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So about RWBY?

So I tried to binge watch the show, key word being I tried to watch this show. But I stopped once I realized how mediocre the writing for the show really is I couldn't really keep watching. It's like if the writer for Fairy Tail, Code Geass, and Mirai Nikki got together and decided to one up themselves by creating bland characters who barely, if ever, change. The main character, the character we're supposed to root for, shows little to no growth through the entire show. Even after her sister gets her arm ripped off, Ruby is still the same character from volume 1 to 5 she isn't allowed to change because then we wouldn't have any wacky character hijinxs.

And the "Character development" she gets from Oscar is so forced, when it should have happened back when Tyler was going after the group, but nope, got let Jaune comfort this lonely fragile girl. You don't get to have character development, this is the Jaune show now, so deal with it! Speaking of Jaune, I'd have to say he, Ruby, Cinder, and Oscar are the worst written characters this series has ever created. Cinder is Xehanort levels of being a villain that conveniently happen the way she wants so she can further her plans, when in reality Ozpin could've turned her into a bloody smear in say....5 seconds. Hell I bet even Jaune could do it, that's how pathetic of a villain she is. Jaune is an idiot, who lucks out into not being cannon fodder for the first grim he comes across, and is the author's self insert, Oscar is just a horrible waste of space, and I don't think I'll ever watch RWBY again after this.
 
RedAlert said:
Cinder is Xehanort levels of being a villain that conveniently happen the way she wants so she can further her plans, when in reality Ozpin could've turned her into a bloody smear in say....5 seconds. Hell I bet even Jaune could do it, that's how pathetic of a villain she is. Jaune is an idiot, who lucks out into not being cannon fodder for the first grim he comes across, and is the author's self insert, Oscar is just a horrible waste of space, and I don't think I'll ever watch RWBY again after this.
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Something that was pointed out to me, relating to this:

During what little we see of the Cinder vs. Ozpin fight, Ozpin is totally kicking her ass without taking any damage in return and has a perfect counter for all of her attacks...but then she wins offscreen.

The writers couldn't get Ozpin's dick out of their mouth for the five seconds it would take to show him losing, even when the story called for it. And the end result of this was Cinder winning EVEN AFTER WE SAW HER LOSING.
 
Leila Hann said:
Something that was pointed out to me, relating to this:

During what little we see of the Cinder vs. Ozpin fight, Ozpin is totally kicking her ass without taking any damage in return and has a perfect counter for all of her attacks...but then she wins offscreen.

The writers couldn't get Ozpin's dick out of their mouth for the five seconds it would take to show him losing, even when the story called for it. And the end result of this was Cinder winning EVEN AFTER WE SAW HER LOSING.
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but...but my OC donut steel? He's a cool old dude with a harem! I can't just show him getting beaten by a woman :(
 
Plot contrivance is written all over Cinders character. Certain events need to happen in order to progress the story, and make Cinder seem like a threat, but the problem is that they have to go in and break things that shouldn't be broken so Cinder can be Ruby's mortal enemy or something.
 
Welcome to bad shonen antagonists 101: where the villains have no clear motivation and everything that ever happens fails to put a dent in their plans, eventually resulting in emotional disconnect from the audience. I tend to call it "Butterflaizen Syndrome".
 
Delphisage said:
Welcome to bad shonen antagonists 101: where the villains have no clear motivation and everything that ever happens fails to put a dent in their plans, eventually resulting in emotional disconnect from the audience. I tend to call it "Butterflaizen Syndrome".
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The big difference is that Aizen was like...well-drawn, and occasionally well-written, and like...fun.
 
Leila Hann said:
Something that was pointed out to me, relating to this:

During what little we see of the Cinder vs. Ozpin fight, Ozpin is totally kicking her ass without taking any damage in return and has a perfect counter for all of her attacks...but then she wins offscreen.

The writers couldn't get Ozpin's dick out of their mouth for the five seconds it would take to show him losing, even when the story called for it. And the end result of this was Cinder winning EVEN AFTER WE SAW HER LOSING.
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Pretty sure the scene ended with it going form an exchange of skill to one of raw power that Ozpin tried to muscles his way through because he didn't have a speedy defense against giant fire lazer beam the way he had 'dodge slash' and 'break glass daggers with cane'. Also I'm not sure taking a few hits and immediately recovering to unleash a giant fire blast constitutes losing.

