First, I’d like to say that I enjoy RWBY. It’s a great show, with great art and a lot of potential that unfortunately hasn’t been realized. I aim to get some followers for this blog by shamelessly riding the RWBY hype train. I’ll be starting with a retrospective of the trailers, music, and Volumes 1 and 2. I’m not going to cover “Vytal Festival Tournament” in this post because that is Volume 3.
The Trailers:
I didn’t watch them in order. I saw Yellow on Tumblr, and it is the best of the trailers, in my opinion since it balanced fight scenes and the intrigue surrounding the characters and world. I didn’t watch the trailers until I got around to watching the episodes, which was sometime after the “Emerald Forest,” maybe “Players and Pieces” episodes were released. The trailers sort of slow burn to a better-developed story in my opinion. Red is almost pure fight scene, while White uses music to reveal bits of information about the depths of the characters. Black and Yellow show characters and intrigue, and in Yellow, Yang is having so much fun with it. Also, I’m a sucker for cool character designs, and the Malachite sisters definitely have that.
Volume 1: story
The first volume is okay. The best part is the initiation episodes, which balance out character interaction and fight scenes nicely. They steadily introduced the main 8 students and their relationships with each other and built distinct personalities for each of them. My favorites are Yang, Nora, and Ruby. They have fun killing monsters to save humanity. The fights with the Nevermore and Deathstalker had great collaborations that confirmed that these kids were fun and definitely going to be great Huntsmen and Huntresses.
Then came the “Badge and the Burden” which dug up the slightly resolved issue of Weiss’s relation with Ruby and made it a big issue. It was disappointing to see Weiss return to being impatient with Ruby a day after saying that she’d give Ruby a chance. Professor Port and Professor Ozpin sort out Weiss’s sense of entitlement and Ruby’s self doubt, respectively, and somehow Port’s words have more effect on Weiss than her own decisions the day before
Next came the Jaune episodes. Yay. Half of this arc exists because the characters just won’t do anything. Ruby becomes a huntress because she loves helping others, and Blake wants to find a way to help Faunus outside of the White Fang, but both just watch Velvet get picked on by Team CRDL. The closest anyone comes to doing something about the fact that Cardin is a bully is rubbing the fact that he was wrong in class in his face and comments about breaking his legs. Yes, Jaune’s macho posturing meant that he wouldn’t ask his team for help with CRDL, but Nora and Ren suspect that something is up with Jaune, and Pyrrha knows Jaune shouted that he broke the law on top of the roof of the dorms, but no one asks him anything. It just leads to Jaune feeling bad and getting a talk with Ruby, who also doesn’t feel like helping people during this arc. The resolution of the arc bothers me. Jaune is isolated from the group by macho posturing and blackmail from Cardin, so the best way to solve the problem is for Pyrrha to use her semblance to manipulate Jaune’s body, so that he gets a kill. How does Jaune not stumble when his arms suddenly change position? Is Pyrrha really so desperate for the one person who didn’t put her on a pedestal at first to be happy that she wants to give him a false self esteem boost? Why is there a band of two-dimensional characters that the writers don’t seem to take seriously in the cast and at the main school on top of that? How did Team CRDL survive initiation in the Emerald Forest or their previous huntsmen schools? Cardin is too lazy to do homework, even when it’s relevant to his weapon, therefore fighting style, therefore reason for being at Beacon, and since Grimm are drawn to negative emotion, one of the first lessons at Huntsmen Academies should be “control your fear.”
“Stray” and “Black and White” are solid episodes. The Faunus prejudice shown by Team CRDL last arc leads into Blake’s backstory and what the most of the audience figured out. That Blake is a Faunus. How does most of the school think it’s not suspicious that Blake’s bow twitches on its own volition? I’m disappointed that Weiss is once again the antagonist in team dynamics. Her motivation makes sense, since the Black Trailer showed Blake and Adam attacking a Schnee Company train, but are the others only allowed to get mad at each other when they have sympathetic reasons like being a victim of racism? Fight scenes are solid, and there is some great team bonding at the end, although it doesn’t feel like a finale the same way that the end of Volume 2 did. I think it’s because most of Ruby was left after the fight, and Sun and Penny did a lot of the fighting, so a lot of the fight focus was on “check out these badasses.” On that topic, I’m not entirely sure if introducing Penny at this point was necessary since her status as a robot isn’t revealed until next Volume, and that could have been an interesting dynamic to add to the human and Faunus conflict. On the other hand, Rooster Teeth didn’t anticipate Velvet’s rise to popularity when writing this volume, and I think Penny is going to play a major role in next volume.
Music:
When is the day we waited for? Seriously, I love the theme songs and the animation that goes with them, but a consistent issue I have with them, and the soundtracks as a whole, is that the lyrics build up to more than the series shows. I probably wouldn’t be as invested in Weiss if it weren’t for the song “Mirror, Mirror,” because the show never tries to show the loneliness that was the focus of the song. Maybe showing her having moments of doubt or regret when she’s away from the team after an argument would help.
Anyways, the opening theme is a great song that will get you pumped up for the main characters doing a ton of triumphant stuff, but they’re just starting out. Even after Volume 2, there’s still hope and peace. The dreams are introduced, but the heroes have no plans for accomplishing them outside of become huntresses. They haven’t found the door to the main villains.
