*A.F.S.A. stands for: Awesome Fight Scene Analysis*
It’s been nearly a year since the last (and first) one of these articles, and I’m sorry for the delay. I’ve had excellent fight scenes I’ve been wanting to rave about in the past year, but I just kept putting off on doing a dedicated A.F.S.A. article for a while. Well, that’s changing now, thanks almost entirely to my recent re-watch of the RWBY series. If there’s two things RWBY is known for, it’s their crazy off-the-walls fight scenes and banging soundtrack.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at one of the hype showdowns that occurs in Volume Two’s penultimate episode, “No Brakes“. In particular, we’ll be examining the stellar clash between protagonist Yang Zhao Long, and antagonist Neopolitan.
SETTING THE SCENE:
After a season’s worth of sleuthing, the protagonists have finally tracked down where nefarious criminal Roman Torchwick and his White Fang terrorists have been hiding and plotting their schemes. Lying in the underground ruins of the long-forgotten Mountain Glenn, Torchwick and his cronies are preparing a bomb-filled train to head straight through the subway system and plow right into the city of Vale, allowing subterranean Grimm to ravage the populace! Oh no!
In order to stop this scheme from happening, Team RWBY board the train and fight through the waves of opposition to make their way to the front of the train and slam on the brakes (apparently unaware that the episode’s title is, in fact, “No Brakes”). One-by-one, the crime-busting girls split from each other to pair off against their opponents, each girl buying time for the next to make it further down the train.
The first girl to set herself up against a foe is Yang, who distracts the cunning Neo long enough for Weiss and Blake to press on. Neo seems more than amused with the prospect of throwing down with Yang, however, and the fight begins with the two combatants (and their shocking height disparity) staring each other down.
THE COMBATANTS:
In one corner we have the (literal) fiery blonde herself, Yang Zhao Long. Yang has proven multiple times over the course of the show to put her temper and hot-headed tendencies to good use as an all-out brawler. Eschewing the fancy acrobatics and tricks of her teammates, Yang goes all out on the up-close punches and kicks (along with the occasional shotgun blast from her gauntlets). Her ability to flare up and grow stronger the more she gets hurt only makes her that much more threatening of a combatant.
In the other corner we have the woman of mystery, Neopolitan. At this point in the show, the viewer could count the things they know about Neo as a character on one hand (and indeed the fight’s biggest weakness is a lack of story significance). All that is known about Neo at this point is that she’s Torchwick’s right-hand-woman, apparently has some sort of illusion powers, and previously prevented Yang from beating and arresting Torchwick after an earlier battle. She also appears to never NOT be smiling, which is unsettling in and of itself.
THE FIGHT ITSELF:
Here’s your listening for this fight (specifically from 3:55 to 4:48 and then 7:02 to 8:42): LINK
As she is wont to do, Yang kicks off the fight by moving in for a simple hook to Neopolitan’s face, the teenaged girl used to being the aggressor in her showdowns. It shocks her, then, that Neo deftly prevents the blow from ever connecting by driving the handle of her parasol right up into Yang’s stomach before Yang can even think about reacting. Instead, the girl finds herself stumbling backward, hurt and surprised, her eyes narrowing angrily as Neo theatrically opens and poses with her parasol, still smiling.
This clearly agitates Yang, but it’s obvious our protagonist still believes her strength will carry her through this fight. She runs right back toward her foe with her fists flying, a furious flurry of hooks and jabs aimed at Neo’s head and upper body. A lesser foe wouldn’t stand a chance against a barrage like this. In fact, we see Yang pull off these same sort of maneuvers against the White Fang, Grimm, and the Malachite Sisters in the earlier Volumes of the show.
But Neo isn’t a lesser opponent…she’s the greatest threat Yang’s faced in her entire life, and Yang is severely out of her depth. This is a teenager still training her skills up against an assassin in her twenties. There’s a monumental skill-gap.
Without so much as striking back, Neo (one hand tauntingly on hip, and smirk firmly in place) simply casually shimmies backwards, slipping under and around every single one of Yang’s blows. Not a single one of Yang’s hits connect, and Neo makes her dodging look effortless, like some sort of twisted dance. Even when Yang shifts to throwing a few kicks, Neo is not caught off guard, blocking the strikes with the handle of her parasol, demonstrating her ability to think and move even faster than Yang.
