#also apologies for the long post these were gonna go side-by-side but them grimm's head woulda been cut off

[keymintt]

starting off the year with drawing these two, naturally

[kiryienka]

RWBY Volume 4: Chapter 1 Review

NOTE: I am a big fan of RWBY, have been since its inception. Please view any of the ideas and views presented in this review as somewhat tongue-in-cheek as intended, but also note that any negative criticisms are not just ‘hating’ or anything like that. I want to see this show succeed just as much as the next guy.

RWBY, the brainchild of the late Monty Oum. A significant pioneer in the world of online media, RWBY has in a short lifespan become one of the largest shows online. Volumes 1 through 3 were huge successes, and so when Chapter 4 started late last year, people were understandably very much looking forward to it, myself included. Today we seem to have reached the end of the Volume with Chapter 12, and after taking everything in and processing it, it is with a heavy heart that I say:

RWBY Volume 4 was pretty bad.

Ok, so I don’t have to be told that this is an unpopular opinion to say the least. So far I have heard mostly good things about the season in general. The reason I’m making this review is not 'to convince you that it’s bad’, but more to expand on my thoughts as to why I think it’s bad, and what could have been done better to rectify it. I liked RWBY when it started out, and I’d like to see it continue for many more seasons to come, but not if it will follow what seems to be a pattern of self-degradation.

I now find myself re-watching the season so that I can give you the best and most understanding perspective I can. Let’s start off with Chapter 1: The Next Step.

The first shot of the episode is this weird pool of goo which turns out to be a Grimm birthing pit of sorts, the camera panning out to reveal a whole bunch of these things in the area. I really like this start, actually. First of all, it gives us some information on how Grimm are made/where they come from, and it also provides the groundwork for the animation department to show off the extent of the new and improved rendering techniques. In this shot, they look great, with dynamic lighting being the most notable improvement. Not just the Grimm, but the entire environment, seems to be lit and  rendered in a similar way, and it looks pretty good and, at the very least, brand-spankin’ new.

So that shot transitions smoothly into a looking-out-a-window shot with Mercury and Emerald, kinda just… looking. Emerald has this puzzling expression of what seems to be a mix between shock, disgust, grief and confusion. And Mercury just looks like he woke up on the wrong side of the bed that morning. They’re summoned to a table by Cinder (who, by the way, is not dead, so immediate red flag going off in my head), who is accompanied at the table by three other men, all of whom are immediately presumably lackeys of Salem: Guy with suit and mustache who immediately looks like an asshole, Guy with unkempt hair and squinting eyes, squatting on his chair rather than sitting and grinning creepily at nothing (he’s crazy I guess, fine, whatever), and sleeping beard guy, who actually doesn’t look too menacing and is the only one at the table that I give any thought into 'who is this guy and what are they like’.

Then we look at Cinder, who has a wicked scar coming from the left side of her face, which is covered by a patch of some sort and her hair. I immediately find myself asking, what happened at the end of the last Volume that didn’t actually kill Cinder, and seems at first appearance to have only superficially damaged her, but that drove her away/stopped her? I assumed she was dead, but lo and behold, she does not just survive, but lives to fight another day. I guess I like Cinder’s character in general so I’ll let it slide for now.

We are now 1:30 into a 20-minute video, so you can tell that each part of this review is gonna be a bit on the long side. Can’t wait for part 12 (the video having been a whopping 27 minutes, which is a whole other thing I want to complain about).

