RWBY Thread III: Time To Say Goodbye

[kokuenDG]

so gotta few things that need to be said real quick.
We get a lot of reports from this thread. A lot of it is just a series of people yelling at each other over arguments that have been rehashed hundreds of times since the end of the recent Volume. And I get that the last Volume - and RWBY in general, really - has some controversial moments that people will want to discuss, argue about, debate, etc.

That's fine. We're not going to stop people from doing that, because that's literally what the point of the thread is. However, there's just a point where it gets to be a bit too much, and arguments about whether or not Ironwood was morally justified in his actions in the recent Volume, or if RWBY and her team were in the right for withholding information from Ironwood out of distrust, or whatever flavor of argument of the day descend into insulting other posters, expressing a demeaning attitude towards other's opinions, and just being overall unpleasant. That tends to happen a lot in this thread. We want it to stop happening in this thread.

So! As of now the thread is in a higher state of moderation. What that means is that any future infractions will result in a weeklong boot from the thread, and repeated offenders will likely be permanently removed. So please, everyone endeavor to actually respect the other's arguments, and even if you strongly disagree with them please stay civil and mindful when it comes to responding to others.

In addition, users should refrain from talking about off-site users in the thread. Bear in mind that this does not mean that you cannot continue to post tumblr posts, for example, that add onto the discussion in the thread, with the caveat that it's related to RWBY of course. But any objections to offsite users in the thread should be handled via PM, or they'll be treated as thread violations and infracted as such.

 

[Terrabrand]

Wait, what?

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I don't understand the question. Jaden explicitly refuses to apply himself in classwork, coasting on natural dueling talent.

Naruto, like Jaune, is completely ignorant of extremely basic concepts about the world he lives in and the profession he chose that he should have learned years ago (and in fact he has even less excuse than Jaune, because we know for a fact that Jaune never went to a combat school while Naruto went to a literal ninja academy); in fact, both of them are ignorant of the very name of the source of everyone's superpowers in this universe. Just a quick note, any notions you might have about anyone deliberately sabotaging him in the Academy is pure fanon.

Naruto, like Jaune, acknowledges that it's a long, hard road to his dream but still fully expects to be able to do it despite there being plenty of peers who are more skilled and have been working plenty hard themselves (the idea that Sasuke has ever coasted on talent is, again, fanon).

Naruto, like Jaune, is totally willing to throw himself into physical training, which is exciting and exactly what they imagine when they hear "training to be a Ninja/Huntsman," just like Jaune is willing to throw himself at Cardin over and over in a no-stakes sparring class no matter how badly his ass gets kicked, but both of them completely conk out the moment they have to sit down in a classroom and apply themselves mentally and come off as lazy slackers despite determination being noted both in and out of universe as one of their key traits.

Naruto, unlike Jaune, impresses several experienced adults in succession with his determination and other good qualities despite being a knucklehead who repeatedly skipped class to graffiti monuments and gets personal tutelage that he quickly absorbs and catches up, then races ahead, of his peers. Meanwhile, Jaune is repeatedly told by his teachers to shape up because his performance sucks no matter how "determined" he might be, and he needs to ask his peer for help and take a lot of late-night extra training sessions before he even begins to catch up with his friends, something he's still in the process of doing.

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Naruto reads as more of a person with genuine issues with booklearning, in a 'it genuinely doesn't work for him' sense. It's not that he refuses to apply himself, it's that he really can't hold still and focus. Like, when you look at the written exam part of the chunin exams, Naruto does try to answer the questions, he just isn't a super genius at classwork like Sakura is and, due to thinking of himself as bad at this doesn't recognize that these are unreasonable questions. Naruto reads to me as the kind of person who doesn't learn well in a classroom environment due to the way his brain is wired, and not because of laziness.

