RWBY Volume 8 Episode 5 Review - Amity Rising 

Maria is literally just Yoda, prove me wrong.

Guys I noticed something in this episode: when the Ace Ops are watching Ruby’s broadcast, everyone is frowning whereas Marrow is showing a tiny smile (that disappears when Hare turns off the broadcast). He’s such a good boi Also I laughed when you called Cinder “the disobedient child” 😂😂😂

Tai: "RAVEN!" Raven (from upstairs): "WHAT!?" Tai: "PACK YOUR BAGS AND GET THAT PORTAL READY! WE'RE GOING TO ATLAS!"

I can't believe out of all the people Neo has fought, it was the 80 year old blind grandma that beat her ass.

What can take Neo? Strong high school blonde? No. Red cape kid? No. Farm boi, vomit boy, and 2 orphans from the middle of nowhere? No. Spring and fall maiden? Yes. Old lady? Absolutely.

I hope to god that ruby's message reached ALL of remnant, cause they're going to need ALL the help they can get, even if Ironwood doesn't want any part of it.

Most importantly, Old Man Shopkeep is ALIVE! Oh, and Glynda is there too XD

The fact that Salem was smiling while the message was playing is ominous as hell, especially because of the river of grim thats on it’s way to our hero’s. It tells you she was planning on the message being sent and knows what she’s doing, I think she will send her own message but not to recruit people but to spread more fear and negativity ESPECIALLY since remnant now knows who she is. They’ll know that she is here. That she exists. And that she is coming!

It was so embarrassing seeing Cinder fail yet again and getting her ass beat by a new maiden penny. Cinder Neo and Emerald are team rocket from Pokémon at this stage.

the penny scene near the end reminds me of ironman in The Avengers with the missile

Maria shouting "get away from her you bi~" had to be an aliens reference

A lot of things in this episode hit me hard... Watching Zwei and Tai again, Penny's goodbye, Team SSS, Nora in bandages, Emerald caring about Cinder, Neo getting beaten up, Winter replacing Clover as the leader of the Aceops... the list goes on and on.

I loved how the measure of power on Neo is her shortness and that to beat her you have to be shorter

Is it just me or did it seem that Salem was way too pleased about them getting the message about her out to the rest of Remnant?

Was it just me, or did Salem seem a bit happy that Ruby broadcasted Salem's existence to all of Remnant? BTW, it's nice to know that Dust Shop guy is still doing okay.

maria's size and preflexes really hard counters neo, especially size due to the fact that neo focus on redirecting momentum, if she wants to do the same to maria, she needs to be lying on the ground but then she won't be able to fight properly

8:11 "Cinder falls for that" Please tell me that was intentional.

When Cinder went "You're just a tool to be used!" I literally said out loud "You're one to talk, Cinder!"

I LOVE Ruby's expression when she is watching her own message. She is so damn adorable! It cutely looks like she's never seen it despite recording it but it's obviously just a mix of joyful surprise at finally getting the message out and awkwardness at seeing herself on there.

You forgot how Whitley seemed to be contemplating and Marrow was smiling during the broadcast. I liked those details a lot. It gave me much clarity on how both of them will likely end up in terms of standing.

Highlight of the Episode. Neo being toyed with by Maria.

Weiss Vs. Winter?! That’s gonna be a good song

Maria vs Neo was not something I knew I needed

25:45 Ah yes, Salem's master plan of having her Grimm Whale piss all over Remnant in order to defeat humanity and the faunus. Why did no one see this coming? It was right in our faces this whole time! In all seriousness, I fell out of my chair laughing at that.

If Tai and Raven do come back, I think we might have a new branch of the story to follow where team STRQ and the addition of Robyn try to get to Ironwood to take him down

I just wanna say: this episode put me into a crying panic attack for about 45 minutes Edit: yea like sometimes straight up struggling to breathe

I think if any allies come it'll likely be Gira with the White Fang and Raven with Tai and her bandits. They would react the quickest to this, Raven might need convincing still but she can also get her forces there in the blink of an eye too.

