Thoughts on RWBY?

[BLUzCLUz]

I have watched all episodes, and I'll rank all arcs from my most to least favorite: Beacon (Vol. 1 to 3) > Atlas (7 to present) > Mistral (4 to 6)

[SenEDDtor Missile]

It's a solid enough show even with it's rough areas.

However, I think it's also one of those shows that you only really "get" if you rewatch it multiple times imo, because a lot of the details that make certain plot points or character decisions work or make more sense can be a bit easy to miss if you only take things at face value, since they basically have to stuff a lot of details into a smaller period of time.

That said, I HATE trying to watch any of the discourse about RWBY on YouTube, because that place is a cesspool of bad takes and poor understanding of RWBY's themes and characters. It's telling that I can only really stomach one, MAAAYBE 2 YouTubers at best when it comes to anything RWBY related, because the rest are either ladened with incredibly misogynistic bullshit, or their takes are less about examining the themes and plot progression and more about forcing their headcanons onto the story, and then throwing a temper tantrum when those headcanons aren't realized in the show.

[BLUzCLUz]

9 minutes ago, SenEDDtor Missile said:

That said, I HATE trying to watch any of the discourse about RWBY on YouTube, because that place is a cesspool of bad takes and poor understanding of RWBY's themes and characters. It's telling that I can only really stomach one, MAAAYBE 2 YouTubers at best when it comes to anything RWBY related, because the rest are either ladened with incredibly misogynistic b*******, or their takes are less about examining the themes and plot progression and more about forcing their headcanons onto the story, and then throwing a temper tantrum when those headcanons aren't realized in the show.

I'm surprised Rooster Teeth hasn't commented on that.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

9 minutes ago, BLUzCLUz said:

I'm surprised Rooster Teeth hasn't commented on that.

Maybe they just don't think it's worth their time?

Then again, given that there are plenty of these RWBYTubers who have a massive entitlement complex to the point that they think they can use a dead man as a prop to harass the RWBY team, maybe they just can't be bothered to do so.

For context, the dead man is Monty Oum, one of the creators of the show who passed away in around Volume 2 to 3, and ever since then, due to the show going in a direction that people have mixed feelings about, some cretins have taken to claiming that Monty would have never approved of it, using this mindset (known as "Monty's Vision") to justify harassing and being overall terrible to the RWBY team, claiming that the latter have "sold out to corporations and stealing Monty's work for their own gain" despite the fact that they were CLOSE FRIENDS to Monty, and RWBY was a collaborative effort between all of them.

It got so bad that Monty's own brother had to tell them to knock it off, and they in turn just used that as an excuse to harass him as well.

[Tornado]

RWBY fucking sucks and has fucking sucked fairly consistently since Monty died despite some times where it looked like things would turn around; with Chibi being the only real thing that has found anything to do with its characters that the show had built up to the point where Chibi debuted. The pacing has been terrible, most of the plots that would actually drive the story are frequently sucked out of entire episodes or even entire mini arcs of a Volume to focus on meaningless pap and fake character growth (probably because there doesn't seem to be any long-term planning between Volumes for the overall plot), and the writers that work on it now have understanding of storytelling concepts in the theoretical "I saw this thing on TV Tropes in some other show so let's try that" way rather than any actual understanding of how to write natural character-driven stories or events. For example:

Spoiler

Yes, it is foreshadowing when you bring things screeching to a halt and have a character basically just say what bad thing is going to happen ("don't fall off the path") a few episodes before the finale. Congratulations. Yes, it's somewhat plausible that a character may actually be gone forever if you imply falling off the path causes them to be graphically erased from existence; and that's a good hook for the next season. This is a show that has killed main characters, I suppose.

 

No, when you ominously "kill" 70% of the show's main cast in the last five minutes of the final episode and then call back to the foreshadowing in an extremely unsubtle way, it's not clever and it's not suspenseful because nobody over 5 years old is going to believe that the status quo isn't going to be either immediately restored in the next Volume or that the next Volume is going to be wasted on pissing around to restore the status quo for most of it and then there will be a couple episodes where actual storyline occurs.

