Well, part of that is that Aizen didn't need to achieve much for his plans and his primary goal in the Soul Society arc failed (so he had to expose himself to retrieve the Hogyoku). He also failed to arrange Momo's death.
Then the next arc doesn't involve much KEIKAKU DOORI except dividing SS's forces, neutralizing Yamamoto and triggering his evolution. None of which prevent him from ultimately losing.
edited 12th Feb '16 4:01:56 PM by BlackSunNocturne
Not to say that I'm not also somewhat irritated with how passive the protagonists have been (but there's more than a few flags that it's because Ozpin knows something everyone else doesn't, and Ironwood's clearly been used as an Audience Surrogate to voice that irritation). However, to address the following:
That should be a question the fans are asking. It is a question the fans are asking. Now, Cinder (and the White Fang) have been constantly linked to Mistral. The question is therefore what does the Haven head actually know? For all we know, the Haven head is the villain behind Cinder, and therefore made sure Cinder's team had a registration as Haven students to enforce their infiltration of Beacon.
Until we find out more about the Haven head, Cinder's connection to Haven, and Mistral at large, has to be filed under a "do not forget this information, it could be important" section. That goes for White Fang's connection to Mistral, too.
The villains constantly being connected to Mistral - the same place a future Fall Maiden potential is from - has to be a red flag for something important. Why bother dropping so many references if it isn't? (Aside from the Red Herring scenario, where the issue turns out to be the barely mentioned Vacuo, of course - which would sort of fit with the World of Oz and the evil Gnome King's territory being beyond the desert.)
edited 12th Feb '16 4:04:08 PM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.![]()
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If he does have time powers, it's going to be going back durations on the order of seconds, nothing more otherwise he would've used it to prevent Cinder from killing Amber. That would still mean easily dodging any attack someone could think to use on you.
edited 12th Feb '16 4:05:47 PM by CaptainCapsase
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Basically, using time powers you can essentially Save Scum your way to victory. Ever see the League of Legends character trailed Ekko: Seconds
?
Think something like that.
edited 12th Feb '16 4:05:29 PM by BlackSunNocturne
Edit: Blake'd/Ren'd by Captain.
Not so broken that he can Set Right What Once Went Wrong, but OP enough that he'd rather not reveal it unless absolutely necessary.
edited 12th Feb '16 4:14:44 PM by TheAirman
PSN ID: FateSeraph | Switch friendcode: SW-0145-8835-0610 Congratulations! She/TheyOne thing we have to bear in mind is that the end goal belongs to the Queen. To me, Cinder seems to be someone with a beef for some reason that the Queen has found perfect to exploit for her own ends. My guess is that Cinder doesn't truly understand the person she works for, who they are, or what their ultimate plan is. The Queen has told Cinder just enough to feed Cinder's own ambitions and to make her a useful tool.
We have seen that Cinder's very good at adapting on the fly, but we don't know how much of the original plan was hers, or whether it's the Queen's and Cinder was the perfect combination of talent, creativity and ruthlessness to pull off that plan (and adapt on the fly as necessary).
Cinder's probably been sold the line that the Maiden powers will help her gain the power and fear she craves, but that Cinder won't know the Queen has some other purpose that requires Cinder obtaining that power. It seems suspicious that the person she was talking to seemed so curious about how Cinder's half-Maiden status felt post-glove. It's as if the Queen has never had such an experience but is living vicariously through Cinder's experience... that, or she needs to know because she needs Cinder ready for her own end-game to work.
I'm expecting the Queen to be trying to create her own personal Maidens for some end-goal, and Cinder's therefore her choice of Fall Maiden for reasons known only to the Queen (and not to Cinder). That means, in wanting to be become and strong and feared, Cinder's given herself to the one person who - unknown to Cinder - is effectively making Cinder blind to how powerless she still is... akin to Emerald, who thought she was escaping poverty (and indeed did so) but who seems to be slowly beginning to realise that she's just exchanged one type of cage for another.
edited 12th Feb '16 4:15:57 PM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.@Nocturne really, you gonna make the Save Scumming Analogy and not mention Undertale?
edited 12th Feb '16 4:26:03 PM by MorningStar1337
Yes.
Now let's move on and never mention it again in the RWBY board, please?
Never played any of them either. Yes, I know. Shocking. Someone who's never played that series, nor has any plan to do so.
Nope
edited 12th Feb '16 4:40:57 PM by BlackSunNocturne
If you ever played (and enjoyed) any of the Mother games, you absolutely should play it. Like literally do it right now if you can.
Paper Mario games?
edited 12th Feb '16 4:36:28 PM by CaptainCapsase
Volume 1 is very similar to Bleach's first arc, it introduces everything, is lighthearted and comedic in spite of the setting's darker elements, and has some very cool moments. Volume 2 is comparable to the first half of Soul Society, where the cast and audience realize there's a bigger antagonist at play, and there's some ominous things, but don't know exactly what their plan involves. Volume 3 is the conclusion of that arc, where the plan gets carried out in full and it causes a lot of chaos and casualties, the tone gets more serious and the action even better. Ultimately the main antagonist mostly gains what they want in spite of several setbacks caused by the heroes - a macguffin or power that breaks some already-established limits of the setting's abilities.
