#'how can i destroy salem' is so bad it's contrived

[constantvariations]

Getting angry at how the writers Jinn favored team rwby with a whole ass cinematic exposition dump while shrugging Oz's question off with two words. She doesn't even grant him the courtesy of a hint! Would it really have been that hard for her to add some sort of clarification like "you cannot defeat her but you can guide the simple soul that can" or "should you find yourself with silver eyes, you may have a chance"?

If that Ozcarnation came before the schools' conception, it would add so much more meaning to them and throw far more shade on Oz than lying and magic birds

[kitkatopinions]

Leave it to RT to make me hate plot points I wanted. I wanted Winter to be the Winter Maiden, I wanted Salem to win, I wanted Whitley to not be treated like the worst person ever, I wanted Emerald to be a redeemable character. All that just flopped.

Hard agree on... Literally all of that. XD

I also wanted Winter to be the Winter Maiden (and before volume seven, I’d theorized that maybe she already was one,) but having the powers go to Penny, then get pulled away due to CRWBY making a contrived story and forcing her totally unnecessary death, making her give the powers to Winter, in order to drive home the message that Ironwood is one hundred percent bad and now that Winter isn’t following his orders, she can have the powers... I’d have rather Winter didn’t get the powers at all. They could’ve kept Penny alive and had Cinder steal half the powers like she had with Amber. They could’ve had Jaune or Pietro accidentally be the last thing Penny thinks of, and therefore the powers go who knows where. Winter looks great as the Winter Maiden, but because CRWBY chose to make everything needlessly complicated, the whole situation was more or less pointless, and now I wish Winter hadn’t ever been slotted to receive the powers in the first place.

I wanted the villains to have a win, but I wanted the protagonists to be present in the real world long enough to start feeling the effects and face consequences, and I wanted it to be because of Cinder learning and changing too. I was actually impressed and excited because they were finally doing something somewhat interesting with Cinder and displaying that when the villains learn and work together, they actually outmatch the heroes, and Ruby and the others need to learn and grow to compensate. But then, they took back any growth with Cinder and they successfully separated all our main characters (and Jaune, for some reason) from the world of Remnant, possibly for a whole volume so they can’t feel the effects. And not only that, but now Salem is in a much worse position and... Really doesn’t seem like a threat, currently. She has only three people left who seem like they’re even on her side, and one of them has proven herself a brat who always puts her own agenda first, but never gets killed for her actions because I guess Salem plays favorites, and one of the other ones (Mercury) might just leave her too. It makes her seem non-threatening, it makes Salem seem weak, like her people are just self-destructing themselves and the heroes happen to get caught in the crossfires here and there. I barely even consider it a win for the villains since Cinder took out Watts, the best villain on Salem’s side, and then betrayed Neo. Also, can I point out that out of the four deaths we got (which I literally said I wanted at least four deaths omg,) only one of them was a hero. One was more or less Ironwood’s henchman who then had a ‘we’re friends, sacrifice himself for his friends’ ending that felt like it didn’t matter because he was the most non-character member of an underdeveloped group. Another was Watts - who became one of the most enjoyable characters of season seven and eight only to be murdered by Cinder in his prime. Bad choice imo. Another was Ironwood, presumably, after his character was destroyed, he still managed to have a sympathetic death, but it’s wholly unsatisfying for me because I’m still sitting here going “What was the point?” And they forced him into a villain role too. And then, counting earlier deaths, Hazel, another villain. Only Penny was someone I feel like we were supposed to even care about enough to be sad about her death.

I wanted Whitley to be treated like he wasn’t the worst person ever and made this big post about how I’d be happy with anything so long as he got a bigger role. And to be fair, Whitley was one of my favorite parts of the season. I didn’t mind his interactions with Weiss. What I minded was how quickly they acted like things were completely resolved, how they never really addressed Weiss’s own problems and her flaws in their relationship, having Willow act like a caring, doting mother out of nowhere with Whitley just smilingly accepting it, having Winter never express an ounce of care or much recognition of Whitley, having Whitley and Weiss now separated, so there isn’t a chance for them having more interactions at least for now and maybe the next whole volume. It’s not that I wish Whitley hadn’t been involved, though, so... I guess there’s that. Whitley’s plot was severely lacking, but not enough for me to wish they’d left him out of things.