We also don't know enough about the academy curriculum. Yes, Naruto is oblivious to things like Chakra that Sakura is aware of, but Sakura is also apparently straight up memorizing sets of Ninja rules. How much of this stuff Sasuke and their other peers knew out the gate is unclear, and we know that a lot of Sasuke's knowledge comes from his family teaching him.

I'll also note re: chakra, that Naruto is much more a secretive setting, though I'll admit bits like him not knowing about the kages do suggest he failed to retain knowledge, whether this is inability or laziness. I think it's closer to incomprehension than laziness, where no one explained to the orphan why these facts he needs to memorize matter, and so he doesn't understand. He does respond to various explanations later.

I still maintain that someone like Jaden who is eager to play the card game yet outright doing stuff like going to actual effort to sleep through classes (at some point we see he has some little face mask thing to make it look like his eyes are open. That's the kind of thing that you have to plan in advance) is a better comparison point, though admittedly Jaden himself has elements of being a deconstruction. As I recall we eventually see Crowler having a legitimate complaint against him due to other people trying to follow Jaden's example.

... I also think Naruto is a poor example just on the level that, as a setting, Naruto is terrible about having a consistent history. Later on we see Naruto palling around with Kiba and Choji and so on in flashbacks to Naruto's academy days, but when those characters were introduced they were explicitly distant and frankly hated figures, who though they shared a class with him they were not friends by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Leingod]

Naruto reads as more of a person with genuine issues with booklearning, in a 'it genuinely doesn't work for him' sense. It's not that he refuses to apply himself, it's that he really can't hold still and focus. Like, when you look at the written exam part of the chunin exams, Naruto does try to answer the questions, he just isn't a super genius at classwork like Sakura is and, due to thinking of himself as bad at this doesn't recognize that these are unreasonable questions. Naruto reads to me as the kind of person who doesn't learn well in a classroom environment due to the way his brain is wired, and not because of laziness.

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Yeah, Naruto thrives in more hands-on teaching environments. You know what? So did Jaune once Pyrrha started giving him private tutoring.

Besides, of course Naruto tried his best to answer that test; his promotion to chuunin was riding on it as far as he knew. Meanwhile, Iruka mentions Naruto having failed the yearly finals twice before (the Japanese school system doesn't do the "hold you back a year if you fail" thing), and Naruto just acts sullen when Iruka chides him to take it seriously, then pranks him during the exam itself.

We also don't know enough about the academy curriculum. Yes, Naruto is oblivious to things like Chakra that Sakura is aware of, but Sakura is also apparently straight up memorizing sets of Ninja rules. How much of this stuff Sasuke and their other peers knew out the gate is unclear, and we know that a lot of Sasuke's knowledge comes from his family teaching him.

I'll also note re: chakra, that Naruto is much more a secretive setting, though I'll admit bits like him not knowing about the kages do suggest he failed to retain knowledge, whether this is inability or laziness. I think it's closer to incomprehension than laziness, where no one explained to the orphan why these facts he needs to memorize matter, and so he doesn't understand. He does respond to various explanations later.

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And yet it's repeatedly said that Naruto is supposed to know this stuff. This is incredibly basic stuff that Naruto is just completely ignorant of. What do you think they were doing while Iruka was lecturing them as they sat around in that classroom, learning floral arrangements? I seriously doubt the word "chakra" is a closely-guarded secret that only a full-fledged ninja may know, and absolutely no one else in the series is ever confused by that word.

And yeah, it's totally because Naruto grew up with no real adult supervision in his life and his teachers, busy with teaching whole generations of young ninja, didn't really have the time to devote to one-on-one lessons with him, so there was no one to correct his mistakes or impress on him the importance of what he was learning. But Jaune's parents clearly didn't expect him to ever become a Huntsman and clearly never did anything to prepare him for that life, so the end result isn't that different, especially since his dad especially seems to have given him very skewed ideas about what heroism is, what men should be like, and what male/female relationships are like.

Also, Sasuke's parents died months into his first year at the academy, how much they actually taught him is deeply unclear.