So, everyone I’ve mentioned so far is now around the table. Suit-mustache guy is the first to speak, telling Cinder to 'keep her “possy” in check’, with a snide and asshole-ish tone of course. There’s one for two on character assumptions. But also, what prompted him to even say that? It seems that this exchange is to show SM guy’s disdain with Cinder and 'possy’, and vice versa, but it is sorta just thrust in there without warning, or even reason. Then he goes on to mention the wonderful 'silence’, despite the fact that the room was completely silent before he opened his big dumb mouth. Then he of course pokes fun at the fact that Cinder was beaten by a 'little girl’, and crazy guy suggests what he would do; hunt her down and then… he makes allusion to the fact that she (being Ruby) 'took’ Cinder’s eye… so I guess Cinder lost an eye? Ok, that’s a bit more problematic, sure, but it still feels weird that such a specific injury derived from the indiscernible flash of light that ended the conflict in the last Volume. Also, this guy is crazy, so I’m 2 for 2 on character assumptions. If that wasn’t enough to convince you, he then laughs crazily just so the point gets across.

The theme I’m noticing at this point is this: present the information to the audience in the most obvious way possible, so we know nobody will misunderstand. I know it probably wasn’t the intention, but I feel like my intelligence and skills of reasoning are being insulted. It’s not giving me even a chance to make inferences about these characters and the situation, and is instead making everything as clear as possible from the very first scene. Oh, there are these three guys. Oh, one of them is an asshole to Cinder. Oh, Cinder is banged up. Oh, specifically, Cinder lost an eye. Oh, this guy is crazy. It feels like I’m getting slapped in the face with basic information that could have been inferred within a few minutes of screen time, not having even been given a chance to do so.

Cinder tries to talk, but is too hoarse or something. I guess her voice is gone too… for some… reason? If the narrative reason for the fact that Cinder is injured in a way that still allows her to get back into the thick of fighting after a little while, and if it’s as black and white as everything else in this scene, it’s that they didn’t want to put this character out of commission to fight. Spoiler alert, that mentality persists through the entire series, not just for this character. More on that a few episodes down the road.

Before SM guy can get more mockery in, the doors to the room open and in comes Salem, with her own theme music too! She walks around the room to the other side of the table, menacingly, and stares at some candles. “Watts”, she says, drawing the attention of SM guy – if I knew his name was so simple as his character, I would have taken a guess. Then she uses the word 'malignance’ to describe his behaviour. I had to look up this word to find that its definition is… the quality of being malign. Well screw you too, I’m just gonna assume it means something like f***ery and move on. After that (which was totally 100% necessary) Salem signals everyone to sit down (they stood when she entered the room, forgot to mention. Didn’t think it’d be worth mentioning. Watts responds to her by apologizing, followed by the conversational equivalent of a vague-post directed towards Cinder, which kinda negates any possible meaning behind the initial apology. Salem defends Cinder with the whole fall maiden thing, and this is the only thing so far that I can infer that hasn’t been thrown in my face: Salem, despite acting like it, doesn’t care any more about Cinder than anyone else at the table, and is using emotional manipulation to put Cinder under pressure to do… whatever it is she’s supposed to do.

Now, I have to ask, why is Cinder at this table? That is to say, why was Cinder taken into this group at all? If it’s to get the power of the fall maiden… why? Why couldn’t Salem do that? Now, obviously, Salem wouldn’t exactly be able to stealthily permeate the tournament like Cinder did, but surely there were other ways. I suppose you could go with the 'Salem is a Grimm’ theory, but I haven’t seen enough to buy into that yet.

So Salem lists off these great reasons why Watts shouldn’t be poking fun. About how she’s the fall maiden, brought down Beacon, and 'killed dear Ozpin’. So first of all, yeah, Ozpin is more important than he let on, great, dandy, like we couldn’t figure that out. But more importantly, this list was presented in a specific way. Salem put great emphasis on the killing Ozpin point. A clear narrative sign that Ozpin is, indeed, not going to be dead. Because I’m going to forget later, spoiler alert: He is dead, but they’re going to continue to BS his way in the series one way or another, and I hate the way they eventually did…

So Salem asks Watts the good question; what was Cinder’s 'failure’ that he keeps mentioning? The girl with the silver eyes. According to Watts anyway, which prompts beard to chime in (who I thought was asleep but I may not have cared enough to notice) about how they’ve dealt with these people already. But how is that a failure? Ruby was kind of an unforeseen circumstance in my estimation, and judging by the fact that Salem doesn’t mention it, it almost definitely wasn’t part of Cinder’s instructions. Though, if they know that silver eyes means trouble, then that means that Cinder really should have got Ruby out of the picture as soon as possible, so I guess you can consider that a failure.

