Oh...This is Gonna Ruffle Some Feathers, isn't it?
Two Steps forward, Two steps back. That's more or less this volume summed up in a nutshell. Greetings Ladies and Gents, It is I the Shaman of Animation here with my review of RWBY Volume 2.
Synopsis: RWBY is an anime inspired web series created by Monty Oum (of Dead Fantasy and Haloid Fame) for Rooster Teeth (The same studio that brought Red vs Blue) in 2013. The show follows four main characters: Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long in the World of Remnant, a world filled with magical elements such as the Monsters known as Grimm. Our four main characters are enrolled in Beacon Academy, a school that trains young adults into warriors known as huntsmen/huntresses in order to combat the Grimm.
I thought that Volume one of the show, while VERY rough around the edges, was an adequate effort by Rooster Teeth and gave viewers enough to want to continue on and keep watching to see improvement. Now that we're here, has Rooster Teeth improved on their shortcomings in Volume One? Well if my first sentence signifies anything: no. But let's take a deeper look and see why, shall we?
The Good: RWBY Volume two has given a major overhaul to its backgrounds. The first volume featured a lot of black shadows for people and its big city backgrounds seemed very barren. This volume has fixed this problem. The backgrounds are more dynamic, and the previous ghost towns have more in them which helps give the settings more life.
ZOMG! ACTUAL BACKGROUND CHARACTERS!!!
The fight scenes continue to be the best part of the show. If you haven't seen any of Monty Oum's work in the past, then you'll get a kick out of the fights here in RWBY. This Volume cranks up the fight scenes to where they're seen more frequently and they are even more over-the-top as the previous volume (You'll believe me after the first episode of Vol. 2)
Your eyes do not deceive you. This girl is holding a swordfish like a weapon. The scene in which this is happening is as awesome as it is ridiculous...
The voice actors from Vol. 1 reprise the roles of their characters and you can tell that they feel a lot more comfortable in their roles this go round than they did in Vol.1 which adds for improved performances from the main cast. The episodes in Volume are also at least 12 minutes long, which seriously helps the show as it no longer feels like you're watching part of an episode on a weekly basis and gives satisfying conclusions to episodes...or at least it should...
The Bad: Oh boy...we made it here. Before I begin this, let me say that I DO like RWBY. I think it's a show with a cool concept, character designs and has GREAT potential. What is going to be said in this section is being said in hopes that the writers of the show will see this, and take this as suggestions for the next volume...season...whatever.
One of the biggest problems in Vol. 1 of RWBY was the constant missteps in the writing. That problem...hasn't been fixed in Vol. 2. RWBY is not aware of the phrase: 'Show, don't tell.' It throws out all these concepts without ever really taking the time to explain or develop ANYTHING. You will spend a good chunk of watching this volume asking the questions:
WHO?!
WHAT?!?
AND WHY?!?!?!?
For example, this Volume has our antagonists: Cinder Fall, Emerald, Mercury, and Roman Torchwick collecting Dust (A type of energy in the RWBY world) for...reasons...what those reasons are? It's never explained. Just like it's never explained who exactly Cinder, Emerald, or Mercury are. We just know they're bad because they're bad, which I'd be fine with if I had any sort of idea what their motives were. I can't exactly be against the bad guys if I don't know WHY I should. Even something as mundane as world domination would help...
Which brings me to their next action, the next episode Cinder, Emerald, and Mercury are seen, they are disguised as students in Beacon Academy to watch the students to add to 'the list' and pull up old Beacon files? I put a question mark because the shows never says WHY they're there infiltrating the academy, or why there's "A list". I suppose the show is purposely doing this to build some sort of mystery around these characters, but it's just not working for me. It's just making me care less about them.
It also doesn't help the fact that the writers more or less FAIL at making the villains seem credible in their plans. Throughout ninety-eight percent of the Volume, the main characters are pretty much seen kicking the villains' asses in battle. The villains never have a big win under their belts which hurts their legitimacy. The only times someone on the villains' side was able to beat a member of team RWBY (Yang to be exact) was when a girl who before her first fight, we've only seen ONCE, curb-stomps Yang, and this was followed by some no name mook with a chainsaw beating Weiss.
Speaking of non threatening, let's talk about the Grimm, you know, the things that our heroes are trained to fight and are considered to be the biggest threat to mankind in the RWBY universe? They show up in the last third of the volume and are about as threatening as the care bears. There was a picture perfect way to make the Grim a credible threat in the penultimate episode of the volume as they've broken out into the city and are chasing after humans. They even manage to heavily outnumber our main heroes. I'm sure you're thinking that there's nothing wrong with this so far, it's creating tension and helps build to what could be some dark material.
