Top Ten RWBY Hugs – Volume 7 Edition

Welcome back to the most important RWBY article on the internet: another season has come and gone, sometimes for better, often for worse, but regardless it is once again time to rank even more hugs. If you want to just get straight to it scroll down ’til you see the underline.

Spoilers for all of Volume 7 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: 37. 4 in Vol.1, 4 in Vol. 2, 5 in Vol. 3, 6 in Vol. 4, 6 in Vol. 5, 8 in Vol. 6, and 4 in Vol. 7

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 – 3 (3 solo)
8. Ren/Nora – 3 (3 solo)
9. Blake/Ghira – 2 (1 solo, 1 family)
10. Ruby/Blake – 2 (1 solo, 1 RWBY)
11. Weiss and Winter – 2 (2 solo)
12. Blake/Weiss – 1 (1 RWBY)
13. Jaune/Pyrrha – 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
20. Qrow/Ironwood – 1

Some musings: 21 hugs are between exclusively female characters, 2 hugs are between exclusively male characters; this means same sex pairings account for more than half the total number of hugs. Volume 7 added an entirely new hug pair! To borrow a phrase from noted sports ball scholar Jon Bois, that’s hugsigami! It’s also in a three way tie for least amount of hugs per season which is somewhat less good. After a few seasons of upswings on the hug count we’re once again in the nadir of our hug fortunes.

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And now without further ado, the main event.

Top 10 Hugs! (as of Volume 7):

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

Pyrrha not even getting a mention in this season relegates this down to the bottom slot, move over Arkos, there’s a brand new straight ship in rwby town.

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

Wow, what a stark (strq ha, in jokes) contrast between Qrow last finale and this finale, so much for that turnaround arc. Probably a bit harsh to dock points from Qrow for poor writing decisions towards the end of this season but maybe you should rethink your life decisions Qrow.

8) Weiss and Winter (Vol. 7 Chapter 2 “A New Approach” – 6:30)

The long awaited reunion hug! Winter’s hug game still needs work but Weiss is positively killing it lately in the hug department.

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

Team whomst? Team not appearing in this finale is more like it. All jokes aside the sidelining of the main leads for unknowable reasons and my general dislike of this shot pushes it back down the ladder.

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

Whomst? I made that joke already in this list but it’s still infuriating that they wrote off one of their best characters only to replaces her with a bunch of nobodies. The hug is still good though.

5) Ren and Nora (Vol. 7 Chapter 6 “A Night Off” – 11:16)

The second on screen kiss between main characters deserves a spot on the list, even I still don’t care about them and think it’s pretty dumb that the B-team are the only people who have gotten romances thus far. Also it’s animated really well.

4) Ruby and Penny (Vol. 7 Chapter 1 “The Greatest Kingdom” – 12:41)

A derpy hug really matches the Penny/Ruby aesthetic to be honest, look at those two dorks being cute together. How anyone ships Rose Garden over this baffles me.

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

Look we didn’t get a proper hug between any team RWBY members this season because I guess the crew forgot about them or something so this will have to do. It’s still a great hug.

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

The ship that will never be, as long as RWBY is still airing, Bumblebee will always be teased as “it’s coming next season” and never actually show up. We didn’t even get a hug this season! Ridiculous. This is still a good hug and will remain in the number 2 spot until RT get off their straight shipping hobby horse and have some more diverse kisses.

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

Somehow still the best looking hug in the show 3 seasons running, I’m not sure if Weiss and Yang spoke more than 10 lines with each other this season so this will probably never be repeated. Also, since RT insists on baiting out the main ships it until the end of the series apparently, it won’t be replaced anytime soon.