Then, once Yang is open, Neo springs into her first counterattack, pushing aside Yang’s fist with her parasol and throwing the younger girl off-balance. Without hesitation, Neo shows off her incredible flexibility by arching her leg up in a full half-circle spin and clocking Yang across the face with her heel, knocking Yang to the floor. It’s relatively painful to watch, both from the brutalness of the hit and the efficient lack of hesitation on Neo’s part.
And it only gets worse as an angry Yang barely manages to dodge Neo’s follow-up attack, which is some sort of knee-first groundslam move. As soon as she’s clear, Yang goes for a rushing punch, but Neo instantly catches her arm between her parasol and the crook of her own arm. Staggered, Yang is powerless to block a direct high-kick from Neo (that pops up a full 180 degrees from her standing position), and a follow-up back-kick right into Yang’s stomach. Yang crumples onto the floor.
It becomes abundantly clear that Neo knows every single thing she needs to about this fight. She knows that she’s better than Yang. She knows that Yang knows she’s better than Yang. She knows that there’s nothing Yang can do to stop her, and she knows that Yang’s friends aren’t going to be coming back to help her, because they’re too busy trying to stop the train. Neo has all the time in the world to ‘play with her food‘, and she’s relishing in it.
But Yang isn’t out yet. After all, she gets stronger and more heated the more damage she takes, so she’s immediately back on her feet. She’s also royally furious by this point, especially as Neo never stops taunting Yang. Neo goes so far as to cartwheel beside her while she’s still on the ground, seemingly only for dramatic effect (and Neo is nothing if not dramatic).
Yang switches from punches and kicks to relying on the shotgun blasts of her gauntlets instead, seemingly deciding that it’s much harder for the dodge-heavy Neo to avoid a direct blast. Unfortunately, Neo is prepared for this tactic as well, and she opens up her parasol in response.
Wielding what is apparently the most bullet- and fire-resistant parasol in existence, Neo blocks two direct blasts from Yang’s gauntlets without missing a beat. She then goes for her own strike, which Yang actually hops back to dodge, but then Neo manages to drive the parasol into Yang’s arm to deflect our protagonist’s attempted counter.
Having now crept her way into Yang’s inner guard, Neo has free reign to seize control of the tempo of the fight, and she uses this opening to her full, delighted advantage. Neo jabs the handle of her parasol into Yang’s stomach, the tip of the parasol into her face, and then smacks the entire thing across Yang’s midsection, causing our blonde hero to stumble back and nearly lose her balance.
In one flourishing sweep motion, Neo pushes forward on Yang, who is figuratively and literally on the backfoot. She spins her parasol around while the canopy is open, managing to toss aside Yang’s aim on her first shotgun blast, and then fully block the burst from the second blast. She then jabs Yang’s chest with the pointed tip, shoving our hero even further backwards.
With a yell, Yang changes her strategy yet again by launching a full-powered shotgun explosion into the floor, aiming to blow up the area around Neo’s feet and knock her off balance. And yet, instead of achieving this outcome, Neo merely backflips out of the way of the explosion, backflips again for good measure, and finds herself sitting upon a storage crate, legs politely crossed and a sassy expression on her face…and wholly untouched by Yang.
She’s loving every single second of this.
Something worth pointing out is that Yang fights significantly smarter than her general devil-may-care attitude would suggest. She’s incredible at reading her opponents on the fly and figuring out the best ways to punch and kick through their openings and weaknesses. She’s not just all brawn, and she demonstrates that during this battle by never once coming at Neo with the same sequence of blows or maneuvers. Yang pulls out her entire repertoire in successful unique fashions, in such a way that almost anyone would be caught tripping up.
But Neo isn’t anyone, and she’s just too good.
(By the way, every single thing I’ve just described takes place across a mere 20 seconds of screen time. This fight is insane, and you practically have to watch it in slow-motion to take in everything that’s happening.)
