Neopolitan

Neopolitan (ニオポリタン, Nioporitan), also known as "Neo" (ネオ, Neo), is a fictional character and antagonist in Tales of RWBY. She is an associate of Cinder Fall and formerly Roman Torchwick. Her weapon of choice is an umbrella with a concealed blade. She first appeared in "Painting the Town...".

"Guess who?"
 * —Neopolitan, sending a picture text of Ruby to Roman.

Appearance & Biography

 * Voice Actor: Not Known (English), Not Known (Japanese), Not Known (Italian), Not Known (Spanish), Not Known (German), Not Known (Finnish), Not Known (Korean), Not Known (French), Not Known (Latin American Spanish)

Appearance
Neo, themed after neapolitan ice cream, has the appropriate trio of colors in her hair and on her outfit. While sometimes altered via illusion for disguise, her hair color is typically half pink and half brown, with white streaks on the pink side.

Neo's natural eye color changes between brown, pale pink, and white, and they can alternate coloration in differing combinations, with this ability apparently being entirely under her control. Because of this, she tends to temporarily have a condition known as heterochromia iridum, where the eyes of a subject have two different colors. In her case, it is complete heterochromia, where one iris in its entirety is a different color from the other. In Volume 3, she is seen wearing green eyeshadow, starting with her paramedic disguise.

Neo wears a white jacket with a pink interior, brown pants, black gloves, and black and white boots with very high heels. Under her jacket is a brown corset, curved in the middle and at the bottom, exposing her hips. She also wears a multitude of necklaces, which hang haphazardly around her neck.

Neo is also rather diminutive in stature, compared to the rest of the main cast, including Ruby Rose, the youngest known character, as shown in the presented by Monty Oum. This is demonstrated in "No Brakes", when she stands off against Yang Xiao Long, as Neo is only able to reach her chin in overall height.

Disguises
While participating in the Vytal Festival Tournament, Neo has a completely different appearance. Her hair is black, with lighter streaks where her white streaks would normally be, and her default eye color is green, though she can change it to pink, brown or white at any time. Her hair is done up in a twin tail hairstyle with white bows, and her bangs are still in the same usual style from her original appearance.

She wears an outfit with a black and white color scheme. Her attire consists of a sleeveless black blouse with white frills on the chest and collar and a black ribbon bow hanging from front of the collar. The blouse exposes her midriff, and she wears medium-length black armbands on both of her wrists. Along with the blouse, she wears a knee-length skirt fastened with a white belt. She wears black shoes with a triple tomoe emblem on the soles, with white legwarmers.

In "Beginning of the End", she disguises herself in a paramedic uniform, with a cap on top of her short hair, and her eye color now changed to magenta. In "PvP", she assumes her regular appearance, but dons the uniform of an Atlesian military officer.


 * Hair Color: Pink, Brown and White
 * Skin Color: Pale white
 * Eye Color: Brown, Pale-pink, White, Green (Tournament), Magenta (Paramedic)
 * Age: Not Known
 * Height: 4'10" (1.47 meters) in heels
 * Weight: Not Known

Personality
Neo exhibits a stern, business-like demeanor at the White Fang meeting. However, when intervening to help Roman following his defeat, she wears a self-assured smile and politely bows to Team RWBY, showing confidence on the battlefield. Neo's confidence was also seen in her fight with Yang, smiling throughout the entire fight, whilst silently mocking and taunting her as well. She displayed confidence before the fight, not only against Yang, but also Weiss Schnee and Blake Belladonna, as, despite being outnumbered three to one, she revealed herself instantly to the trio, and was prepared to fight them.

Neo is also shown to have a sadistic side, as seen in her smile when she prepared to stab Yang. However, she does seem to exhibit fear and hesitance when she knows she's outmatched, fleeing if her opponent proves to be as such. This can be seen when Raven Branwen appears and engages her on the White Fang cargo train.

Powers and Abilities
In "No Brakes", Neo proves herself to be a highly skilled combatant, able to defeat Yang in a one-on-one fight, seemingly playing with her opponent as she was able to defeat her without taking anything more than a glancing hit. In close quarters combat, Neo utilizes her umbrella's open form in parrying Yang's attack which opened her up to counter blows. Neo also displays incredible reflexes and speed, dodging several of Yang's attacks with ease, even when holding her umbrella in one hand. This is further shown in "Heroes and Monsters" where she is easily able to keep up with and defeat Ruby almost single-handedly.

