Gizen said:
This is subjective. I felt some of the more serious moments from the recents RvB seasons were handled pretty well, so I feel they can do at least an acceptable job.
Haven't seen RvB so I'll take your word on this.
No, she isn't, but that has nothing to do with the point that I was responding to.
Yes it does. Because you see, our 'main' character is Ruby, insofar that she is the one character who is consistently the 'main' character. Ergo, the conflict between hero and villain (main character and main villain) is very much significant to the plot. If we cannot decide who the main villain is, we have to spend more and more time building up the "next" villain, and make them do worse and worse things to show how much worse that character is than the villain we had.
Did you not see Adam? His characterization seems to me to be forced so heavily into irredeemable slime territory that this is solely being done to cement the White Fang into "they are villains, period." There's no subtlety in his characterization, no nuance, no ambiguity.
In any case, this is turning into subjectivity on my end so I'll concede the point.
Maybe if you're expecting the next season to be the last one or something.
Length is irrelevant, it can still happen. Far Cry 3 if you follow the main story and ignore everything else might arguably be shorter than all 3 volumes, but had it ended on the Va'as fight would've still been a relatively satisfying climax. So it would've actually benefited from the plot being shorter than it actually is.
Considering all signs point to RWBY being nowhere even NEAR its end though, that makes for LOTS of time to build Salem up into a conflict the audience can get invested into. But she needs to actually be introduced at some point first in order for that to happen. When is it better to do that? Before they kill The Dragon [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDragon] or after? Frankly, doing it after much more frequently feels lke a copout, at least doing it before gives the opportunity to build it up.
Fair enough, but my problem with her right now is the lack of connection to our heroes. Like, it would be better if Salem is just Cinder after Ruby hit her with the beam, like her disguise has been burned away and now she's like "ok I'm done fucking around with these people now" or something. Because then there's a more personal connection between hero and villain, and a lot more opportunity for drama and of course taking Ruby's own optimism and good nature and seeing how far it can twist as more friends die and whether or not she can bring herself to kill the villain.
Introducing a villain to be the "man behind the man" only works so far before there's an emotional disconnect. I know, there's time to develop it, so long as they continue volumes, but to what lengths do they need to go now to make the audience hate her more than Cinder? What makes her so much worse than Cinder (if they are not the same person) beyond simply being more powerful and wanting to "burn ze world"?
Except Cinder was NEVER going to be the ultimate bad. Just from the way they talked about the Grimm made it clear that, when the ultimate bad finally made an appearance, it would be Grimm related. Also, you say yet another villain like there's way too many, but the number of villains is pretty much par for the course for the genre of anime which RWBY would most closely compare to.
Ah, right, my bad, they cut down one of the more fun villains to introduce Kaguya from Naruto into the mix instead.
I kid, I kid, but for serious, last I checked anime of RWBY's genre usually at least have one or two villains defeated before the next one shows up, at least.
Before you even mention, no, I don't count Torchwick. He was NOT 'defeated.' The only thing that defeated him were the writers.
To go so far as to say 'contempt for the audience' is disingenuous.
Well when the writers laugh at you for asking basic questions about the ploooot...
Ok, ok, presuming authorial intent again. It's just that Miles and Kerry for most of the first two volumes casually threw in whatever popped into their heads from watching anime, at least considering the stuff they've done with the first two, in addition to literally contradicting themselves about basic world lore, and pandering to fans a LOT (more in Volume 2 than 1) made me assume they just didn't really care. Volume 3 shows they are more inclined to actually care now, so I'll give them that.
You can argue the show's flaws, what does or doesn't work about it, but that's treading into 'I don't like it so it sucks and anyone who disagrees also sucks' territory.
As opposed to "I like it so it's perfect and anyone who disagrees sucks" territory?
She's come across to me as very much the smart, manipulator type. However, if you feel like she's too 'in the middle' wit and strength wise... well that's exactly the type of character who would typically serve as the secondary bad to someone higher up calling the shots, would it not?
And that's what drives me nuts. She's not the big bad, pursuing the power of the maidens to become that super strong type. In fact for all we know they might have her pull a Vegeta or something (speculating again, irrelevant).
But she is the one who did something significant in this volume. She took down Beacon, she drove a wedge between Ozpin and Ironwood, she manipulated Pyrra into killing Penny and then killed Pyrra. In that second regard maybe she's more an opponent for Jaune than Ruby, but Salem will now need development and more to establish an emotional connection, and that also means topping Cinder villain-wise.
DBZ had this thing called "serial escalation." Frieza had to be a bigger threat than the Saiyans, Cell had to be a bigger threat than Frieza, Buu had to be a bigger threat than Cell. That means they had to do progressively more and more evil things. Now Cinder I won't deny has pretty much overthrown one city and killed one slightly important character, sorta. So in that regard more characters will have to die to feed Salem's evil quota. More characters we care about. And we have to see it, because evil does not get remembered when it's off-screen.
They did, in the same explanation where they detailed how it was planned from the start, they specified that the timeline of what would happen when was as well and is still going according to plan.
After Torchwick triggered a phase of their plan 'too early' and Cinder shrugged her shoulders and went "just as planned, lol"
Unless Cinder intended to do that for misdirection, but without it being implied or outright stated I don't know if that was intentional or not.
Also Qrow saw all of them attacking the Fall maiden. Plot Hole nitpick, minor oversight, or massive bloody plot hole? I'll let you decide.
I disagree. I watch the show, and I'm reminded of Full Metal Alchemist, where it starts off fairly light and whimsical and then all of a sudden Shou Tucker is conducting horrible experiments on his daughter and Mayes Hughes is being murdered by Envy.
Uhhhh...we get dark stuff early on. I did not miss the part where the two of them tried to revive their mother with forbidden alchemy, Ed had his limbs reduced to bloody stumps and Al ended up in a soul jar. You call that light and whimsical?
Look, FMA wasn't always light and whimsical all the time. It had breaths of air between darker moments. And while FMA got reaaaaaaaaally dark, like, a lot, there was never a feeling of hopelessness. The story went into really really dark places, but those breaths of air were there to remind you that things didn't completely suck.
Volume 3 is better than previous volumes. But I think if we really want to settle this then in general there should just be a disclaimer slapped across the first 2 volumes stating "IGNORE ALL OF THIS."
Yes, they did state Volume 3 was going to be darker, I know.
I'm concerned that they will either drown us in grimdark or throw jarring humor at us that doesn't work with the tone of the story. (What I mean by that is imagine instead of giving you that breath of fresh air they literally empty an entire helium tank into your lungs in one go instead.)
You can certainly argue that the pacing could be better, but I don't feel the tone shift is that dissonant, and I ESPECIALLY don't feel that the foreshadowing was terribly done. Hell, the song lyrics alone, which have been surprisingly dark since the very beginning, left me surprised that it didn't turn dark sooner.
Ehhh, this is a case of subjective opinion. I don't think the tonal shift was that well done, considering the overarching tone of volumes 1 and 2, and to my memory, song lyrics only got dark with...er, what, Red Like Roses Part 2? Alongside stuff like Gold and Shine? Volume 3 music does not count, because that is the volume where things were to get dark. What I mean by foreshadowing is "how did the previous volumes lead us into this darker story?"
Maybe that's the problem. I'm looking at the whole thing rather than the volume itself. So okay, I concede, Volume 3 overall was a nice swerve into a darker story, if we ignore the first two volumes completely.
Maybe I just need to buy the box set and watch the whole season in one sitting to see it...
How much are they charging for that? Is it even out yet?
