Just heard that Otr of the Flame is going to end this week after 34 chapters and I’m genuinely surprised it even lasted that long. I really wanted to like it but it was just so boring, I had to drop if after 20-something chapters.

And for some reason there are almost no beautifully muscled big booby women in it? That’s like 90% of the reason people even still remember and like Red Hood, why not lean more into it? Alajoki only appears in the first couple of chapters and just dips forever, what a bummer.

Hopefully Yuki Kawaguchi learns from his mistakes and has better luck in his next publication. On the bright side, this means 3 new titles coming to Jump, and I’m interested in talking about each of them in time.

The most interesting thing about this trailer is that almost nothing shown is actually explained. The Red Trailer didn’t do much explaining either, but its basic plot was simple, short, and obvious. Here, so little detail is given away that it renders the trailer almost abstract, at least in a vacuum. A LOT of what I’m going to say here in this rewatch is information that would only be revealed years later. I’ll clarify things when I get to them.

This trailer, and the following two Color Trailers, is prefaced with a quote. And God do I hate to sound like a obnoxious nitpicker but I’m pretty sure a “metric” IS a form of measurement. Kind of feels redundant, like saying a snowball is both frigid and freezing to the touch. But I digress. As for its meaning, it’s obviously about Weiss and how sad she is. Its sympathetic attitude feels like a response to a cold superior, probably Weiss’s father, Jaques Scnhee, who’ll be someone to look out for later down the line.

The trailer begins with an announcer (voiced by Jeff Williams, today I learned) introducing Weiss Schnee at what is presumably an SDC ball. The crowd roars and gentle piano music plays in the background, and then Weiss begins to sings. I want to bring attention to this because, having been in this fandom for so long, it’s kind of surprising how overlooked this part of Weiss is. Fandoms are odd things. Yang the Punster has said two puns max in the whole show, and Ruby’s constantly wolfing down cookies because she ate a bunch of cookies in the first episode, but Weiss is literally introduced singing and nobody ever talks about it! She even sings in Volume 4 for the charity event. I dunno. None of this shit matters, by the way, I just wanted to talk about this.

Weiss’s singing voice doesn’t sound ANYTHING like her normal voice, but I’ll gladly disregard it. “Mirror, Mirror” is a banger and my absolute favorite song from all the Color Trailers. It takes what I loved of most of Casey’s vocals from “Red Like Roses”, her powerful, lilting voice, and turns it up to an epic degree. I’m also generally a sucker for orchestral backings, and the way the percussion ramps up halfway really sells the intensity of the second half. And the aria that’s sung right in the middle? Absolute cinema.

Anyways, Weiss continues to sing for a bit, and then the camera flips around to her reflection in an enormous, dark room. The fandom back then apparently nicknamed the location the “White Castle”, which is hilarious. We’re then shown Weiss’s opponent, a huge suit of armor, and while the trailer doesn’t say, it’s called an Arma Gigas. I’ll go in more depth later.

As for the fight itself, I must say that watching it makes me feel all warm and happy inside. Weiss’s fighting style has always been my favorite. Her battling against such a huge and slow opponent makes for the best showcase of it, of her dashing and pirouetting, rapid-fire slashing and stabbing, using Glyphs for speed and platforming. Not only does Weiss’s fighting style reflects her character perfectly, her finesse, elegance, and precision, it’s just a blast to watch. Let us put her “fight” at the Battle of Haven out of our minds for now. Here, this very moment, there is only Best Girl™.

The Arma Gigas isn’t a slouch in the animation department either. Every time its about to attack, so much anticipation is built that no matter if the attack lands or not you can FEEL its heaviness. I especially love the shot where it raises its sword for a full two seconds before it finally drops.

ALT

Here’s a fun fact: When Weiss is thrown back by the Arma Gigas for the second time, around the 1:23 mark, if you look VERY closely (I recommend going through the video frame-by-frame with the comma or period keys) you can actually see that Weiss’s weapon, Myrtenester, only has red Dust crystals in it. This same design is also shown at the end of the trailer when Weiss’s silhouette is filled in. This was Weiss’s original design, and I presume this clip was old footage that Monty forgot to swap out. According to Monty he originally made the Dust red to compliment Weiss’s design, believing that having a someone walking around with a rainbow on them all the time would be ugly. On the other hand, he also wanted the audience to know that Weiss was using different types of Dust. In the end, as much as it pained him, he made the Dust color-coded. Design-wise, I agree that Weiss’s Volume 1 outfit pairs wonderfully with more red, but lore-wise, I thank God everyday that we can actually differentiate the Dust.

