I've been bingeing Redvs Blue recently and going off of it, if RWBY is going to on as long it has I'd expect volumes like volume 4 to be fairly common because I got a similar vibe from like every other season of R vs. B after season six.
Okay so I just went ahead and watched the other video, which turned out to be about the series as a whole up to that point, not just season three.
tldr, season one was a mixed bag with some good bits and some terrible bits, season two was just an improvement overall (mostly good, some great, fewer terrible), and season three was even better because it has all of season two's general improvements plus goes in an entirely new and exciting direction with the plot during the finale.
I'm not going to summarize his points more specifically than that other than to comment on them, because it's a 20-minute video and I'd inevitably forget and/or mangle his points.
His main point about season one is that several of the characters are problematic because they're either bland (like Pyrrha) or straight-up unlikable (like Weiss, who's just unpleasant, or Jaune, who is cringey and annoying) but that virtually all of these characters are redeemed via character development in season two (Jaune gets some self-confidence and remains adorkable but without the cringe, Pyrrha's relationship with Jaune gives her a Lonely at the Top aspect that makes her more interesting, and Weiss just kinda chills out in general). I largely agree with all of this, except with Weiss who I never really warmed up to as much as he did. One thing that he mentions about Weiss which I found interesting is that he points out that there are basically two sides of her personality that are pretty much entirely disconnected from each other. Sometimes she's the cold, aloof rich girl who looks down her nose at everyone else, and sometimes she's less standoffish and more excitable, and there's no real transition from one to the other. He seems to read it as the latter being her real personality and the former being a persona she's developed in an attempt to live up to her family's expectations, but — as he points out — they do a terrible job of showing that, which is why I don't really buy it.
His comments on the season three finale are almost entirely on the concept and very little about the execution, so while I don't really disagree with his specific thoughts (for example, that getting rid of the school setting opens up a lot of interesting new plot directions), I don't agree with his overall conclusion (that the season three finale was great and left him wanting more). My beef with the season three finale has always been that it felt like an Only The Author Can Save Us Now sitaution. The bad guys held all the cards and had absolute control over everything, which completely killed the dramatic tension for me and made the whole thing a drag because it felt like a foregone conclusion. Oddly, he didn't mention Ruby's silver-eye powers (either in this video or the season four video) at all, which is interesting because it's a huge part of my problem with both the season three finale and Ruby's character development (or lack thereof) in season three and four. Apparently he's willing to accept magical eye-powers if it gets the plot where he wants it to go, while I find them really unsatisfying and annoying.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.I think one of RWBY's problems is that it tries to use anime storytelling conventions while also using more Western storytelling conventions. Because of that, you're going to have some fans (like me) who think the show would be better if it went full anime while others think it'd be better if it got rid of as much anime-esque stuff as possible and it's literally impossible to please both.
Let the joy of love give you an answer! Check out my book!It's impossible to please both sides...
If one side likes one style but not the other...the people in the middle don't count because they'll just be talking about the real flaws.
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.Except that Volume 4 is packed full of plot advancement.
There's more plot exploration in Volume 4 than in any volume to date. It just happens in a different (and less blood-pumping) manner to the previous volumes (novel-esque rather than video-game-esque).
When I see people complaining about 'no plot advancement' in Volume 4, what they're usually complaining about is this different manner of developing the plot and the pros and cons that don't make the volume enjoyable for them. I've got no problems with people not enjoying the way Volume 4 is carried out (for example, see below), but the fandom has conflated style of storytelling with 'plot advancement' in a way that should not happen.
I think his concern here is perfectly valid because the show does suffer from the Show, Don't Tell problem.
The show seems to have take a decision that things are seen from the perspective of the main characters. That means anything they're not directly involved with doesn't get seen by the audience. It is a very long-standing, traditional style of storytelling. Some storytellers can pull it off, some storytellers can't.