Well guess what? The very next episode, ALL the Grimm are killed. Almost effortlessly by the secondary characters of the series who show up right on time, and four random @$$holes who we only saw just ONCE (One of them who only had ONE line of dialogue the entire volume) ; these guys end up curb stomping the Grimm, not our heroes, not the secondary team that's already been established, it's these guys!! The most damage that happened was the show SAYING a lot of people got hurt and SAYING there was a lot of damage. The Grimm are the textbook definition of canon fodder!! How would you all feel if the Titans from Attack on Titan were all taken out in one shot? Or if the Akatsuki from Naruto were all beaten in five minutes? That's how you're gonna feel with this last ep. of volume 2; you'll look at it and at the end of it, you'll say:
You'd think a giant Robot like this would provide a challenge to the main characters, but nope. One of these gets taken out by a F**KING CORGI!!!!
Well guess what? The very next episode, ALL the Grimm are killed. Almost effortlessly by the secondary characters of the series who show up right on time, and four random @$$holes who we only saw just ONCE (One of them who only had ONE line of dialogue the entire volume) ; these guys end up curb stomping the Grimm, not our heroes, not the secondary team that's already been established, it's these guys!! The most damage that happened was the show SAYING a lot of people got hurt and SAYING there was a lot of damage. The Grimm are the textbook definition of canon fodder!! How would you all feel if the Titans from Attack on Titan were all taken out in one shot? Or if the Akatsuki from Naruto were all beaten in five minutes? That's how you're gonna feel with this last ep. of volume 2; you'll look at it and at the end of it, you'll say:
In the process of finding this Spider-man meme, I found several others on Google & had a good laugh. You could spend all day reading those Spidey memes. Good time all around...
A lot of fans defend the poor ending as 'just setting up for the next volume.' To which I call BS on. Setting up for the future doesn't excuse a weak finish in the present. You wanna know how Book 1 of Avatar the last Airbender ended? With our heroes finally getting to the North Pole, stopping the Fire Nation from destroying the North Pole, Katara becoming a water bending master (thus ending her character arc of that season), the Gang continuing their journey for Aang to master all four elements and a brief glimpse at Azula.
But oh wait, it's "not fair" to compare a "professionally made" series like ATLA to a web series like RWBY. Then here's this for a "better" comparison: You wanna know how the first season of TOME by Chris Niosi (which you should totally check out by the way) ended? With our main protagonists beating the Forbidden power followed by a short that went into detail about the villains with an amazing twist that tied it all together, and then ending it by showing that the forbidden power wasn't gone for good.
You know what ATLA and TOME had in common? A very strong season finale that wrapped up the events of that season while foreshadowing what was next in the series. Something that RWBY fails to do and decides to sweep that fact under the rug by saying and I quote: "Not every story has a neat and tidy ending."
I want you all to go to YouTube, type in RWBY volume 2 episode 12 and search for the comment with the most thumbs up (Which is mine) What I'm about to say here is the same as what I said there: That line, that one. single. line. Was essentially the show in the kindest of ways giving every single viewer a middle finger and saying we don't have to explain anything to you, you're gonna tune in next year anyway. Yet they made sure that all the Grimm were taken care of in the final episode and our heroes were sitting and starring off into the sunset...That's not foreshadowing... that's plain lazy writing.
RoosterTeeth, something is seriously wrong when fanfictions and an Alternate Universe comic made by your fans tell a better story than your actual show.
Speaking of, Check out RWBY Henceforward by kumafromtaiwan on Tumblr. It's not a bad read...
I've talked about the villains and the ending enough. Let's talk about some of the other issues I found with Volume 2. This volume used two of the biggest cliches I've seen...the first being the villains in the same school as the heroes cliche. Now granted, that's nowhere NEAR as bad as say, the other cliche. The School Dance...
*Sigh* Oh God, we've made it here...
This subplot...this stupid...stupid... subplot, has to be one of the biggest two and a half episodes I've seen in a show ever. This subplot takes place after, IMO, one of the best episodes of the Volume, and continues for another two. I've seen people defending this subplot, saying that: 'It gives time to develop the characters and take a break from the actual story and all the action.'
Now to be fair, those fans would've had a point there...if the show deserved the right to actually take a break from the plot when in reality, they had JUST STARTED getting into the plot. There were literally TWO episodes of the main plot of the volume before the writers decided now was a good time to take a break...Before the end of episode two of volume two, the characters were just jacking around getting into food fights and playing Yu-Gi-Oh rip-off card games!!
