-Journey to the West is now Journey to the East!
-But seriously, that dragon was cool. I like that we have both types of dragon in this show. It's also nice to see Grimm with other powers beyond just being tough and strong.
-Also, Sun's theory is entirely too plausible. No wonder he followed Blake in secret. Sadly for him he signed up to meet the parents.
-Ironwood keeps being a bro.
Something that hooked itself into my mind about the farmer kid, I'll put it under spoilers.
I think the first thing that started pinging me was the fact that Arc family symbol was rainbow (this gets mentioned in director commentary during the first volume), and the kid having a lot of colors in his eyes and his sash.
So, going over odd parallels:
Multicolored theme of Jaune and the kid
Jaunedice 2 score playing during his scene, this is where Jaune let out his "I could always be a farmer instead of warrior against darkness", and where he was being mulish about involving others in his issue, isolating himself
RWBY chibi tabletop game episode - the baddies of the game are only weak to compost, which needs to be prepared by the compost king (CK crown symbol on that hand cranked machine)
I mean, it could be just directors trolling the viewers into wild theorizing, but I feel they are showing us how this "regeneration" of Oz is not quite enthusiastic about fighting Salem, or perhaps he feels helpless and needs a specific push that will make him stand up and fight back, much like Jaune did to Cardin when he turned towards Pyrrha.
I wonder if he will become the 5th party member of Ruby party.
An episode dedicated to characters interacting and some fun and not so fun things being teased and revealed.
Well, huh, Taiyang and Yang have a rather interesting dynamic, I was totally going WTF Tai and then they dashed that thought.
"Hello! I am professor Ozpin." - Poor Oscar the farm boy fell on his ass at that.
Team RNJR is on their way to the next bigger village for an overnight stay.
Qrow is nearby, and while staying over in a neighbouring inn gets a drink, courtesy of a certain red eyed woman.
Qrow and Raven were raised by a bandit tribe, Raven is the leader of said tribe now.
Raven is asking if Salem has the Relic, Qrow counters by asking about Spring maiden, who is apparently critical for their fight against Salem, Qrow then asks about a powerhouse in her group, because she alone couldn't do that much damage on village of Shion herself, Raven does not let any info out on that matter and portals out of there.
Raven has some twisted ways she follows, saving someone only once and "The weak die, the strong survive."
At the end of the episode Yang comes out for some practice with her new arm.
Jaune, Ren and Nora all have an axe to grind with Raven and her bandit tribe, Ruby is a bit questionable, depending on if she knows who Raven is. The powerhouse member, could it be the Spring maiden maybe?
An episode dedicated to characters interacting and some fun and not so fun things being teased and revealed.
Well, huh, Taiyang and Yang have a rather interesting dynamic, I was totally going WTF Tai and then they dashed that thought.
"Hello! I am professor Ozpin." - Poor Oscar the farm boy fell on his ass at that.
Team RNJR is on their way to the next bigger village for an overnight stay.
Qrow is nearby, and while staying over in a neighbouring inn gets a drink, courtesy of a certain red eyed woman.
Qrow and Raven were raised by a bandit tribe, Raven is the leader of said tribe now.
Raven is asking if Salem has the Relic, Qrow counters by asking about Spring maiden, who is apparently critical for their fight against Salem, Qrow then asks about a powerhouse in her group, because she alone couldn't do that much damage on village of Shion herself, Raven does not let any info out on that matter and portals out of there.
Raven has some twisted ways she follows, saving someone only once and "The weak die, the strong survive."
At the end of the episode Yang comes out for some practice with her new arm.
Jaune, Ren and Nora all have an axe to grind with Raven and her bandit tribe, Ruby is a bit questionable, depending on if she knows who Raven is. The powerhouse member, could it be the Spring maiden maybe?
An episode dedicated to characters interacting and some fun and not so fun things being teased and revealed.
Well, huh, Taiyang and Yang have a rather interesting dynamic, I was totally going WTF Tai and then they dashed that thought.
"Hello! I am professor Ozpin." - Poor Oscar the farm boy fell on his ass at that.
Team RNJR is on their way to the next bigger village for an overnight stay.
Qrow is nearby, and while staying over in a neighbouring inn gets a drink, courtesy of a certain red eyed woman.
