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supersaiyanjedi14 · 3 months

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RWBY COMBAT ANALYSIS: THE RUSTED KNIGHT

“I’m sorry, I… I know I’m not okay. I- I’m not right, but… How am I supposed to be…? I’ve been alone… for SO… LONG! Here… On that bridge… I was the only one that could do it! I was the ONLY ONE! And I… And now I have to live with that forever… In here or back home…”

PHYSICAL

After falling into the Ever After during the Atlas exodus, Jaune Arc stumbled across a Clockwork Orange, an item that forcibly sent him back in time. Unable to return to the present, Jaune was forced to spend the subsequent years braving the dangers of the Ever After as he awaited Team RWBY to finally join him, eventually taking up the alias of the Rusted Knight, a supposedly fantastical character of the fairy tale The Girl Who Fell Through the World. By the time he finally reunited with his friends, Jaune had spent anywhere from ten to twenty years in the Ever After, placing him in his early-to-late thirties during the events of Volume 9. While ostensibly still in his physical prime, Jaune’s aging was far from graceful, his blonde hair and beard streaked with gray and his weathered features betraying the trials of his tenure. His mental strain was even more pronounced, his failure to revive Penny Polendina driving him into an obsessive preoccupation with protecting those around him, latching on to keeping the Paper Pleasers intact despite their frequent attempts at Ascension.

Despite his premature aging, Jaune still retained his athletic viability as the Rusted Knight, continuing to demonstrate his exceptional strength and agility. His physical might was sufficient to overpower Jabberwalkers on a fairly regular basis and even stagger the Curious Cat with physical combat after the creature possessed the body of Neopolitan. While still disinclined to employ acrobatics, Rusted Jaune was quick on his feet, covering ground with running charges and employing balanced footwork and evasions to keep his target in his crosshairs. Furthermore, he grew into an exceptional equestrian and mounted warrior, expertly working alongside his jackalope mount Juniper on multiple occasions. Though he failed to catch the Curious Cat before it could possess Neo’s body and was later overpowered by the Furious Cat, this is no sign of weakness in either area given the Afteran’s overwhelming physical might. Where Jaune's athletic performance differed the most was in his dexterity and reflexes, something he was forced to develop in response to his damaged weapon and no doubt honed by his experience in the Ever After. With a much shorter blade than he was used to, Jaune was forced to rely more on technique and precision when fighting than brute force, targeting the weakest link and striking accurately.

Regarding Jaune's physical tolerances, he remained an extremely capable endurance fighter, focusing through hits and continuing to fight afterwards. During the battle with the Curious Cat, Jaune soaked up several major hits from the Cat and was later accidentally hurled from the arena by Weiss, yet he was only minorly disabled by this, regaining his feet and continuing to provide tactical support for Weiss, Blake and Yang. It was only after the Cat transformed into the Furious Cat, it’s exceptionally more powerful form, and struck Jaune square in the chest that his Aura broke and he was out of the fight. During his time as the Rusted Knight, he was noted for multiple harrowing adventures that tested his mettle, and he was even able to survive being poisoned by Alyx despite having little in the way of medical attention. However, Jaune's stamina was surprisingly cut short in his elder state. While he did not burn out immediately, he was still subdued at the Tree far quicker than his allies, his Aura breaking before any of theirs had even flickered. Far more detrimental was Jaune’s mental fortitude. While his will to persevere and fight remained indominable, his previous failures left him with an obsession with protecting his charges, leaving him anxious and prone to angered outbursts. However, despite his limited composure, the Rusted Knight retained his dogged determination even when under duress, and pushing him to the point of no return would be an uphill battle for anyone.

Despite the severe state of disrepair it had fallen into, Jaune’s armor remained strong and effective, and had in fact been further supplemented with additional plating. The cuirass was upgraded to provide greater coverage over his abdomen, while his pauldrons were replaced with a heavier set, though the gauntlets remained unchanged. He added to this with a full helmet, greaves, tassets, and a codpiece, under which he wore a gambeson and beige trousers.

RANKING: Tier 2, Peak Human Fitness

Despite his less than graceful aging and deteriorating mental health, the Rusted Knight has not actually underperformed significantly in the realm of physical ability, and he still solidly qualifies for Peak Human Fitness. He is a battle-hardened endurance fighter who leverages his strongest attributes for maximum effect, supplementing his grounded stalwart posture with solid mobility and top-notch equipment. In fact, I'd argue that Jaune’s upgraded armor serves as a solid compromise for his undercut stamina and discipline by bolstering his native durability. The Rusted Knight may be at greater risk of breaking than he once was, but the only way to put him down would be to shatter him completely.