Maria Doing her Best Ripley from Aliens Impression was SOOOO on Point!!

Something I noticed when Inronwood asked Watts “what exactly did you do?” Watts said “exactly what you asked” and as he said that the subtitles read “exactly what SHE said” there’s no way this is an error right? Anyone else?

Eddy said in a recent AMA that Cinder doesn't have any spring power

The remnants of team STRQ are definitely going to appear for the mid season finale

Qrow: imma kill him Tie: don't kill him Qrow: I'm still gonna kill him

This episode was freaking crazy I hope penny doesn’t die. How much do you wanna bet it’s gonna be a Avengers final battle? Cause they’re all gonna unite in the end obviously

12:30 I prefer to think that Cinder is draining their aura energy and not specifically the Maiden powers residing in their souls. Still, she could murder them in a weakened state.

Penny felt pain this episode I have a weird theory that she becomes a “real girl” following her origin

I squealed seeing shopkeep, then I cried seeing Glynda 😍😍 I must admit I didnt think the message would get out so soon so I'm interested to see what will happen next

YESSS MARIAH, I knew she was still badass YESSS we saw Glynda again, its about time! Also why are Sun and Neptune standing in the middle of the dessert? And Zwei is just to adorable

It would not wonder me, that cinder dies like Peter peticrew from harry potter. Killed by the Fake arm, who was Given by his master

That Grimm at the end puts a whole new meaning to 'cry me a river'

*Penny's scenes* was indeed a powerfull part of the episode. She bodied 2 strong fighters and I'm so happy I was right during the Phoenix festival of Penny being able to charge her kamehameha fast enough (within seconds while drawing her weapons) and knock Neopolitan agains the ship they brough along. I also loved Maria taking on Neo for a brief moment and we see she can still hold her own agains someone like Neo's skills. Personally I think Maria would so toy with team JNPR if she ever has to train them xD. After that she was struggling so hard to push Amity back into broadcasting range, only for Watts finally succeeding to hack her system and for a brief period of time she was also resisting this. All this was messing with her tasks at hand as she mumbled she needed to go to the vault, before losing consciousness. so *Watts* has already betrayed Ironwood's dumb ass. Penny with the new microchip will most likely fly up to the vault now (looking like the Terminator because off her falling through the atmosphere that burned her up), grab the relic "staff of creation" and fly it straight to Salem. As for the black pool calling it piss is a way of thinking it, lol. The *Whale grimm* obviously is big enough to great pool of black and I believe the last time we have seen something this big who could make spots of grimm pool was the Wyvern grimm in volume 3. As for *reinforcement* I am so hoping *Taiyang, Raven and Qrow will go up agains the Hound grimm!!! and then the hound grimm has to shift his face arround to reveal silver eyes!!! it would be perfect.* Really messed up offcourse because they will find out what happend to Summer, but still perfect to get a conclusion on this topic "what happend to Summer".

Ruby: Now all of Remnant knows you're here. Salem: Good.

I would like to add an horrifying idea to the river of Grimms which are heading toward where all the people are in Mantel, if you wanted to make humanoid grimm on a mass level it would be a great way to do it. Sure I assume most people exposed to the river would die but if say 1 or 2% did become humanoid grimms that would still be a lot of humanoid grimms.

Does Ruby realize how far apart these kingdoms are? How soon is she expecting aid to arive if it comes at all?