I still maintain that someone like Jaden who is eager to play the card game yet outright doing stuff like going to actual effort to sleep through classes (at some point we see he has some little face mask thing to make it look like his eyes are open. That's the kind of thing that you have to plan in advance) is a better comparison point, though admittedly Jaden himself has elements of being a deconstruction. As I recall we eventually see Crowler having a legitimate complaint against him due to other people trying to follow Jaden's example.

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Except unlike Jaden, Jaune is never happy-go-lucky about what a poor student he is or how far he lags behind his peers. Jaune is not okay with being the lovable dope all his life.

... I also think Naruto is a poor example just on the level that, as a setting, Naruto is terrible about having a consistent history. Later on we see Naruto palling around with Kiba and Choji and so on in flashbacks to Naruto's academy days, but when those characters were introduced they were explicitly distant and frankly hated figures, who though they shared a class with him they were not friends by any stretch of the imagination.

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Where are you getting "hated?" Naruto insults them in his mental introduction, but not with any real heat, basically calling the Ino-Shika-Cho the Three Stooges (which they kind of are at that point from an outside perspective) and trash-talking Kiba because he's a brash, loud-mouthed punk whose mouth writes checks his skills can't cash (exactly like Naruto himself, which is the whole joke when they start going at it), while Choji and Shikamaru don't really interact much with Naruto at all and seem pretty neutral toward him.

And it's not like they seem like best friends or anything when they hang out, more like they're just kids who hang out because they happen to be doing a lot of the same stuff, i.e. napping in class, snacking in class, and skipping class to get into trouble. They weren't exactly having deep heart-to-hearts.

Though either way that was just anime filler.

 

[Terrabrand]

Though either way that was just anime filler.

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Er, no. I read the manga, I did not follow the anime past Chunin exams or so. Naruto palling around with them shows up at some point in the manga. Fairly late, but it's not just the anime that does that.

Regardless, I do not care enough about the point to keep arguing it and it's kinda tangential to this thread, so I'm gonna try to bow out here.

 

[Psyga315]

Maybe headcanons can be crafted to explain this

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Because they wanted to take an airship in Shion...

That's the entire reason.

 

[Leingod]

Because they wanted to take an airship in Shion...

That's the entire reason.

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Pretty much. They state it right there in the first episode that they know there's an airport in Shion and that they plan on taking an airship to Mistral. But then they get there after Raven and her band of losers threw a rager that got way out of hand and that plan went right down the drain.

In other words, everything is Raven's fault once again.

 

[ShadowEMT]

So I worried making this comparison would feel reductive, but after thought I decided that doing so might raise awareness which would be a net positive. So here I go.

My general assumption for how the SDC operates is more or less along the same lines as the palm oil industry, which also allows for the whole "We pay them equally" thing to be addressed, IE, that doesn't mean Faunus aren't given unfair tasks, unsafe working conditions or aren't put in debt other ways like say through company stores that overcharge them for basic necessities.

Here, this video covers much of what I am referencing:

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There is also the good ole "subcontractor" trick, the mines and equipment are owned by the SDC but they are operated by a "subcontractor" that brings their own workers to man the mines, those "subcontractors" pay a rent and sell the dust to the SDC, they also shield the SDC from responsibility, so the SDC can still claim to pay fair wages, after all it is the "subcontractors" that use pseudo-slave labor, and if something terrible happens, like a mine explosion or it appears that the mine labor was people kidnaped by bandits, then the SDC just issues an statement of condemnation, terminates their relationship with the "subcontractor" and then hires the next guy who continues to do the exact same thing.

 

[Zam]

There is also the good ole "subcontractor" trick, the mines and equipment are owned by the SDC but they are operated by a "subcontractor" that brings their own workers to man the mines, those "subcontractors" pay a rent and sell the dust to the SDC, they also shield the SDC from responsibility, so the SDC can still claim to pay fair wages, after all it is the "subcontractors" that use pseudo-slave labor, and if something terrible happens, like a mine explosion or it appears that the mine labor was people kidnaped by bandits, then the SDC just issues an statement of condemnation, terminates their relationship with the "subcontractor" and then hires the next guy who continues to do the exact same thing.

