Penny Polendina

"“I was the protector of Mantle. But now, I am much more than that, and I wish I was not.”""—Penny in Divide."

Penny Polendina is one of the major characters in the American webseries RWBY. She is a robotic girl with the soul and aura of a human.

Why She Rocks

 * 1) She's arguably one of the nicest and most polite characters in RWBY, as she's friendly to everyone she meets, to the point that said kindness is her defining character trait.
 * 2) Her swords, the Floating Array, an array of levitating swords, are an awesome choice of weaponry.
 * 3) Her socially awkward and curious nature is simply adorable.
 * 4) At the end of Volume 7, she inherits the Winter Maiden's powers, and gets a chance to use them in the following episodes, and they're fantastic. She's also able to keep them from getting stolen by Cinder.
 * 5) She has a very cute character design.
 * 6) As the Winter Maiden, she's the only one able to open the Vault containing the Relic of Creation in Atlas.
 * 7) She has infrared vision, which came in handy during Volume 8, as it allowed her to detect the real Cinder when Emerald creating multiple illusionary clones.
 * 8) In Amity, upon seeing Emerald in tears holding Cinder, she lowers her swords and decides not to attack her.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Volume 7 has her being framed for murdering partygoers by Tyrian (who actually slaughtered them himself), causing the blame to be put on Atlas.
 * 2) She ended up dying in Volume 3, though she does return 4 volumes later.
 * 3) * She later ends up dying for real in the Volume 8 finale, The Final Word, several episodes after she became a human. This was either viewed as her character arc coming to a close, or wasted potential for her to adapt to being human and rebuild her entire fighting style, and that killing her off was nothing more than cheap shock value.

Trivia

 * Dance Dance Infiltration shows that Penny enjoys dancing as she dances by herself between two Atlas Soldiers. And later that night, she does "the Robot" with one of the said soldiers.
 * Her character is heavily inspired by Pinocchio, as her being an android is based on Pinocchio being a puppet, her swords being controlled by wires are an allusion to a puppet's strings, her hiccups whenever she lies to Pinocchio's nose growing whenever he does the same thing, and her receiving the Winter Maiden's powers (or more accurately, her becoming human in "Creation") alluding to Pinocchio becoming a real boy.
 * In Worst Case Scenario, Pietro reveals that he used a part of his own Aura to create Penny's. And while the exact mechanism of how he did it was not revealed, Pietro notes that it takes a little more of his aura each time he rebuilds Penny.
 * Penny's fighting style resembles that of Naminé as depicted in Dead Fantasy, an online series also created by Monty Oum.
 * Her swords have the international standby/power symbol on each of them, as part of her robotic theme.