 

It legitimately got better in Volume 6 and Volume 7 both in writing and animation and design work and definitely in world building, but honestly Volume 8 was so extremely try hard and rote and "characters do things but it doesn't matter because no one accomplishes anything and their attempt to do anything was ruined way back in episode 1" that it's on an extreme backspin towards the dark times of Volume 4 when they were making shit up by the episode and spent the entire volume spinning their wheels. Very extremely rarely does it seem like any characters have any real agency; and even rarer still does it seem like they have any influence on the plot. It's just people backstabbing each other and ping-ponging off of each other and not talking to each other and lying to each other and doing basically nothing to advance the because the plot happens independently of all of them; like if you watched the back half of Evangelion and completely misunderstood why things went to shit there. And the choreography is definitely worse than it ever was in 8; despite a brief respite in 6 and 7 where things were improving again.

It's also fairly hard to detach the show from the soulless faceless cynical media company that Rooster Teeth became following the AT&T buyout, where anything that causes controversy is removed with extreme prejudice and the show seemingly just exists to create new content to put on whatever the newest streaming platform of the year that Rooster Teeth signed a deal with; nor can you really separate it from how the writing staff of RWBY like to put out stupid takes on Twitter about things that aren't RWBY and pick fights when people mock them for it.

 

 

 

 

 

And while it is absolutely unfortunate (and reductive, and unhelpful, and frequently deliberately insulting) that the go-to criticism of the show is so frequently to beat the current creative staff over the head with Monty, RWBY occupies that same sort of space where Pokemon does vis-à-vis Iwata: The show is so bad and so deficient in ways that were specifically praised under Monty's influence, and has been for so long, that making hypotheticals about how it would be if the important guiding hand from the early days was still around can be so easily used as a lazy tool to attack the creative team when you don't want to put the problems with what they are creating into real words.

[Kuzu]

RWBY fans are essentially in the same category as most fans of "unpopular" things like Kingdom Hearts and Sonic; they've been bullied for so long about the stuff they like, any sort of criticism they get is met with immediate vitriol. So I just avoid them altogether. 

 

I stopped watching this series a long time ago due to just getting bored. 

[MetalSkulkBane]

I never was part of the fandom. I watched first 3 seasons, kinda liked it. Season 1 was a little messy, but quality seemed to only get better and better.

Then 4th season just drained me and I stopped. Sorry to say that but I just really didn't liked it and I don't care about behind the scene drama. So I just stopped watching and moved to something else.

[Wraith]

Even during the "good" era of Rwby the show was pretty bad because of terrible character writing and even worse priorities(IE focusing large chunks of the season on the dweeb who can't fight and cheated to get into the school over the titular characters, who were reduced to anime stereotypes). Monty kept it afloat with his excellent fight choreography so when he passed I figured the show itself would crater. I dropped it partway through Season 4 and was convinced it actually wouldn't make it much further than that, so I'm surprised each time I hear it's getting another season.

[Kuzu]

The show is actually RT's most popular IP despite how terrible it is, hence the Sonic and Kingdom Hearts comparisons I made. Its had games, merch, crossovers, etc. Its got a very devoted fanbase, so there's no reason for the creators to stop.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

And this is why I don't like talking about this franchise outside of certain places.

Because people fucking suck at getting anything about it, and you'll probably just outright dismiss me as a brainless fanboy if I even bother to try explaining it.

EDIT: I apologize in hindsight that I was being a condescending jackass with this and several subsequent posts. I still don't agree about the quality of the show, but I could have handled that better in hindsight.

[Kuzu]

I've watched the show since Season 1, so I definitely "get"  it. I just think what it is isn't all that good.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

That would depend on what you "get" vs what I "get". If there's one thing I've learned, it's that people can literally look at this series and somehow come away with wildly different or just plain wrong interpretations even when the message or theme is really blatantly obvious, based on how much they really bothered to look into the series, vs just expecting it to conform to certain cliches or their own headcanons and then getting pissed when it doesn't fit.