Like, leaving the show is fine, not gonna blame anyone, but this feels inaccurate.
 
Zam said:
Pretty sure the scene ended with it going form an exchange of skill to one of raw power that Ozpin tried to muscles his way through because he didn't have a speedy defense against giant fire lazer beam the way he had 'dodge slash' and 'break glass daggers with cane'. Also I'm not sure taking a few hits and immediately recovering to unleash a giant fire blast constitutes losing.

Like, leaving the show is fine, not gonna blame anyone, but this feels inaccurate.
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It's a beam struggle in the dark, man. I don't think anything happening that happened in that scene was clear or made sense. The only thing that I remember is that it ended with a cutaway as the beam struggle was even, and then we later hear an explosion and get a cut to Cinder jetting up to the roof through the elevator shaft.
 
Delphisage said:
It's a beam struggle in the dark, man. I don't think anything happening that happened in that scene was clear or made sense. The only thing that I remember is that it ended with a cutaway as the beam struggle was even, and then we later hear an explosion and get a cut to Cinder jetting up to the roof through the elevator shaft.
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I didn't find it that hard to follow myself, Cinder and Ozpin clash at mostly the same speeds, Cinder hurls her glass daggers at him, he breaks them and manages to pushed her back with some well delivered strikes and then Cinder unleashed her full Maiden power in a giant fire blast, Ozpin charged it in a glowing orb and then it faded into an explosion with them seemingly being about evenly matched.
Edit: Save Ozpin was nowhere near Cinder when the explosion started.

The only time Ozpin had much of an advantage was when he delivered some strikes which, yes drove Cinder back but isn't the same as dominating or winning the fight, especially given she barely reacted to them. Like, Junior wasn't suddenly stronger than or beating Yang cos he smacked her backwards into a table once during their fight.
 
Doesn't that basically mean that none of the choreography is carrying a narrative to it, and it's really just a glorified light show?
 
RWBY is bad and dumb trash.

It is my kind bad and dumb trash, though.

The fights are usually floaty nonsense and the character interactions range from "potentially interesting, but not actually interesting in the moment" to "cringey garbage"

But I love the cringe. I love my dumb waifus struggle to express human emotions in a relatable way. I love how the melodrama of the plot is taken 100% seriously. I also kinda love to follow the writers and listen to their lies. They're actually probably decent people, but they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge criticism meaningfully, and I love to hate that- as professionals (not as people, again, this isn't a personal thing), they're the best kind of villains to root against. Even the weightless, pointless fights aren't too bad after a few beers.

I genuinely do like the show, but probably not in the way the creators hoped.
 
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Barnaby said:
RWBY is bad and dumb trash.

It is my kind bad and dumb trash, though.
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This has kinda become my opinion. I think that Volumes 1-3 have potential. You need to tighten up the writing a lot, fix up the animation budget in places, schedule some acting classes (I honestly think some of the early VA work isn't that bad for an amateur project but my goodwill dies when we get into Volume 3 and you're casting professional VAs as Qrow and Winter and like... the contrast is becoming much clearer, even if the VAs have improved slightly.)... but like... I think the character ideas and potential dynamics, many of the themes at play, the overall aesthetic and world, and the broad strokes plot could have been quite good. I like the idea of stealing shounen tropes and in many ways being a shounen show in spirit rather than in letter, and being this fun cute story about a girl and her friends going to school and fighting baddies with maybe some commentary about oppression and all that. That's fun. It's not super sophisticated or intellectual, but I'd burn my time watching that show.

And I mean, sure the fights can be kinda bullshit (partially due to not having the best animation at times) and things seem to not mean anything... but if they just turn a corner and make it the show I want it to be...

Then Volume 3 ends and Volume 4 happens and it becomes clear they have no intention of doing that. And writer promises kind of go nowhere, the writing doesn't substantially improve, VA work is still "meh", and in the end in a lot of ways the show if anything goes way downhill.