After Weiss is punched across the White Castle, the scene shifts to her at the concert. As she begins to sing her aria, the music swells, and the scene shifts back to her fight. She stands up, newly scarred but undeterred, and spins her weapon’s cylinder.

Now, from a purely logical perspective, this doesn’t make much sense. Once Weiss uses her Dust, the tide of battle changes so thoroughly in her favor that it becomes a curb stomp, even though the Dust could have been used at any time. But from a storytelling standpoint, it the moment serves both as a climax and a showcasing of Dust. Ruby did the same thing too back in the Red Trailer when she used the Gravity Dust cartridge, but here it’s especially obvious, with Weiss doing crazy stuff like lighting up her sword, deflecting attacks, affecting the landscape, and even imbuing it into her Semblance. Here, Dust isn’t simply a weapon, but a powerful and varied trump card. Dust is so cool here that, in RWBY proper, It’s kind of a shame that the power of Dust is all but forgotten, being an accessory at most, and certainly not special.

Weiss manages to blast the sword off the Arma Gigas, and then makes a sort of pensive face when she’s setting up the Glyph trap. The Arma Gigas runs into it, is blasted into the air, and is then locked into place with Glyphs imbued with Hard-Light Dust.

Weiss jumps into the air, the broken moon behind her, her sword lights up, and with one final slash the Arma Gigas is defeated. The last words of the song are sung: “I’m the loneliest of all.” Weiss stares up at the moon. The crowd cheers and the curtains close.

Weiss’s silhouette is filled, and the trailer ends.

Now comes the clarifications. What’s actually going on, as told in the 3rd chapter of the RWBY manga written by Shirow Miwa (which I’ve never read) and slightly differently in the first episode of RWBY: Ice Queendom, is that Weiss is trying to prove to her father that she has what it takes become a Huntress, and this fight one huge, cruel test.

Weiss’s opponent is a type of Grimm called a Geist that can posses and control inanimate objects. It would take until Volume 4 to actually see a Geist in the show proper.

Obviously, I know any of this back then. I got into RWBY after Volume 2, sometime around 2014, and it would take years before this trailer was fully explained. When I first watched it, I assumed that the whole fight was metaphorical. I saw the overturning shot of Weiss singing onstage to her fighting the knight as a sort of dream transition. The huge white knight represented Weiss’s abusive father, or the expectations of being the Schnee heiress, or something like that, and her winning represented her triumph of attending Beacon. The Arma Gigas also just didn’t read as a Grimm to me. It was too humanoid and it faded into white smoke upon defeat, when Grimm always turn into black smoke. It also doesn’t help that nobody in the show, least of all Weiss, ever talked about the events of this trailer. But while I would have liked it if the White Trailer were brought up in the show (a major gripe I have with these Color Trailers as a whole is that they feel disconnected from the rest of the series), I ultimately digress. The part during the Battle of Beacon in Volume 3, where Weiss summons the arm of the Arma Gigas to fight on her behalf was both an enormous hype moment and a genuine shock to the fandom, and something that badass more than makes up for all the confusion along the way.

Also like the last trailer, Weiss doesn’t speak, but I think the trailer here does a better job at conveying Weiss’s character. Weiss’s full personality, her pompous “tsundere” exterior covering a kind and frankly goofy personality, isn’t shown, but the central conflict in her heart, her loneliness and legacy in relation to the Schnee family name is touched upon. You have to listen to the song to get it, but it’s there.

Despite all my kvetching, I still love this trailer. I’m not one of those annoying critics who thinks everything has to explained all the time. Sometimes the power of a work comes from aesthetics alone. Even if you can’t parse the story, that doesn’t prevent the fight choreography, the music, and the backgrounds from all being fantastic. At the end of the day I value narrative above all else in art, but that’s a personal bias, and here I can let it slide.

The Star Detective Precure designs look good, pretty interesting that the main one is purple. Kind of wished they leaned into the “detective” visuals more. Cure Arcana Shadow is a phenomenal fucking name, I think she’s my favorite just for that alone.