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Oh wow, yeah I can totally see that, completely fitting.

 

[Leingod]

Relevant quotes from the episode "Tipping Point":

Jacques: That's precisely my point. We offer faunus the exact same wages given to the rest of our mining staff. Their argument's completely invalid right out of the gate.

Businessman: Well, I think the bigger issue here is our society as a whole.

Jacques: (scoffing) What, you mean Atlas?

Businessman: Atlas, Mantle... You can't deny the economic disparity between the two.

Businesswoman: I mean, what exactly are you suggesting?

Businessman: I'm just saying I don't think it's necessarily an issue of compensation as much as it is one of opportunity…

Businesswoman: Look, no one asked them to move here.

Businessman: But companies like the SDC promised jobs.

Jacques (having ignored them to start treating his probably 18 year old daughter like an adventurous 3 year old): I'm sorry, I tuned out for a second, but sounds like I'm the good guy again?

---

So at a guess, the SDC promised a bunch of jobs in Mantle and drew a bunch of people (probably with a disproportionate amount of faunus for socioeconomic reasons that also saw a lot of emancipated blacks essentially end up right back in the same position they were before the Civil War and also saw the horrific grindhouse factories of the Industrial Revolution hiring disproportionate amounts of impoverished immigrants and minorities) and then didn't deliver, or at least didn't deliver as much/in the way they claimed they would. This might have been a deliberate strategy to make sure there was plenty of cheap, desperate labor on hand to keep wages low, and the presence of faunus and humans together probably keeps unions divided in much the same way early unions were often very divided due to ingrained racial and ethnic attitudes, which some corporations even deliberately preyed on to keep their workers weak and divided.

As for Ilia and her family? Well, there are always success stories in cases like this. The system can't survive if it's completely closed, because without any hope for something better for their children they suddenly have quite a bit less to lose if some charismatic speaker says they should rise up and seize the means of production and overthrow the bourgeoisie and all that. There need to be just enough people who "make it" that you can point to and claim that everyone can get there eventually to keep the (usually futile) dream alive. And as seen above, it makes it much easier to Jacques to deny that his company's practices are racist if he can point to a few success stories here and there in his company. It's essentially the corporate version of the "I have a black friend" argument, and it's just as much a load of bullsh*t.

 

[Zam]

Relevant quotes from the episode "Tipping Point":

Jacques: That's precisely my point. We offer faunus the exact same wages given to the rest of our mining staff. Their argument's completely invalid right out of the gate.

Businessman: Well, I think the bigger issue here is our society as a whole.

Jacques: (scoffing) What, you mean Atlas?

Businessman: Atlas, Mantle... You can't deny the economic disparity between the two.

Businesswoman: I mean, what exactly are you suggesting?

Businessman: I'm just saying I don't think it's necessarily an issue of compensation as much as it is one of opportunity…

Businesswoman: Look, no one asked them to move here.

Businessman: But companies like the SDC promised jobs.

Jacques (having ignored them to start treating his probably 18 year old daughter like an adventurous 3 year old): I'm sorry, I tuned out for a second, but sounds like I'm the good guy again?

---

So at a guess, the SDC promised a bunch of jobs in Mantle and drew a bunch of people (probably with a disproportionate amount of faunus for socioeconomic reasons that also saw a lot of emancipated blacks essentially end up right back in the same position they were before the Civil War and also saw the horrific grindhouse factories of the Industrial Revolution hiring disproportionate amounts of impoverished immigrants and minorities) and then didn't deliver, or at least didn't deliver as much/in the way they claimed they would. This might have been a deliberate strategy to make sure there was plenty of cheap, desperate labor on hand to keep wages low, and the presence of faunus and humans together probably keeps unions divided in much the same way early unions were often very divided due to ingrained racial and ethnic attitudes, which some corporations even deliberately preyed on to keep their workers weak and divided.