For example, David Eddings. His Belgariad series is hit-and-miss for me in its ability to pull off this style of storytelling (it's mostly seen from Garion's point-of-view, so the reader only learns as Garion does —- except for those few occasions where the reader journeys with Ce'Nedra instead of Garion). That style drove me mad in the Belgariad books because I don't think Eddings pulled it off well at all. However, the Mallorean books did a much better job of handling this style, making for a much better overall reading experience.
In RWBY, the 'from the protagonist's POV' has worked well for Volumes 1-3, because the kids are only just beginning to learn the truth about the world they live in, so the audience learns with them. However, one example of where it was a missed opportunity is the fact that we didn't get to see much in the way of faunus discrimination. We got told about it too much. With Blake hiding her Faunus status, we don't get to see what she's hiding from, and Velvet isn't in the show enough for us to see more than the one example of bullying in a storyline that actually focusses on Jaune's position as leader, rendering the faunus discrimination a bully-boy footnote.
That means the missed opportunity is Sun. He's the one where the faunus discrimination could be really explored, especially because of his laid-back personality and dislike of the White Fang, and especially since otherwise good people could conflate his laid-back, no-personal-boundaries style with his faunus heritage in a more realistic approach to racism (people in real life can often seem like they're starting with 'legitimate' issues that when poked only slightly fall apart to reveal the racism driving the issue). We did see a little bit with Weiss, but it was displayed as if very unusual because of unique circumstances.
But that's a Show, Don't Tell problem rather than a 'from the protagonist's POV' problem. And the separation between the two is the big problem with Volume 4. Because we see things from the protagonist's POV, we don't get to see everything. That's fine, but only if they are the window to us actually seeing what's happening around them, instead of being told about it. And with the main characters too isolated from the societies where the Beacon fallout is happening, we're just not seeing the fallout right now. We get one or two glimpses at best, and are told the rest.
However, I don't always agree with things like this, where the implication from the person talking about is that they want to see every single plot thread, every single question being dealt with in every single volume.
No, we don't need to circle around every subject in ever volume. In an ongoing storyline we dip in and out of aspects as the authors feel relevant for the flow of the story. We don't have to cover every subject in every volume. If we get to the very end of the story, and there's no more RWBY to ever come, and Penny was never revisited or we never do find out what happened to Neo, then we've got cause to complain about things not being addressed.
Until the story ends, however, we're not in a position to say Plot Thread A should have occurred during Volume X. It's fair enough to say 'these are the plot threads I'm most interested in and wish we'd seen more' — I've got no problem with that. But we should have no expectations that every aspect of the plot should ever be covered in a single volume. That's too much and will kill the volume through over-stuffing.
Edit: Corrected post format problem.
edited 29th May '17 3:47:32 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.I agree, and that's the issue. Too many things were happening, so almost everything suffered from mismanaged screentime and relevance. Blake's arc is the only one who's issues have nothing to do with this, and work on spite of the actual issues in her arc.
Overall, volume four feels less like "holy crap, everything is different now!" and more like "okay, everything will be different next season, promise". Some stuff happened, sure, but very little of it had anything to do with the fallout of season three.
No, it really isn't. RWBY is nowhere near close to being over, and people are inevitably going to be more invested and interested in different plotlines based on taste. "They didn't focus on what I hoped they would" is absolutely a legit reason for personal disappointment, but it is in no way valid basis for objective criticism.
There's a very easy example of that in this season: the Ren and Nora backstory. A lot of people who considered that pointless or poorly done, and that's fine, but there are also a lot of people who loved it, and would consider the volume much worse if that had been removed. Different priorities and interest and Ren and Nora factor heavily into which opinion you hold on the matter.
As others have said, they can't focus on everything all the time, and spreading themselves too thin might very well have hampered their story-telling on what they did show. And for the specific criticisms: I'm very doubtful of them forgetting Penny, and Neo frankly is so unimportant that even if they did never bring her up again it really wouldn't matter. I don't think they should just leave her hanging there, but her only significant connection to the story is Torchiwick, and he's gone.
