this is one of the first reviews I'll ever do for reals
I watched every volume of RWBY, do I like it? I did at the first volumes and I still find some joy and fun with the newest volumes, there are good fighting scenes, good music, good visuals and etc, but what the show nowadays lacks the most is good writing, and I'll try not to compare the anime to the later volumes to not stretch my review that much and to not lose focus, just wanted to make it very clear, I don't like RWBY nowadays despite still liking some aspects of each volume,
...
and I'll watch the next volume despite already not liking the direction the series is going;
RWBY Ice Queendom, at first something that no one had no idea what it would be about, would it be the entire first volume but anime? would it be a spin off? a side story? complementary? mandatory? All we knew at the time is that team RWBY had some sick new designs themed around winter, and now with the anime at it's 11th episode, the penultimate episode at the moment I'm writing this, what it was?
RWBY Ice Queendom starts with the first ep, remade with additional scenes and interactions that where never there, at that point everyone thought it was just the first season, the next episode being a mash of an entire 3 ep arc made everyone more confused, until ep 3 straight up ended at the end of the original series' first volume, so ok, we have 3 eps of inconsistent quality, which I'll talk about later, that compiled the entire first volume, I personally hate this decision for 2 reasons, 1 is that this is Mounty's first volume, he uses it to introduce his world, his characters, the mechanics of that world, the elements and etc, and there's no better way to illustrate it than on what's originally 2-3 eps on the forest miniarc, the arc to get the relics and decide your teams, in the anime that took 1 ep, was also one of the worst eps animation wise, except for one scene which I'll talk about later, and didn't served any sort of purpose, while in the series, both the Deathstalker and Nevermore fights served a single and clear purpose, to explain how that world functions, and by that I mean, both these fights have a huge attention given to how each character acts, fights and uses it's own arsenal, or improvises, for example, pick both Ruby and Yang, both prefer to use their weapons in it's melee form, and both like to use it's firearm properties on mobility, almost exclusively, using the firearm part as a resort for long distance fights, and both don't care that much for dust, both character's semblance isn't also that much useful in a fight, Yang being a comeback/berserker type of semblance, and Ruby being a mobility type of semblance that doesn't match her fighting style in itself, since all of her tight turns or momentum gain are based on the firearm part more than her speedy semblance, with that, you can see that both characters learned together and trained together, but both fight in such different ways that you can clearly see they are not the same characters or act the same way, same thing with Blake and Weiss, both opting to stay at a distance, to use more dust and more ranged attacks, and both needing to use their semblance more, and yet, completely different characters; and when he's not making this distinction in the nevermore fight, or the fights before this one, you see Nora or Pyrrha using their weapons in the most creative ways possible, Nora using as a type of rocket to travel a distance, Pyrrha using as a spear and literally shooting to launch her spear to have more distance, and even more situations that I could think and mention here, but anyway, Deathstalker and Nevermore are pretty important parts that the anime cuts, that isn't to say that it makes everyone fight the exact same way, but the attention to this sorts of detail is lost in the anime, they fight differently more because their weapons are different, instead of the way they use and how it intergrades to their fighting style; that's my first reason why this decision was terrible, the second one is that by making ep 3 be the last ep of volume 1, they cut my favorite area of the entire show, the Forever Fall Forest, I'll never forgive the anime for that;
Anyway, after the first 3 eps, the anime starts for real, and what it's about? There's a new type of Grimm that possess people having moments of stress, depression, anger and etc, making them sleep and consuming their beings, it is a interesting and kinda generic tbh concept, and the way it's used is genuinely interesting, which I'll talk about in a sec, I genuinely liked new ideas being throw and used to the max of their potential, although a little too overused; and the first victim of the Nightmare is Jaune, the episode wasn't good or bad, it served it's purpose, to show how the nightmares should look, to give that amount of ludic symbolism needed in a dreams like context, and showed a little bit of Jaune's past in said ludic symbolism, wasn't spectacular but wasn't bad either, and it also worked to create a small JNPR moment, something we definitely need if the anime continues to adapt the other volumes;