EDIT: I apologize in hindsight that I was being a condescending jackass with this and several subsequent posts. I still don't agree about the quality of the show, but I could have handled that better in hindsight.

[Kuzu]

Bro, you and I follow Sonic the fucking Hedgehog. A series that's notorious for its questionable writing and unclear themes.

If people are getting wildly different interpretations from a series, then maybe the themes aren't actually all that clear at all. Don't pull the "they just don't get it" card because that's the same excuse every fandom uses when they don't want to acknowledge that maybe the series they love is kind of flawed in its execution of certain things.

 

And that's RWBY in a nutshell; its not a BAD series, merely a mediocre one. But if you tell the fanbase that, they get pissed off and defensive about it.

[MetalSkulkBane]

Sheesh, can we just agree to disagree?

If someone really likes it, then more power to them. If someone likes something I never try to convince them otherwise. What's the point, why would I ruin somone's fun, what is there to gain?

Only exception are Disney Live Action Remakes and Bay Transformers. Those things and money they do just make me sad. But even then I tend to avoid discussion, it only makes me angry, so why bother?

[Kuzu]

Its less about that, and more how defensive people get when you criticize it.

Like yo, if its ok for people to like the series why isn't it ok to critique it?

[SenEDDtor Missile]

On 9/20/2021 at 11:18 AM, Kuzu said:

Bro, you and I follow Sonic the fucking Hedgehog. A series that's notorious for its questionable writing and unclear themes.

Yeah, but Sonic's had decades of genuinely obvious reasons for what went wrong, with much of the problem stemming from a team that barely understands what they're doing half of the time. You can disagree with RWBY's choices, but they more often than not have a clearer idea where they're going.

Quote

If people are getting wildly different interpretations from a series, then maybe the themes aren't actually all that clear at all. Don't pull the "they just don't get it" card because that's the same excuse every fandom uses when they don't want to acknowledge that maybe the series they love is kind of flawed in its execution of certain things.

And that's RWBY in a nutshell; its not a BAD series, merely a mediocre one. But if you tell the fan-base that, they get pissed off and defensive about it.

Or maybe they just genuinely don't get it because they're too busy trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Not every instance of "they just don't get it" is purely defensiveness on the part of the fan.

I've seen wildly bad interpretations that made absolutely no sense even when the message or theme was really fucking blatant, or said interpretation is so actively contradictory that it comes off as distorting the story to fit their own pet peeves that it destroys whatever merit the interpretation might have had.

And frankly given how more often than not nasty the kinds of people who have these kinds of bad interpretations, combined with the sheer amount of dogpiling that often occurs if you even dare to HINT that you like the series, I don't blame fans getting defensive, especially if those same people end up liking equally mediocre or extremely poor stories that frankly end up even worse in their execution or themes, yet are constantly given the pass for things that RWBY would get atomized or placed under a microscope for, even if it did that idea better.

And it's not like I'm unaware of the flaws in RWBY's execution; I've had my own share of problems with the series that I wish were done better, but it's just fucking exhausting to deal with people who insist on holding RWBY to unfair double standards that I'd never see applied  with the same level of vitriol and bullshit to more "acceptable and beloved" media, even when that media does shit that's arguably just as bad as RWBY's worst lows and yet nobody gives a shit. Or even when they do something that's basically identical to what RWBY did and yet are praised for it.

EDIT: I guess that's probably what pisses me off more than anything; the double standards that people just apply to RWBY in vitriolic and cruel ways that I'd never see to other franchises, or at least to the same degree.

I'd also be a lot less irritated if people DID actually just treat RWBY as mediocre, instead of the oftentimes sheer hatred and it being treated as "THE WORST THING EVER" it gets at times.