I went back to the show since originally posting in this and gotten caught up, and I'll probably see how it ends. Partially because it isn't as bad as a lot of people on SV (and in this thread) say. Despite what I'm saying, it's not a terrible show. Partially due to good ol' sunk cost fallacy, but also partially because if I'm not going to get the story I wanted and genuinely believed RWBY could have been really good being, I might as well see what the writers, in all their infinite wisdom, thought I deserved instead.
 
WhoAmEye said:
It's definitely a fun sandbox to write fanfics in.
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I think this is one of the biggest reasons for it's continued fandom. It's world is big and vague enough that it's really easy to do whatever you want.
"My Oc's name is Rowan Locke. Get It? Robin of Lockesly? He has a compound bow that splits into two kopesh swords." I wrote this a joke but this does sound rather cool. Which just goes to show how malleable the setting is for stuff.its also tonnally flexible. You can do a Grim (heh) serious story with lots of action and violence and politics but it you want to do dumb school dramadies with awkward love triangles it fits that too. It's kinda like Harry Potter. Not in level of quality but in how it's open vagueish world plays into fan fic well.
 
all fictions said:
Yeah, but like, a work shouldn't be judged on its quality by whether or not it makes writing fanfics of it easy :V
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That is true. There's a lot about it that could be better - but I like the world. It's a bit like Worm, in how giving almost any old person superpowers isn't lore-breaking, there's a huge variety of powers available, just enough info on how those powers come about to take it interesting directions (Soul bullshit vs Shard bullshit), except there's less morality debates.

The writing could have been done better. Prioritization and information density of screentime in particular. They really needed someone to rein in on Monty adding cool shit because it was cool. That may work for stand alone things like samus vs master chief, but for long term projects... I can honestly say they ended up more trouble than they're worth more often than not. The gods stuff I don't mind because it's... well, about as plausable a motivation as we'll get for the Grimm and Salem pulling the shit they do. The animation could use more work, but given budget and time constraints, it... usually turns out to be decent quality. Choreography could use a touch up too.

The story lost me ages ago. Now I stick around for worldbuilding and character interactions and cool character/weapon/tech designs. And I think that's okay.
 
WhoAmEye said:
That is true. There's a lot about it that could be better - but I like the world. It's a bit like Worm, in how giving almost any old person superpowers isn't lore-breaking, there's a huge variety of powers available, just enough info on how those powers come about to take it interesting directions (Soul bullshit vs Shard bullshit), except there's less morality debates.

The writing could have been done better. Prioritization and information density of screentime in particular. They really needed someone to rein in on Monty adding cool shit because it was cool. That may work for stand alone things like samus vs master chief, but for long term projects... I can honestly say they ended up more trouble than they're worth more often than not. The gods stuff I don't mind because it's... well, about as plausable a motivation as we'll get for the Grimm and Salem pulling the shit they do. The animation could use more work, but given budget and time constraints, it... usually turns out to be decent quality. Choreography could use a touch up too.

The story lost me ages ago. Now I stick around for worldbuilding and character interactions and cool character/weapon/tech designs. And I think that's okay.
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Here's the thing - when they started they had a tiny budget. That was before Volume 1. They are now selling the Volumes on Blu-Ray in national chains here in the U.S. (Wal-Mart for example.) They've expanded the brand as an export into the Japan Anime market.

Giving them credit for having a small budget .. with as much profit as they are making how do they still have a small budget?

Note I believe, pass the grain of salt, that RT is doing what a lot of companies do. They are diverting the profit from RWBY to new shows. In Volume 2 they were shilling X-Ray and Vav in RWBY and it looks like from the outside, pass the grain of salt, that they were using the profits from RWBY to start that franchise. These days it appears to be gen:LOCK.

Either way they should have enough profit at this point to expand the crew working on the show. That means bringing in more animators, bringing in more people to be directors / supervisors for the animators to catch animation errors, more people to work on the fight choreography, and so on. Last I checked they haven't. (Or at least not in significant numbers. A single hire here and there doesn't get any credit with me.)
 
My opinion on RWBY at this point is "Watch My Hero Academia instead and don't look back".
 
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