#with the live action atla i figured now would be a great time to revive this account

[incorrectzutaraquotes]

zuko: we just need one of those construction trucks. with the thingys to pick stuff up

katara: the forklift ??

zuko: hey i never said i was smart i just know it exists

katara: i never said i was smart either i had to look up the damn name of the vehicle.

katara: i knew ‘lift’ was in there somewhere my remaining 2 brain cells are close to deteriorating

sokka: you two should join forces

zuko: we did. it took both of our brain power to come up with forklift

[toooldforfandom-liveblogs]

RWBY V07E13 - The Enemy of Trust

I can't remember the last time I've felt so reluctant to watch an episode of RWBY. There's no way they'll turn _everything_ around in 20 minutes so no happy ending this season. Who knows who's going to die this episode to satiate RT's thirst for blood and drama.

The other reason I'm not sure I want to watch this episode is that the big moment of last episode fell so flat for me that I fear it'll manage to disappoint me again and this time there'll be no next episode to give me hope for a good ending.

But, the liveblog must go on, and there's still hope in me that even if it's not a happy season ending it's going be a good one.

Last episode ended with:

Clover dead and Qrow and Robyn either about to escape or about to get arrested.

Ruby and Weiss about to go find Winter and Penny

Blake and Yang about to go find JNPR

JNPR about to fight Neo

Cinder about to fight Winter and Penny, with the Winter Maiden in a pod.

Is the Winter Maiden going to die? Who's going to get her powers? Winter? How many minutes into the episode before Pietro dies? Yang vs Neo rematch? How is Ironwood going to be stopped if he's stopped at all? Is Salem going to appear at the last possible second with her flying monkeys?

I don't know so let's do this!

Ooh, there's the aura projection he was supposed to learn this volume. Not as spectacular as I hoped but still works.

This makes me have a ton of questions about how her semblance works. How did she escape Oscar's grasp to make that illusion? Was Neo an illusion the entire time? How resilient they are in that case? She very noticeably didn't get hit at all until now.

Poor Oscar, it's been a long day for him.

I'm trying to figure out if Neo could have disguised herself as someone else in JNPR but the moments they leave the screen don't match with Neo's dissapeareance. I guess she could have been the guard but still, weird.

high poly birds, the true advantage of the new cg engine

Hints to Cinder's backstory?

It's fun to see Penny finally have a match considering she's been a powerhouse the entire season. She _has_ to be disabled in some way though if Pietro's death flags are going to get triggered this season at all and I'm not looking forward to that.

I have no idea when this fight turned into Matrix Revolutions but I'm not complaining.

I'd be more worried about Winter but I'm sure she can summon _something_ to survive.

That's even cooler than whatever I had imagined.

_this_ is what I expected from V5's fight between maidens, and Winter is not even a maiden yet.

Welp, now I'm worried.

Cinder's becoming an expert in that move. Hurt someone, run while they are worried about their "friends"

"but it does to me"

That's even better. Penny has grown so much

Maybe carry the child WITH THE RELIC instead of leaving him off ready to be picked off by either Neo or the soldiers.

Yeah, that's Neo. That expression is too sassy to be Nora.

This must have been so much fun to animate.

Of _course_ she'd use her powers in this way. I hoped she'd turn into Pyrrha at some point but this works just as well.

Ren seems to have realized something. I hope it's more "I care more about Nora than I realized" and less "feelings are a weakness"

I'm loving Neo this episode, she's mute and tiny but that doesn't mean anything when she's smart enough to manipulate everyone around her.

Huh. Interesting. It still could be the "feelings are a weakness" thing and he's crying because he knows what he needs to give up but I'm still holding hope for the other choice and he just feels bad about not being able to recognize the real Nora and everything he's been doing this season.

Her movements are so delicate.

Holy shit. This is the first maiden with a lifetime of experience, Cinder has no chance unless her old age becomes an impediment.

oh no no no

LOL at Winter apparently floating, bad layering there.

Is she blaming herself for not completing the job or worried about Penny? After the whole "I don't matter" thing I'm not sure.

Sure, yell at the one person who's never going to yell back.

I feel this siege is going to be Ren's last chance to decide what he's doing with his life and his friends.

...he's going to go find Ironwood. There's no way _that_ ends well so rip.

Okay, this alleviates my "this is murder" concerns from last episode. She was fully aware of what she needed to do and the sacrifice that it entailed. This line however makes me wonder if she remembers Winter at all.