MARTIAL

As the Rusted Knight, Jaune Arc continued to carry Crocea Mors as his primary weapon, but time and damage had taken a significant toll on it. The blade of the sword was snapped in half as a result of his confrontation with Cinder Fall, reducing its length to barely over a foot. Far more noticeable was the severe degree of rust and wear on the blade and shield, with numerous pits and scratches had made their way into the metal. However, despite this long-term damage, the weapon set retained its combative reliability, as the sword remained sharp enough to dispatch Jaune’s opponents, while the mechanisms allowing the shield to convert into Jaune’s scabbard remained unaffected. Overall, looks are deceiving, and Crocea Mors remains a lethal killing tool.

When analyzing the Rusted Knight’s capabilities as a martial artist, it is important to note both the substantial degree of development he attained and the significant trade off in his skill configuration. Due to being thrust back in time, Jaune was forced to spend anywhere from ten to twenty years contending with the dangers of the Ever After, a grinding trial by fire that went a long way towards compensating for his most significant weakness prior to Volume 9, his inexperience and lack of development. While the reliability and details of Lewis’s recounts of Jaune in The Girl Who Fell Through the World has not been established, even a conservative assessment would place the Rusted Knight as comparable to many of the most experienced and skilled Huntsmen on Remnant. However, between his damaged weapon and limited resources, Jaune was forced to heavily reconfigure his fighting style to compensate, resulting in a similar but very different combatant compared to what he was beforehand. Fortunately, the aforementioned decades of isolation gave Jaune plenty of time to refine his new style with his limitations in mind, and his developed skill upon reuniting with Team RWBY was, at bare minimum, comparable to theirs. Despite the handicaps imposed on him by his weapon, Jaune’s technique remained similar in its core ingredients; a grounded defense-and-counter oriented fighter who leverages physical ability through simple and direct swordplay. He retained a stalwart grounded posture in his footwork, eschewing acrobatics for sidesteps and evasions. Where the differences presented itself were in the defense/offense balance. Rusted Jaune displayed a much stronger offensive component in his style, alternating between shield blocks and sword strikes far more actively. To compensate for his shorter blade, Jaune adjusted his swordplay to perform swifter and tighter slashes and stabs, getting in close before laying into the target. The most significant additions to Jaune’s skill set were his expanded use of his weapons, his integration of hand-to-hand combat techniques, and his proficiency as a mounted warrior. He swapped techniques for his sword and shield, warding parries for the former and shield bashes with the latter, using the weapon set to mor effectively maintain offensive pressure while maintaining defensive coverage. Though still not a committed unarmed fighter, Jaune was more than willing to throw hands in battle, staggering the Curious Cat with sweeping kicks and headbutts. His strong bond with Juniper allowed him to coordinate and utilize her for multiple combative purposes, from tackling targets to serving as a cushion to safeguard her master.

While Jaune’s deteriorating mental health made him an anxious wreck in the grand scheme of things, they did nothing to diminish his capabilities as a tactician and strategist. He continued to demonstrate his strong aptitude for tactical analysis and coordinating with his allies, adjusting his approach to suit the opponent and exploit circumstantial factors. When confronting the various Jabberwalkers summoned by Neopolitan, Jaune focused on repelling the creatures and warding off their advance before turning around to counter. Against the Curious Cat at the Tree, Jaune quickly deduced the hallucinogenic effects of its leaves and ordered Weiss, Blake and Yang to set fire to them, forcibly expelling the Cat from Neo’s body. In single combat, Jaune applied these same tactics to endure the opponent’s assault before retaliating, seizing the initiative rather than passively responding. However, where Jaune previously relied on the integration of his Dust gadgets to break the opponent’s advance, he now opted for abrupt alternation between offensive and defensive movements, pressuring the opponent while still maintaining coverage. He will break off to defend if need be, but he will not stop advancing. What Vomit Boy achieved through leaning on alternative equipment, the Rusted Knight achieved through tested and developed technique.