Ok, have a theory I thought of: You know how Nora is unconscious? Well maybe she’s unconscious and dreaming her memories throughout her life maybe even memories she locked away or forgot. Soooo I’ve been thinking in a future episode we might get a look inside Nora’s head and get some backstory and some more story of who Nora really is besides her “being strong and hits stuff”

They should have name this show “you think it’s cool to make me cry”

Pietro cares about Penny more than the world so it's pretty clear imo that he's going to get Panny back to life if possible. Also, while I wish Neo would leave Salem's forces asap, I'm starting to think that if Roman Torchwick is going to come back this season it might be him that makes Neo leave Salem. And a theory about basically the end: if Cinder is going to get all the powers and then fight, in grimm form or otherwise, her last thoughts might be "I hate you so much RUBY!" and Ruby is going to get all the maiden powers that way, and then Ruby will have Rainbow eyes (Silver with white-ish powers plus all the maiden powers).

maybe the ruby and yang's father contacts raven to get qrow out of prison and gets to yang or ruby next to help out :D that would be something to see :O

Damn, I gotta say. When Cinder got her grimm hand on Penny's face, I literally freezed.

Neo uses here being smaller to her advantage but since Maria and Oscar are smaller they can use uno reverse card on Neo.

Here's a question. Can a person even hold multiple Seasons? Even if Cinder gained more Maiden magic, could her body handle it or would she self-destruct?

This episode hit me dead in the feels bro

I think this volume may involve another fight between Maria and Neo where Neo takes the fight far more seriously and may very well kill Maria.

I’m sure Pietro will try to interfere in Penny’s hacking as the opening implied. Which could cause Penny to overload and in a sense die.

I can’t wait for next week to actually get to watch this! Especially since- this was the FIRST TIME EVER, that Neo’s aura was broken! She always runs or wins before it happens. Cinder getting whooped by Penny is amazing. And Penny’s pushing Amity, and her final moments with Pietro and while falling. Those are going to hurt even worse when I get to watch the episode than they are during this video.

I think there are some glaring inconsistencies with the show. Cinder, upon receiving the full maiden powers, seemed to master them immediately and was able to kill Ozpin. Penny was incapacitated by 4 of the Ace Ops. I kind of assume it is clumsy writing causing the issues. They need things to happen a certain way to advance the plot in the way they want to. It also seems like they are afraid to kill off important characters. Yes, Clover, Adam, and Professor Lionheart died, but they aren't really as impactful as say Neo actually killing Maria or such. And Maria seems to serve no further purpose in the plot at the moment. Or Penny using the maiden powers and actually injuring the Ace Ops in a significant way to keep in line with how important the powers are supposed to be. That would also allow more emotional conflict for Penny related to the powers because she hurt her friends using them. I have no problem with Neo being bested by Maria in the context that Maria is still actually able to move like that, but given how rigid and slow she is in the previous volumes it seems very unlikely. Obviously the reflex semblance would help greatly against a melee fighter like Neo who's semblance does little to help against another melee fighter. But Neo taking the offense and lunging at Maria and leaving herself open seems very unlikely considering what we have seen about her fighting style. It has been very much about taking the defensive and using opponents' force and momentum against them. On top of that, I think that Penny could have easily blocked Emerald's bullets, beaten her, and captured an unconscious cinder who they could transfer the maiden powers out of. The entire encounter seems clumsy in general. It kind of achieved nothing but Cinder siphoning some of the maiden powers and damaging the tower. And a different scenario could have been written in which the tower is damaged. I would say they wrote themselves into a hole that they didn't know how to write themselves out of and ended up with the nonsensical Neo being okay after the blast, cinder being unconscious but not captured, and Penny randomly deciding to let them go. There are definitely scaling issues; I think they definitely know that they wrote the maidens too powerful in the first place. If they could only control the elements/weather of their particular season it would help the issue. Not going to lie, I preferred when the shows main focus was well choreographed fight scenes and the plot and dialogue were in the background. Now the fight scenes are in the background and often just implied as off screen events and the main focus is awkward dialogue and forced plot lines. Volumes 4 onwards seem to be plagued with bad writing. At this point, I do not know why they killed Pyrrha or Penny off at the end of volume 3 or why they had Yang lose her arm. The impact of Pyrrha's death on the characters was not profound or well explored, the death of Penny was really dampened by the fact that no one seemed to care when she returned, and Yang had inconsistent PTSD that just vanished without any intervention or without even talking about it. At this point, I do not understand the relationships between the characters. They all seem to hate each other and there is no chemistry between the ones that we are supposed to believe like each other. There is a real absence of depth. They could do with spending less time with exposition and more time developing the characters and their relationships with each other and having them actually express emotions and have healthy conversations... and also more time with developed fight scenes that do not mainly happen off screen