Qrow and Raven were raised by a bandit tribe, Raven is the leader of said tribe now.
Raven is asking if Salem has the Relic, Qrow counters by asking about Spring maiden, who is apparently critical for their fight against Salem, Qrow then asks about a powerhouse in her group, because she alone couldn't do that much damage on village of Shion herself, Raven does not let any info out on that matter and portals out of there.
Raven has some twisted ways she follows, saving someone only once and "The weak die, the strong survive."
At the end of the episode Yang comes out for some practice with her new arm.
Jaune, Ren and Nora all have an axe to grind with Raven and her bandit tribe, Ruby is a bit questionable, depending on if she knows who Raven is. The powerhouse member, could it be the Spring maiden maybe?
Well, she was raised in that tribe alongside her twin brother Qrow, and Qrow regards them as thieves and murderers, high possibility that the two of them were kidnapped as children for some reason or another.
There is also the fact that she didn't intend for Shion to end up completely wrecked, something went wrong, and her reaction to that when Qrow mentions it is telling.
In before the "overpowered troublemaker" in her tribe is the spring maiden, which brings the question of how did a bandit tribe end up with a maiden. Was she snatched into it, did a member of the tribe kill the previous one, or is it possible that the spring maiden power was kept within the tribe for a few generations?
Ravens portals look very much like Grimm tech summoning portals, in before she actually passes through the Grimm dimension or something.
Also, team RNJR will clash with that bandit tribe so hard, Ren and Nora have a history with them, Jaune has a reason to wreck them, and Ruby too, and if the bandits do have a maiden, RNJR has Ruby to trump her, and then there's Tyrion who is shown fighting Ruby in the opening, who is also searching for the maiden, hmmmmm.
Faunus have been around ever since mankind was, if not a little longer.
They still derp and say how Faunus have a single animal like feature only, despite the emphasized horned and fanged Faunus on the screen, I'm not mentioning the eyes due to humans having funky eyes all over the place.
Humans and Faunus are biologically compatible, 2 same type of faunus parents get a kid of their type, human and faunus goes one way or the other while 2 different type of faunus parents roll a lottery on the kids type. Qrow mentions a skin shedding baby as an example for a bull and a wolf type parent.
Man was scared of faunus from the first time they encountered them, and this lead to them constantly shitting all over them to this day.
One incident on Sannus (Vale continent) led to faunus and humans fighting against Grimm together, which led to human society easing up and seeing them as usable and exploitable now, the treatment was different from place to place, this continued until Vale and Vacuo started off the great war against Mantle and Mistral, the war was such that all human sides made compromises to never see one like it again, faunus were "awarded" equal rights as citizens of Remnant, and the loosing side (Mantle and Mistral) gave them the continent of Menagerie as an apology.
The promised equality varies from place to place, but the constant pushing and prodding resulted in the formation, or rather reformation of the White Fang into what it became 5 years ago, which is good seventy years and then some since the Great War, as well as the short Faunus war that Oobleck mentioned back in the first Volume.
The WoR episode and everything else up to now understated Menagerie so hard, it's a small island that is 2/3rds a dangerous desert filled with murderbeasts.
Blake is equivalent of a Faunus princess, her dad is the current governor of Menagerie, and also the previous leader of the White Fang.
The two hooded guys from the opening are the representatives of the White Fang in Menagerie, they are also very sly and report Adam as leading a "splinter group" while they themselves are actually in contact with him.
Meanwhile, Tyrion just arrived at the inn where Qrow was staying over, laughing maniacally at that cute waitress.
RNJR finds an unmapped city named Oniyuri, turns out it was a project started by some rich and able folk from Mistral, which got cut short by a special Grimm, Rens parents were part of this project. Turns out that mark might infact be a Grimm mark.
Atlas is full of rich and entitled, Weiss has to deal with one rich brat named Henry, who is dark blue haired and voiced by Lindsey (Ruby) for hilarity, afterwards she snaps at a Trophy Wife (listed as such in end credits) and the rest of the shittalkers, ends up summoning a boarbatusk while upset, thankfully Ironwood is there to prevent bloodshed. Weiss will now have to work on stabilizing her summoning and controlling her summons.