 

EDIT2: I apologize in hindsight that I was being a condescending jackass with this and several subsequent posts. I still don't agree about the quality of the show, but I could have handled that better in hindsight.

[Kuzu]

Man, the creators have outright admitted that while they have IDEAS of where things are headed, they're more or less just writing by the seat of their pants for the most part. And they have admitted they could use some improvement. 

Even if the series has a fundamentally good idea, if its executed poorly the you can't really blame people for reacting poorly. 

RWBY is going to be eight years old this year, that's almost an entire decade and still struggles with many basic writing principles. It would be one thing if the series made genuine improvements and don't get me wrong, it has improved in some areas but its regressed in others.

 

I'm sorry you feel like RWBY gets an unfair hand, and that is true to an extent, but it brings most of its misery on itself. I don't think its high standards to ask for more consistency and clearer details on what's supposed to be a flagship show. 

[SenEDDtor Missile]

On 9/20/2021 at 12:14 PM, Kuzu said:

Man, the creators have outright admitted that while they have IDEAS of where things are headed, they're more or less just writing by the seat of their pants for the most part. And they have admitted they could use some improvement. 

Even if the series has a fundamentally good idea, if its executed poorly the you can't really blame people for reacting poorly. 

RWBY is going to be eight years old this year, that's almost an entire decade and still struggles with many basic writing principles. It would be one thing if the series made genuine improvements and don't get me wrong, it has improved in some areas but its regressed in others.

I'm sorry you feel like RWBY gets an unfair hand, and that is true to an extent, but it brings most of its misery on itself. I don't think its high standards to ask for more consistency and clearer details on what's supposed to be a flagship show. 

I find this debatable, because a lot of people's definition of "executed well" frequently translates to "be as cliche and conform to status quo tropes as possible". How many times have people bitched about the show's early seasons being full of cliche anime stereotypes, only to literally try to make any later seasons conform to different kinds of anime stereotypes that they deem "good and deep"?

How often does the story try to actually show don't tell through details in the background and context, or the characters showing their mindsets through the way they behave, especially after the weaknesses of Volume 5, only for people to then get mad when it does that because it turns out they can't be bothered to listen or watch the entire thing without needing to literally be told the backstory and plot word for word, or deliberately misinterpret things because it turns out their view of things is more shallow than they'd like to admit?

Maybe it's just because I notice a lot of these details more easily and just think about these things far more than others, but it gets aggravating when people demand for a story to be more consistent and get clearer details, demanding the story to treat them more intelligently, only to spit in the creative team's face because it turns out those same people can't be bothered to do anything of the sort, and instead basically just want to make the story what THEY want it to be instead of actually understanding what the creative team is doing.

There's no winning because people just shift the goalposts constantly.

EDIT: I apologize in hindsight that I was being a condescending jackass with this and several subsequent posts. I still don't agree about the quality of the show, but I could have handled that better in hindsight.

[Tornado]

21 hours ago, SenEDDtor Missile said:

And this is why I don't like talking about this franchise outside of certain places.

Because people fucking suck at getting anything about it, and you'll probably just outright dismiss me as a brainless fanboy if I even bother to try explaining it.

Motherfucker I've watched this show as it aired since Volume 2 and went to every single theater viewing and would have gone to more if they kept doing them. This is the wall of my apartment:

These are some hats that I regularly wear:

Here's my home release collection:

Here's (coincidentally) my current phone wallpaper in the cycle that happened to be showing when I took those photos:

 

If it wasn't pouring ass rain out right now I'd go take a picture of the two RWBY plushies that have been hanging from the headrests of my car for 5 years, so this picture with one of the seats pulled out will have to do:

 

 

 

 

I offered specific criticisms with specific examples of the problems that the show struggles with, so you can miss me with this "true fan" bullshit. RWBY was never good enough to justify people diving on swords for it like they do now when it's pretty bad; and the fact that people insist that it's just so super fucking deep that people don't understand it like you're trying to do here is probably directly related to why it and the fans of it gets criticized more harshly than random Summer anime 2020.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

Whatever, I'm done talking about this for now @Tornado.

