Top 10 RWBY Hugs – Vol. 6 Edition

Welcome back to the most important RWBY article on the internet: another season has come and gone which means it’s time to rank some more hugs! If you want to just get straight to it scroll down ’til you see the underline.

Spoilers for all of Volume 6 of RWBY!

To remind everyone of the ground rules: hugs require two arms and the intent to hug someone, side arms or playful shaking of shoulders or riding motorcycles do no count as hugs, end of story. Second, to prevent this ranking consisting of only a few characters and to increase diversity, I have included only unique pairings in each of the top 10, so they’re won’t be two Bee hugs for example. Some entries may share some characters such as the full team hug, however these are distinct from other entries. Finally, hugs were chosen for the list based on their importance within the episode in particular and the show in general, and also which ones I think look the best and yes this does mean some hugs will be in different positions on the list than last time because they have a different value for this season.

Now for some newly updated statistics. As a reminder, each pair in a hug is counted once. If there are more than two people in a hug, the pairs are counted separately. For example a hug featuring Ruby, Yang, and Weiss would count as 1 each for RY, WY, and WR. This does not add to the overall hug count which only tracks total hugs period.

Total Hugs: 33. 4 in Vol.1, 4 in Vol. 2, 5 in Vol. 3, 6 in Vol. 4, 6 in Vol. 5, and 8 in Vol. 6

Hugs by pairings:

1. Ruby/Yang – 8 (6 solo, 1 RWY, 1 RWBY)
2. Weiss/Ruby – 3 (1 solo, 1 RWY, 1 RWBY)
3. Weiss/Yang – 3 (1 solo, 1 RWY, 1 RWBY)
4. Blake/Yang– 3 (2 solo, 1 RWBY)
5. Ruby/Qrow – 3
6. Blake/Kali – 3 (2 solo, 1 family)
7. Penny/Ruby – 2 (2 solo)
8. Ren/Nora – 2 (2 solo)
9. Blake/Ghira – 2 (1 solo, 1 family)
10. Ruby/Blake – 2 (1 solo, 1 RWBY)
11. Blake/Weiss – 1 (1 RWBY)
12. Jaune/Pyrrha – 1
13. Weiss and Winter – 1
14. Jaune/Ren – 1
15. Weiss/Klein – 1
16. Blake/Ilia – 1
17. Ren/Yang – 1
18. Nora/Oscar – 1
19. Ruby/Jaune – 1

Some musings: 19 hugs are between exclusively female characters, 1 hug is between exclusively male characters; this means same sex pairings account for more than half the total number of hugs. Ruby continues to be the character most present in hugs, still unsurprising, but what is surprising is that Blake/Weiss is the only pair of our four leads who have yet to have a solo hug. Considering we just got a Blake/Ruby solo hug at the very end of this season perhaps we will finally get that one next season. Volume 6 continues the trend of upward mobility in number of hugs.

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And now without further ado, the main event.

Top 10 Hugs! (as of Volume 6):

10) Weiss and Winter (Vol. 3 Chapter 4 “Lessons Learned” – 12:52)

A very cute hug hopefully foreshadowing a reunion in the near future, #WinterWonderland2019, make it happen Rooster Teeth.

9) Ren and Nora (Vol. 4 Chapter 10 “Kuroyuri” – 14:15)

Hilariously this is still the most on-screen chemistry these two have ever had since Rooster Teeth has decided to just background this ship into obscurity and oblivion.

8) Ruby and Penny (Vol. 2 Chapter 4 “Painting the Town” – 1:45)

A highly relevant hug after the finale, kind of wish they had reanimated this shot but I’ll settle for the show bringing back Penny next season.

7) Jaune and Pyrrha (Vol. 3 Chapter 12 “End of the Beginning” – 4:20)

Another surprisingly relevant hug, especially after “Lost”. Ironically I’ve connected more with this ship postmortem than I ever did when it was present in the show.

6) Team RWBY (Vol. 5 Chapter 14 “Haven’s Fate” – 16:50)

Look I still don’t really like this shot and wish we had a better angle for the one and only full team hug but you gotta work with what you got I suppose and this one really foreshadows all the classic RWBY interactions we finally got back to this season.

5) Ruby and Qrow (Vol. 6 Chapter 13 “Our Way” – 13:35)

A very cute ending to the Ruby and Qrow arc this season where Ruby reminds her uncle that just because he’s been a drunk, layabout, pessimistic jerk for most of the season doesn’t mean she doesn’t still love him and hopefully sparks a turnaround in Qrow’s outlook on life.

4) Blake and Ilia (Vol. 6 Chapter 1 “Argus Limited” – 6:25)

The big farewell (hopefully temporary) to the breakout character of Volume 5 always promised to be an emotional affair and this hug delivers on that promise quite well, with things both said and unsaid, which provides a perfect cap to the interactions between Blake and Ilia over the previous season.

3) Ruby and Blake (Vol. 6 Chapter 13 “Our Way” – 5:00)

I don’t know if it’s more surprising that this one happened or that it took 6 seasons to happen in the first place but it kind of makes me annoyed we haven’t had more Ruby/Blake interactions before now because they’re very good in this episode.

2) Blake and Yang (Vol. 6 Chapter 12 “Seeing Red” – 11:25)

Thank the dragon gods, Rooster Teeth finally gave me a good Bumblebee hug. This is almost literally the wish fulfillment of Bumblebee shippers everywhere and it’s exactly as glorious as I dreamed it could be. The emotions are palpable and raw and unlike some hugs, there are so many good angles for this scene it was hard narrowing down which one to use; it honestly like half of this list could just be different angles of this one scene. The only way this could be improved upon is if instead of a waterfall, there were like, a shining symbol of justice disintegrating into beautiful light particles in the background, but when would that ever happen?

1) Weiss and Yang (Vol. 5 Chapter 4 “Lighting the Fire” – 15:20)

Still the best looking hug in the show, the Weiss/Yang pairing has mostly fallen to the wayside in favor of the OTP Bumblebee (and White Rose baiting), but they had some glances this season and that other pairing has never had a giant ethereal knight dissolve into stardust behind them over a perfect sunset sky so this one will remain in first for the foreseeable future if only because it’s just a top tier RWBY screenshot. Maybe when the Bees make-out over like an aurora while Atlas falls from the sky or something I’ll swap it out.