Meanwhile, Tyrion catches up with RNJR, casually tells them his intentions to whisk the Rose away and showing some interest in the young Arc, potentially due to Arc senior, and then proceeds to trump their attempt at surprise smashing him by revealing his strong scorpion tail, Qrow managed to fly to them in time to transform and intercept Tyrion, and yes, they pretty clearly confirmed that Qrow can transform into a crow, I still expect people to refute that because crow > building > Qrow doesn't mean he is the crow, he just flew in from out of nowhere instead, like magic >.>.
Volume 4 - WoR Schnee Dust Company episode
So, grandpa Schnee was born to a miner, who previosly took a stint in the Great War in between his mining.
Nicholas Schnee managed to create a company with his dedication to making his kingdom a stronger one, he went to Atlas Huntsman Academy to train himself, worked alongside his father at the same time, and learned anything and everything that could help him in his goal.
After his father passed he went on his first expedition, it was succesfull and it started off the Schnee Dust Company, succeeding expeditions were also led by him across the world.
Due to heavy conditions of mining work, he didn't last long, and so he had to find someone who could lead and maintain his company. Enter Jacques Julee, who married into the family and rose the company to todays profit margins with his shrewd business moves.
The episode ends on an optimistic note though, with Weiss being highlighted as the one who might make the name Schnee great again.
So, after the TFF Discord constantly talking about RWBY, I decided to give it a shot and watch. Just finished Volume 1 overnight. No spoil for me past that plz
First impression of the animation was that it was throwing me off hard. Not sure how to describe what's so wonky, besides that you can definitely tell foregrounds and backgrounds apart easily, and character skeletons are really weird sometimes. Camera cuts seem odd sometimes during scenes, and there's obvious sly wink shorthand from time to time to skip out on attempting to animate something (like how Ruby eats her cookies in her first episode, and instead of chewing them or eating them, they just outright disappear). Also, Blake apparently has two sets of ears. Jesus Christ how horrifying. The animation did grow on me after a while. The battles when they have them have some nice effects, and there's some really nice choreography in there as well.
What really sticks out is that the social awkwardness most of the characters have both early on and after they've gotten to know each other is absolutely completely realistic. I'm also impressed at Ozpin and Peter's words of wisdom during the leadership episode. Actual, honest-to-goodness, real mentorship. The writers weren't following the book of tropes FFN writers and mangakas like to use.
Ruby Rose is absolutely adorable with her personality, and attempting to grow into her role as a leader is kind of cute. Jaune has more outright character development thus far. Ruby, Blake, and Yang are more of the idiot trio, with Weiss being more straight-laced (and lol at Blake with her secret romance novels). Clearly, there is no kemonomimi fetish among the human population of this world. Do not bully the bunnygirl, lewd the bunnygirl!
Still, even with the animation as janky as it is, I can see why the Discord keeps talking about it. It's actually fun to watch. It's got good choreography as mentioned above, plot beats move really fast with no real filler (I'm not counting 'downtime' as filler)
After V3 was finished. It was right as V3 was being posted on RT and V1/2 had just been put on Netflix. Monty also voiced Lie Ren, until that point as well.
Yeah, I just watched it. This is what I meant by how it's actually fun. I was smiling the entire time that went on, and then had to rewatch the entire scene after I finished the episode. Very good choreography, and I assume the production crew had a big learning curve from volume 1 because animation is a huge step up.
Also, my lewd mind keeps expecting upskirt shots given the multiple times the girls' skirt frills are shown
Just note that a lot of the perceived quality drop after V3 also involved a combination of crunch, new graphics software, and people having to pay attention to plot for once. Writing actually improved a bit after V4 in a number of places, although some fairly obvious errors were made. Other issues you may find in later volumes tend to be related to crunch and other teams involved in the production having a fair few glitches. Some pandering may have been involved.
And finished Volume 2. A lot more consistent episode lengths was nice.
Penny being a robot wasn't really surprising. When she appeared in season 1, her mannerisms suggested some awkward lack of social skills beyond simply being an introvert or shut-in, and of course the panel opening up on her back. Before the reveal in season 2, though, Ruby and Penny happen upon the presentation about robots and giant robots. Not very subtle foreshadowing at that point! I did see she was allowed to come to the dance party! I assume Penny hiccups whenever she lies. Maybe she'll find her Blue Fairy equivalent.