with the Nightmare being showcased and partially explained, the anime really starts, turns out that Weiss, for being such a brat and bitch, she gets infected with a Nightmare, she falls asleep and it's up to team RBY to save her. About this part in particular, I love it, I love how they decided to use the Nightmare for real, making it clear that JNPR's only served as a showcase, and I love most decisions the anime took, some being even better than Mounty's original writing, let me explain; in the original, Weiss is a brat, spoiled little bitch, and the series makes no effort to hide this, since her introduction ep introducing her like a bitch, and every ep that follows is Weiss complaining about Ruby, and Ruby showing her value, and each time a situation like this happens, Weiss gets proved wrong and learns to respect little by little, it is a bit unbelievable, but it's also something that works, she starts not believing Ruby should fight in the first place, at the end of the ep learning to respect her as a fighter, then Ruby becomes the leader, making Weiss furious and acting more spoiled then ever, just that at the ending, she's told from her professor that although yes, she is skilled and has leading qualities, doing what she's doing helps in nothing, and that she should instead focus on trying to be the best second hand, helping to make the plans with Ruby as a teammate, and finally, the racism part, one of the last eps of the volume, she's discussing about Faunus and White Fang, being extremely ignorant and rude, while Blake is getting more and more mad at her prejudice against the Faunus, revealing that not only she's a Faunus, but that she was a member of White Fang by mistake, the rest of the ep is showing that Weiss continues her act, claiming that Blake is a criminal, that only guilty people run and etc, eventually explaining why she's acting the way she is, and it's a situation where you don't need to agree with her, but at least you understand where she's coming from, she is part of a really important family both money wise and status wise, her family is one of the biggest manufactures of Dust in the entire series, if not THE biggest, and thanks to that, she isn't strange to having cargo being stolen, families working for her being killed in said robberies, going to funerals, having to probably see children her age crying because her parents where killed, having her dad furious because cargo continues to be stolen, and probably discounting on her family and etc, she knows that not all Faunus are bad, but the bad she knows is way much more terrifying for her to not care, btw fun fact, Blake's last mission was helping stealing a Schnee cargo train, soooooooooo... the resolution for that is after a lot of time thinking and talking about it, she knows Blake isn't associated with White Fang anymore, and she may have her reasons why she was a part of it, but she doesn't care, because she wants to trust her friend for what she is now, it is a kinda strange resolution, not gonna lie, that shouldn't be something so easy to just let it in the past, but ok, after that Weiss continues having disagreements, but they are solved much more quickly or turned into comedy, but the core of her character in volume 1 was that, showing some traits of how she was raised by a family that has so much love in it that even Africa would offer some so that they don't starve; now for what the anime did, the anime decided to take it from a completely new viewpoint, that Weiss prefer not to continue voicing her opinions to solve a problem much more quickly, Ruby's conflict? She's a kid but I'll indulge that she's mature. Ruby being a leader? Although that one hurt, I'll take Pyrrha's example and follow it, I'll pretend to be a good teammate so that gives me point the same way she's doing for Jaune. Blake's a Faunus? Let's just say that I'm past all of the things she did, and that way I'll be rewarded as a more mature person, and my teammates will think more highly of me. It may be a consequence of compiling an entire volume in 3 eps, and probably is the case, but there's scenes like Pyrrha and Jaune that are completely original and the resolution for the conflict is so much in the idea of Weiss playing pretend that makes me believe that yes, it was intended; and I love it, I love the new way they are portraying Weiss here, and how they decide to solve the problem with the rest of the episodes, and in some cases, it's even better than the original, specially Weiss and Blake, since again, although not agreeing, her hate is justified to a certain point, same thing with her concern and anger towards White Fang, and again, although I don't agree with her prejudice, you can understand why she has some of it in the first place, but choosing to just let it in the past like that, that isn't how it works, you can't solve prejudice in 1 scene, and that's what makes me like this decision in the anime;
Now finally, team RBY enters Weiss's dream to fight the nightmare and save her, first things first, I love the visuals of the dream/nightmare, I love how creative and abstract the rules for the new character made to hunt these nightmares are, I love the redesigns, the changes and the ludic symbolisms in Weiss' dream, I love that Klein is represented as being 7 different npcs in her dream, each one serving more than comedy, but also working for narrative, like sleepy Klein being sleepy because it makes it easier for Yang and Ruby to escape, maybe being something Weiss wanted without knowing, or the Klein for the Sillies being silly, showing her own childish and silly personality that she never shows, I assume leader Klein is the flame, not entirely sure, but representing how she finds warm in Klein, and etc, I can keep thinking of ludic symbolisms for this all day, and most of them would work one way or another. But Klein is not the only one here, you see Weiss mother, being an alcoholic that can't stop laughing at what I assume is her own misery, much like what she thinks of her own mother, Whitley being a bat, something that may annoy her, her dad