And then, as for Emerald, you’re right, I really wanted a redemption arc for her. But I’m entirely unsatisfied with how rushed it is, with how everyone can just laugh with her and trust her, with how they thought a little bit of groundwork was just enough to convince everyone she’s a good guy now  and that the heroes should just... believe in her. They let it go without consequence like her former, terrible actions didn’t even matter and didn’t really need to be worked through or addressed. Our good guys have stupid little teasing moments and laugh about Emerald saying something about being on their side when she’d been attacking Penny with Cinder mere episodes ago...It’s so weird. CRWBY’s lack of real growth and evidence of change in Emerald makes her seem like a weak character and make our heroes look really stupid and reckless. I almost expect Emerald to drop them with no warning and go run off to find Mercury after maybe severely wounding one of the heroes because there’s no way she suddenly changed that much, except that CRWBY has such a bad track record when it comes to making jumps with their characters and their dynamics without providing real growth. It’s so unsatisfying that it’s making me dread what they’re going to do with her in Vacuo. I totally wish she was still a villain, if only so they could give her organic growth and a more convincing arc.

But yeah, RWBY volume 8 really is just the season of really good concepts that just aren’t executed very well, or walked back on, or too caught up in plot points I already didn’t like. Some of it’s my own personal likes and dislikes, some of it I feel I can safely deem just kind of poorly done. That’s not to say there’s nothing to like about Volume 8 - Like I said, some of the Whitley stuff was good, and there were other good things too - but on the general whole, Volume 8 was just a disappointment to me.

[blackcatmanor]

RWBY V7 Ep 10 Photo Review

Not great at best, cringey at worst. More below 

This episode was so, so bad! So I’ll soften the blow with the good: 

 Story stuff that was good:

Uhm----it seems like next episode is set up for the Robyn/Qrow (and apparently Clover) vs Tyrian fight so…that’s good? Although Clover and Qrow literally did NOTHING this episode and just jumped into place for their final showdown. 

 Character stuff that was good:

Tyrian’s voice actor is MVP of the episode. His quick rage and quick recovery to cool and calm was truly unnerving and is the actual real-world traits of a psychopath. Whether or not that was intentional on the writers part is unknown, but it was good nonetheless.

Silver eye problems

Ruby’s issues activating her silver eyes was interesting. I think it would be a good thing obstacle for her to overcome over time (unlike the contrived “need to learn hand to hand combat obstacle). Plus it could bring Maria back into the story in a way that would be interesting.  Although they should address why suddenly she can’t do it, when she did it TWICE a few months prior. 

Good/Bad: Cinder? 

Cinder’s acting was good for a solid half minute. Her annoyance that they were beat to Atlas felt genuine, along with her yelling at Neo to kidnap Oscar. It shows that Jessica Nigri is capable of delivering good dialogue that is not over the top aloof and airy.  

Unfortunately, as fast as it appeared, it was gone. The second she slips back into sultry, haughty Cinder with her cringey line of “Ironwood is as predictable as his androids” I basically felt like I wanted the sweet release of death.

Story stuff that was bad.

Where for art thou, Action? 

Once again we are teased a lot of action and given a fairly small amount. However, the reason why the action was cut short was stone-cold baffling. In the first half, all of the action literally stopped dead in its tracks for a speech between Robyn and Ironwood that was so contrived and out of place narratively it was actually cringey. Was there no better time to deliver this speech? Apparently when Ironwood decided to be honest last episode, he became Ironwood’s Pizza and Plot Development: Piping Hot truth delivered in 45 minutes or less! At least the grimm were super considerate and stopped attacking half of the people to listen to their speech. Literally. In the shot below no grimm attack despite the proximity alarms, and the grimm Ruby were fighting apparently all de-spawned after she killed one saber so Ruby can stare at a monitor and smile. 

For the other batch of people still running and screaming, so I doubt they heard their message on the first go-around. They’ll probably have to be filled in by the others on the evacuation transports- WHERE THIS SPEECH SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED!