As for Ilia and her family? Well, there are always success stories in cases like this. The system can't survive if it's completely closed, because without any hope for something better for their children they suddenly have quite a bit less to lose if some charismatic speaker says they should rise up and seize the means of production and overthrow the bourgeoisie and all that. There need to be just enough people who "make it" that you can point to and claim that everyone can get there eventually to keep the (usually futile) dream alive. And as seen above, it makes it much easier to Jacques to deny that his company's practices are racist if he can point to a few success stories here and there in his company. It's essentially the corporate version of the "I have a black friend" argument, and it's just as much a load of bullsh*t.

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Very insightful, thanks for breaking down that conversation I had never been able to make most of it out. Plus even with Ilia's parents, well, they died which to me gives the implication the mine they were in wasn't that great and they still had her pass as human cos it presented her greater safety and opportunity which says a lot.

 

[The Narrator]

I didn't say it would make them more like hard traveling heroes(though I'm not entirely sure where you're getting that from).

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What? I didn't say that you said that. I said that I appreciated getting to see them do the heroic road trip thing ("Hard Travelling Heroes" was the name of a DC Comics storyline based around that premise back in the '70s, so I was just being a smartass by referencing it) for a season rather than having an easy time getting to Haven.

Look, we don't seem to be understanding each other here, so maybe you could explain what exactly your position is?

Very insightful, thanks for breaking down that conversation I had never been able to make most of it out. Plus even with Ilia's parents, well, they died which to me gives the implication the mine they were in wasn't that great and they still had her pass as human cos it presented her greater safety and opportunity which says a lot.

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And according to Ilia, the response of a bunch of Atlas schoolchildren to a mine collapse that killed a lot of Faunus workers was to mock them.

 

[Mook]

We never see any sign Naruto is lazy. Yes, from the start we see him pranking, but we also see in eg chapter covers him apparentky doing stuff like one hundred punches a night. Indeed, one of our earliest plot threads is him lecturing Konohamaru about hard work and how there are no shortcuts to being hokage.

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Dude what? Early Naruto was a complete brat. We see several scenes of him sleeping in class, not paying attention in class, skipping class, not wanting to learn the basics because it's boring and demanding to be taught ultra cool ninjutsu that will let him win without having to put in any effort, etc. One hundred punches at night is like, the bare minimum exercise that a ninja should do just to stay in shape.

 

[The Narrator]

It's been like 15 years since I watched any Naruto and I didn't really care much for it, but I seem to recall that in the early episodes he tended to mostly coast on the huge amount of chakra he got from sharing his body with a demon fox and letting it go into berserk mode if he was losing to make up for his lack of actual competence or forethought. The protagonist being unskilled but getting by on raw natural power or rare special abilities is not an uncommon trope in shounen anime, and one that I've gotten pretty sick of.

 

[Leingod]

It's been like 15 years since I watched any Naruto and I didn't really care much for it, but I seem to recall that in the early episodes he tended to mostly coast on the huge amount of chakra he got from sharing his body with a demon fox and letting it go into berserk mode if he was losing to make up for his lack of actual competence or forethought. The protagonist being unskilled but getting by on raw natural power or rare special abilities is not an uncommon trope in shounen anime, and one that I've gotten pretty sick of.

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That happened sometimes, but in the early series Naruto was actually a lot better than most shounen in having its hero display actual cunning, grit and even flat-out luck to get most of his victories. His chakra was huge but far from bottomless (in fact, everyone was a lot more sparing with their big techniques and conscious of their stamina, which made the fights much more tactical and interesting) and a lot of his memorable victories came down to tactics rather than just "I wanna win and I'm the hero, so the world is just gonna hand me a power-up to kick your ass." That really only happened... twice, I think, before he fought Sasuke at the Valley of the End, and in neither case was it actually a life-threatening fight against some major threat, they were just fights that were important to Naruto's character development and basically served as foreshadowing for said fight with Sasuke, where it was mostly used as a counter to his Cursed Seal powers, so it balanced out.

