RWBY/Recap/Trailers/P3 Black Trailer

"Your hopes have become my burden. I will find my own liberation."

The scene opens on a forest of brilliantly scarlet foliage. In the center of the scene, a girl in white and black (and purple, though it's hard to see) sits contemplatively on a large bouder. A figure in black -- Adam, we learn later in the trailer -- walks up to her and says, "Blake, it's time."

She turns to him slowly and says, "Okay."

A moment later we see them speeding through the red forest to halt at the top of a cliff. Below them is a wide railroad track, and in the distance an oncoming train. They slide down the hill and then leap off to land on the roof of one of the train's freight cars. Climbing inside through a hatch, they find themselves surrounded by robot guards, and when challenged, attack.

After demolishing all opposition in the car and across the next, a flatcar this time, they make their way into another freight car, where they find and check the contents of a chest. "Perfect," Adam says. "I'll set the charges."

"What about the crew members?" Blake asks with obvious concern.

"What about them?" he all but sneers in response.

Before she can reply to that, a huge spider-droid drops out of the shadows above them. Unlike its predessors, this defender is no pushover; its armor is resistant to both Blake's blades and her bullets, and with one powerful salvo sends them flying out of the freight car and onto the next flatcar. At Adam's request, Blake distracts the spider-droid while he prepares his next attack. The droid fires its big gun again, and Adam catches the beam on his sword, apparently absorbing the energy. Glowing with power, Adam slashes with his blade, disintegrating the droid and much of the cargo on the flatcar.

When he turns back, he finds that Blake is standing on the next flatcar, right above the coupling. As if anticipating what will happen next, he raises his hand as if to stop her, but she says simply "Good-bye", and cuts the coupling. As the detached cars slow and she recedes into the distance, she turns into a black silhouette on a red background.


 * Arc Symbol: The Schnee snowflake appears on just about everything on the train except the robots.  It wouldn't be until late in V1 that the connection to Weiss's family is confirmed.
 * Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics: Blake's weapons seem to demonstrate this.
 * Boss Battle: The fight with the spider-droid.
 * Critical Status Buff/Limit Break: Adam appears to charge up his Finishing Move by absorbing the energy from the spider-droid's Wave Motion Gun into his sword.
 * Finishing Move: Adam's last blow struck against the spider-droid.
 * Iaijutsu Practitioner: Adam's sword style is clearly Iaijutsu or a variant; he sheathes his blade after almost every strike.
 * Image Song: "From Shadows", which underlies the entire trailer, is very much this for Blake, and if listened to closely enough actually spoils the big Reveal from the end of V1.
 * MacGuffin: At the time trailer was released, the contents of the chest on the train.  By late V1, though, it was obvious that the train was transporting Dust.
 * Mecha-Mooks: The robot guards on the train.
 * Spider-droid: Part of the defenses on the train, and definitely not a mook like the other robots aboard.
 * Super Speed: Both Adaam and Blake demonstrate greater-than-human speed and reflexes throughout the trailer.
 * Train Job: The trailer is about one.  The events of this train job become a minor plot point late in V1, and a much larger one at the end of V3.
 * Traintop Battle: The fight against the security robots alternates between inside freight cars and outside atop flatcars.
 * Wave Motion Gun: The spider-droid's "big gun", which requires a physical reconfiguration and a short charge-up.
 * What Measure Is a Human?: This is the philosophical conflict, often missed by viewers in all the action, which finally forces Blake to abandon Adam and the White Fang:  his deliberate and callous disregard for the lives of the train's crew because they are not faunus, which turns out to be typical of the "new" White Fang.