I really hope at least one group of people we saw watching the broadcast shows up sometime this volume. Most likely Tai and Raven considering her semblance and hopefully Zwei goes with them. One of the things I want to see most is to see Zwei fight again. Also I’m curious if he has a semblance, I mean he has aura so why not.

I feel like we’re gonna get more cinder back story coming up while she’s unconscious etc

I just realized... cinder still hasn’t told Salem about the spring maiden.... and she’s 100% about to bring ty to mantle.

Basically Maria: Honey, you've got a big storm coming.

Man imagine if team rwby saw maria fight, I can only imagine what they're reactions would be like. Especially yang of all people, seeing maria kick neos butt

This is actually one of the best episodes I've seen in a while from RWBY, props to them!

How odd, Watts did something bad. Who could have ever seen that coming. Also, with Ravens Portals, we could get an Avenger's Endgame moment with portals opening up and people walking threw XD

I love that scene when ruby was watching the message with blake and the others. Her face was like "damn i'm good at speeches"😂

This has been such a great volume!

did anyone notice that scene where neo briefly removes her hat to greet penny as soon as emerald comes out of the ship ?XD

This is probably my favorite episode so far, really like that we FINALLY see Glynda again and the others. Though i must say, i was a bit disappointed Raven was not with Tai

It was nice to see some old faces again. Now let's hope that they weren't just shown for fanservice, but that they'll actually contribute to the plot of this volume. But who am I kidding were not gonna see them again this volume, At least not now. Was nice to see them again anyway.

Kinda reminds me of Yoda vs Count Dooku form Star Wars episode 2: Attack of the Clones.

I have a prediction: In the next episode Winter and the Ace opps are searching for penny until they spot Ren Jaune and Yang. Harriet inmideatly goes after them despite Winter's orders and confronts them. The three huntsmen try to tell them of the grimm river but it will eventually end up in a fight with a 5 vs 3 disadvantage and Ren Jaune and Yang almost defeated until a red portal opens behind them and outcome Taiyang with Raven. Now with a 5 vs 5 even fight the ace ops and winter will be forced to retreat because of Raven's maiden powers and Taiyang's sembleance and it will end with Yang confronting her parents about what is going on and vice versa.

Hey Phoenix, I think I have an interesting theory revolving the “siphon arm” that cinder has. I’ve heard it’s been confirmed that she didn’t take any powers from Raven and when she did take powers from Amber her aura was broken. I think that to take the powers they have to have their Aura broken and until then it just either drains or siphons their aura. It would make sense for power scaling reasons Bc it would make people permanently weaker and stronger slowly but surely.

Lol the disobedient child.

Now how are they going to explain that to Salem once they get back to the whale grim?

I don’t think that Cinder will gain the maiden powers if Penny or Raven die because in volume 3 Amber last saw Cinder before she went unconscious meaning that Cinder was the last person in her mind. This is also just like what Qrow, Glynda, Ironwood, and Ozpin thought if Amber were to die, then they had the idea to transfer her to a different host (Pyhra, sorry if I spelled it wrong). I think that the reason why Cinder got the rest of the maiden powers was because Cinder was the last person on Amber’s mind, so if Penny or Raven were to die, Cinder would have to be in their mind for Cinder to obtain said powers. In conclusion, the only way Cinder could get the rest of the maiden powers in Penny or Raven is that Penny or Raven would have to be thinking about Cinder before or as they are dying.

God damn, everything this man says is so poetic. I look forward to these videos almost as much as I look forward to the actual Chapter.