When I went back and reread the series, I was honestly amazed at how good the fight scenes were; Masashi Kishimoto has an amazing talent for getting across very rapid, fast-paced action across in still images and for making very evocative imagery of the techniques being used. It's once you get to the latter half where it starts devolving into the same old cheesy shounen bullshit where lots of speed lines and blurs are meant to get across fast movement and fights mostly just devolve into throwing big fuck-off attacks until one sticks, and even by the end there are still glimmers of the old quality here and there.

 

[Mook]

It's been like 15 years since I watched any Naruto and I didn't really care much for it, but I seem to recall that in the early episodes he tended to mostly coast on the huge amount of chakra he got from sharing his body with a demon fox and letting it go into berserk mode if he was losing to make up for his lack of actual competence or forethought. The protagonist being unskilled but getting by on raw natural power or rare special abilities is not an uncommon trope in shounen anime, and one that I've gotten pretty sick of.

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Early Naruto can basically be summed up as "Shadow Clone Spam! Shadow Clone Spam didn't work because the clones are just as bad at fighting as the original? MORE SHADOW CLONE SPAM!". Granted he had a lot of good moments where he displayed cunning and came up with clever strategies to win, but even then he often won due to what I like to call the Shonen HP Formula.

The Shonen HP Formula is the process wherein the protagonist of a shonen manga can have their lungs and liver carved out, all their teeth punched in, their arms&legs broken, their balls chopped off, their nose flattened, their eyes gouged out, their skull crushed, their intestines turned into slurry, but if they just land one good hit on the opponent their far superior enemy instantly goes down, victory is theirs, and their wounds are quickly healed with no consequences bigger than having to wear some bandages for a while.

 

[Leingod]

Early Naruto can basically be summed up as "Shadow Clone Spam! Shadow Clone Spam didn't work because the clones are just as bad at fighting as the original? MORE SHADOW CLONE SPAM!". Granted he had a lot of good moments where he displayed cunning and came up with clever strategies to win, but even then he often won due to what I like to call the Shonen HP Formula.

The Shonen HP Formula is the process wherein the protagonist of a shonen manga can have their lungs and liver carved out, all their teeth punched in, their arms&legs broken, their balls chopped off, their nose flattened, their eyes gouged out, their skull crushed, their intestines turned into slurry, but if they just land one good hit on the opponent their far superior enemy instantly goes down, victory is theirs, and their wounds are quickly healed with no consequences bigger than having to wear some bandages for a while.

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I strongly disagree, as you can see above. Outside of Mizuki, Naruto never really won a fight just by burying a dude in Shadow Clones.

