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RWBY: Ice Queendom
Episode 12

by MrAJCosplay,

How would you rate episode 12 of
RWBY: Ice Queendom ?
Community score: 3.9

I have to admit, this season finale caught me off guard. As an epilogue, it does a solid enough job bridging this story back to the established status quo of the original series. There are some discussions regarding some of the main emotional and thematic beats, and some conversations that I almost wish were in the original series considering how well they play off of pre-established events. That said, not all of it will work for anime-only viewers. When the principal is talking to Blake about the white fang attack, he's referring to an event that technically was not shown in the anime, so I can see that being confusing. What's more, the food fight at the end of the episode, while incredibly visually stunning with an amazing insert song in the background, kind of nags at the obsessive part of my brain as I try to think of how this is connected to the iconic food fight scene that happened in the original series. I don't think it's supposed to be the exact same food fight, even though some of the action sequences are almost identical. If I remember correctly, this show takes place after the first food fight but I can't really tell if that's a continuity error.

After going through such an ordeal, almost all the tension has dissolved in team RWBY. Maybe it was too much to ask that the characters address all of the deep-seated desires and insecurities that manifested in the nightmare realm, particularly for Weiss and Blake. It would've also been nice to get a little bit more from Ruby regarding her insecurities about being a leader, which I still feel like the show sort of dropped the ball on despite her being probably the second most prevalent character in the entire show. However, everyone at least seems to be aware that everybody else is coming from some place of hardship, and most importantly, they're all trying to get better. When Blake and Weiss talked to each other about how they may not understand everything but what's important is they want to be able to trust each other and set an example, I definitely believe that – if anything, that's probably the strongest thematic beat that the show can end on.

Ice QUEENDOM has been an amazing experiment to witness. Regardless of your feelings on the original webseries, the fact that it was able to reach the medium that clearly inspired it is heartwarming on its own right. To top it off, it mostly works as a standalone while also acting as a canon fill-in scenario for the original series, which is not an easy balancing act to pull off. I still don't think everything is handled perfectly, but I also feel like it ends in a satisfying enough note.

Rating:

RWBY: Ice Queendom is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.


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