Volume 3 Chapter 4 Quick Review

Welp, that was awesome. 

I was not expecting that level of badassery from Mercury and Emerald, but I'm glad I got to see it. And, next week should straight up be an new episode, which is always nice.

Animation: 

As I just said. Merc and Emerald. These two showed that they were most certainly a force to be reckoned with, and I hope to see more from the and Cinder in the future. The fight was extremely smooth and well paced.

I think Mercury's animations deserve a particular shout out for, well, everything about them. His break-dancing style has been carried over from volume 2 perfectly. I also liked seeing Yatsuhashi show a lot of skill when using his sword. The various other moments in the fight were just as impressive.

Aside from the fight, we had the artsy flashback with Qrow, which was a pleasant surprise. It was nice to see a lot of focus being put into the Schnee Glyphs, as well as Winter's summoned Grimm (which also mean that the "birds" she summoned against Qrow will have actually been small Nevermores). Other than that, the remainder of the episode was on par with the rest of the volume - ie. very good. 

Dialogue:

Unexpected feels from Qrow were unexpected. As were unexpected feels from Winter. However, they also showed that there is still a lot that has yet to happen, and that the possibility of RWBY continuing after the teams have graduated is ever present.

We also got to hear a bit more of how Weiss and Winter view their father. It seems that although neither of them are particularly fond of him, they don't outright despise him. It was also nice to hear the conversations between the two of them, as well as the one between Qrow, Yang and Ruby. It's clear where the members of RWBY got their personalities from.

In terms of voice acting, we got to finally hear Yatsuhashi's voice. Although it was voiced by Joe MacDonald instead of Grey, it still sounded suspiciously similar to the White Fang Lieutenant's :P Other than that, there's not much else to say.

Scenes:

So, during the fight we got to see some semblances. We definitely know now that Emerald's seems to be the ability to change her appearance to anyone else's. Mercury's could be to create those wind/ice (I couldn't tell which) energy attacks, although they could also be a type of ammo that he uses, as he does seem to fire them from his feet. In any case, the sound they made was awesome.

The arena showed that it didn't need to just be a two way split, meaning we may get to see all eight sections in use for the one on one fights.

We also had a quick glimpse of best gurl Raven, and had it confirmed that Qrow's team was team STRQ and was therefore led by Summer. We also got to see Yang's reaction to seeing her mother, which was hard to analyse.

Other than that, we were shown that Weiss has a lot left to learn, and may go on to become much more powerful. It was also ominously shown that when she was asked to summon an enemy, she began to conjure up at least the sword, of the metal armour she fought in the "White" trailer, making it all the more likely that she had to fight it as some form of test from her father. (Also, it must be said that the courtyard was very well designed)

Music:

Of course, we got the fight themes, which were all brilliant. There was also some reuse of old themes played in the more feelsy moments. Most noticeable of which was the re-edit of "Mirror, Mirror" played at the end of the episode.