Watts continues to grill Cinder for a bit and then Salem says something weird that made me pause: 'It’s because of the maiden’s power’. Um… That doesn’t explain how Cinder was bested… quite the opposite actually. Salem talks about a 'crippling weakness’ that comes with the newfound strength, but doesn’t bother mentioning what it is. It also begs the question, exactly how long ago was the fall of Beacon with this conversation only just taking place now? Cinder is told that she will stay there as her treatment continues. Then Salem calls up 'Doctor’ Watts all of a sudden. Doctor of what? Does it matter? Probably not, but it does still annoy me. So Watts is told to take Cinder’s place and meet some informant in Mistral. Take note of that, and keep it somewhere you can find, because when will we find out who this informant is? The very end of the very last episode.

Tierian (which is a really annoying name because they could have easily gone with a real name like Tiernan, but nooooo), who is apparently the crazy guy, is instructed to continue a hunt for the spring maiden. Hazel, who is beard, but I might still just call him beard anyway, is to go to the leader of the White Fang, an encounter arranged by Adam, who for whatever reason is still on these guys’ side.

Now Cinder wants to speak, so she raises a hand which apparently means 'Emerald, come over here so I can whisper in your ear’. The message, Cinder wants to know what about Ruby? Watts states that it’s 'Cinder’s problem, not ours’. But… you just said that that was her 'failure’. You stress this quite a lot for something which you now claim doesn’t matter. Even though it apparently doesn’t matter, Salem changes Tierian’s mission to go get Ruby and bring her there.

After Tierian laughs himself silly, we see a smash cut to… this… guy… who is this? Well, they look young I guess, probably around 15. Clothes indicate a rural life, probably literally on a farm. And no, it almost 100% is not the spring maiden. Stop perpetuating that nonsensical theory.

Anyway, farm-boy here wakes up from a nightmare, and because I’m an asshole I have to point out that he was sleeping in his bed in his regular day-clothes (with like a suspender and s**t). Anyway, he leaves his room and the next cut reveals that he is indeed on a farm. My clairvoyance frightens me. And do we learn anything else about this character? … No. No we don’t. It was a proper waste of a minute or so of my life.

And now we cut to a forest. In this forest we see Nora talking Ren’s ear off discussing what their new team name. Nora argues that because there are more members of JNPR than RWBY in their crew, they should go with JNRR, even though, according to Ren, 'junior isn’t a colour’, which I wasn’t aware was a prerequisite to be a team name (CFVY? CDNL? They are names of colours, but very unconventional names the layman wouldn’t know.). I guess colour is an important thing with names in this society. How do I know this? Well, Ozpin mentioned it in a speech in season 2, the only time it was ever mentioned. So when you throw it into this conversation, it doesn’t make sense to most viewers, and it took me a while to understand the logic as well. Ren’s proposition is that because the objective is Ruby’s, she should be the leader, making RNJR appropriate (but I don’t remember 'ranger’ being the name of a colour either). My suggestion for a name was TDFM, which stands for THIS DOESN’T F***ING MATTER. Jaune shared my sentiment, though, not as violently. But then backpedals and says that 'JNRR is way cooler’, because sure, let’s continue this comedic scene which is more infuriating than it is funny.