I'm pretty sure either Miles Or Kerry said that Cinder's Grimm Arm siphons aura. My guess is that the arm has to siphon a person's aura before it can actually suck out the maiden powers, but her grim arm's mechanics are so vague that it's impossible to know what it does. Awesome video, though!

I literally had daydreams of Jaune boosting Raven's powers so she teleports the whole city to Vacuo and stays behind to hold Salem back as long as possible but not before telling Yang why she left her because she wanted her to be a better person than she was and how proud of her daughter she is before sucker punching her and pushing her through the portal as she admits she loves her before closing it.

I've been waiting to this one all day, because I really want to hear what you have to say about Episode 5 and the many, many things that transpired today.

Can we talk about the voice acting on this volume? Like- THE SCREAMS

OK I'm looking for an Avengers: Endgame type of ordeal here where the broadcast was shown all over Remnant and four kingdoms or at least three would help out and clash along with our beloved characters making an appearance like Sun, Neptune, Illia and the faunus malitia group, team CVFY, and possibly Raven and Tai but yeah it's going to be epic I'm so hype but I can't believe we have to wait 7 weeks for chapter 8 to come out I hope it'll all be worth it 👍

Maybe Salem wanted Amity to broadcast bc 1. The speech could instill more fear in the public, which attracts Grimm 2. Additional forces coming in might mean she can take out more opposition at once 3. Maybe there are more ppl who/who would worship Salem (like Tyrian does), considering how she posed as a god w Ozma in the past

Cinder disobeyed Salem and STILL lost. Not one justification. Cinder Fall is definitely going to become Cinder Fell.

Phoenix you freaking called it when you said when Amity go's up and the broadcast get's out we would get small cameos of everyone we've seen in previse volumes it was so good to finally see Glynda again in the new Maya engine and Tai as well now I can't wait in till the end of the volume if anyone makes it to Atlas in time and Tai and Glynda are among them

Ironwood and Watts are going to pay! Edit: You guys really can’t find anything good to say. Even about this episode...

Imagine if RWBY ends like Endgame did. Team RWBY facing Salem and her army. Then a massive portal, created by Raven (with the help of Jaune), opens behind team RWBY. A legion a hunters step through to fight. Probably impossible tho...

The fight scene between Neo and Maria reminds me of one lyric line from one of Gurren Lagann songs, "Row, Row, Fight the Power". "Touch the untouchable."

I was hoping we would see team CFVY when the message went out. but, sadly we did not.

New Goals: 1. Stop the Grimm River from reaching Mantle 2. Recover Penny before the AceOps 3. Rescue Oscar from Salem

Shopkeep is an immortal 5th dimensional being who is beyond the confines of mortality. Shopkeep is the god of light. Reason? He appears in multiple places at once and is able to manage and operate multiple large revenue businesses at once. Also he survived the fall of beacon. It’s confirmed

Great video and looking for forward to the next one, as well as the next chapter for team SRPH

Theory Time: Salem wants the broadcast to go out to lure people to Atlas. She’s going to use the Grimm river to create more Grimm like the Hound, and hoping that more people will show up to suffer the same fate. And if they don’t, she believes they’ll underestimate her based on Ruby’s words as she unleashs more hounds, instilling more fear and drawing more Grimm.

Tyrian is the hound calling it now.

(At 22:30) 2 years, actually. She left at the age of 15, before she got to Haven she was 16, and now… now that she's in Atlas, she is currently 17 years old, now.

A penny stan doesn't have any minute of peace

You think it was just a coincidence that the Grimm skull appeared in the river just after a plant fell in?

Are we really about to get an avengers assemble scene at the end of this season on beginning of the next season??!

It's really playing out that way, Pietro is going to give up his last pieces of Aura and die, to revive Penny. I'm gonna cry-

There are mountains with snow behind Ilia. She's at Mistral.

I wish we got to see team CFVY... I wanna see my husband Fox

Imagine having to get stronger only to get a beating by a old blind women who hasn’t fought since she lost her eyes.

I think it made the 'rain cloud' around it and it rained the river into existence