Naruto and Sasuke's teamwork to free Kakashi from Zabuza's Water Prison is rightfully well-remembered as one of their first displays of real teamwork and a rather clever use of basic abilities.
Against Haku, Shadow Clones were totally useless because Haku was so fast and deadly he was popping them as fast as Naruto could put them out, and Naruto won by tapping into Kurama's power due to his rage at Sasuke's (apparent) death.
Okay, I guess you can count him killing one of Orochimaru's giant snakes after getting swallowed by basically spamming Shadow Clones until the thing popped like a balloon, but that was awesome.
While it's true that Naruto used Shadow Clones to deliver the finishing blow(s) to Kiba, that's like saying that Jotaro Kujo is just dumb muscle because his fights end with him punching an opponent's lights out, totally ignoring the cunning tactic that led to him getting into lights-punching range; in this case, it ignores stuff like Naruto using a basic Transformation technique and a bit of misdirection to trick Kiba into taking out Akamaru, cutting Kiba's offensive power by more than half.
Against Neji, Naruto did try Shadow Clone spam and it failed miserably because Neji had the Kaiten. He taps into Kurama's power again, but only to release the tenketsu that Neji shut down so that he can move again, and then he once again uses misdirection (and a single Shadow Clone) to get a sneak attack on Neji and take him out.
The fight with Gaara is basically this huge, multi-stage boss battle where Naruto brings out literally everything he's learned up to this point in succession, from misdirection and clever thinking to Shadow clone spam to leveraging the basic Transformation to Summoning and even to tapping into Kurama's power, but none of those alone win him the fight.
Against Kabuto, Naruto wins because Kabuto doesn't take him seriously and plays with him, which lets Naruto figure out how to use the Rasengan even though he hasn't mastered it yet by having a Shadow Clone help form it, surprising Kabuto and sealing the win.
Naruto only uses Shadow Clone spam once or twice when fighting Sasuke, and it only gets a small upper-hand before Sasuke uses some fire techniques to wipe them out with AoE. The fight is mostly very physical, as it should be given the emotions that were going into it.

... I feel like I might be getting wildly off-topic now, so I'll stop. TLDR: early Naruto actually didn't spam lots of Shadow Clones as much as most people remember him doing, and it only even contributed positively to the fight about half the time.

 

[Terrabrand]

When I went back and reread the series, I was honestly amazed at how good the fight scenes were; Masashi Kishimoto has an amazing talent for getting across very rapid, fast-paced action across in still images and for making very evocative imagery of the techniques being used. It's once you get to the latter half where it starts devolving into the same old cheesy shounen bullshit where lots of speed lines and blurs are meant to get across fast movement and fights mostly just devolve into throwing big fuck-off attacks until one sticks, and even by the end there are still glimmers of the old quality here and there.

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I'll just mention here that apparently late in the series an increasingly large amount of the work was offloaded on assistants to the point that, from what I hear, he had basically stopped actually drawing anything late in the series, which is probably where the later half's problems came in.

I mean, in terms of the art part you are talking about. Other things I suspect are more on his end.

Regardless, learning the assistant point there was a light bulb moment to me on the count of why the later parts go to having so many faceless generics, where crowd scenes in early Naruto tend to be full of distinctive figures even if none of them actually matter.

 

[Jcogginsa]

That happened sometimes, but in the early series Naruto was actually a lot better than most shounen in having its hero display actual cunning, grit and even flat-out luck to get most of his victories. His chakra was huge but far from bottomless (in fact, everyone was a lot more sparing with their big techniques and conscious of their stamina, which made the fights much more tactical and interesting) and a lot of his memorable victories came down to tactics rather than just "I wanna win and I'm the hero, so the world is just gonna hand me a power-up to kick your ass." That really only happened... twice, I think, before he fought Sasuke at the Valley of the End, and in neither case was it actually a life-threatening fight against some major threat, they were just fights that were important to Naruto's character development and basically served as foreshadowing for said fight with Sasuke, where it was mostly used as a counter to his Cursed Seal powers, so it balanced out.

When I went back and reread the series, I was honestly amazed at how good the fight scenes were; Masashi Kishimoto has an amazing talent for getting across very rapid, fast-paced action across in still images and for making very evocative imagery of the techniques being used. It's once you get to the latter half where it starts devolving into the same old cheesy shounen bullshit where lots of speed lines and blurs are meant to get across fast movement and fights mostly just devolve into throwing big fuck-off attacks until one sticks, and even by the end there are still glimmers of the old quality here and there.

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No, the strategic element sticks around all the way until the end. the tools at their disposal get bigger, but the fights remain battles of cunning

 

[Tython82]

to change the subject I present this from a blog about Jaune and Weiss

I find this an interesting look at Weiss and Jaune's relationship going forward and not in the romantic but the platonic.

