coin: on the one hand, it’s nice to see the cutesy character Penny showing sympathy for her enemies as well as her friends, as she only puts away her swords when she notices Emerald shed a tear over Cinder’s broken body, despite her holding a gun to Penny. On the other hand, wasn’t Penny supposed to be designed as a combat android? Perhaps this could be due to her having a part of Pietro’s soul, who isn’t a very antagonistic person, or that she was made for mainly combating against Grimm, so fighting against humans is a relatively new and unpleasant experience for her.
Penny returns to her father, who reveals that a stabiliser on the tower has been damaged, meaning that they’re outside of broadcasting range and they’ll almost certainly crash. Penny offers to correct the path, but the following dialogue tells the audience that this will be dangerous, potentially life threatening. Usually, this would make for a touching scene, especially how Pietro initially refuses to let it happen: “I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE BIG PICTURE, I CARE ABOUT MY DAUGHTER! I’ve lost you before, and you’re asking me to go through that again? No… No… I want the chance to watch you live your life.”
Additionally, the beautiful orchestral piece in the background as Penny kisses her father and flies away to correct the path of the tower does make for an emotionally touching scene, as well as her looking at the shattered moon and lights in the night sky. However, there is one problem that takes away from the whole thing: the audience has already seen her die in Volume three, and her death was made to be a big deal.
It was an event that represented a turning point in the show: it thematically represented the loss of innocence, it broke Ruby as she watched one of her friends die and was an emotional punch to the audience as she was a fan favourite. Granted, a good portion of the fans were happy to see her return in Volume 7, myself included. But in this moment, putting her into a life-threatening situation when the fans have already witnessed such a traumatic event in the story undermines the emotional stakes at play.
However, Penny’s intervention works: the Amity Tower is pushed into range long enough for Pietro to play a recorded message to warn the rest of Remnant. As an orchestral piece of the opening plays in the background, the audience are shown a group of familiar faces from previous volumes reacting to the message: Jaune’s sister, Sun and Neptune, Illa, Glynda (who hasn’t made an appearance since volume 3), Salem (who seems a little too happy about how the situation has played out, as if it was all part of her plan) before concluding on Taiyang. While it makes for some nice visual storytelling, it feels oddly familiar. It feels very reminiscent of Blake’s arc in Volume 5: a location is threatened/comes under attack by the forces of evil, causing the heroes to call out to whoever they can for help.
As all this is happening however, Watts finishes up hacking into Penny’s system, which causes her system to first glitch out then temporarily shut down, dropping down to the earth below, her last words to her dad being “I love you”. It is a touching scene with some interesting observations. On the one hand, the previous topic about emotional stakes still stands. On the other, this could be the last time the audience sees the Penny that they recognize before Watts hacks into her.
The scene changes to the Atlas command, as the Ace Ops and Ironwood take note of the situation, infuriated the situation turned out the way it did, with Watts replying smugly to Ironwood after he asks him what he has done: “Exactly what you asked. It’s possible Penny’s systems are merely rebooting. As for the tower, well, perhaps Pietro isn’t the genius you thought.”
I noted in a previous review that Watts’ hacking would definitely come around to bite Ironwood: even in the opening, there is a brief few seconds that alludes to this being the case. It will certainly prove interesting to witness a hacked Penny going haywire and how this will affect the rest of the volume. It’ll be especially interesting if Ruby is the one who is forced to kill her. Considering the fact that her ‘death’ in volume three had such an emotional impact on her, it would be such an emotional development to see, both for the story and how it would affect Ruby as a character.
As Ironwood orders Winter Schnee – who’s had a nice update to her character design – and the Ace Ops to track down Penny, Harriet goes to take Watts back to his cell, but not before he sneakily swipes Ironwood’s discarded scroll. Obviously with the way the camera is positioned, Watts is probably going to fix the scroll up and use it to control Penny. With that being said though, wouldn’t he be patted down before and after leaving his cell, just to make sure he can’t cause any mayhem? Surely Atlas has some regulations on how to handle prisoners. Then again, Qrow didn’t have Clover’s badge confiscated from him either. Apart from this minor note, the camera work in this is nice: even though the audience can hear Ironwood giving the orders, the camera goes between Watts and Winter, with the former smugly grinning, as if he knows what they’re in for.
‘Amity’ concludes with Jaune, Ren, and Yang as they lose the signal to the broadcast. They then hear a tremble and run out to investigate, only to find a river of the liquid that Grimm are born from flowing towards Mantle. This is a hell of a way to conclude the episode: in previous volumes, fans have seen Grimm come out of pools, so why not have Salem make a river to attack the kingdom? It also gives the audience a hint of just how dangerous this liquid is: a small tree falling into it dissolves into a Grimm skull. It would be intriguing to see how far the writers go with this, like watching some helpless humans fall in to come out as monsters. It’s also a beautiful shot to end the episode, with the trio looking like ants next to this trail of danger with the kingdom in the distance.
‘Amity’ is one of the volume’s strongest episodes so far. The writing, which can often weigh down the pacing, takes a backseat here in favour of gorgeously animated action and some dramatic developments in the plot. With Atlas’ defender looking to be under Watt’s control and the Grimm threat becoming ever more dangerous, the dramatic tensions are starting to boil as the volume continues to be all the more intriguing.
Read more of our RWBY reviews here.
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.