Look how INTENSE and plot heavy this is!! Next they're gonna start playing with Beyblades!!!
The main focus of this arc was that character 'A' wanted to go to the dance with character 'B' but character 'B' wanted to go with character 'C'. Meanwhile Character 'D' likes character 'A' but he's too busy focusing on character 'B' to notice and this sounds very annoying to you doesn't it? Now you know how I felt when I watched this. It's one of the most painful things to do in a show about teenagers.
I'm just gonna call a spade a spade and say what this whole dance arc was: Shipping fuel.It was just there to give the people who loved drawing fan art of their favorite pairings material to draw and also draw the ire of the fans of certain ships. I'm not gonna sit here and say I don't take some pleasure in shipping characters, but this whole arc gave me flashbacks to two of THE WORST shipping wars I've seen: The Narusaku/Naruhina war from Naruto and the Makorra/Masami war from Legend of Korra...I should never be reminded of those two shipping wars...
The only good to come out of this was that we FINALLY got some backstory to one of our four main characters that also answered a question that had been asked for a while. Back story that we SHOULD have gotten in the first volume, which in turn makes the payoff to the long awaited answer of that question very unsatisfying...
Which leads me to this: In ep. 5, we see Jaune, one of the secondary characters (And The best developed character in the show) worrying about not using his aura (some mambo jumbo I don't really care about explaining right now). So why not have the next two episodes that followed it not be about some dance, but about Jaune learning to use his Aura while Team RWBY investigate what's going on with the villains. That way, we have character development while STILL focusing on the main story.
Speaking of the title characters, let's move on to Team RWBY themselves. This volume...they're actually a well oiled machine. They have team formations (Which is really just pandering to shippers), they work well on the field and they, outside of one scenario, communicate greatly with each other...and that's where I have a problem. I feel that a good chunk of develop for the team was just skipped over. The last volume revealed that Blake was a Faunus (A human with animal traits) and a, a species that Weiss hated for all the damage they did to her family. In the last volume, that arc was wrapped up in two episodes and NEVER touched upon again in this Volume...
This is where I feel RoosterTeeth missed out on a great opportunity. They could have ended with Blake and Weiss coming to mutual terms in the final episode of volume one and in Volume Two, there was still some Animosity between the two; that the trust between them isn't fully there, which could have expanded on the inner conflict that was established on in Volume one. Instead, we get the team worried about Blake not going to a dance...
The Rock questions your story choices Monty Oum.
Everyone, I want you to watch the opening for RWBY Vol. 2
Now I want you to watch the trailer for it...
I cut RWBY volume 1 a lot of slack as it was a fairly new and experimental project that was trying to find its footing. But now it's been over twenty episodes.... and I ran out of kindness. All this volume is is set up for the next one as nothing really gets resolved in this volume. It seems that for every positive the show has going for it, there seems to be twice the negatives that hold it down. The plot just seems to meander around and take a back seat for cliches and inconsistencies (Like the awesome trailers before the series first premiered that had no meaning to the show actually having a meaning suddenly).
I could forgive shoddy animation along with not so great production as long as the writing's good. That's the one thing that both Monty and the RWBY fanbase needs to understand. Not being a "big time professional studio" does not excuse poor writing...
During this volume's duration, I came to a realization. The RWBY fanbase (and even Monty to an extent) treats the series like it's a big name show until it gets critiqued like a big name show. They praise it and say it's better and more original than a lot of anime, but when it gets compared to a series like Kill la Kill, they retreat and use the defense "It's just a web show." Well guess what? If RT wants to sell merchandise like DVDs and figurines, get licensed and dubbed over in Japan, and get promoted on Crunchyroll like it's a big name anime, they better be ready to be judged as such.
I'm coming down on RWBY as hard as I am because unlike other critics, I do see the potential in it. I want Monty and RT to succeed and show WHY this show deserves to be up there on Crunchyroll along with series like Madoka Magica and Fate Zero. But as it is right now, it's just a show that's hyped to the sky because of the names attached to it, and as it is, I can only like the show in concept...
If you're at all interested in RWBY...just go find the fight scenes. They're uploaded separately from the show itself so they shouldn't hard to find. Here's hoping next Year, the guys at Rooster Teeth manage to wow me with volume three...or Season 2 volume one...or...oh who cares...
Till next time, I'm the Shaman of Animation saying that if you made it this far and read this ENTIRE thing...
Take Care...
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