However, while Jaune’s new approach was more developed overall, it also came at the expense of the versatility he displayed in his youth. With his damaged weapon and limited-to-unapplicable alternative tools, Jaune’s style and tactics were ultimately centered around leveraging his core technique for maximum effect. Jaune’s style may have been flexible, but it was also very singular and direct; what you see is what you get. Additionally, Jaune’s emotional instability manifested itself most profoundly in a resurgence of his youthful recklessness. Disturbed by his failure to save Penny during the exodus, Jaune became obsessed with protecting his chosen charges from everything around them, including themselves. Aside from patronizing the Paper Pleasers, this mentality led to Jaune overexerting himself and biting off more than he could chew, his refusal to stop advancing stemming from a pathological unwillingness to give up. Where Jaune’s Beacon humbling motivated him to pace himself and fight smart, his Atlas failures compelled him to run himself ragged in a misguided effort to keep fighting. As seen in the Cat’s Penny and Pyrrha illusions, this failure to take a more measured approach fed into a weakness to more subversive tricks and distractions, ironically making him vulnerable to the very tactics he once employed himself.

RANKING: Tier 3: Standard Mastery

While Jaune’s failures as the Rusted Knight seem to point to a middling level of effectiveness, his improvements and experience still more than qualify him for a Tier 3 ranking. He is a gritty, battle-hardened warrior whose style had been developed and honed into a far more complete package than he once employed, and he remains a highly capable tactical thinker when he puts his mind to it. Jaune’s problem, like many Standard Masters, is that he has fallen into the trap of going through the motions, basically doing the same thing again and again in every battle when dropped in cold. To be fair to Jaune, this is more the result of a limited arsenal and lack of comparable enemies rather than damaging oversights. The baseline reliability of his style and approach cannot be denied; he simply hasn’t meshed it with the versatility he used to have. Regardless, the fact that he came closer to killing the Curious Cat than anyone else tells me that his fabled reputation is very well-earned.

SPECIAL

And now for the part of this analysis that I’ve been dreading, that being the assessment of the Rusted Knight’s special abilities and powers. This is the area where Jaune’s development is most unclear simply because, aside from a few uses of his gravity Dust, we never really saw him do anything in Volume 9. He never explicitly used Aura Amp on screen, and the times he used his Dust could be counted on the fingers of one hand. This is especially odd given Jaune’s ready use of his abilities prior to falling into the Ever After, especially in conjunction with his martial skills. However, I do believe that both discrepancies can be reasonably inferred given context. Firstly, it must be remembered that Jaune’s last recorded attempt to use his Semblance was on Penny Polendina, whose injuries he was utterly incapable of healing. Given his failure to save Penny was arguably the single strongest contributor to his psychological breakdown in his isolation, it follows that his confidence in his abilities was shattered, and he unconsciously avoided using his powers due to the weight of that failure. While I don’t believe Jaune’s proficiency with his Semblance truly atrophied, I also don’t believe he developed his powers beyond what he could do in the Atlas saga. As far as his Dust is concerned, I see his limited use being identical to the limitations of his sword, that being logistical shortages. There is no evidence that Dust exists in the Ever After, much less the incredibly rare synthetic hard-light variety that powered his shield panels. With nothing to replenish his stores should his shield get damaged, it’s plausible that Jaune refrained from using his Dust unless he absolutely had to, conserving a non-renewable resource and otherwise relying on physical combat.

However, this isn’t to say that Rusted Knight Jaune has no ethereal talents to speak of. He did in fact continue to utilize his gravity Dust repulsor in combat, and like his martial skills, his fluidity with it had clearly improved with practice. Previously, Jaune would simply use the pressure wave from a static position, allowing the shield to do most of the heavy lifting. Now, Jaune demonstrated a far more active defense, combining the gravity waves with sweeping shield bashes. Though never outright stated, I believe this technique allowed Jaune to slightly enhance the overall power of the repulsor’s push, getting more bang for his buck. Additionally, Jaune continued to demonstrate his talent for combining his powers and skills together with one another. Aside from the basic offensive applications, Jaune also showcased an ability to use his Dust to drive his other weapons, seen when he bounced his sword off the shield to turn it into a projectile against Neo’s clone Jabberwalkers. These new applications further showcased Jaune compensating for his limited arsenal with greater skill and refinement, sacrificing output in favor of control.