This _reaaally_ feels like she's going to give Penny her powers, but Cinder is probably just close enough to avoid that. What happens if Penny gets her powers and then someone destroys her? Would she keep her powers if Pietro revives her?

The ultimate "things I want to do vs things I need to do" question for Penny.

WHAT THE FUCK

I was joking when I said RIP a couple of screenshots ago, why would you take me seriously!

I'm just slightly disappointed by Ironwood. So far, even in the throes of his paranoia, he had mostly held back, using "legal" means to do what he needed to do. But there's no way to justify shooting Oscar, an _unarmed_ child. This moves him firmly from well-intentioned idiot to a minor evil just below Salem, just like Oscar said. In fact he's more dangerous than Salem right now because he's already there.

Who gave Cinder's VA voice acting lessons? Whoever it was, they deserve a trophy. That break while screaming, just perfect

I didn't want Penny to absorb her powers because that'd mean she's going to be irrevocably tied down, she's never going to be free. _But_, I didn't want Winter to become a maiden because Ironwood has completely lost his mind and unless she suddenly changes her mind about not following him to the ends of the earth that'd mean that Ironwood would have a relic _and_ a maiden.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

His semblance? Or is it _something_ powered by aura inside the cane?

And that's the end of "Ruby won't be able to use her silver eyes after what Salem said" theory.

...she looks much better with her hair down. And welp, first thing she does is think Weiss did something to deserve being on the run.

I didn't realize Cinder had hit Winter so hard she started to hallucinate. Sure, tell two healthy huntresses to surrender while being half dead.

This is going to _suck_ next season, she's probably going to fall into Ironwood's plans even more since she just lost everyone she cared about in Atlas.

My heart.

So, does Cinder think offering the relic up is going to be enough to get into Salem's good graces? How long before Neo tries to put a knife into her back?

IT'S A FLYING WHALE

IT CAN'T END LIKE THIS

---

That was a lot. First things first: I've never been so happy about being wrong, that was a _great_ finale. I'm not incredibly happy about it being such a cliffhanger but it works.

For full disclosure, I'm writing this review a couple of days after watching the episode since I was too tired to continue due to insomnia.

V7 is probably RWBY’s best executed most coherent volume so far. It’s also probably in the bottom half of the list of my “favorite” volumes.

When I say coherent I mean how every single character and action has been laser focused in justifying Ozpin’s monologue at the end. Everything important everyone did has been because of Fear. Overcoming fear, falling to it or causing it. Ren’s try at being a fash, Yang and Blake’s “betrayal,” Ironwood’s (and the council’s) whole thing, Penny’s acceptance of the Winter Maiden’s powers, Watts and Tyrian’s objective, Salem’s appearance and its effects in both Ironwood and Ruby, and a lot of other things I’m probably forgetting.

I don’t remember any other volume so focused in a single theme. Sure, they _have_ themes but V7 is relentless in making everything fit.

It has a great plot throughout that explores themes that have been teased but not fully explored in the past, with some interesting less than black and white issues and a ton of threads that converge mostly gracefully by the end. It’s not RWBY’s most ambitious season, I think V4 still has that distinction, but it’s probably second place _and_ it accomplishes what it wants and almost everything it does better than any other season before.

And for as much as I don’t find the fights interesting, they are _really good_, I think there’s not a single one this volume where I’d be able to complain about the issues that bothered me in past seasons. They are interesting to watch, with creative uses of everyone’s abilities and great choreography and cinematography.

So, on paper I should love it. It’s a _great_ season. But I don’t.

I think that my main issue with V7 is that it’s too real. I distinctly remember feeling weird watching it after everything that happened in my country, the social unrest due to the inequality that reigns supreme.

It was weird living through that, with the military on the streets trying to repress and contain what had been festering for years, _and_ watching a show where something similar was going on but with what felt like sympathetic authority figures. It probably did a good job at that but by the end I wasn’t interested in giving them sympathy, killing most of the emotional weight of the climax.

It doesn’t help that there are very few moments where Mantle’s problems are shown directly on screen. They talk, rant and cry about it but it’s always people unaffected by what’s going on discussing what to do. Even Robyn, who’s supposed to be the voice of the people, feels detached from the people she’s supposed to represent since she has no personal motivations. And when the people of Mantle are shown, it’s mostly after Tyrian’s attacks so it feels like the early episodes are trying to make us feel bad about Mantle but not _too_ bad because it’d cast Ironwood into too much of a bad light.