Cue rumble sound and ground shake, and Ruby is fighting some big rock monster. It looks pretty damn cool, if I’m honest. But more important than that is, how is the fight choreography? Simple answer: not great. Individual movements are not bad, but everyone has a much more ridiculous weightlessness, almost flying in their attacks for seconds and seconds. Not only are the characters weightless, but their weapons are as well. Nora swinging around her hammer looks like she’s playing with a styrofoam toy. It’s silly at best. Nora also says 'crap’ randomly in the battle (at a point when nothing is really happening so I don’t know why). I don’t have any problem with cursing, if you can call crap a curse word. They’ve just never done anything close to that in this series so far. So I can expect that that will hold up, right? This is a more mature show now with more mature themes, right? Nope. Only instance of a word like that that I can remember, there may have been one or two more at most. Next point, Ruby uses her semblance… excessively, to put it lightly, in this battle. Now that would be fine, if we didn’t already know that that uses up her aura, and we’ve already seen that she isn’t able to use it too much without getting tired. Then, Jaune comments on the fact that he doesn’t have a weapon. So what happened to his weapon? Eh, let’s not address it now when it’s actually important.

So this big ol’ rock-Grimm poses a demonstrable threat, and they have a lot of trouble with it. Eventually they find that the way to defeat it is to attack its face. When Jaune comes to this realisation, he formulates the plan to knock all of its limbs off at once and then attack the face so that it can’t protect itself. How does he present this plan to the others? “Guys, I got it! We hit it… harder!” Are. You. F***ing. Serious. Let’s just move on from this scene, because the list of things I could complain about in it is growing faster than the f***ing rate of acceleration of the universe. Though, I will just add, everyone was then told the plan to knock off all its limbs and then attack the face, and the Grimm was defeated by… not doing that. God, I need a drink.

So apparently they were just doing an extermination job for some old dude in a village, which I suppose prevents me from asking why it’s necessary to fight this thing, but inadvertently makes me ask why they’re wasting their time doing odd-jobs. Then they go to a blacksmith, where Jaune’s weapon apparently was, along with a shiny new set of armour. He takes off his old armour, which reveals on the front of his hoodie, a cute design of a bunny. Now first of all, I’d wear the s**t out of that hoodie, but second, at this point we begin what may be the most irritating exchange I have ever watched in any show, movie or short.

Ruby starts to make fun of Jaune’s hoodie, which is fine, it’s a little unexpected of him I guess. But then she starts laughing and screams about how 'it’s got a cute little bunny rabbit’, as if that wasn’t obvious to anyone in the world. Jaune details that it’s 'Pumpkin Pete’, from some brand of cereal, as Ruby continues to laugh. She jokingly asks if it was a box top prize, to which Jaune responds that it was, needing a whole 50 of them. And she continues to laugh and laugh and laugh, and where it gets seriously obnoxious is at this point where the animation department decided to make her whole head grow and do this weird movement towards the camera. It’s extremely jarring and highlights a few things. Firstly, her facial expression is not one of somebody dying of laughter. If you cover her mouth, it looks like she’s in pain, and if you cover her eyes, it looks like she’s talking normally. Mashed together, it looks like Lt. Cm. Data trying to heartily laugh – it conveys the fact that Ruby is laughing, but it looks so mechanical, artificial and bland that it takes you out of that mindset, and the entire scene, completely. Also, the movement of the mouth and face is ridiculously minimal. It doesn’t look like she’s laughing at all. It almost looks like whoever animated it did so without hearing what the laugh would sound like, and the voice actress did the laugh without seeing what the animation would look like. Lastly, it is the first point that you will notice – and this will continue for the entire season – that shots last way too long. The zoomed-in Ruby laughing portion of this exchange, with minimal movement and no change in anything else, lasts an agonizing 8 seconds, which is extremely long for what isn’t even a gag, but a character’s reaction to said gag.

I also hate how Nora and Ren just stand there, just f***ing stand there, while this goes on. I imagine they’re not laughing because they knew about this sweater already, but then you’re not even gonna defend Jaune or something? Not gonna contribute to the conversation and make more fun of him? Not even gonna tell Ruby to shut up? They just stand there with dopey half-smiles on their faces as if part of them doesn’t really know what’s going on, another part is wondering why they’re wasting time here when they’re trying to go to Mistral, and the rest of them is just like 'why are we being dragged through another season of this hell’.