Now, normally I like to stay with concrete information rather than headcanons, but I do believe there may be evidence that Jaune did in fact use his Semblance at specific points in Volume 9, and both of my theoretical examples do speak to him still displaying great skill and power. Hear me out;

During his early travels with Alyx, Lewis and the Curious Cat, the Cat poisoned Jaune in order to get him off his back and sow distrust between him and the children. While Jaune’s physical fortitude certainly played a role in his survival, the Curious Cat is not a figure that comes across as leaving a job half-finished. Given that Aura Amp’s most obvious application was accelerating Aura’s healing properties, it is entirely possible that Jaune’s survival owed itself in part to using his Semblance to help purge the toxin from his body. Later, during the battle at the Tree, Jaune was confronted with a vision of Alyx after being blasted from the arena. While this episode was mostly a mental battle forcing Jaune to confront his demons, the flash of light that immediately preceded Jaune breaking out of the vision could have very well been Jaune using Aura Amp to dispel the effects of the smoke. Assuming I’m right, then this could arguably make Jaune’s use of his Semblance even more potent than before, as dispelling drugs and poisons is easily an incredibly useful talent to have that goes well beyond fixing broken bones.

RANKING: Tier 3: Specialized Combat

Even if my supposition is 100% on the money, it does not significantly change the Rusted Knight’s standing as an ethereal fighter, given his hypothetical applications are so few, far between, and limited to utility. That said, Jaune’s use of his gravity Dust more than makes up for it. His applications are not only just as calculated and powerful as they used to be, they are also far more technically sophisticated and pair up much better with his fighting skills. His only real limitation, as in other areas, is that he lacks versatility, and his more skillful use of his power still mostly amounts to a directly offensive ability that can only do so much. Jaune may lack the variety he used to have, but the far greater skill he has with the powers he still has firmly establishes him as a force to be reckoned with.

OVERALL RANKING: TIER 3, ADVANCED HUNTSMAN

As in his youth, Rusted Knight Jaune Arc’s overall ranking is determined by his martial skills and special abilities, showcasing both his high improvement and the limitations he still suffers from. In all areas, Jaune is performing on a very high level, but his methodology is centered on direct application rather than the balanced versatility he used to showcase. In many ways, I consider Jaune’s most direct analogue in this state to be James Ironwood. Both are aging heavyweights who leverage their strength and fortitude for maximum effect, both are grounded heavy-handed fighters who focus on maintaining a heavy stalwart advance, and both leverage their special abilities and powers as direct supplements to their offensive advance. They are powerful battlefield operatives who make full use of all the tools in their arsenals, but their approach is based on the direct application of power, not tactical considerations. By operating as a one-man crusader in the Ever After, Jaune got so good at what he was doing that he simply couldn’t loose, leaving holes in his skill set and tactics unaddressed because they simply never came up.

Jaune’s greatest strength and weakness as the Rusted Knight is that his previously broad skill set has been significantly reduced, forcing him to throw all of his eggs into one basket to compensate. The result is a tradeoff. On the one hand, his fighting method is blessed with a substantially greater degree of developed skill by way of his combat experience, and he effectively blends them together into a singular, high-performance technique. But on the other hand, this also means that he no longer has the versatility he used to have, relying on a singular method rather than balancing out between his options. He is skilled and powerful enough to capably overcome the vast majority of challengers, but it also means he could get into trouble very quickly if confronted by someone his style is poorly suited to engage.

As with most things, this ties directly into Jaune’s mental state as the Rusted Knight. Between his traumatic experiences, forced isolation, and fixation on preventing the same failure all over again, Jaune simply fell into the motions and got into the habit of doing the same thing over and over again. This may have been an okay coping mechanism at first, but there is a stark difference between dedication and obsession. He never really diversified because, not only did he never really need to, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so since he was convinced that he was doing the only right thing he could. Fortunately, unlike Ironwood, Jaune’s self-destructive stubbornness was the result of improper healing rather than arrogance, and he was the first to admit that he wasn’t in the right headspace to be the hero he was trying to be. As with the rest of his life, Jaune’s friends were there to pick him up, setting him on the path to properly heal. Whatever Jaune’s status as a warrior may be upon his return to Remnant, he will at the very least be on the fast track to achieving a healthier self-actualization, and finally move on from his trauma. The Rusted Knight may not have been the hero, but Jaune Arc still may be.

* images taken from RWBY Wiki and @talia-pumpkinwand*

#rwby #rwby combat analysis #jaune arc #rwby jaune #rusted knight #ever after #team jnpr #peak human fitness #standard mastery #specialized combat

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