Brooklyn 99’s quote of “cool motive, still murder” describes Ironwood’s (and Atlas’s) entire plot line for me, and since _everything_ is tied to that it leaves me without much to like.

That’s not to say I hated it, I enjoyed it moment to moment as my liveblogs can attest but the end result is not something I’d like to rewatch unlike other volumes.

The cliffhanger worries me. Or more specifically, _when_ they decided to finish the season worries me. If the cliffhanger had been after Ironwood had raised Atlas his fall would have been definite but since he hasn’t done that yet there’s still a chance he won’t do it. It feels like the writers weren’t sure how far they wanted to take him and decided to postpone making that decision as long as possible (even if him getting redeemed would be incredibly weird after trying to kill Oscar, Ozpin’s speech aside).

Worries aside, I have high hopes for V8 if only because this season was so good besides its particular topic that if they keep that level of quality I'm bound to like it, especially if it doesn't try to redeem the Atlesian military.

I think that's all for now, until next time!

[canvaswolfdoll]

CanvasWatches: The Dragon Prince

Netflix is making a live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series.

Just… no? I realize time and development has been put into this. People are employed. But… the first series was magic, stop trying to recapture it.

Netflix has this problem where they want to propel themselves forward with original content, but that content is very mediocre. They try reviving old series and produce productions that disappoint.[1] The original concepts mostly fade into obscurity, are Stranger Things (which had one pretty good season, and then a mediocre second season), or is BoJack Horseman which I haven’t watched but haven’t heard a bad word about.

Then there’s their irritating handling of Anime.[2]

Netflix is willing to experiment and let creators do what they want. I admire that. But (and trust me, I hate to say this), they need focus testing. They need a stricter format. Edges for creators to bump up against and work around.

A standard season length, for one. An allotted time per episode maybe. Make production a puzzle to solve.

Instead they say ‘Let’s do the live-action Avatar series no one asked for, and is a passive insult to the original!’[3]

Which drags us into The Dragon Prince.

Spoilers! You might want to watch it for yourself (it’s nine episodes), but if you don’t mind spoilers, go ahead. I’m not the City Watch.

So, I think we’ve finally figured it out. We had Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was great. Then we distilled the creative staff, ran experiments and isolated elements.

Legend of Korra was good. Had the creators produce it, but not the head writer. The world was the same, but evolved in interesting ways. Good character concepts and real heart, but still missing the magic and character relationships that resonated so well in the first series.

Now, with The Dragon Prince, we get to see what happens when you isolate AtLA’s head writer, Aaron Ehasz.

You get a cliche fantasy setting, weak main plot, and a lot of cheap AtLA mimicry. But you also get some super charming child characters, intriguing (if not currently complex) villains, and small details that could build up to something great.

Which is to say: go to Bryke for the world and myth arc, go to Ehasz for the character interactions.

There it is! The ultimate break down! Let’s pack this up and…

Okay, fine. You want to hear my opinions on The Dragon Prince. That’s… fair, I guess.

So, in this setting, magic comes from six source: The sun! The moon! The Stars! The Ocean! The Earth! I think the sky?[4]

However, then humanity created a seventh magic! Dark Magic! Ooo, so evil, so dastardly!

Sigh.

Just once, I’d like dark magic to just be misunderstood. If they called it Life Magic, they’d probably have better PR.

Anyways, humanity went to war with the elves, but the Dragon King got sick of the fighting, so he sent the humans west, elves to the east, and divided the continent in half with a lava river.

Humanity didn’t really like this, so they killed the dragon king and his egg. So that’s vengeance.

Except this upset the elves because, y’know, murder’s bad. So they send a party from the assassin elf faction: The Moon Shadow Elves! They turn invisible under moonlight![5]

They’re gonna kill the Human king and his son to make things even. Because suddenly murder’s not so bad?

However, a member of the group is a child who couldn’t will herself to kill.

Basically, that cool and exciting setting you created when you were fourteen? Good news, it’s a Netflix Show now! Yay!

Also, the first season is Book 1: Moon.

And the title card is formatted exactly like Avatar, but with white text on a black background.

So the world isn’t special, and they’re deliberately aping some Avatar trappings. But that’s fine, there’s still the characters and plot. We could bicycle this!

So, what do we have with the humans? A beloved king with a dead wife and two children? Okay… both are sons,[6] so at least it’s not the usual nuclear structure. And, hey, the eldest prince is the king’s step son! Nice change.

