RWBY's Arkos Ship is Adorable

Recently I went back and re-watched RWBY’s Volume 3, Chapter 12.
Spoilers (up to end of Season 3) below; although I reckon RWBY’s story is good enough that it wouldn’t be “spoiled” by lack of surprise.

I also had some fun watching some of the reaction videos for the episode.
I’m not a big fan of reaction videos in general; nothing against them, it’s just I’d rather watch the video myself than see someone else watch it.
– But V3C12 (or, S3E12) is so intense that it’s a lot of fun to share the reaction with them. – And, also, watching these videos, you can’t help but notice “wow, these people are geeks like me”. <3 – The other benefit is the fans will each point out details of the episode I didn’t notice.

The episode’s first half concludes the combat which has been raging since Volume 3 Chapter 10. – For a show which’d previously been very skimpy on fighting scenes, it’s suffice to say this is an intense sequence.
But chiefly, Pyrrha finally kisses Jaune, then she goes off to battle the big boss baddie and gets killed.

I found it a delight to search “Arkos” on YouTube and come across “The Shipping Corner: Arkos” from Romance Scrooge.
– The video does a great job discussing the ship between Jaune Ark and Pyrrha Nikos. (NiKos? … took me a long time to get that one).

Maybe worth mentioning, and not obvious to me, but together with the other two on their team (Nora and Ren, who are also shipped together, but currently not “together together”), the characters are loosely based upon cross-dressers: Ren is Mulan, Nora is Thor; Jaune Ark is … Joan of Arc, Pyrrha Nikos is Achilles.
– Small touch, but Pyrrha is shot in the Achilles Heel before her death.

– Anyway, yeah, what I liked about the video is it did a good job of explaining why the relationship was mutually beneficial between Pyrrha and Jaune. Otherwise it’s quite clear that he’s certainly with a better person.
In a way there’s a kind-of symmetry to them: Pyrrha recognises potential in Jaune that others fail to see it; Jaune recognises humanity in Pyrrha where others fail to see it. (& Jaune’s potential increasingly becomes realised under Pyrrha’s mentorship; Pyrrha’s humanity increasingly comes to fore ’till she decides her duty/pursuit of destiny was more important).

(Personally my favourite AMV under the search is this one. <3 the fan art, n’awwwh).

Even so, I’d like to keep track of some of the great moments for the Arkos ship. Forgiving out-of-order:

• V3C12 (from 3:35) they finally kiss. You can see the conflict in her eyes, which harkens to..

• V3C8 (from 9:33), Jaune comes to comfort Pyrrha; seeing she’s got something on her mind.

This in turn mirrors

• V2C6 where Pyrrha encourages Jaune to have heart/courage for asking Weiss to the dance. – But just the way she walks as Nora admonishes her.

• and V2C5 was where Jaune admits he’s interested in asking another girl to the dance.

  • V2C5 opens with an awesome combat sequence of Pyrrha fighting.

• The dance itself, V2C7, Pyrrha gives a heart-felt confession that the way others treat her makes her feel isolated; but that the way Jaune treats her has allowed her to make friends. (Jaune later following-through with his promise to her).

• V1C11-14, The Jaundice, II, Forever Fall, II arc (total runtime around 25 mins) is culminates in the first/most awesome fight Jaune really shows himself in. – After being bullied by Cardin at the beginning of the arc, (& pissing Pyrrha off by harshly rejecting her offer of help), Jaune stands up to fight this big Ursa monster.
  – Jaune then accepts Pyrrha’s mentorship.
  The parallels are cute here: Both Pyrrha and Jaune feel they have a duty to live up to something great; though Pyrrha’s actually good where Jaune isn’t (at least initially). At the beginning of the arc, Cardin stands over Jaune in victory, remarking that he hoped a monster in the wild would eat him; at the end of the arc, Jaune stands over Cardin, after having defeated the monster which was about to eat Cardin.

• There’re various tidbits in how they come to meet early on in the first volume: V1C4-8 (The First Step, II, The Emerald Forest, II, Players and Pieces),

  • 4. Pyrrha’s first appearance; she meets Jaune as everyone is excited about which teams they’ll get to be on,
  • 5. Pyrrha chooses to team up with Jaune,
  • 6. Pyrrha unlocks Jaune’s aura after he suffers a cut to the face.
  • 7. They run away from a deathstalker,
  • 8. Jaune forms as team leader of JNPR, as they kill the deathstalker.
       Pyrrha is happy. (This is also, imho, the coolest fight in RWBY so far; “Red Like Roses” is such an awesome soundtrack to the fight).

That covers the highlights, for me; but some other tidbits:

• V2C12: The finale of Volume 2 features a brief incursion of evil monsters into the city. Pyrrha, from a distance, is glad to see Jaune improved in being able to take care of himself in combat.

• V3C2 has them in a tournament fight.
  It’s a little cringe-worthy, but Jaune mentions that Ren and Nora are team “flower power”. This leads Pyrrha to ask “so what’s our ‘team name’?”. She’s less than enthused about the name “Arkos”.

I guess the light-hearted RWBY-Chibi has a few more. RWBY Chibi 9 features a game of tag, Pyrrha tags Jaune. (One of the fan-submitted subtitles, now sadly gone, was “You’re mine tonight”, ha).

Shoulder Love

It’s also a bit strange, but it seems that shoulders play an important part of their relationship. Mostly in terms of touching-shoulder as encouragement.

• In the opening screen in Volume 1, Pyrrha touches Jaune on the shoulder. In Volume 2, Jaune touches Pyrrha on the shoulder.

• V1C6 (Emerald Forest): Here she touches his cheek/chest, not his shoulder; but her line of dialogue features “by my shoulder, protect thee”.

• V1C8 (Players and Pieces), Pyrrha affectionately hits Jaune on the arm as congratulations.

• V1C12 (Jaundice II), she’s touches him on the shoulder, encouraging him (before he admits that he faked his way into the academy).

• V2C5 (Extracurricular), as he admits he wants to ask another girl to the dance, she touches his shoulder in encouragement.

• V2C7 (Dance Dance Infiltration), he reaches for her shoulder as she goes away, after she’s made her confession.

• V3C8 (Destiny) Pyrrha rests her head on Jaune’s shoulder.

If nothing else, I guess that highlights just how much of their relationship is mutual faith and encouragement.

The other thing I noticed re-watching the above; Ruby and Weiss’s partnership improves dramatically. W. can’t stand R. at the beginning; W.’s pride tells her that she should have been leader, and R. isn’t so competent. – Yet by this latest episode, W. follows R.’s leadership as Ruby makes the heroic decision to go after their missing friends in the city devastated by monsters. – That character growth/development is a really nice touch.