There is some really good writing and character introspection throughout the season. Ozpin continues to be a decent authority figure in episode 2 with Blake, and later on some words of wisdom and mentoring to Ruby, as well as being smart enough to realise RWBY would run off and letting them accompany Doctor Ooblek anyways. Ooblek asking each of the girls sans Ruby about why they want to be a huntress, and their campfire talk about their motivations, too. Yang being a good friend and getting Blake to listen and take a day off, too.
Characters still actually feel real in that sense. Pyrrha honestly admits her feelings at being put up high on a pedestal, and Neptune comes right out and admits to Jaune he can't dance to immediately stop a potential fight cold. 90% of writing in stories would love to have a stupid miscommunication followed by overwrought drama, and it's a breath of fresh air not having that in this, outside of Ozpin apparently knowing things he's not telling Glynda or Ironwood, or even why he won't tell them. I really continue to adore Ruby's occasional genki girl outbursts and how she reminds everyone she's still a mid-teenage girl, like when she sees Zwei again.
The animation also took an enormous step up from the get go. I guess volume 1 was their learning curve with Poser, and volume 2 was where they got to show that experience off. The benefit of this 3D modelling vs. traditional animation shows off in lots of cool little moments. Ruby at one point slides down a railing casually and quickly, and I can't help but think nobody would have bothered with that in traditional animation. They can fill backgrounds up with loads of characters who have natural motions, and even when standing sway around a little bit. The battles are where they really shot their loads with the animations, especially the robot fight imo (also awww, how cute, Ruby named all their formations!). Lots of stunning choreography again, even if Weiss doing a backflip dodge underneath a chainsaw and missing by millimetres makes me cringe.
Tons of fun visual gags too, like how Blake reacts to Zwei's initial appearance and hiding up on the bed, how Zwei rolls over out of his mail package, Blake/Yang/Weiss popping up in front of Ruby after she gets back from talking with Ironwood, etc. Oobleck using a rocket launcher to launch a flaming Zwei at a robot may be the best 5 seconds of the series.
One nice thing about this being a web project and not made for TV is the lack of filler. Oh gods, the lack of it. I'm crying in relief at how little of it there is. I neglected to mention it before, but I like how they switch up the ending theme song every episode...even if some of them are totally out of place...(one of them has the lyrics 'reap my seed' ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) )
I was totally expecting payoff on the brick joke of Jaune declaring he would wear a dress, and he delivered. That dance episode was fun to have, too. I guess this is the equivalent of a beach episode?
That final episode, though...I was actually expecting shit to go down. I was expecting the horde of Grimm to invade Vale and wipe out half the city before they got pushed back and eliminated, with actual major consequences. Instead, four teams and a few professors dispatch them over a few city blocks, and Glynda even casually repairs the damage to the streets and wall with her magic. What a letdown. I guess maybe there'll be some consequnces re:Ozpin and Ironwood, but that's about it. It was still fun to watch, but not what I was expecting from the penultimate episode.
Team CFVY showing up in the finale feels sort of like the whole 'the adults take over in the Suna/Sound invasion' in Naruto. They're second years, and they show up and clean-up really easily. Coco uses her briefcase/machine gun to casually kill one of the scorpion Grimm and multiple of the big bird Grimm that took Team RWBY and JNPR an entire episode to kill one of each back in Volume 1, while the two guys just about dust the remainders. I'm assuming Velvet is in some sort of weird situation where maybe she's a first-year who got slotted in to take over an empty slot in a second-year team (considering she was being bullied by Cardin, and was in the 1st year history class), since Coco tells her not to use up her weapon she spent a semester building.
Roman Torchwick was a pretty good antagonist. I hope they get another season out of him, albeit as a secondary villain.
My German heritage gets triggered every time I hear Weiss' and Zwei pronounced with a 'w' sound instead of a 'v' sound.
Anyways, re:Faunus. I have to look at the side materials for the world-building context. But, clearly there aren't very many if any humans with kemonomimi fetishes! Otherwise, things would be a little bit different.
Blake in-universe be like: "I wear this bow because I want people to see me for who I am, not what I am"
Blake in real life would be like: "I wear this bow because I don't want countless guys lusting for my hot catgirl body"
Or with Velvet, too. Do not bully the bunnygirl! Lewd the bunnygirl!