Who else? King has an advisor that uses dark magic, suggested killing the dragon king and the egg, and talks above his station. But, hey, Lord Viren has two charming children, and he seems genuinely concerned about his king’s survival and the good of…

Oh, he gets a magic makeover in the final episode to make him look more inhuman, and spends the season plotting to take the throne.

Ugh. Of course.

Well, what about Viren’s children? Claudia is a mage like her dad, and is a cloudcuckoolander. Good choice. And she doesn’t do much that’s actively evil. We’ve got Ty Lee in Zuko’s role. I’m game.

Soren is… well, he’s going to be Azula. He doesn’t have her sadistic streak, but he’s been given the job of eliminating claims to the throne, is a competent combatant, and Viren motivates him with being in line for the throne.

He could turn, but my money’s on just being Azula.

Now, to be clear, Viren wasn’t obviously evil. There were plenty of early moments that hinted that he could be sympathetic and non-evil. However, he does spiral into torture and deceit, so once the season is over, there’s no ambiguity. Sorry.

Hey, what about the main cast?

Prince Callum is voiced by Sokka! Awesome! Jack De Sena needs more work. This time, he gets magic and impressive artistic skills! But he had to give up his sword abilities, and kept the daddy issues. But there’s still that snarky edge and loving brother personality, though the weight of them have been swapped.

He’s the half brother of Prince Ezran, who is the heir apparent of the kingdom. He’s… a goofy young boy. I dunno. Aang light. No overt talents. He’s fine.

So those two are hanging out at the castle, when suddenly their father tries to send them off to the winter cabin, despite it being not winter. He suggests made making a dirt man or going mud sledding.

Callum finds this suspect, and eventually logics out that King Harrow expects to be assassinated and wants to get his sons a safe distance away.

Meanwhile, the Moon Shadow Elves are planning their assassination, making a vow on a magic ribbon that will amputate a limb if they fail. Two targets: King Harrow and Prince Ezran to make up for killing the Dragon King and his egg. Even, you know?

Of course, they dragged a literal child along and had her make the same oath with the same ribbon, so screw ‘em. Child soldiers are bad.

This girl is Rayla. She’ll be the rogue of the main cast! Yay![7]

However, after making this promise, they find out she let a guard go so the humans know they’re coming. You’re off the mission Rayla! Turn in your fancy switchblades and ribbon!

Except the ribbon is magic and won’t come off until the job is done, so keep that I guess. And it’d be mean to take away your knives, so… look, stay at camp while the five adults go murder a dude and an actual kid.

Please remember, these jerks wanted to murder an innocent child.

Rayla decides to redeem herself, and sneaks into the castle. She finds the two princes, Callum attempts to martyr himself for Ezran, shenanigans occur in secret tunnels, and… oh, look, it’s the Dragon King’s Egg. Guess they didn’t actually kill that?

Well, let’s call the whole thing off!

Oh, nevermind. Rayla’s Uncle still wants to kill the king and prince. What a jerk.

So our three heroes escape the castle with the egg, planning on returning to the Dragon Queen. We got our mission!

Oh, and the elves killed King Harrow. So… that’s fun.

To be honest, I wouldn’t discount Lord Viren using dark magic to sidestep this. But he’s also trying to claim the throne, so maybe the king is actually dead.

Could go either way.

The kids head off to the royal cottage, where they stumble onto Callum’s aunt. She’s mute! (Maybe deaf, not one hundred percent on that, since lip reading was referenced but also some ambiguity…)

She’s a military General, fights with a shield, is super awesome, and I’m sad how Callum didn’t bring her into the scheme.

Like, yes, for the plot to work, Lord Viren needs to know the princes are alive and the boys have to be careful and having General Amaya know and supporting the boys would’ve caused other troubles.

But… c’mon Callum, literally signing to Amaya that Rayla is a monster and forcing the elf to do a Blue Spirit act is terrible. Like… they’ve established a sweet way for Callum to communicate a secret past her soldiers, and they didn’t use it for a sweet twist?

Ugh. Intentional miscommunication and unnecessary secrets. They are hitting a bunch of my hated tropes.[8]

The children run off and… don’t really do anything very interesting for a couple episodes.

The villain side of things is where the real fun is! General Amaya goes to the castle to report on the survival of the princes and stop Lord Viren from taking the throne.

