You know, one thing I see a lot of people misunderstanding about RWBY is Taiyang's talk to Yang in Volume 4.
They take it as Taiyang explaining the virtues of tactics and strategy when Yang has already shown to be tactical in her fighting. They decry it as a retcon, a shallow attempt at developing the fighting ability of the best fighter in the show. But that's not the point Taiyang is trying to get across.
The point he's trying to get across is that Yang has a tendency to let her emotions rule her actions, a tendency that makes her actions predictable. Not that she's not thinking enough about how to punch people, but that she should be thinking more about whether to punch people.
Look at the fight with Neo in Volume 2. When Neo starts dodging her attacks, Yang switches up her strategy twice. But the problem isn't "How do I punch this person". She didn't need to win the fight. All she had to do was stop Neo from interfering with Weiss and Blake. And even if she wanted to win it, maybe she should've thought of dealing with the purely melee fighter at range. But she didn't think of that, because she was annoyed, and wanted the satisfaction of punching Neo.
Or the fight with Mercury in Volume 3. When Emerald tricked Yang into thinking Mercury made a sneak attack, she could’ve done anything else. Blocked, dodged, anything. But they predicted she’d be angry, predicted she’d want to counterattack, and successfully demonized her in the eyes of the world.
Or the fight with Adam in Volume 3. He baits her by hurting Blake, she rushes in to punch him, and he takes her arm off.
Yang is very, very good at punching people. Figuring out how to punch people best. How hard to punch people.
But Taiyang isn’t trying to say she isn’t good at punching people. He’s trying to say not every problem is something to be punched.
Much like the old saying, Yang is very good at using a hammer, but she can’t treat every problem like a nail. Especially when she has so many more tools to use other than a hammer.
The advice ultimately culminates in the Volume 5 finale, where instead of punching Raven, Yang calmly takes apart her justifications and leaves her mask shattered, revealing her as the broken human being held up by lies that she really is. It's the best fight in the series, in my opinion, and not a single punch is thrown, and that is the whole point.
The one physical action that Yang takes in that fight is shoulder-checking Raven as she walks past. And Raven, the Spring Maiden, the leader of the ruthless bandit tribe, trained Huntswoman, one of the best fighters of her generation... puts up no resistance. Yang won the battle well before she landed that blow.
And that’s the fundamental difference between what Raven did in the Vault, and what Yang did. All Raven’s schemes, from Vernal to tricking Cinder into getting Qrow and our heroes involved, was based around making sure she had the upper hand when the time to fight came. Meanwhile, Yang used her knowledge of Raven and what she was able to figure out about the situation to end the fight before it even started.
As Sun Tzu says in The Art of War, “For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
Submitted September 30, 2018 at 10:11AM by Luimnigh https://ift.tt/2P0ZLDa
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