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Because I'm criticizing the writer's decisions. They chose to have the volume end on a battle devoid of tension instead of going with anything else.
Not everything has to be tense or high stakes early on. Their student so they should get a small taste of a minor situation before things hit the fan volume 3. Especially if the writing works with what the plot was intending for. Battle that shows the strength of humanity against the grimm.
"Shall I use you, or make you mine... I'm not so sure what I'll do." - DorthyExcept it was the Volume finale. There shouldn't be an Anti-Climax in a finale.
Pretty sure even when the threat is manageable grim running through your town is never a good thing especially if one attack gets your authority questioned.
generally large group battles are the mark of a season finale. I would imagine it is more then what first years would normally face.
From what I could gather from interviews that I've seen (I don't own the DVDs, so I have no idea what's been said on them), this particular problem wasn't the writers, it was that the final episode ended up being not what was originally planned because, just like the first volume's finale episode, Monty decided to redo things at the last minute. This was on top of them having such a tight work schedule anyway that the time available to produce the final episode was already squeezed before Monty started making last minute changes. Didn't they say the episode was finished only about an hour or two before it was due to air? That's ridiculous scheduling.
Monty himself pointed out that he was a terrible writer and was driven by a love of Rule of Cool fighting. He also had a habit of adding things at the very last minute, or redoing entire scenes at the very last minute. The writers didn't know about the Penny fight in the volume 1 finale until after the episode aired. We already knew - even when Monty was alive - that there was a communication problem between the writers and Monty which was caused by the way Monty worked. Even Monty mentioned that.
Dealing with an actual breach of the city could have been a good climax for the episode. It became entirely too busy, however, to be effective and the two important points ended up being lost and even cast to one side. Those two points were about undermining Ozpin's public reputation and his ability to do his job and activating Adam because of the loss of White Fang lives.
One thing it still manages to do (but hindsight is needed for this one), is show us what Oobleck was talking about to Ruby when he indicated that the Grimm who were genuinely threatening do not habitually attack cities and sit back, waiting. The younger, less threatening Grimm were immeidately sucked into an opportunity to attack the city, and were put down fairly easily by trained huntsmen and a dedicated robotic army (with a bit of help from trainee huntsmen) despite the numbers of Grimm that got involved.
It showed us just how easily huntsman can put down even a city breach, and therefore why the more experienced Grimm hold back. Without that city breach being so easily countered, a Level 9 breach with multiple flanks at the same time would have seemed like a ridiculously over-the-top moment that's come out of the blue. Now we know that huntsmen can easily put down Grimm even when they breach a city, Cinder's super-complicated plan of having a three-pronged invasion makes sense. If you want a huntsman academy to burn, that over-the-top attack is precisely what you have to do to achieve it.
So, the Volume 2 finale definitely does have its place - but the writers and animators did say at the time that there were reasons it was underwhelming.
My big complaint about the first three volumes (and this complaint is sadly not limited to this show, it's a very common complaint in both shows and literature). Very early on in Volume 2, the writers and Monty said that Ozpin is extremely intelligent and perceptive and Cinder knows that opposing Ozpin can only ever succeed if you come up with an extremely well-organised, patient and intelligent plan to counter him. That's the reason for Cinder's complex, mysterious behaviour, but neither the writers nor Monty have really allowed us to see Ozpin being intelligent and perceptive where the villains are concerned to justify the lengths Cinder has gone to. There's no point telling us in interviews that Ozpin is dangerously intelligent and competent for any villain to go up against, the story has to show us.
Part of the problem is that Ozpin has been kept so mysterious we don't see inside him at all - we only ever see what other people think about Ozpin and how other people interpret Ozpin's behaviour. Another part of the problem is the all too common You Can't Thwart Stage One issue which often makes the mistake of dumbing down the protagonists to build up the villains instead of taking the more difficult route of making the protagonists genuinely completent and the villains even more so.
edited 15th Oct '16 7:16:10 AM 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.Like I said, we already know why that happened. We had staff that were under a ridiculously short schedule for producing the final episode, and then a lead animator decided to change the episode at the last minute for the sake of Rule of Cool without telling anyone else, including the writers, what he was doing.
We don't know how well the original final episode would have unfolded and whether or not there would have been suitable atmosphere during it because we never got to see it. We therefore cannot say if the original concept was good or bad because that's not what we ended up seeing.
My point was that the claim that the problem was the writers appears to target the wrong people as the writers (just as they were for the volume 1 finale) were left out of what content ended up being put into the final episode until it was too late.
I know Shane shared Monty's dislike of storyboarding, but I think Volume 3 has benefited hugely from it, especially the finale. That isn't to say I don't think there are problems with the writing and the plotting of the story (I mentioned one or two of my issues in my previous post).
edited 15th Oct '16 7:24:49 AM 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.Yep! Well, I never heard his own words part, but I recognize the symptoms due to experience working with similar people and trends I noticed.
Improving as an author, one video at a time.Please tell me you're talking about Chibi.
That's not really better but if you're saying Volume 2 was all cringe and you're counting Coco's No-Holds-Barred Beatdown I will find a way to slap you across the internet.
This is the first time anyone's said anything bad about Chibi since it started... well there was one person who wasn't impressed but they stopped posting awhile ago. How on earth could the finale have been bad?
edited 15th Oct '16 10:25:06 AM by Soble
I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!Damnit, I still wanted them to do their own Don't Hug Me i'm Scared...
A corpse should be left well enough alone...
