I'm not going to spend too much time on Team RWBY vs The Ace Ops because the show actually used "show don't tell" to show why Team RWBY won.
Because they are all on the same page. Where as the Ace Ops are clearly not. Marrow and Vine are holding back, while Harriet and Elm are getting irritated and annoyed. This is not "well, their power level is higher because they are more experienced, so Team RWBY should have lost"
Normally I hate the "power of friendship triumphs over an obstacle" because usually its a character going on a long winded speech about "how their friends give them power, etc". Blake and Yang complemented each other so well, because both of them were on the same page while Elm and Vine were not.
Team RWBY vs The Ace Ops was fantastic. It was excellent "show, don't tell"
Now with the stuff with the characters on the airship. Oh boy
I understand why people are frustrated, but I think a lot of criticism I've seen here and on twitter is that "the characters got the idiot ball" but I don't think that's the case. When I see people saying "characters are not doing logical things, the writing is bad" I think these people are judging character actions based on a third person perspective, rather than a first person perspective.
People are asking "why would they do that?" when the question I think should be asked are "why are they doing that?"
And with Qrow, Clover and Robyn all three have reasons that are internally consistent with their characters that make their decisions make sense.
- Robyn: Has just been told that after allying with Ironwood, he has betrayed her and the people of Mantle by leaving them to die. She is established as quick to anger, and starts the fight.
- Qrow: Has just been told Ironwood is abandoning Mantle, and now hears that Clover has orders to arrest him. Qrow has no idea about what happened in Ironwood's office, and now thinks Ironwood is betraying him.
- Clover: He puts absolute trust into Ironwood's decisions. Because of this he breaks his bond with Qrow because he believes in Ironwood and doesn't question his instructions.
And all three of these characters made a horrific mistake.
The entire theme of this volume has been
TRUST
Everything went so well at the beginning of Episode 11 because all the characters trusted each other. They worked together, and they won.
But Salem successfully divided them. Ironwood's paranoia and decisions made him an enemy of Qrow and Robyn. And Clover shows that his allegiances are to Ironwood first.
People keep saying "Clover should have prioritized Tyrian first" or "How could Qrow team up with Tyrian"
And the reasoning for both is as follows
For Clover, he has been given orders to arrest Qrow from the highest authority (Ironwood). He doesn't question these orders, he goes along with them and forsakes his relationship with Qrow. He isn't differentiating the severity of crimes because both Qrow and Tyrian are wanted men. So his job is now to neutralize them both. He can't say to Qrow, "help me take down Tyrion so I can arrest you later", so Clover is on his own in this free for all.
Qrow is now considered wanted, and knows that Clover won't stop until he is apprehended. So he begrudgingly works with Tyrian to get Clover out of the fight so he can fight off Tyrian. And this is the critical error Qrow made because since he can't trust Clover anymore his begrudging alliance with Tyrian backfires completely like Tyrians inspiration of "the scorpion and the frog"
And the problem is that the trust between Clover and Qrow has been dissolved due to Ironwood's decision.
And that's where the huge tragedy of this episode is.
This whole thing could have been avoided if the characters literally just talked it out
But they didn't. Because Trust died between them.
Clover didn't need to die. And that's why this episode feels like such a gut punch. Because you, the audience as a third party can see these characters are making huge mistakes. The characters themselves can not see it because of their own internal character logic.
I genuinely think this episode had good writing, but I understand why people might think it's bad. Because the characters made frustrating, easy to see mistakes, but because they can't trust each other anymore... they didn't realize they were making mistakes.