RWBY season 4 feels the same way to me as A Song of Fire and Ice book 4: the previous installment was ridiculous so let’s just give up on escalating and set up for the rest of the series with some ok but not remarkable plotting.
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." TwitterIf you mean they're separate or should be considered separately, I disagree.
It was both.
It definitely did not end on the idea that the Big Bad was finally making her move. She was, in fact, very clear that she was only just getting started. Salem merely confirmed that all we've seen is the story's introduction.
That's a different subject to the bit I'm talking about. I'm saying there are two different issues here.
It's absolutely not a valid criticism, and it is absolutely vital that, for some things, you simply have to wait for the end of the story before you can sensibly critique it. I have read stories that were split across multiple novels - trilogies, tetralogies, pentalogies, etc. Sometimes with years between the release of each novel.
Just because you might sit down and read a single novel in four or five hours or wait four years between the first book in the story and the final book in the story note , it doesn't change the fact that a story develops to have different strands appear and disappear at varying points of the storyline. It doesn't matter whether you're waiting four hours to see a plot thread or a character crop again or four years. The concept is the same, no matter the length of the story or the medium through which the story is told.
Waiting one year because that particular volume doesn't raise the subject in a work that is designed to span years? Not a problem. At the age of eleven, I was waiting two years from one novel until the next in the series could be published (and then several months on top of that again because I couldn't afford the hardback and had to wait for the paperback release). Waiting one year, at my age, is absolutely nothing.
I will certainly develop my own opinion about where different strands of the story appear and disappear and reappear, but only when the story is complete and I can see where they went from and where they ended up; and from everything I was ever taught in literature studies, it's the reasonable thing to do. As a result, I will always be adamant that you [generic] cannot sensibly discuss the structure of the storyline until all the pieces have been revealed and the entire storyline completed and that the length of the story - or how many years in real life - it spans during the publishing (serialisation) phase isn't an excuse to over-stuff a single novel (or, in this case, volume).
edited 29th May '17 4:32:19 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.![]()
Beach episode. Monty did say that Ruby surfing on the food tray during the food fight was foreshadowing, so that obviously means we're supposed to have a beach episode where the students all fight marine Grimm on surfboards and water-skis.
edited 29th May '17 4:35:51 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.If you watch a show for X and the show doesn't provide X for an entire season, you are well within your right to complain.
Let the joy of love give you an answer! Check out my book!Well that really depends on what X is doesn't it? Certain factors are not necessarily central and as such would not be a part of every season or even part of most seasons. I mean, anyone can complain about whatever they want, but I don't think all complaints necessarily hold the same weight.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/lb_i.php?lb_id=13239183440B34964700 Alfric's Fire Emblem Liveblog Encyclopedia!I suppose. As an example, if you say that Spice And Wolf (an anime you absolutely need to watch) sucks because it doesn't provide more of the fight scenes the I'd have to ask just why in the world you watched the show long enough to get to one of the handful of fight scenes (if you want to call them that) throughout the entire series.
Let the joy of love give you an answer! Check out my book!If your complaint is "not enough Neo" then no, that is not a complaint I feel the writers should in anyway take to heart.
More generally, if your complaint is about not enough focus on people or things you put more investment into that the show gave you reason to, that is also on you.
While there are areas they need to improve on, you aren't going to please everyone, and things like that strike me as a waste of time pandering to people instead of legit trying to improve.
edited 29th May '17 5:25:53 PM by LSBK

I can see why someone would like Weiss' arc, but I agree that Blake's was better while Weiss' wan't particularly even decent. I also think that plot Uniquenameosaurus wrote out for Yang would be pretty good, especially because it wouldn't need to give her more than 2 episodes of screentime. And the comment about season 4 feeling more like season 3? I love that comment. It sums up so many critical feelings I had about season 4 while watching it.