I'm not changing my mind, you're not gonna change yours. I don't agree and won't agree until the show does something poorly or stupid enough that I find genuinely bad to make me not like the series, and then I'll just quietly leave the fandom like I've always done for various other series in the past. This isn't worth my effort trying to argue about anymore, when I can just talk about the series elsewhere.

EDIT: I apologize in hindsight that I was being a condescending jackass with this and several subsequent posts. I still don't agree about the quality of the show, but I could have handled that better in hindsight.

[Tornado]

You haven't done anything to try and change anyone's mind in the first place, but keep that persecution complex up. As a Sonic fan I'm sure you'll find a use for it here too.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

@Tornado Because I'm tired of arguing in other places about the series as it is, and I've already dealt with enough bullshit elsewhere. I don't feel like wasting more of my time and my energy having to make those same arguments here.

EDIT: I apologize in hindsight that I was being a condescending jackass with this post. I still don't agree about the quality of the show, but I could have handled that better in hindsight.

[Tornado]

If your immediate instinct for how you can contribute to a topic of discussion is assuming that everyone who disagrees with you on it is so fucking stupid that they just don't get basic concepts like you do, and you double down on that even when people go at length to explain their problems with it, it's probably for the best that you only discuss that thing in echo chambers.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

Okay fine.

Spoiler

I started off on the series from Volume 4, when the series was considered to be on a decline from the sacred cows of Volume 1 - 3, and I didn't mind it because while the floaty fights of V4 to  bits of V5 were bothersome, there was a lot of good character bits especially for Blake, Ren and Nora at the time, combined with decent enough world-building. I am also generally a lot more patient when it comes to slower bits, so I wasn't bothered as much by the slower pacing compared to Volumes 1 to 3.

I ended up going back to Volumes 1 to 3 after that and my opinion of it is that it's extremely rough at first and did steadily improve, with fight scenes that were good but began to show rougher points after Monty's passing. Additionally, because of the time when I got into RWBY, I didn't have the nostalgia factor mixed together with the borderline worship of Monty to go through in regards to these volumes, so I never really had the same view of Monty or his influence that other people had. My favorite aspects include the excellent fights and the dreamlike aspects of things like the flashback talk between Blake and Yang in Volume 2, and the more dreamlike quality of the Volume 1 to 3 openings compared to later ones. As such, while I acknowledge them as decent enough, they never held the same value to me as people who view the series as getting worse after Monty's passing, and frankly some of the best fights in more recent Volumes can match to some of the best Monty fights, even if their style and choreography are vastly different.

I have mixed feelings towards Volume 5 because it took some of the slower aspects of Volume 4 and worsened it, while also poorly integrating worldbuilding due to the cast spending too much time in a fixed location with little variety, and the good aspects of the Faunus arc (such as Blake helping Ilia to see the true depths of Adam's depravity and turning her away from his path, and elements of her speech such as not being apathetic to what's going on in the civil rights movement standing for you, otherwise cruel abusive bloodthirsty types like Adam will be the ones who will usurp a good movement, control the narrative and can destroy everything you've worked for) being cancelled out by the unfortunate implications of the only decent radical in Sienna being killed off and not allowing more of a balanced perspective between Ghira's long term pacifism and Sienna's use of fear to force racist humans to respect Faunus rights, as well as the lack of proper setup to highlight that it was the fault of ADAM's section of the White Fang that was at fault, not the White Fang as a whole, and the bad implications of only the pacifism side remaining, especially given the time-frame was set during the real life rise of fascism and racism.

And of course, the fight choreography of the Haven fight was extremely poor and there were far too many scenes in Volume 5 that was too reliant on weirdly handled exposition despite having used flashbacks in the past to help demonstrate these concepts better, though it was salvaged by a solid Maiden fight between Raven and Cinder.