 

[thesevenwielder]

Whoa there, mister "I got threadbanned from the RWBY discussion thread for being overly hostile in bashing the show". TVTropers act that way towards all works. Don't treat this show as some kind of unique case.

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'Sup.




I'll take my leave now. Just wanted to clear up that little misconception.

 

[mistakenot]

'Sup.




I'll take my leave now. Just wanted to clear up that little misconception.

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I think it was rude of @Delphisage to bring that up in an unrelated context, and I wish people would stop importing drama from other threads, but IIRC it is true you were thread-banned:

[stop=Stop]@thesevenwielder has been permanently threadbanned from this thread.

Look it's alright to dislike a thing but posting in a thread for the sole purpose of riling other people up's never going to fly.

The rest of you all had better be good to each other. The eyes of the moderati are on you.

That's all for now.
[/stop]

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Or at least, that was supposedly the case. Not sure if this is an oversight or if the thread-ban was repealed.

 

[Strypgia]

Or at least, that was supposedly the case. Not sure if this is an oversight or if the thread-ban was repealed.

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it's real He's been given a second chance. Everyone play nice.

 

[Zam]

[information=IT'S REAL] He's been given a second chance. Everyone play nice. [/information]

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Not in a rude way, but can I ask why and who made that call?

 

[Strypgia]

He asked politely. Several Staff members examined things, and decided he could get a parole. An Arbitrator made the full review.

 

[Delphisage]

If I can apologize for that gesture, I only brought it up because I thought it was an interesting topic to bring up TVTropers finding stuff like flirting and other probably lecherous behavior to apparently be a grudge of RWBY's, whether or not that was actually true or just a set of occurrences observed by Tropers as a cognizant pattern, et cetera - and yet Seven (not tagging out of fear) instead chose to respond with "Fuck Tropers for being so adamant in defending this show". I've had a similar history with ragemonster behavior that I very much wish to distance myself from, so I snapped at him for being overly negative and dismissive as a proxy for myself. I promise I won't bring up this drama again.

Anyways, here's the TVTropes segment in question:

Acceptable Targets:

• Characters who try too hard when flirting are seen as annoying by others, including those they hit on and their playboy tendencies are often the result of some personal insecurity. Jaune tries too hard because of his desire to be a traditional hero and disgusts Weiss with his advances, Mercury's cheeky attempts at flirting with Emerald pisses her off, Neptune hits on many women because he's afraid of what people will actually think of him being a nerd (intellectual!) and annoys the Malachite twins at one point with his suave cool guy image (as well as pisses off Weiss, who has a crush on him), and while she's yet to be rejected, Yang's eagerness to meet boys in the early episode clearly annoys Ruby and Yang is agitated when Qrow's story takes a flirty swerve to distract her from the video game they were playing. Downplayed in that none of the characters are treated as bad people specifically because of these traits, but their Casanova tendencies are never treated as positive attributes either.
• In general, sexual abusers and lechers are a common target in the show. Adam's abusive and possessive behavior in Volume 3 toward Blake immediately marked him as a monster, while Junior's flirting with the then-underage Yang in the Yellow trailer is treated as justification for her to hit him. Later on, in Volume 5, a lecherous man Yang encounters at a gas station keeps hitting on her and then tries to touch her hair, and she promptly punches him so hard he's hurled out of the store and gets a water on the house for it.

Click to shrink...

 

[mistakenot]

If I can apologize for that gesture, I only brought it up because I thought it was an interesting topic to bring up TVTropers finding stuff like flirting and other probably lecherous behavior to apparently be a grudge of RWBY's, whether or not that was actually true or just a set of occurrences observed by Tropers as a cognizant pattern, et cetera - and yet Seven (not tagging out of fear) instead chose to respond with "Fuck Tropers for being so adamant in defending this show".

Anyways, here's the TVTropes segment in question:

Click to shrink...

Argument merits aside, if you and t7w both want to continue this discussion I think the two of you should do so in the original thread. There's no reason to drag it over here.