being a monitor scream that she needs to report to, showing how their relationship is, automatic, mechanic, without any ounce of feelings, there's also the designs for RBY, Ruby having the most amount of winter clothes, maybe something she wants to protect, Yang having a more adventurer style without warmer winter clothes than Ruby, she doesn't need to be protected like Ruby, and Blake being part beast and part human, with one of her cat ears being show and the other not, how she can't decide how she sees Blake maybe, the weapons too, Yang's and Blake's being somewhat different visually but also having the same functionality, and even being stronger, maybe because she has some fear for Blake and things Yang's even stronger, while Ruby has a total overhaul design, probably because she doesn't understand Ruby's weapon, being all over the top, she makes the barrel for shooting at the end of the scythe, not at the head like how Ruby designed, probably because she's looking at a pure military view of it, instead of understand how the barrel being at the head helps to connect to Ruby's fighting style, and to end it all, Ruby's weapon turns into a snowboard on it's compact form, again, Ruby is a child, so something childish. I absolutely love the amount of symbolism they put in this, and they continue to do it over and over again... until this turns into a problem;
So far I only said what I like about this anime, but, while watching, I thought this arc would last at maximum 4 eps, we where on ep 5 when it started, so ending on 9 and doing something at the last 3 eps, but noooooooo, this lasted 7 eps, and while yes, it never got stale, always introducing something new about Weiss, it also got stupidly clear that they where pushing it further and further instead of ending sooner, always something new happens to stop team RBY to save Weiss, and oh my god, she's getting closer and closer to dying, we need to save her, this is our last chance, and lets waste 3 more episodes on it, and again, it truly never got stale, it always managed to introduce something new, something new on how the Nightmare works, a new risk, a new problem, a new solution, a new symbolism, a new explanation and etc, but it also was so clear that it could end so much sooner, and if the animation was stellar during all that, ok, that's something you could tolerate, a beautiful and creative world with neverending ideas that continues to stretch it the maximum it can stretch, but no, the animation sucks most of the times, this is where I want to comment about animation, and it's bad, but it's not entirely terrible, but it's so far away from being amazing, incredible, or even great, on it's best days it's good, on it's worst days it's bad, sometimes even being terrible with 3d scenes out of nowhere, but at the same, there are AMAZING scenes, like, stellar animation, things made for AMVs, but that's the problem, they are not a normal occurrence, they are a exception, something made for trailers, or for youtube videos making reviews of it, for AMVs, it's such a rare thing to happen that you stop caring, and yes, HUGE CONGRATS for the animators, it's a show of what a master of it's craft can do, but when it only happens so many times that I could count on a single hand, it is worthless, you want a prize for that? ok, take it, but the rest still continues being just ok, and sometimes really terrible;
The rest I have to say for the anime is, I loved the characterization, the visuals, the ideas, the dialog, sometimes the animation, and the sound, the sound in particular, I loved the new op and ending, plus the times they sang actual songs from the series was amazing, but the cons of taking waaaaaay too much time on Weiss' nightmare arc, wasting the first volume, the bad times of the animation, that didn't fulfilled Mounty's original purpose, makes it kinda hard to suggest this anime to anyone that isn't a fan of RWBY beforehand, and for whoever is a fan, there are a lot of moments that make you dissatisfied with the wasted opportunities, or not achieving the same things Mounty achieved, although that is a high bar to achieve, I agree.
And that's it, my first ever review on MAL, and for RWBY, I'm so ashamed of myself lol, although the reason I did this in the first place is just that I wanted to share my personal feelings for this series, since no friend of mine would give a single iota of a fuck.
Sep 14, 2022
RWBY: Hyousetsu Teikoku
(Anime)
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this is one of the first reviews I'll ever do for reals
I watched every volume of RWBY, do I like it? I did at the first volumes and I still find some joy and fun with the newest volumes, there are good fighting scenes, good music, good visuals and etc, but what the show nowadays lacks the most is good writing, and I'll try not to compare the anime to the later volumes to not stretch my review that much and to not lose focus, just wanted to make it very clear, I don't like RWBY nowadays despite still liking some aspects of each volume, ... 
Feb 2, 2022
I said that I'd give 10 if a character got shot, so here I am
also MAL wants a bigger review so I'l just say that said character getting shot was the best part of the whole Wing series, I have never found myself enjoying it so much until that part because my God, Gundam Wing is terrible, it's laughable how bad the entire series is, and is by far my most hated gundam show of all times, and whoever says it's the best, I'm sorry but you're blinded by your nostalgia, I don't mean any disrespect towards anyone who loves it, bc I totally get it, the ... |