Following this logic, we're only really at the end of the first major arc here, it's only going to get more amped up from here on.
To further explain why Cinder is winning right now:
Miles and Kerry have said that plans were made up to Volume Five, right? Then, in a traditional three-act structure, we're at the end of the second act.
And in the traditional structure, this is where the villain is winning and the heroes are taking hits. This is Loki's attack on the Helicarrier, the double event in Shanghai, the Empire Strikes Back, Batman taking the fall for Harvey Dent's crimes. The villain has to be winning at this point.
Volume 4 is the beginning of Act Three. The licking of wounds and the preparation for the climax, which is obviously Volume 5. Expect our heroes to give Cinder a setback either in the next episode, or during the next Volume.
Wyld, if that was supposed to be a plot point, they should've at least brought it up at some point.
And on the subject of "we're only half a season in and barely any plot has happened", doesn't that seem like a problem to you? Three volumes in, and barely any plot progression or answers? Even if they manage to make things work out later, it won't make the lead-in any less of a pain. Payoffs don't mean anything if the way to get there is too much of a slog.
From the sound of things, we still don't know what the main villain's agenda is. That seems like kind of a warning sign. It's like we're only two thirds of the way through the first book of a seven-novel series.
but HOW?I would imagine that the ironwood or ozpin will probably be paying Haven a visit in regards to their potential invovment in the cinder business. Would not be surprised if the people behind cinder did not have other connections in other kingdoms to ensure that plans do not face to much adversity. That is definitely something to keep in mind for future arcs.
Also I don't exactly count penny as a significant death since minus her Aura she is just a machine so she probably will come back. The question should be is it going to be the same penny or a completely new penny with no memories of what happened to the last one.
"Shall I use you, or make you mine... I'm not so sure what I'll do." - DorthyWhy? If it is a plot point, there are plenty of flags that are building towards it, so it won't be left field. If that's not the plot point, something else probably is - but we can't exactly critique it until we know what it is (or until the story is finished and we never, ever get an explanation, which ever happens first).
The thing is, this is a story that is still in the process of unfolding. I'm not going to claim the plot is perfect, or doesn't have problems, but there's no hard and fast rule over how fast a storyteller has to reveal his plot points, or how fast or slow he needs to explain something that's created a question in the minds of the reader/audience.
So, why Cinder's team hasn't been outed as fake Haven is a legitimate question for fans to be asking - and they certainly have been asking it (indeed, it's an assumption on the part of fans that they are fake at all). There's no requirement on Rooster Teeth to answer that question the moment it's asked, or at any point in Volume 3. Hell, there's no requirement on them to answer it anywhere in Volume 4. It depends entirely on how long the story is, and how they want to structure the telling of it.
I guess I'm used to very long stories then because I'm not particularly bothered by the pace of villainous agenda reveal at all. It seems fairly mundane to me so far.
edited 12th Feb '16 5:11:17 PM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.@Geek: Scripts were written up to volume 5; there was an eventual conclusion planned at an unspecified point beyond that.
@Endless: RWBY was very much a low budget series for the first two seasons, and you know what they say; you can have it fast, cheap, and high quality; pick two. They obviously went for "cheap but good." Hence why the show moved at a glacial pace until this point. I also have a suspicion Monty wrote the scripts with a 30 minute timeslot in mind, and couldn't get it due to the budgetary reasons.
Now that the show has a following, there's a higher budget since it's lower risk.
@Dean: 30 minutes? Hold onto your butts.
edited 12th Feb '16 5:06:47 PM by CaptainCapsase
In the livestream just now, they stated there are "years of story left". They were joking about how Monty had 20 seasons worth of story, and that he even had ideas for the kids all the way up to adulthood if it needed expanding. The team clarified that Monty has left them with the overview of the entire story, but they can't say for certain how many volumes there will actually be because the content of any one volume depends on how Miles and Kerry structure it when they come to writing it.
As far as I can tell from what they said (ie, my interpretation), the take home message is that there's no way this story will be told in only five volumes.
I think (and not this is just my thoughts on the matter) the "volume five" idea comes from interviews months ago where the team were saying that Monty had been structuring the first five volumes before he died. It's not because there's only five volumes worth of story - there's far more story than that - it's just the bits he was working on before he died (the opening scene of the volume, where Ruby is talking to her mother's grave, had already been conceptually created by Monty, and there are some small parts of the fight between Neo/Ruby/Roman in Episode 11 that were animated by Monty, too).
edited 12th Feb '16 5:12:37 PM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

'but this has been going on since Volume 1; like fucking lose already.'
Cinder wasn't even in volume one except for the beginning and end scenes.Roman was handling the operation until V2.
edited 12th Feb '16 3:59:10 PM by DeanCole