Volume 2’s opening is very much the same. RWBY doesn’t have a reason to question their path until Oobleck questions WBY, but there’s no time for WBY to think of potentially negative consequences of their choices because they’ve got to get to work on saving Ruby and stopping Torchwick. The opening theme animation is even worse as far as hyping events that don’t happen in the volume. Promising RWBY showing down with Cinder’s group and the teens all coming together to protect Vale, and only parts of the big promises are shown, such as RWBY, JNPR, and CFVY defending Vale and Blake having a showdown with Roman. I’m going into the next theme song with caution.
Volume 2: Story
Volume 2 suffers greatly from a bloated cast. It doubles the amount of characters who are deemed important enough to make the theme song, but a lot of them don’t get anything. RWBY have some great adventures and bonding, and Sun and Neptune get screen time as RWBY’s delightful sidekicks/potential love interests. However, Pyrrha still seems to have little presence outside of Jaune’s character arc. Nora and Ren are still fairly minor. Team CRDL’s contribution to the volume is getting their ass kicked by Pyrrha (and themselves because Cardin is some kind of achievement hunter when it comes to sucking). While Sun and Neptune are promoted to secondary characters, Sage and Scarlet might as well not exist. It’s revealed that Penny is a robot (just like the fans guessed), and then she gets a cameo at the dance before disappearing from the volume. CFVY appear as total badasses, but Velvet, the fan favorite voiced by a fan and designed in a fan contest, isn’t given much time to shine. WHAT IS IN THE TRUNK??? I want to see her do something besides some nice jump kicks next volume. She has at least one year of school at Beacon under her belt. She has to have more than a trunk and kicks up her sleeve. The adults fare better in terms of development. Complex relationships between Ozpin, Ironwood, and Glynda are nicely established.
This volume was great for Team RWBY’s development overall, but not so much for Ruby herself. She doesn’t get a chance to really grow this arc either and remains the slightly goofy young idealist we met in the first episode. I guess Ruby doesn’t have to say goodbye to the innocence of youth. The Volume 1 song “Red Like Roses Part II” suggests that Ruby was shaken up by her mother’s death, and that her parents may not have approved of her and Yang becoming Huntresses. There’s build up to a big arc for Weiss with Weiss questioning how she’ll achieve her goals for Schnee Dust Company and her sister Winter’s arrival. However, her interest in Neptune is too sudden. Last volume she was still prickly around people unless there was an immediate benefit to befriending them (such as Pyrrha). Neptune is from Mistral
Then there’s Jaune. Last volume, Jaune stands up to Cardin after a talk with Ruby about leadership and Cardin tries to make Jaune hurt Pyrrha. I thought this would lead to him being a more confident and conscientious leader. Nope. He’s a better fighter thanks to practice with Pyrrha but that’s it. He babbles about his love life to Pyrrha (who is blatantly interested in him) and an uncomfortable Ren (who really wanted to have more than a towel on during their talk). He seems to have no interest in Nora’s opinion on romance and tries to shut her out when she tries to clarify things for an uncomfortable Ren. He still hits on Weiss, even though by now it’s obvious that she is not interested. The only reason there is a stop seems to be that he realized that Pyrrha liked him, and he decided to go out with her. When his team comes to the battle in “Breach” Pyrrha leads the attack while Jaune just groans in discontent.
The villains fare somewhat better. Junior and the Malachite sisters make a brief reappearance, and Adam reappears at the end. Roman has a lot of great moments interacting with the other villains and a captured Ruby. Cinder, Emerald, Mercury, and Neo all have interesting personalities and make great villains. However, the motivations are questionable. We don’t see anyone being affected by the Dust robberies that Roman is doing. Maybe it’s the reason that Weiss, Cinder, and Blake are the only people who use Dust, and Cardin, once, but he doesn’t count to me because I enjoy hating him. I feel like the reason that Cinder, Emerald, and Mercury are undercover as students is purely left to fan speculation, although fans didn’t seem to come up with ideas for why being students instead of spectators would help them until the World of Remnant from Volume 3. They’re going to destroy the city with Grimm, robots, and a Dust shortage, as well as steal semblances (are they going to start ripping out souls?) and make the CCT have a screensaver of a queen chess piece because “sow the death and reap the seed?”
Volume 2: World of Remnant
I love Remnant and would like to see it explored more, but these were largely unsatisfactory this Volume. “Kingdoms” is the only one that I felt contributed information to the series that the audience needs. The only characters that would talk kingdom politics would have to explain the council, which they should already know about. Still, there are a few nitpicks. Kings, not councils, run kingdoms, so why are they called kingdoms? Also, the way the map is colored to represent the kingdoms makes it seem like the only way for communities outside the kingdoms to exist is for them to be on continents that don’t have kingdoms on them.
“Dust” is informative too, but I’m a little biased against it because it didn’t fully answer my own Dust based questions. What do all the colors mean? Also, if Dust is used in everything, what kind of Dust is in Nora’s explosives, or does her aura just dye it pink? “Aura” is DVD exclusive but can be found on Youtube. It’s okay in the same way that “Dust” is. It gives some new information but doesn’t answer my burning questions.
“Grimm” is a weak entry. Oobleck explains a lot of the details about Grimm that are mentioned in the video in the next episode.
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