RWBY: Volume 1 (2/5)
I tried ma. Really. But I just can't get into RWBY.
Before ma gets too angry, I'm going to explain why. Going in, I thought I'd dislike RWBY for its reliance on spectacle over substance, and an over-reliance on fight scenes. Well, I was wrong. Instead, I now dislike RWBY for a different set of reasons. If anything, the fights are some of the better parts of this volume because they stand apart from how poor everything else is. So let's go through that:
First, the animation. It's lacklustre. I know, I know, good writing and characters can make up for poor animation, but that RWBY doesn't have either of these things aside the animation is still lacklustre. It clips, the lip sync is off, and a lot of background characters are literally blacked out. I...what? You can argue it's an artistic choice, but even then, it's lacking. And even compared to other RT shows, extremely lacking.
But okay, so the animation's off, what about the meat of things? I mean, this is a fantasy world, right? Surely there's an interesting setup here and-
NO.
The worldbuilding in this season is lacking. I won't rule out the possibility that later seasons may do a better job, but very little is conveyed, and what is conveyed is done poorly. For instance, many times, characters literally engage in exposition, even to the extent of telling other characters things they may already know. For instance, the White Fang. Here's an example:
-Blake: Do you know about the White Fang?
-Character: Of course. What Faunus doesn't.
-Blake: Well, here's the history of the White Fang.
This thing happens a lot, and even then, a lot of stuff is left vague. Like, there's these creatures called the Grimm. What are they? Monsters. What do they do? Why are they here? What's their history? Meh, I dunno. They're fun to kill I guess. I mean, it's not as if RT can't do good worldbuilding (see Nomad of Nowhere), but in RWBY, little is conveyed, and what is conveyed is conveyed terribly.
But even then, worldbuilding is just the cream on the cake. Surely the characters are good? Surely...no.
The characters and writing are lacklustre, and the poor writing leads to poor characterization and vice versa. Characters develop pretty much at the drop of a button. For instance, Ruby and Weiss start off on the wrong foot, and remain on the wrong foot until a professor tells Weiss she's an asshole, so then she stops being an asshole, gives Ruby cofee, and from then on, they're friends. Similarly, Weiss finds out Blake is a faunus in an episode, and pretty much goes "yeah, I'll stop being a bigot now" in the VERY SAME EPISODE (or at least the one after, it kind of blurs). In theory, this is sound character development, but it's super rushed, and considering that the average episode is 6-12 minutes long, even more rushed than your standard cartoon or anime where episodes are around 20 minutes in length.
This problem also extends to groups outside the main quartet. For instance, Jean. Jean has snuck into the academy. In an episode, we learn that Jean is being bullied by someone, who finds out he snuck in, and holds it against him. By the next episode, all of that's been resolved. In fact, Jean's indicative of another problem, and that's a lack of focus. You'd think that the writing would focus on Team RWBY, but no, a lot of time is given to Jean and his team. Which is fine, in theory, but when you're operating with a very limited runtime, you can't spread your attention out too wide.
And final problem, the writing. The dialogue isn't great, but that isn't the main issue. The main issue is that the season really has no cohesive plot. I mean, yes, events progress from one episode to the next to form an overall story, but the story just...stops, at the end. I guess an example I could use is Avatar: The Last Airbender. Season 1 is part of a larger story, but it has its own cohesive arc, with Aang learning waterbending by the end of it for instance. The RWBY equivalent would be if season 1 just randomly ended with, say, The Warriors of Kyoshi. That's it, the end, tune in next time for another batch of episodes. Because at the end of this, I kind of struggle to say what the overall story is. Stuff's arguably being set up, but there's no sense of throughput. The story just...ends.
So, no. I don't like RWBY. I don't like it because the worldbuilding is poor, the writing is poor, the characters are poor and outside the fight sequences, the animation is poor. And I don't get its popularity, especially in light of RT's other shows. But then, people really seem to love this show, so hey, what do I know?