So then the blacksmith brings out the new sword and shield, commenting on the nice metal Jaune brought him and that it 'accents the white nicely’. When asked from where it was procured, Jaune states that it’s 'from a friend’. Now, because this exchange is extremely vague, and this point is never addressed again, I’ll spell it out for you. Jaune melted down the metal from Pyrrha’s shield and possibly her weird crown-thingy. It’s hinted by the similar shape to that crown towards the bottom of the shield’s design. So… did Pyrrha not have any family that would have liked to have the last remains of their daughter? Did they just say 'nah, let her former boyfriend of 5 seconds keep it, I’m sure it means a lot more to him than to us’?

So when they leave the smith, in one shot Jaune puts the sword in the sheath and it attaches to the back of his arm somehow. It just floats there, so I think 'oh, I guess that’s where it goes now, fine, whatever’. Then, in the shot after next in the very same scene, it’s on his waist. What. I don’t. Kill me.

So they continue on to the next village, where they hope to find an operational 'airship’ to quicken the journey to Haven Academy. They also allude to the fact that Nora seems to have lost their map as they walk aimlessly in a direction, but the camera pans away anyway because who needs maps am I right? That’s not important.

The transition into the next scene is a little jarring but somewhat smooth at the same time. The camera slowly moves into the sky and fades from clear blue to another sky with a few clouds, and then suddenly, jets. Turn down your headphone volume or it will be a little uncomfortable. We see Weiss in some room, staring dramatically out a window before someone enters the room. Judging by the white blandness pervading every object in this room, it’s pretty easy to guess that this is her home, quickly confirmed by the new entrant, a butler, summoning 'Miss Schnee’ to her father. And it is with Weiss’ character model that I first though, 'something isn’t right’. At this point in, I wasn’t sure what, just that the characters definitely looked weird to me for some reason. I’ll bring it up again when I realised what the problem was, which will be a few episodes on. And the episode ends there, just suddenly. I ask, what was the point of showing Weiss in this episode pointlessly for less than a minute? Especially when you consider the fact that we weren’t shown Yang or Blake. The world may never know.

So finally we reach the new opening for this season and it’s… horrendous. There’s no being kind to this, it’s simply awful. Immediately, the song 'Let’s Just Live’ is sub-par to the Williams’ standards, and it also has a confusingly upbeat nature despite this season coming off the back of such a dark end to the last, and not being expected to get much brighter. The first shot in this opening is a s**ttily animated sphere of some sort with portions coloured red, white, black and yellow. The reason why I complain about it is twofold. The colours within the sphere are not divided equally, and instead look like an Egyptian flag with an unexplained discolouration on the right side. And despite the fact that the sphere is not coloured in quartered segments, the halo around it is, which makes it look all the worse. So then there are Grimm clawing at the thing and one eats it, any potential meaning behind which is far too vague to parse at any point in the season. Then you have four coloured circles of the same colours spinning around aimlessly and then they break out of what looks to be Beacon Tower and go off their separate ways around a map. This is obviously to represent the four members of team RWBY off having their own journeys and development, but it could have been conveyed in a way that didn’t look quite so lazy.

We cut to Ruby walking along when wind blows off her hood (which was up for whatever reason) and the remainder of JNPR is behind her. The camera zooms in towards them with… speed lines. Why this was thought to be necessary by the animation department is a question that I may never find the answer to, because it really is there not just for no reason, but for a completely nonsensical purpose. There was nothing fast about the camera’s or anything else’s movement, nor was there anything exciting in nature about the shot. Then they walk off and we see a crow fly towards the camera, and this is the point where you ask yourself why we haven’t seen Qrow, who we can assume with reasonable certainty is following RNJR/JNRR. The crow transitions into a standing shot of, you guessed it, Qrow, as if literally to dispel that thought you just had not half a second ago.

