It is now July and I am officially back in RWBY mode.
And I have good reason to be, with Before the Dawn releasing, the V7 soundtrack coming
out, and the amazing RWBY panel.
Before we know it, Volume 8 will be airing and I can remember why I love the show so
much.
I’m gonna be honest- season 7 episode 12 kinda traumatized me.
So much so that I have not really wanted to make a RWBY video for a long time.
I still love the show a lot, but I wish I could ignore some of that episode… if you
know what I mean.
But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today.
For today’s RWBY video, I want to discuss some of the most important information we
learned in the novel, Before the Dawn.
This is the follow-up novel to After the Fall, which told the story of what happened to Team
CVFY after the events of RWBY volume 3.
Before the Dawn has a much bigger task on its hands, as we find that team SSSN as well
as a whole bunch of other teams from Beacon have joined CVFY at Shade Academy.
And while I do have some thoughts on the novel as a whole, I will save all that for the very
end of the video, as I don’t really plan on making another video on this book like
I did with the previous one.
Spoiler warning!
Now, onto our boys from team SSSN.
I’m sorry to break the news to anyone who has yet to read the book or hear other spoilers,
but we learn basically nothing about Scarlet, and absolutely nothing about Sage.
Which is disappointing, but I will save all the rest of my opinions for later.
So, for this video I am just going to share the interesting information we learned about
Sun, Neptune, and the tiny interesting thing we got for Scarlet.
Starting with the best monkey boy Sun Wukong, we get a good amount of backstory on him.
We meet his Cousin, Starr Sanzang.
She is the only family he has left as Sun’s parents died due to a Grimm attack.
Now she runs a dojo in Shade, where Sun lived for a few years, presumably before going to
Haven.
The most intriguing thing we learned about Sun was how he unlocked his semblance.
To use his semblance, he always starts off with an image that lets him focus.
This is the image of a desert willow, which he saw once as a child while looking for a
place to live with his clan in Vacuo.
Going to sleep one night, he spotted the willow, which gave him peace and a sense of purpose.
He was going to tell Starr about the tree as a perfect place to live, but it had vanished.
By having something that he alone remembered so vividly that gave him strength, he was
able to discover his semblance, Via Sun.
That’s honestly quite beautiful, and honestly now that I think about it, I hope we get a
story about Team RWBY unlocking each of their semblances.
These are long overdue if you ask me!
Now onto Neptune, who I think has the more surprising backstory.
It turns out he grew up on the coast of Argus with his parents and siblings.
Even though his family all have water-related semblances, himself included, he always had
an aversion of water.
And due to this aversion, he never learned how to use it.
In an attempt to get Neptune to learn to control the water around him, his older brother Jupiter
figured a trial by water would work best.
As any good older brother would do, Jupiter dragged him to the beach and threw him off
a pier when he was only 4 years old.
Swimming is second nature for the Vasilias family, and while Neptune was fine and was
able to make it back to shore, a lot was learned about his semblance in the process.
Not only could he push water away from his body, but he could also pull it to him and
even manipulate water’s cohesion with other things.
So, when he made it back onto land, he brought some of the ocean water with him and was caught
in a bubble of water that was continually increasing in size.
The water stuck to his eyes and went into his ears so he couldn’t see or hear.
Not to mention the lack of being able to breathe since the water went into his lungs.
As he panicked, he quickly sent the water away from himself, which then went around
his brother.
This thankfully did not scare Jupiter for long, as his semblance was able to turn the
water into vapor.
But now Neptune was more afraid of water than ever, as he thought he had almost killed Jupiter.
And so Neptune would never swim again, nor did he want to touch water in case it ever
got stuck to him.
The only way to even get Neptune outside was for his parents to buy him goggles and eventually
move farther inland.
At Haven academy Neptune learned more about his semblance, which he named Water Attraction.
To manipulate water, he first needs to touch it and bring it to himself to charge the molecules.
Then he is able to control it over a distance or propel himself at great speeds in the water.
But, in the present we never actually see him use his semblance, as he does not think
it is worth the trouble and would only ever use it as a last resort.
With the introduction of Neptune’s semblance and mentioning that everyone in his family
has water-related semblances, it does reveal that other semblances besides the Schnee family
one can be connected on a genetic level.
Perhaps this mostly only happens when both parents have a similar semblance, as we know
Qrow and Raven have very different semblances, as do some twins introduced in this book.
Of course, Neptune and his siblings all have unique semblances, but for there to be a common
theme among the whole family is something totally new to RWBY lore.