Volume 6 is when I feel the "modern" era of RWBY finally found it's grounding, with better choreographed (albeit much more grounded, slower paced, and "realistic") fights, with the story providing a good twist from the get go by revealing Ozpin's lack of ideas on how to actually end the war with Salem, and his deception having a massive impact on the team, who up to that point had settled back into basically relying on the authority figures to help them see this mission against Salem through, and pushing them to start taking things into their own hands. In the process we got a good horror mini-arc with the Apathy, and the team having to deal with the fallout of Ozpin's deceit and trying to figure out where they're supposed to go from that point. Adam returning at the end of Volume 6 was actually a good thing, since it allowed Blake and Yang to wrap up that part of their story and only further cement the truly pathetic nature of his character that he really was all along. My only gripes with this Volume being Oscar's rather rapid acceptance of his current state of affairs despite literally getting wailed on by Qrow and Jaune, though at least the latter bothered to apologize.

Volume 7 and 8 are my favorite arcs overall, because where my biggest issue with the Mistral Arc was that the worldbuilding, character and story didn't always mesh very well due to working with multiple locations and differing stories having to converge together (even if they made for good character moments, they were abysmal in regards integrating with the Haven area until the story had literally already left there with Cinder and Neo's side of the story in Volume 6) and the aforementioned failings of the Faunus Arc, Atlas was basically the inverse, where Atlas' systemic problems and how they influenced and affected the characters (especially the mindset of James Ironwood, Penny, the Ace Ops, Watts, and ESPECIALLY Cinder) are extremely well integrated.

What also made it more interesting is that (at least in hindsight), how much it actually started out with Team RWBY and JNPR taking the gray moral path when it comes to siding with Ironwood and his Amity Tower plan, because context clues and the World of Remnant Shorts about Atlas (though I'll admit I forgot to mention that I don't really understand why these bits weren't included in the main story instead of side videos from the beginning, but that was a long time ago) makes it clear just how much having global communications restored to tell the world about Salem is a good plan at first glance...but it's also a fatally flawed one where Atlas is the country that controls all the information, and highlights a very "Atlas World Police" mentality where they'd basically allow the world to suffer the backlash of the inevitable Grimm rising from the sheer panic of Salem's reveal, and then essentially put the rest of the world under Atlas' control that's extremely pervasive throughout the series, but only really became really obvious due to Atlas and Mantle being essentially authoritarian police states and us actually being able to see what Atlas is really like up close.

A lot of people say that the change against Ironwood was a gray moment that was made black and white in Volume 8, but honestly looking back it was frankly that Team RWBY and JNPR chose the gray option at first by siding with a dictator in a "lesser of two evils" scenario due to their own struggles with dealing with the burden that Ozpin left on them and their own fatigue of the situation, and eventually through interactions with Robyn who turns out to not be the bad guy of the situation, but rather the freedom fighter against Ironwood's callous lack of care for Mantle (something that comes back to kick him in the ass later), the steady degradation of Ironwood's sanity due to his control freak tendencies and demand of trust while showing how little he deserves or ever gives it in return, as well as the machinations of Watts and Cinder, they eventually make a stand against him...

And then the shitshow begins in Volume 8 when Salem shows up.

Volume 8 gives a fair bit of depth to several villains like Cinder and Hazel, better giving us a sense of how much Atlas destroyed and tormented her, how much she's basically spent her life trying to be free and never hurt again only to trade one abuser for another, in the process damaging her own connections with her own henchmen to the point Emerald decides to leave and Mercury becomes separated from her trying to pretend he's fine with the situation (even if he really isn't). And Hazel also getting a better explanation for being part of Team Salem, his grudge against Oz and Salem better clarified and also giving development to Ozcar. On the heroes side, we also see just how much the whole mess takes it's toll on a ragtag team of people trying to do the right thing, but finding themselves being further cut off from any good solutions due to circumstances beyond their control and the degrading sanity of Ironwood. Ruby also shows more and more of the strain of being essentially elevated to the Ozpin position despite this type of leadership being part of the problem in the first place (I'd elaborate, but basically it's the dangers of elevating one person above the rest and everyone else just deferring to them, since that kind of leadership either resulted in things falling apart like Ozpin, or Ironwood being dangerously unrestrained due to his council being nothing but soldiers and yes-men), people like Winter and Marrow having to contend with their desire to blindly follow orders vs doing what's right, Penny's disturbing self-sacrificing tendencies and lack of control over her own life...