Then we cut to Weiss reading a book, and she turns around to see her butler (I know his name is Clyne, but I don’t know if that’s how it’s spelled or if it’s Klein or Klyne or Clein or Clayne or any number of spellings so I just didn’t bother writing it up to this point) and somebody standing behind him. Judging by the short stature, white hair and neat and tidy suit, I am going to assume it’s Weiss’ younger brother, and chances are he’s going to be an asshole (no points for guessing whether that assumption will be correct). Then it cuts to this dude in a study who we can assume to be Weiss’ father, who is probably also an asshole. I say assume, because, correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t remember ever seeing this guy’s face at any point in the last three seasons. Ironwood is there too I guess. Then it zooms into Mr Schnee’s eye to transition to Weiss seemingly having a mental breakdown. You can ascertain from this that Weiss’ father is emotionally/psychologically abusive or manipulative. I see that as heavy-handed, but for that one I’ll concede that maybe that’s just me.

Smash-cut (literally) to Blake standing on the long-pointy bit on the end of a ship (I could look it up, but giving people something to complain about other than this review seems like a good idea). Sun suddenly jumps from behind her and hugs her quite violently. Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that such a motion would have pushed the both of them clear off the front of the ship. If you look at the frames just between 18:46 and 18:47, the strange expression on Blake’s face coupled with the robotic stiffness of her body should at least give you a chuckle. I would criticise it more were it not for the fact that this is the 4536th word in this document and I would like to finish this as soon as possible. This other huge guy with a big beard and really weird chest hair (which I will address once this character is actually introduced) puts his hands on their shoulders. Now, one can’t really derive just from this who or what this character is, and at this moment I assumed he was someone on the ship or something (which was wrong, shocking, I know). And then he violently pushes Sun away, and another character jumps into his place. It’s a shorter but older-looking woman than Blake, and most importantly she is a cat Faunus as well, which immediately leads to the realisation that she is Blake’s mother, and the man is therefore her father.

Then we take a look at Yang, who seems to be training with her father Taiyang, no arm and all. Her hair looks bizarre in how large it is and how much it juts out, but that’s really the least of my qualms at this point. The camera is spinning around the pair, and when it’s behind Yang, Taiyang is replaced with a replica of Yang, +1 arm. And then she falls backwards into a weird fiery image of Adam. At this point you think 'fine, makes sense, it’s PTSD or whatever’ before two random people jump in front of the scene for seemingly no reason. One is visibly a Faunus, and they both are wearing strange robes with a red hood vaguely in the shape of a snake head. We learn who these people are a few episodes later, but any possible connection to Adam or Yang is actually never explained, so the way this is cut together is especially strange.

Then we see Hazel, Cinder, Tierian, Watts and Salem in succession, standing at different strata of a rock structure and posing menacingly. It goes from there to a scene with Ruby fighting Tierian, with oddly slow and sweeping movements from both parties. What’s worse, in this exchange none of Ruby’s attacks are at all in a position or direction to threaten Tierian, and he isn’t even attacking at all, just sort of break dancing. Then we go to Adam attacking Blake. I can’t even notice the choreography of this exchange because it’s all put on the back burner by the goofy expression of 'fear’ on Blake’s face for a whole half a second of panning in. It transitions then to Weiss. If patterns are to be followed, she’d be fighting one of the bad guys, probably Hazel or Watts, right? Nope. She’s just… practicing, I guess? In her room, nobody there. Then we go back to RNJR/JNRR fighting random Grimm with more slow and awkward movements before they stand there and pose. One last crow wipe shows the members of team RWBY standing around and looking away from the camera as it tracks up to the title. A title that also appeared near the start of the opening, would you believe.

Well, there you have it, that was my review of RWBY Volume 4 Chapter 1. Again, this is written to be tongue-in-cheek but also because I want to see the series get better, not worse. These are truly my opinions, just exaggerated for entertainment value (because who wants to read about 5000 words which are boring?). I don’t have a timeline for the next part of this review, but if people want more then I will try to do it within the next two weeks or so if possible. Until then, thanks for reading.