Neo has also shown herself to be very acrobatic and exceptionally skilled in hand-to-hand combat, relying on her agility to dodge and misdirect enemy movements and attacks, before retaliating with her own kick-based attacks, as her combat style is mostly relied on kicks, similar to that of Mercury Black's combat style.

Powers
Neo also appears to be capable of creating illusions, which she used to help Roman escape from Team RWBY, during the events of "Painting the Town...". The nature of this power is yet to be fully-explained, although visually they are perfect moving replicas of whatever Neo wishes to project, and are physical enough to be shattered on impact. Neo is skilled enough to use them as misdirection during a fight, casting an illusion of herself that the opponent thinks is the real thing and attacking from their blind spot. She can also use these illusions to cloak herself in various disguises, banishing the image when it is no longer needed.

Her radically different appearance in "Round One" also implied her illusions extend to changing her appearance, although it is also possible she disguised herself by more conventional means.

Semblance
Neo's Semblance allows her to be capable of creating "physical illusions that can be seen by everyone", which she used to help Roman escape from Team RWBY, during the events of "Painting the Town...". Her illusions are perfect enough to pass as real and shatter like glass when she dispels them or someone breaks them. She is first seen using her Semblance in "Paintng the Town..." when she creates an illusion wall that depicts herself and Roman as a distraction while the two flee to an airship.

Neo is skilled enough to use them as misdirection during a fight, casting an illusion of herself that the opponent thinks is the real thing and attacking from their blind spot.

Her illusions are not limited to images of herself or others, as she can also change the appearance of her outfit or the color of her hair, eyes and skin. In "Round One", she takes on a radically different appearance with black hair, green eyes and a different skin tone, and she dispels the illusion on her eyes, returning them to their usual pink and brown coloration. In "PvP", she disguises her outfit as an Atlesian military uniform and later dispels the illusion in "Heroes and Monsters".

Other
Neo herself proves to be a competent getaway driver, as shown in "Beginning of the End," where she (disguised as a paramedic) drove Cinder, Mercury, and Emerald away to an unknown location in an Air Bus after their plan to frame Yang was initiated.

Weapons
Neo's weapon of choice is an umbrella containing a sword, a long, thin blade hidden within the length of the umbrella's tube, which can also project the blade from the top end of it, with the crook handle serving as the hilt. The canopy of her umbrella possesses high defensive properties, demonstrated by its ability to block an incoming blast from Yang Xiao Long's Ember Celica. In close quarters combat in "No Brakes", Neo utilizes her umbrella's open form in parrying Yang's attack which opens her up to counter blows.

Notes & Trivia

 * From the 8th to the 11th of July, 2014, Monty hinted at Neo's Neapolitan ice cream theme by tweeting pictures of Neapolitan ice cream, long before the character's first appearance in the show.
 * It is possible that this may have been in response to some fans noticing Neo in the Volume 2 Trailer (published July 4th, 2014) and discussing her, as these tweets began shortly after she was noticed.
 * Neo- (νεο-) is also a Greek prefix, meaning "new". In English, neo- is also used as a prefix to denote something that is contemporary, recent, modern, or new. The word of her name, Neopolitan, itself derives from the Greek Neápolis (Νεάπολις), meaning "new city". Neo also means 'young' and 'immature' in Greek, usually in medical terms.
 * Monty stated during the August 21st Rooster Teeth livestream that Neo's design is partially based on a presentation-play cosplay of Torchwick made by one of his friends (Sonja Carter aka SoulFire Photography).
 * Neo can change the color of her eyes at will, usually alternating between pink and brown. They can also turn white (completing the ice cream theme) although rarely; one turns white as she removes the sword from her umbrella, and both turn white when Raven appears. Later, she also changes her eyes to green as part of her tournament disguise and magenta as part of her paramedic disguise.
 * Though Gray G. Haddock has confirmed that Neo has a voice actress, she has not spoken once during her screen time. Whilst she never makes any vocalizations whatsoever in Volume 2, including grunts in combat, she does make some nonverbal sounds in the episodes "Round One" and "Heroes and Monsters".
 * Neo's necklace is very similar to those of Coco Adel and Raven Branwen.
 * Although Neo is currently the only character known to have complete heterochromia, Blake was originally going to have it as well, as evidenced by early concept art in which she had a yellow eye and a blue eye.
 * It has been confirmed that Neo does not allude to the Cheshire Cat.
 * According to Gray G. Haddock, Neopolitan was created from scratch about ten days prior to her debut after Monty Oum had the idea for her. She was inserted into the shots of the White Fang rally in "Painting the Town..." just a couple of days before the premiere of the episode.