This narrative weirdness could have been fixed very easily by just adding a scene after the people are loaded onto the evacuation transports. The ships would be full of people, seemingly bent-for-sound that their homes are being destroyed by grimm, and the implication is that they are going to continue rioting in Atlas. However, their rage is quelled by a holo-screen speech on the transports where Ironwood and Robyn tell the citizens the truth, and vow together to launch Amity communications tower and rebuild Mantle better than ever. (Admittedly it would still be weird timing but not as egregious and weird as telling them literally during an invasion).

 Character stuff that was bad 

Low Wattage

Watts’ story for me had a lot of issues this episode.

First, in addition to hacking abilities Watts basically seems to have super stealth and/or teleportation powers as well. He was in Mantle one minute and the next he was out in the tundra at Amity. Despite stating in previous episodes that Amity was hours away from Atlas academy (so who knows how long from Mantle), in three minutes it was implied that Watts somehow acquired an Atlas airship with no resistance, flew to Amity without being detected by any sort of central command and shot out of the sky, and walked into the totally unprotected site. Ironwood didn’t even leave droids to defend it? Like, he directed 100% of all forces including all androids to be put in mantle, no exceptions?!

There doesn’t even seem like there is any indication that a passage of time occurred before Watts ended up in Amity to face Ironwood. The fact that Watts appeared there with no hassle is lazy, and shows that the directors and writers just wanted to jam Watts into his final position for the concluding episodes in order to have the showdown between Ironwood and Watts. 

Also- it turns out that Watts is a fighter and a scientist? Did he attend a huntsman academy as well as regular schooling? Are there a lot of people who are both? Did he learn fighting after his exile from Atlas, once he joined Salem’s faction? The last scenario is most likely, but Watts never seemed like someone who would be a fighter, which led him to always have to team up with others like Cinder/Elm/Mercury in V5 and Tyrian this volume. If he always was a capable fighter as well as an evil genius, why does he need a companion if it’s not for protection and muscle?

So now we are going to have a fight between Watts and Ironwood: A scientist vs a military general. Does this sound totally out of left field? Yes. But, per the formula, we need a few different fights to cut back and forth to for a season finale. 

Could they maybe just continue the Mantle invasion and fight all of the new grimm like the dragons and the tundra beowolves? Well, no because grimm are no longer an actual threat in the show (which is a totally different tangent-see below). With grimm fights being so low-stakes, the only fights the writers can use for narrative tension has to be people vs people, even if it’s as contrived as a scientist fighting a freaking military general.

The only way this fight would ever make sense is to have Watts’ hacking glove thing manipulate Ironwood’s mechanical body parts. It would show a good balance between Ironwood’s general combat superiority versus Watts’ technological superiority. They should establish that Watts is clearly an inferior fighter, but the ability to hack Ironwood’s cybernetic body parts could even the playing field and present dynamic and interesting strategies that would be unique to each fighter. 

If it just ends up being a punch-punch, shoot-shoot fight I’m going to be annoyed. 

Speaking of the Grimm-

They are bad. There is literally a whole bigger tangent I have for another day but the grimm have been nerfed to the point that they add nothing to the tension and combat. I barely even consider them “fights” anymore because we just get small snippets of tussles before they just die after one hit. I appreciated that they added a small element of increased difficulty with the larger Mammoth-type that Penny and Ruby fought, but it simply required a tiny bit more effort, ultimately being barely an inconvenience. It makes you wonder how any villages fall to these monsters.... 

Overall: 4/10  It wasn’t good. The small amounts of action we did get was nice, but literally having action grind to a halt as people gawk at someone talking is reminiscent of Volume 5. Characters are jammed into place for final confrontations and the Grimm continue to be a non-issue in a series where 4 Academies were created with the explicit purpose of training people to fight these non-threatening creatures. Also: What random storage room are Cinder and Neo occupying? At the end of episode 9 it seemed like they were in some empty wing of the Schnee mansion but they’re still there? There was no thought behind just cramming them into a room in Atlas.  

Not even Weiss could save this one