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Bagheera and Shere Khan, working together, along with Adam the Beast.

RWBY Volume 6 trailer focuses on Adam’s story

The Sixth Volume of RWBY by Rooster Teeth will premiere in October, but they gave us a tantalizing nugget to pacify us in the meantime. Adam is probably one of the most universally disliked characters in the RWBY canon. He was an abusive boyfriend to Blake. He helped turn both Blake and Ilia into terrorists, he brutally murdered his leader Sienna Khan (I’m still salty), and perhaps most offensive: he cut off Yang’s arm.

Let’s see a bit of his story up until now.

We get a lot here, but I’m going to start with SIENNA KHAN!! The tiger Faunus was built up as the leader of the White Fang civil rights organization gone terrorist, but she was summarily killed off seemingly without a care. In this seven-minute video, we see her in her prime before she led the White Fang, and as she became more violent in her ways, and ultimately died for encouraging Adam too far down this dark path.

This short initially reveals how Adam was the blunt instrument they needed to save themselves when attacked by militantly bigoted humans. He saved the life of Ghira Belladonna, but killed somebody in the process. Dark choice, but ultimately forgivable, especially in fiction, nobody likes bigots. This section was fascinating to see Adam, Sienna, and Ilia fighting alongside the pacifistic Ghira. This was probably a few years in the past. Ilia was probably just out of middle school years.

Blake is coming to her senses.

We then see him across the years as he becomes more and more violent. Blake Belladonna shows fear towards his increasing ‘accidents’ on missions when he spills blood.

 

Ilia was always an actual cinnamon roll.

We even see Ilia take off her mask in something akin to fear during a raid on the Schnee Dust Company’s train as Adam cuts down their attackers without mercy until Sienna cautions him to stop.

What a wasted character.

The action set pieces here are nice. They demonstrate Sienna, Ilia, and Adam’s brutal efficiency against multiple opponents, something we haven’t seen before. The color scheme goes from lighter hues to the blood red we now associate with Adam. Neither have we seen a White Fang raid led by three named characters, so that was nice.

The (dark) dream team.

The last bit we see is caught up to the current time as he limps away from the fight at Haven Academy, where both his proteges Blake and Ilia defied his ideology once and for all, sending him scurrying into the jungle, having lost everything.

As he limps away from the camera, his mask falls, and he doesn’t turn to pick it up. (Also, this image destroys a fan theory that Adam was actually a twisted human, that his horns were artificial and attached to the mask. They are not.)

Face the music.

A symbolic shift towards something positive? Perhaps. I’m not ready for an Adam redemption arc. But I’d be amenable for him to end up as an enemy of the Enemy to everyone that is Salem. I don’t want the writers to try and brush his past horrors under the rug by writing the other characters as somehow miraculously forgiving him.

But as Avatar Aang would say, “When we are at our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change.”

It’s also worth pointing out that this short is the first time we see real blood as a result of violence. Is this a darker turn for the series? But I’m jumping to conclusions.

RWBY returns October 25 in theaters and October 27 on their website.

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Nathan Levine

Nathan is from Culver City, California. Follow him on twitter @BellicoseEmpath.

2 CommentsLeave a comment

  • I think Adam has silver eyes for millions of reasons and I have a few answers that can back that up. First and foremost is the color scheme. Both Adam and Ruby have black and red color schemes not to mention have similar flower logos. Adam’s is a wilted rose and Ruby’s is a scatter rose. Those two have an important connection and meaning then you realize. Remember when someone made a theory about Adam and Ruby being related and Monty stated that they are not and the difference between them is scattered and wilt. Well, he even stated that even though they are different it doesn’t mean they aren’t connected in the story. The reason that I bring this up is that they are both silver-eyed warriors that have a purpose of wanting to make the world a better place, but like Blake said in the second volume that Adam’s idea of a perfect world is not for everyone and I think that what she is referring to is humans. That is the difference between scatter and wilt. Ruby is a symbol of life who wants to help and save lives no matter who they are hence her scatter logo, but Adam wants to kill people to make his world better by making the world decay. And we are not done here yet. I know that you guys are probably sharping your pitchforks right now and are shouting but he’s an ex-abusive boyfriend that cut yang’s arm off. Yes, he did, but what if there was a reason to back that up. Now as we all know from Volume 5 Adam wanted Blake to suffer for leaving the White Fang, and he said to the Fennec brothers that the Belladonna name has brought him nothing but grief. And that is a mystery what could the sweet belladonnas have possibly done to make Adam miserable. And I have a theory on that. It was said in the Volume 6 lyrics that Adam wants to be lionized. He wants to be seen as the savior for the faunus. What if Adam originally joined the White Fang to keep Grimm from terrorizing their territory. He uses his silver eyes to protect his people and it probably wasn’t enough for the faunus to see him as a hero and he decides to train harder and become a powerful warrior without using his powers and because they were more focused on the faunus rights than the Grimm at that point. And maybe there was a point where Ghira’s methods of not using violence don’t work. Adam suggests to use violence and Ghira doesn’t agree with that and since everyone still looked up to Ghira they agreed and Adam was shunned for it, but Blake was the one who stood up for him and believed in his ideas and even left with him to join the other White Fang with Sienna. The reason I say this is because Illia said to Blake that she use to sees things the way Illia and Adam did. And Blake did, but when the White Fang was using methods that were too extreme she was beginning to doubt it and Adam was scared of Blake leaving him and I think that was what he meant when he emotionally manipulated her and said about abandoning the cause like her parents because he’s scared that she will give up on him and leave him like her parents did when he wanted to use violence to get faunus equality and that everything he did was for nothing. And the next thing that happened was she left him and he was probably upset, but I wouldn’t say that he was a crazy obsessed psycho because if he was why would he prevent his lieutenants from finding her? Because he still had the White Fang with him he still had Sienna to back him up, but when he suggested attacking Haven and Sienna didn’t agree he killed her. And then the White Fang gave up and surrendered when Adam tried to blow the school along with them and he ditched them. And that is why he is upset with Blake and I would too if I looked up to someone who stood by me and believed in my ideas and then ditched me and went to a school with humans and became friends with not only a Schnee, but replaced me with a human me and tried to stop my gang from completing my goals. So yeah I would want to make my partner suffer, but that doesn’t really make it right. Ok so now Adam is no longer in the White Fang and he ditches the mask. Why? Well, I think it is because he is going to go through a metamorphosis because he has suffered a lot. I mean Ghira didn’t support him, Blake ditched him, Sienna no longer considered him a symbol, and the White Fang hates him, and he did the one thing that was out of his league he ran away. So all that can build up stress, anxiety, and pressure in someone’s mind. This would honestly make sense of sienna’s early death because Adam could have visions of her and remember her advice of strength and remember Blake’s reason for leaving and his original purpose of being a warrior and this would help us get a great backstory. This metamorphosis could change him back to who he was before destroying the beast inside him and train Ruby to use her silver eyes. This would explain why her eyes weren’t mentioned in Volume 5 and this would be a great character growth for her. Besides what better way to train her than an expert. And this is the most important thing to back up this theory. Before Volume 5 was released there were 3 character shorts that were about Weiss, Blake, and Yang because Volume 5 was mostly about Weiss, Blake, and Yang’s journey and character growth, not Ruby’s or RNJR’s. And that is why I think Adam had a character short because he is going to have an important role in Volume 6.