While Neo sits patiently smiling on her box, Yang approaches steadily with barely-contained rage. Any semblance of mercy long gone from her thoughts, Yang rears back to send an fiery explosion right into Neo’s face. Right before the blow can connect, Neo finally springs into action, brandishing her parasol to deflect the blow, and then she begins flipping around the box like she’s busting out some sick moves, moving too fast for Yang to find an opening.
With her feet kicking out in a spinning circle, and her blade-edged parasol still whirling about her as she twists atop the box, Yang doesn’t have long enough to slip in an attack before Neo launches off the box. Pushing off the box, Neo aims an overhead kick at Yang’s face, then backflips into a second overhead kick. Both kicks are just barely blocked by Yang, but it is the third frontflip kick aimed at Yang’s shins that catches our hero by surprise. Yang is hit, and she flies back.
Surprisingly, Yang holds herself steady enough to launch another shotgun blast, but one can almost see the yawn on Neo’s face as she blocks it with her parasol’s canopy. Again, Yang is smart, and she expects this, because she runs right in with a follow-up, attempting to get at Neo while the shorter girl has her vision impaired by her own parasol. But of course, Neo knows that Yang expects this, and she’s ready for her.
Neo immediately spins out of harm’s way, and then the two exchange a brief but furious volley of blows. Yang punches with all of her strength, but Neo either dodges or blocks each blow, stopping Yang’s punches with the handle of her parasol, and deflecting the shotgun blasts with sweeping strikes. While Yang is fighting for her life to stop this criminal scum, Neo’s merely enjoying the dance.
And Yang has yet to land a single blow…
THE FINISHING BLOW:
The audience is given the briefest glimmer of hope right as the fight nears its conclusion. After spending the entire battle on the losing end of a curb-stomping beatdown, Yang finally manages to outmaneuver her opponent and catch Neo’s leg when the shorter girl goes for a kick. Knowing that Neo’s best advantage is her maneuverability and her capability for countering, Yang aims to bring the fight to a decisive end by throwing Neo onto the ground, where she can’t escape anymore.
Suffice to say…this doesn’t work out well for Yang.
Yang’s throwing form is fine, but having been prepared for such a maneuver, Neo avoids the damage of being slammed into the floor by leaning into the momentum of the throw in place of fighting it. Instead of crashing into the floor, Neo delicately cartwheels to safety, then sprints right back towards Yang, who is unbalanced due to being surprised by Neo’s added thrust on our hero’s initial throw.
As if to show the blonde brawler what a ‘real throw‘ is like, Neo performs a jaw-dropping maneuver that can only be referred to as breakdancing atop Yang’s head, spinning and spiraling around as she deftly avoids Yang’s confused grabs. The dance-like movement ends with Neo bracing her feet against Yang’s neck, arching herself back, and then launching Yang into the air like a ragdoll. It’s a powerful and utterly humiliating move for Yang to suffer from, and it seals the fight.
Yang slams against the metal roof, falls back to the floor, and is unconscious. Neo, without a single scratch on her, and smile still in place, is the victor.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
It’s hard for me to put into words why a fight scene barely longer than a minute gives me so much joy, but I genuinely cannot watch this fight without a giant stupid grin on my face. It’s no less exhilarating than the moment I first watched it, and I’m not sure it will ever get old. In fact, I might actually like it more now than I used to, particularly in the sense that I’ve started developing a (borderline) obsession with writing fight scenes into my own novels. It’s scenes like this that give me so much inspiration for high-quality action.
Like, on a level purely examining the choreography and rhythm of the battle, this is easily in the top five (or even three) of my favorite fight scenes of all time.
And, of course, this fight isn’t all about action. While the story relevance of this fight is questionable at best, and the audience investment in the stakes is low given how little screen time Neo has before this moment, the characterization expressed by Yang and Neo during this fight is unmatched. Their fighting styles convey their personalities perfectly, and the rhythm of their fight really highlights who they are and how they feel about each other, all without a single word of dialogue.
RWBY isn’t some sort of perfect show (nothing is), but its fight scenes remain the pinnacle in the world of animated entertainment!
But hey, that’s just my opinion!
The Contrarian Corner 