And finally we got Scarlet.
Sorry for going out of order, but I didn’t even notice we learned Scarlet’s semblance
until after doing the initial recording!
And his semblance, gliding, isn’t given big fan fare like most other semblances of
the important characters are.
In fact, it’s only mentioned twice and very quickly.
But he uses it to safely reach the ground or onto another object.
Nothing too fancy, but it is pretty fitting considering his allusion is Peter Pan without
straight up giving him the power of flight.
And I think that about covers the new information we get about team SSSN, besides learning how
Scarlet and Sage reacted to Sun leaving them without warning then just as suddenly returning-
which is not well.
So now I am just going to give a few of my thoughts about this novel.
Sadly, I was not a big fan of this book.
Don’t get me wrong, I really wanted to love it, just as I loved After the Fall.
But what made After the Fall so great was the amount of information we learned about
team CFVY as well as how CFVY’s time at Beacon intertwined with team RWBY and just
the flashbacks to the fall of beacon and before in general.
Before the Dawn had almost none of that.
We don’t really learn much about team SSSN when they were at Haven, nor did we learn
a single interesting fact, as far as I can recall, about Scarlet and Sage.
And this was a huge missed opportunity, as I kind of expected to learn a lot since After
the Fall relied so heavily on team CFVY’s backstories and semblances.
Especially with Scarlet, this is kind of a letdown that almost nothing happened with
him.
There did seem to be a potential friendship for him to have with Nolan, but it went nowhere.
A lot of fans felt betrayed after Clover’s death due to his relationship with Qrow, and
while that was for the most part just fan theory fueling the eventual fallout, Scarlet
is word of god confirmed to be gay.
This was the perfect opportunity to showcase that, and yet there was nothing.
I felt that this was very strange compared to what we got with Coco in the previous book,
but perhaps the author did the best he could now that there were so many different characters
to juggle around.
But I should acknowledge how far in advance books can be written, so it’s possible this
novel was already done before the last few episodes of Volume 7.
Though I will say- at least Scarlet got chapters in his perspective!
Sage didn’t even get that luxury.
Now the one redeeming hope I have for this book is that it is not the last in the series.
While this book did very much feel like an end to this story, with the Crown taken care
of, I wouldn’t mind more.
If book 3 decides to solely focus on team SSSN and their adventures, then we will have
another chance to explore Scarlet and Sage and who they are as huntsmen as well as people.
Additionally, giving us Neptune’s traumatic semblance discovery and a mention of it later
in the book, but never actually having him use it is either bad writing or there are
plans to use it in the next book.
I am really hoping for the latter as this is a semblance we definitely need to see in
action.
And I gotta wonder if he has 6 more siblings that all have the names of planets.
Also, I would like to know more about Sun’s cousin Starr and more about team SSSN’s
backstory in general.
Finally, I would like to mention I did enjoy the reveal about who was behind the crown,
the twins Jax and Gillian Asturias, and their motives.
It took me longer than it should’ve to realize that they’re supposed to be based off Jack
and Jill.
Though I am a bit sad that their tragic backstory where Gillian is pretty much responsible for
the death of her mother immediately after being born since she took all her aura due
to her semblance probably means my Qrow headcanon won’t be canon.
I had long thought that perhaps Qrow got his name and semblance because he was always told
he was a bad luck charm, as it went all the way back to his mother dying almost immediately
after Qrow was born even though it was not his fault.
But who knows, it’s still a possibility I would say.
However, with the introduction of both Neptune’s and Gillain’s sembalnces, as well as showing
that Yatsu’s semblance can break people out of mind control and bring memories back,
and the pretty clear quote from Glynda in this novel that says “semblances can grow
as people do”, I still want to believe that Qrow will one day gain mastery over semblance.
Even if he never gets good luck, as Clover was the one to fill that role, I do want Qrow’s
semblance to evolve in some shape so it doesn’t actively harm him.
Of course, as with all tie-in material, the more these novels do that the writers of the
show need to know about, the more likely that we will get retcons, which RWBY is already
famous for.
Learning about Headmaster Theodore and Professor Rumpole was awesome, but now there is no denying
that these books will have an impact on the plot, so I hope the show takes all of this
into account when team RWBY gets to Vacuo.
And that was pretty much it!
I am sure I will do more RWBY content in the future, so make sure to subscribe if you haven’t
yet and consider supporting the channel on Patreon, it would mean a lot.
Have an animated day!