And Ironwood especially became one of my favorites due to his fallen hero arc and his steady degradation due to his own failings as a leader and person mixed together with the worldbuilding of Atlas highlighting just how much of those flaws came from Atlas' toxic systemic problems of not valuing anyone except the elite, treating people as disposable cogs in a machine, the repressing of emotions causing severe problems later down the line with characters like Ironwood and Harriet, the dangers of blind obedience, ignoring Mantle to the point they make a number of terrible tactical decisions that was exploited by Salem...

Ironwood is easily the best written character in the series due to the fact that the path to his fall from grace was obvious, and was something that could have been avoided, but his own poor decisions and toxic worldview born from a fatally flawed system basically made him incapable of recognizing where he was headed, and ultimately became just as much of a danger to his own allies as Salem ever was.

It's his arc that's where my "looking into the series more deeply" bit came from, because prior to the point, I didn't really pay as much attention to details and mostly was indifferent to his character up to Volume 7. But seeing how things turned out for him made me start rewatching older episodes and noticing the red flags of his behavior in earlier volumes, as well as details like body language and context based on scenes that I had overlooked earlier, which also came to apply to a lot of other characters like Ruby, Ren and Blake. That's what I meant when I said that I thought part of the reason people didn't "get it" was because they only noticed the surface elements or just skimmed over things like I did in the past, while later Volumes made me look back and actually take a much closer look at what I had overlooked and realize there was a lot more going on that I had initially thought.

I'll admit, there are elements I did not care for,

Spoiler

like that one Vine guy dying, the fights feeling too short in some areas, and I have very mixed feelings on the second death of Penny, but I found myself overall satisfied with how Volume 8 turned out. Atlas' fall is extremely poetic given just how much of a terrible place it was revealed to be, and a really brutal.

 

...And yeah, I think that covers most of what I wanted to cover, or at least what I remember wanting to cover.

Overall, I stand by my viewpoint. RWBY is a show with a lot of rough areas that comes from budget problems as well as initial inexperience, but there's a lot more going on than people give it credit for, and it's a far stronger show once I started noticing how those pieces fit together, and gave me a better appreciation for story and character elements I might not have noticed or cared for. I like to dissect RWBY down to these details because it's a show that gets a lot better when I do so, when smaller seemingly inconsequential details turn out to be more relevant than I expected.

Maybe someone will say that I'm overthinking things too much, that I'm just filling in the gaps of a mediocre show and doing the work for the creative team, but these kinds of things, even if they weren't always included through some perfect outline and extensive planning, do work out more often than not. And frankly it's not like we've never seen other series where shit was changed or made up as it went, and turned out to be a good thing in the long term, because not every aspect of a series is planned out to the letter, nor does it make the story inferior for it.

And this is only the abridged version of my overall thoughts on the series, since I'd probably be rambling on even longer if I went any deeper than this, and my hands are starting to hurt from all the typing.

 

There. I've covered my thoughts more thoroughly as to why I think RWBY is a better show than most give it credit for, and I apologize for my earlier attitude, since frankly I was letting my temper and irritability due to past bad encounters and poor criticisms cloud my judgment. I should have tried to be more thoughtful and actually explain my mindset instead of just jumping the gun and assuming the worst @Tornado @Kuzu.

EDIT: I apologize in hindsight that I was being a condescending jackass. I still don't agree about the quality of the show, but I could have handled that better in hindsight.

[BLUzCLUz]

I read the novels too; the first one was better.