Though I find it amusing how Sun Wukong basically walks around in plain sight not hiding that he's a Faunus.
The end of vol2ch2 and ch3 has the team resolve to basically start investigating the conspiracy in-town of what White Fang/Roman are doing, and a little later I thought, "If this was a doujin, this is where the bad endgood end bad end where they get captured and turned into Faunus broodmares would happen."
For now, I'll take a few days break as a breather since I don't like binging entire series all at once. I'll probably look at a lot of the side material, though. Since the discussion in this thread actually stopped basically at the start of season 4, maybe once I get to season 4 I'll post thoughts every episode or two.
To clarify: a lot of the drop in quality was a storm of multiple things- some things which are spoilers, which I won't spoil, but in a lot of cases it was a clusterfuck of new software, unfamiliarity with said software, the loss of their absolute best animator, Monty, and the discovery that the rest of the animators were... not super great. Monty's death also meant they lost their ONLY fight choreographer. Considering the entire point of RWBY is 'cute girls fighting things in awesome ways' that means you have to fall back on the plot, which takes a pretty noticable downturn as well, considering Monty was also 1/3 of the writing team.
The animation quality steadily rises from v4 on as they get used to the tools, the writing quality varies rather wildly from episode to episode, and the fight choreography ranges from 'absolutely dogshit' to 'semi-acceptable' until... I want to say v5 or v6 when they manage to hire someone that brings fight quality up. It's still spotty, because unlike Monty the new guy doesn't work himself ragged and spend 20 hour days animating. (Monty was a MASSIVE perfectionist) He also has a habit of giving everyone roughly the same fighting style (or at least he did, last time I paid attention to RWBY). As you can imagine this causes some pretty massive shifts in how pretty much every character fights. I imagine s/he's (I think he?) has gotten better at this though.
So I watched the four character trailers (Red, White, Black, Yellow). Damn, I actually should have watched these before even watching the show proper. I would have thought they'd be just clips of the first season, but they weren't. Blake and Yang's have some important stuff in them — Blake has Adam, and Yang has the club she goes to in V2 and Roman Torchwick hiring some henchmen in the background, as well as her red eyes early on.I felt Blake's was the weakest trailer. Though she gets to fight, it's the least 'artsy', with Adam stealing the show with the whole red-and-black visuals near the end. Also, Weiss sings!
Thinking about this, I like how Ruby being the main character is more subtle at the start. I mean, yeah, she gets the first trailer, her name's at the start of the team acronym, and she's the leader, but it's not blatantly in my face. There's a few bits in the first two episodes about getting into Beacon 2 years early, her uncle being a teacher at Signal, and her designing her own scythe weapon, but after that she's fairly even with the other girls until I'm reminded she's the leader during the campfire talk later in Volume 2. I enjoy pony, but subtle about Twilight Sparkle being the special uberpferd from the get-go they were not (magical prodigy, has a baby dragon assistant, her teacher is literally the ruler of the nation and an alicorn, her Cutie Mark has a very unique design, and she gets a tiara for her bling while everypony else gets only a necklace).
On a different subject now...video games. I have a Steam Key for Grimm Eclipse. Anyone play this? How's it in general? I don't need 'oh it's not worth it if it's not 10/10'. Even 7/10 mindless hack-and-slash is alright. I see it's nominally co-op with the option to play single-player, but that it's a lot more worthwhile with the co-op, but would like to know if there's at least a moderate playing community still...
...I also see there was a WayForward-developed RWBY game announced last year, to be published this year sometimes. No specific genre, but since it's WF, probably an action-platformer mash-up.
On a different subject now...video games. I have a Steam Key for Grimm Eclipse. Anyone play this? How's it in general? I don't need 'oh it's not worth it if it's not 10/10'. Even 7/10 mindless hack-and-slash is alright. I see it's nominally co-op with the option to play single-player, but that it's a lot more worthwhile with the co-op, but would like to know if there's at least a moderate playing community still...
While I can't say if it still has a community or not, I've heard it's about a 6/10 gameplay-wise. If you've played through one level, you've played them all. It's supposedly rather lacking in variety.
I'd take a look at some gameplay videos on Youtube if you're not sure, but if you already have a Steam key, then you might as well give it a bash.
(Honestly, I feel like RWBY would lend itself better to a Musou/Warriors style game.)
