I wholeheartedly agree with this review. I admittedly wasn't too impressed with the first half of season 1, and while it still isn't perfect, I'm now finding it a lot more enjoyable since the series has definitely improved in a lot of areas.
I look at this current season and I see improvement, sure, but I still can't say it's good yet. Especially with all the overhype about "LOL PYRRHAS GONNA HAVE A TRAGIC BACKSTORY AND WILL DIE A VILLAIN" everyone assumed about.
I was one of the people who thought the first season had a lot of potential, but I stopped watching when failed to impress me despite some good moments. Can I jump into season 2 without having watched the first and still make sense of what's going on?
As Above, So Below
- "Can I jump into season 2 without having watched the first and still make sense of what's going on?"
That'd mostly depend on when you dropped the first season.
If you watched at least most of it, then you'll probably only be missing a name (or two) and may have only missed one major event. But if you dropped it early...? Eh... you might be able to still watch season 2 and get the gist of what's happening, but you'd definitely get more out of it if you're completely caught up on everything.
It's quite hard to judge, not much important plotwise happened in season 1, I think the only big things might be knowing that Blake is a [spoiler]faunus[/spoiler] and that the villains have basically hiijacked the White Fang which was an extremist civil rights group for faunus'. As long as you're ready to pick things up as you go along, I reckon you can jump right back in.
I will say, depending on how much season 1 failed to impress you, you might find rewatching it in one big chunk a lot easier than watching it the first time. It improves the pacing a lot (but you still have the plotting/animation/lack of action to deal with)
I was going to write a review for the end of the season too, but it feels unnecessary. The whole of season 2 (except maybe the finale) is exactly as good as the start of the season promised. This show won't necessarily blow your socks off yet, but you no longer have to work to like it. They've fixed the mistakes which make it much easier to enjoy the strong art design, fantastic fight scenes and strong fun character designs.
So this is officially a review for the whole of season 2 now
I was going to write a review for the end of the season too, but it feels unnecessary. The whole of season 2 (except maybe the finale) is exactly as good as the start of the season promised. This show won't necessarily blow your socks off yet, but you no longer have to work to like it. They've fixed the mistakes which make it much easier to enjoy the strong art design, fantastic fight scenes and strong fun character designs.
So this is officially a review for the whole of season 2 now
If you're going to cut out anything that can be called filler from season one, watch episode 1 (for a refresher on the past), 6 and 7 (for info on aura and some character stuff), 8 (bitching fight scene), 15 and 16 (setup for season 2, as well as bitching fight scene). If you care to check out the character development and extra world-building details, I recommend http://roosterteeth.com/members/journal/entry.php?id=3082879
the RWBY recaps series for both added comedy and a writer's analysis of the more interesting parts of the show writing-wise. It's impressively in-depth while still being funny and being the origin of/explaining a good number of RWBY memes (Juane Arc, for instance.).
I went and watched the first episode of Volume 2 after reading this, but I was prepared to be disappointed. GLAD I WAS PREPARED.
This is probably the mostly highly-reviewed work I've seen on this website, even more than Buffy.
Why is that?
Akira Toriyama (April 5 1955 - March 1, 2024).
I heard about RWBY first second-hand, so I don't full understand it, but as far as I can tell:
It's produced by Rooster Teeth who are one of the biggest producers of video content on the internet.
It's made by Mounty Oum who was one of the most famous internet fighting animators since practically before the internet. Haloid was one of the biggest things around way back when in 2007.
It's character designs are incredibly Tumblr friendly, as is a lot of the background physics and character details.
The music is frigging incredible.
And the trailers for the show were truly incredible trailers (that promised a show completely different from what RWBY actually is and way better than almost anything on the internet)
That created a perfect storm of internet publicity where practically every story focused internet community had to be checking out RWBY, and it also created a perfect storm of over-hype so that everyone had strong reactions to the show. If you check out the first and last trailer I linked to, just watching them and watching the show is going to create a lot of negativity because they're so different from each other. RWBY made everyone want beef bourguignon and then gave them pizza. Even if you like pizza, it's hard to mentally process the disappointment from the misplaced expectations
I'm not sure all the blame is on the trailers though; Monty and the crew themselves said that RWBY wasn't gonna be all-fighting-all-the-time (before and after the trailers came out)
Besides, trailers are meant to draw people in; that's a fact. But that also means, by default, that they can mislead, show stuff that isn't in the final cut, and other such stuff because they're crowd-drawers, but not entirely truthful depictions all the time. You can't logically expect the show's gonna be exactly the same as they show/imply - usually that just leads to unnecessary disappointment created by the people's reactions. I learned that former part early on, and thus largely avoided the latter myself.
There's just a tonal difference with the trailers though, that's going to cause a lot of backlash. It's even more of a dissonance than you normally get with trailers. They promise roast dinner when they're making pizza.
I don't deny that aspect, but I believe a similar approach to the tone must be taken to my 'set in stone' aspect. If it looks like roast dinner, then you can expect roast dinner, but also prepare yourself for anything else it might be instead
Works a lot better for disappointment imo
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Series 2 - Time To Check Back In
If you were originally interested in RWBY but the execution of season 1 drove you away, season 2 might be the time to renew your interest. The rise in quality is large enough to make the whole of season one look like an extended pilot.
RWBY is comfortable with itself at last. The fifteen minute episodes are a lot more satisfying and manage to tell a complete story. This gives RWBY a feeling of direction and allows itself to comfortably be defined as a mix of school drama with some higher stakes instead of the tonal clash of the first season. They're also much better at managing their large cast of characters now, despite adding yet more of them! The voice actors are more comfortable in their roles and whilst the team are still strong archetypes they've had the space to feel like real characters too who have an easy chemistry with each other (the exception being Jaune's cringe worthy arc). Weiss is still stuck up, but now it's the kind of stuck-up where their friends all know and love to jab at her now and then, whilst Weiss trusts them enough to let it pass, albeit clumsily because she's still new to letting her friends in.
There's been some kind of production miracle too. Compared to 2 fights in 16 7-minute episodes (once a week), RWBY season two has 3 spectacular fights in 5 15-minute episodes (once a week) so far. And they've achieved this whilst raising the quality of animation across the board. Non-fighting animation is still a little below par but it's improved to the point where it's very easy to ignore now. The fights are wonderful and manage to convey a huge amount of character and story-telling through just fighting. In particular episode 5 has a rundown between Pyrrha and a new bad guy that manages to show the characters of both people, be entertaining and convey the way the bad guy is deliberately sizing her up without showing what he's got. All without dialogue.
RWBY still isn't perfect, the trailers overhyped everyone for the first season and I don't want to commit that mistake for the new people rejoining. And we still have more episodes to come in this season. At the moment it's top class fight scenes, a strong character design and fair art aesthetic with great music but a mediocre plot and passable dialogue/animation. But if it managed to improve this much already imagine what season 3 will be...