However, Lord Viren offers her the throne. Again, how the scene is written and acted, I still found myself doubting what role Viren’s supposed to take. He seems genuinely concerned for the general populace, and offers compromises at every turn, and communicates honestly and…

I want Lord Viren to be a misunderstood good guy. I really want Dark Magic to not be an irredeemable evil. A story without a Big Bad, just factions with cross purposes would be great. There’s so many good escape routes for a more interesting story.

Then Lord Viren throws the man Amaya chose (her interpreter, Gren. He’s neat! I like him!) to lead the Prince Recovery Team into a dungeon, where he can watch Viren torture Rayla’s uncle for information.

Yeah… this is who our villain is.

In Gren’s place, Viren sends his children. Soren is given secret instructions to insure the princes don’t make it home alive, and Claudia is given secret instructions to prioritize the safety of the egg. So that’s our Zuko and Azula doing the Avatar hunt.

They have a fun dynamic as Soren doesn’t put much stock in magic and Claudia is an adorable dark magician girl![10] I look forward to more of them.

Now, back to the D&D campaign of the kids: Callum is trying to learn magic after stealing Claudia’s storm magic orb, and he’s pretty good at it. Rayla is worried about the ribbon cutting off her circulation and is an awesome rogue. Ezran… needs to learn healing magic so we can have a Cleric.

They accidentally drop the egg into a frozen lake and are afraid the baby dragon within is dying, so they head off to get help at a town. There’s a fun kid moment with Rayla turning a snowman into a snow-elf (it was a cute moment and Rayla needs more).

Then the group picks up a girl, Ellis, so abruptly that she might as well have been a player that joined between sessions. Ellis rides a giant puppy named Ava, so we’ve got a beast-master fighter!

Ellis tells the boys about a magic healer on the top of a scary mountain filled with scary monsters. With no options, the four go to the mountain.

They fight one monster, have some self reflection, get to the mountain, learn Ezran can talk to animals,[11] and the monsters there are illusions.

They get to where to where the healer is, only to learn that, nah, she’s just a powerful illusionist and Ava only has three legs.

The only way to save the egg is to hatch it. But they need a storm to do so.

Thus, Callum shatters his magic orb to release a storm, the egg hatches, and the titular Dragon Prince is able to gently bite off the magic ribbon Rayla couldn’t cut off with a magic sun knife.

(Either the dragon is magic enough, or saving the baby dragon was considered equal to assassinating Ezran).

Soren and Claudia use a spell to pinpoint the group!

Lord Viren inprisons Rayla’s uncle in a coin and transforms into an eviller looking form!

Also, there’s some mystery with a magic mirror? Cliffhanger stuff.

So… The Dragon Prince is not amazing. The dialogue and character interactions and relationships are great, but the story and world is paint by numbers.

The next season has plenty of room for subversions and interesting experiments, but… until I see it, I honestly think the show’s skippable in its current form. Filler episodes to build the world and characters would do a lot to help, and committing to nuances hinted at for Lord Viren would be great.

Also, hopefully they improve the animation. I’m not normally one to care about frame rates, but boy did the animation stutter a lot for a finished product.

It’s average.

Thanks for reading this review! Consider checking out my other writings, sending me comments and questions, check out my webcomic or RPG Blog, or whatever. Next time, Netflix is releasing an Anime I’ve been excited for nearer the end of the month. Keep an eye out for that, which will post to my Patreon first. I’m also slowly rolling out a Review of Digimon there!

Until we go flying with dragons,

Kataal kataal.

[1] Admittedly, modern fandom is filled with loud obnoxious people, but I haven’t heard anything good about Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, even from my less frothy-mouthed sisters. [2] If you’re gonna simuldub series in Canada, you can do it in the US, you jerks! [3] Everything can be improved. But actually remaking something just says the original wasn’t good enough. That’s why people hate reboots. [4] Can’t remember if that’s under the purview of the stars or not… [5] Which is Warcraft, Ehasz. [6] Unless there’s a spoiler with Ezran’s voice cast. [7] Canvas likes playing rogues. [8] Let’s see if season two can get inappropriate student-teacher relationship![9] Then they can get a free sandwich. And my eternal ire. [9] For the record: when Claudia inevitably defects and starts teaching Callum magic, that’s not going to count. The two are close in age and it’s not an institutional power imbalance. [10] I want a show about Claudia, Rayla, and Amaya on awesome adventures. [11] He’s a druid! Learn to heal, nerd.