I'm the kind of person who likes things because other people complain about them, so right now I'm like WHOOOOOOOOO HIGH SCHOOL ANIME BEST THING EVER WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Voice-acting has improved from the Yellow trailer, which was an improvement over the Black trailer, so...positive trends are good. Next episode might be even better?
Having never watched a single thing on Rooster Teeth, I didn't like this very much to be honest. I'm really not a fan of cheap cell shaded CG. I've played, without hyperbole, hentai games that were better animated.
The voice acting was... middling. I didn't think it was going to be very good, and I'm glad I was right. Red also seems a lot like Maka from Soul Eater... even down to the whole fighting academy thing.
Why did the antagonist need to rob the store? He has a legion of henchmen and can purchase a fucking VTOL, why can't they just buy the dust? If he can't afford it, who can? What the hell was even his name? We should probably know his name. Is he part of a syndicate? Is the distribution of Dust heavily controlled and monitored, forcing him to steal it? If so, wouldn't a high profile robbery draw a lot of attention? If so, why is Dust just sold in a store with huge regular windows on a normal street any kid with a rock could break into? What the fuck is dust anyways? I realize it does "magic stuff" but I'd like more explanation.
I have a lot of questions, but the show doesn't seem to respect the viewer enough to bother establishing any kind of setting or believable motive.
Do we really need another high school focused anime style show?
Well, on the one hand, the series it self isn't even mediocre. The animation is stiff, the characters are boring, the action has no weight to it, and the writing is boring on so many levels.
On the other hand, I love the idea of it: An original animation series created by a decidedly small studio is something that just isn't seen that much, and I could honestly forget the stiff animation and fluffy action if it had a more compelling premise. I just wish that they used their resources and independent nature to do something more interesting.
1. Why did the antagonist need to rob the store?
2. What the hell was even his name? We should probably know his name.
3. Is he part of a syndicate?
4. Is the distribution of Dust heavily controlled and monitored, forcing him to steal it?
5. If so, wouldn't a high profile robbery draw a lot of attention?
6. If so, why is Dust just sold in a store with huge regular windows on a normal street any kid with a rock could break into? What the fuck is dust anyways? I realize it does "magic stuff" but I'd like more explanation.
7. I have a lot of questions, but the show doesn't seem to respect the viewer enough to bother establishing any kind of setting or believable motive.
8. Do we really need another high school focused anime style show?
9. Also, RWBY is a shit name.
1. Because buying legally is for people who aren't evil. Also he is a publicly known gangster, so he is probably on the Dust buying blacklist.
2. Roman Torchwick, they said so during the news program, right before they mentioned the White Fang.
3. Probably the leader, but it is the first episode and honestly I like a bit of mystery.
4. Dear God I hope so. I don't want anyone to walk in and buy magic dust that can be used to kill me.
5. He is already publicly known and probably has a gang full of evil dust users. I doubt he cares about 'attention'.
6. I will give you that one, a bit weird about the store. Then again willing suspension of disbelief has to be used when watching anything, so I am cool with believing in people having a store to sell mana. Also Dust is pretty much what fuels this worlds version of magic. At least that is the feeling I get from the interviews and such.
7. You do realize this is the first episode right? And they don't exactly want to exposition dump on us. Just because a show doesn't explain everything right away does not mean it is disrespecting those watching it. Just that they leave some stuff up to the imagination or to be explained later, so people can learn about it as time goes on. Which to me is much more preferable to having the entire world shoved down my throat in the first episode. The show starts out giving us just enough to jump into the world, and then will reveal more as we go.
8. Maybe, maybe not. Honestly I am fine with it being whatever so long as it is good and continues to get better as time goes along.
9. It works well. First letter of each girls name and is pronounced the same as the lead characters name. I mean I can't really think of a better title so...
Fucking Highschoolers in a fucking highschool? Check.
Yeah, I love me some anime, which is why I don't like this thing at all.
As I posted earlier, it feels like an approximation of anime. It was made by someone either trying to copy popular anime to be successful, or someone who thinks that the superficial elements of anime are what make anime so interesting.
This show is horrible. It's everything I hate about anime. The trailers made this show seem like it would be so awesome, and then... ugh. So it's NOT a dark-but-fun monster hunting adventure with interesting, unique characters?
Instead, it's a High School anime, and the characters really are the cardboard cutout annoying stock tropes they appear to be? God damn it. Really?
After episode one, I predicted I would hate Weiss on account being a bitchy priss who was going to chew out Ruby over the slightest provocation. I hoped she wouldn't be. But damned if she wasn't exactly that to a T.
Man.
It's shows like these that remind me why I usually never let myself get hyped up by anything. What a kick in the balls.
I'm rather disappointed by it, really. While the models are OK and the voice acting is rather good, the non combat animations are awful, and the nods to anime, like Ruby turning into a chibi and the brawl between her and Yang (is it Yang?) just doesn't work with computer animation, and certainly not with that style.
It also annoys me so much that the only people who are not just silhouettes are the main characters. It just screams lazy and/or unfinished.
Three episodes in and I think a biggest problem with this series is that it's just not working in this format; it feels like I'm watching an Anime that's been uploaded to Youtube but has been broken up into smaller chunks. None feel like they're complete episodes. Combine episodes 1 to 3 and they make a passable single episode - which is a problem because it is quite obviously supposed to be three separate episodes, not three parts of a single episode. I might watch the show with that in mind; check in every month to watch 3-4 episodes in a row, and view it from that perspective rather than individual episodes.
(and yes, the obvious Anime influences in 2 and 3 are distracting rather than endearing.)
9 episodes in and I'm sadly disappointed with this series. I want this to be a good series, I want to like it, but it's slow and boring. The action sequences are nice, but they don't really have much of an impact onto the overall story; it's called RWBY, we've seen the four leads in their own trailers, so we know that they're going to get together as a team. Because of this. there was no tension in the team building episodes for the main characters - and it made the secondary characters more interesting to follow because we DON'T know what's going to happen with them. The secondary ones is also where some of the exposition is coming, though in a clunky way that was disappointing - but not disappointing enough to make me want less of the second team, which is being set up to be a frenemy-prantagonist team, who are going to be friendly rivals in the school stuff but when the chips are down and the enemy makes its presence known, will side with RWBY. And the third team is pretty much set up to be a pure antagonist team...
... who I'm betting are going to be tied directly to the Antagonists introduced in the premiere and a couple episodes later on.
We also have next to no information about the Antagonists. They've appeared in what, 3 episodes, including the premiere? We have something about them doing something, but the importance of it to the main characters isn't clear. Beyond Red thwarting a robbery in the premiere episode, there's no hint of how the two will be connected, and that's a big problem. Current seasons of Red Vs Blue appear to have the same issue, but they get around it by having the shadowy antagonist(?) appear in a cameo at the end of many episodes, tying them into the main characters in some way. (I bring up RvB because it's being written and produced at the same time by the same company, and has some similar situations - interplay between protagonists alone, with a shadowy antagonist in the background who hasn't begun to directly interact with the main characters. RvB is doing it properly (IMO, anyway), RWBY is failing.) Without more information about the antagonists, the show has little scope, little story.
There is little of importance to the sequences with the protagonists because there is nothing to compare them against, nothing to say why they're important. Red is young, impulsive and reckless. Is this a problem? Is this a weakness? Does she have to overcome it, to become more thoughtful, careful and controlled? White is a rich snobby ice queen. Black is a quiet loner who loves to read. Yellow is a good'ol girl who likes to have fun. Insert same questions after each of them as after Red. Where are they going as characters, where do they need to go, why do they need to go where they need to go, and is that their only option for "success"? Lastly, what is "success" in this show? RvB has shown that you can have characters with obvious potential arcs but can subvert them or ignore them entirely - look at Sarge. His obvious character arc has always been "Realize you're on the same side as the Blue's, team up with the Blue's to win." and it's always been a question of "How will Sarge screw that up and yet still come out ahead in some way, sometimes obviously via deus ex machina, sometimes ironically, sometimes by actually following that arc for a while?" So it's not like RWBY has to be predictable and obvious, but it does need to have SOME hint of where the show thinks characters need to go. Currently this is missing.
All in all, my idea of waiting 3 weeks before watching a bunch of episodes at once is the best way to go for this series so far. It's not a must-watch every week (like RvB is), and really if it wasn't done by Roosterteeth I wouldn't be watching it at all. I've enjoyed much of what RT has produced (and I really do miss the web comic) so I'm willing to put up with what I consider an inferior product for a season, giving it a chance to find itself before dismissing it entirely. But damn, I'm losing faith that it's going to be worth even the minimal effort I'm putting into it.
It's a bit rough, but I enjoy it. It has potential, the characters look nice enough, and it's a decent time killer, even if the episodes typically feel rather short.
Hell, the in-joke in the latest episode ('The Achieve Men' poster) made my day.
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