RWBY Review: V4E1-The Next Step

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

Hello and welcome to the restarted RWBY review. Today, I will be reviewing the first episode of the new volume of RWBY: The Next Step

First off: due to the shift to Maya, the shading, particle effects and lighting have improved to the point of approaching professional. There are moments where the touch up work should have been better and the depth of field at one point is off but in general, the rendering is an improvement. What is an issue is the animation; the character animation is better with no sign of "puppeting" but there are moments of dead models where the models suddenly stop with no transition and there is no moving background or camera to help dispel the illusion of stillness.

For character designs, they added three new villains to the roster but their design is too simple. They look like a stereotypical bruiser, psychopath and plotter/negotiator with no unique traits or features that would distinguish themselves from their archetype. The new costume for Ruby makes little sense as she's now designed to be "sexy" but she still maintains her immature personality and behavior. The new costumes for the remainder of JNPR do work as they are more natural evolutions of their original style.

As for basic story, it handled it's tone a lot better with the humor and the drama better segmented. The humor itself is more RvB style fourth wall absurd humor; it's delegated to non action moments and low points in action so it doesn't disrupt combat. The drama though is undermined by the lack of tension with the villains as the villains are underdeveloped with no real presence established for even Cinder. To use an example, Makishima Shogo in Psycho Pass was developed over the course of 10 episodes before the 11th episode when the viewpoint lead meats him. Cinder and Salam don't have anything approaching this development. One thing that annoyed me about this show was that there was a scene with a farm that was superfluous to the plot and was merely padding to extend the run time. Other then that segment, the plot introduced Ruby's team in a basic fashion and leads into Weiss's story in a fairly competent way.

The opening isn't the best. The visuals are standard foreshadowing and emotional music. the issue is the music for the opening. There is no range compared to "It's Time to Say Goodbye" or the other openings, the tempo is slow and kind of dull, and the lyrics are trying to sell a bittersweet story with a happy end but there is no increase in the tempo or pitch of the song to correlate with that

RWBY volume 4, episode 1 leaves me apprehensive. The story seems to be trying to break from the issues of the last three volumes but I have concerns about the villains and the main girls.

Edit: on another note, I have started to make reviews on a Wordpress, see this review and the old reviews here [https://animechopblock.wordpress.com/]

 

[Scarim Coral]

First thing first, this explained why Jaune appearance wasn't different when first seen in the preview until now. Even then his new armor and weapon weren't that much of a difference compared to the other (I never get on wearing a hoodie in combat, shouldn't be he sweating alot).

I must say however the beginning does bring an interesting insight of the birth of the grim. Was that random liquid or is it blood or some kind of special liquid found in that area.

As for the new characters, ok sure they are typical archtype but I do admit I found the crazy one interesting and aswell the overall objective on those 4 want to bring chaos to Revenant?

The complain I got was the audio was too low when they were providing info to Jaune. I couln't hear what Nora was saying even when I blast the volume to max!

 

[09philj]

I liked it. The new villains had good chemistry, the fight was good, and most of the jokes landed. All in all, a good start.

The new theme tune still sucks though. Seriously, whoever mixed it should be ashamed.

 

[andrewHayes]

Yeah, I mean the animation's got a lot of problems still, even with the higher production values. The outlines are done differently and I'll have to say that I preferred Monty's method way more. The shading is also wonky as heck, and the animators don't understand flow. I never liked RWBY's artstyle but Monty's direction was better than what we have here.

Big loss would be Sun's ab lines (he looks ugly in the intro). Fangirls weep as I write this.

Also Mercury's FUCKING EYEBROWS MAN.

Character acting is rather uninspired as the animation just seems to be going through the motions. I don't know why people are just praising the facial expressions when RT seems to have gotten worse at conveying characters' expressions. Look at Blake's derpface in the intro, for example.

There's also the fact that the choreography is terrible. Absolutely terrible. Monty's best work wasn't spent on this show, but he had certain details close to heart like how Ruby wielded her scythe with two hands on it at nearly all times and swung it with lateral movement. Everything we've seen of Volume 4 doesn't express the same amount of thought: now Ruby just swings her weapon like it's a freaking sword one-handed (never mind that it's only edged on the inside). Same problems can be seen from her and Qrow in the last Volume. (Same thing can be said of Adam, as he's forgotten Iaido completely and waves his katana like a weeaboo.) And her needlessly twirling it to look coo--I mean, reload it is just wasted movement. Ren's midair spin not only doesn't make sense from a physics standpoint, but is also cliched and badly animated. The way the scene is edited also reduces impact just like Hollywood action scenes; for cripes' sake, they cut away TWICE before they could show killing blows.

Needless to say, action won't be a reason to watch RWBY anymore.

The villains are also big stereotypes, and Miles and Kerry seem to think a "crazy" character is one who just laughs maniacally all the time and likes killing indiscriminately, when usually the best crazy villains are those who have consistent personalities and codes of conduct, just ones that are off-kilter by normal standards. Heck, Miles wrote Felix and Locus, surely he could do better with Tyrian?

Lots of logical inconsistencies as usual. The timeskip gets treated with ambivalence; sometimes the gap in time is acknowledged, other times we're expected to treat the characters like the Battle of Beacon happened yesterday. How did it take months for the villains to meet together to discuss what happened? Actually, wouldn't it be smarter to use more long distance means of conferencing, or do they rely on electronics for that too? Communications got brought down by the events of Volume 3, but one of the villains is checking a Scroll (*twitch*) and the Vol 4 character trailer has Ruby apparently using a LAN function with her Scroll. One character says Ozpin is missing, Salem says he is dead. Cinder apparently never prepared for Ruby's Silver Eyes power even though she made note of it in Volume 2 and her ingroup has had generations' worth of experience in dealing with them. Rrrgh, Miles and Kerry...

Goddamnit my head hurts. Don't question me about the fight scene either, never mind why it takes so long for the team to shoot for the freaking weak spot or devise a proper strategy.

Devil's advocate however, I think the farm boy is Amber's brother and he'll play a role in the story. Could have made it more obvious, however.

 

[Gizen]

Lots of logical inconsistencies as usual. The timeskip gets treated with ambivalence; sometimes the gap in time is acknowledged, other times we're expected to treat the characters like the Battle of Beacon happened yesterday. How did it take months for the villains to meet together to discuss what happened? Actually, wouldn't it be smarter to use more long distance means of conferencing, or do they rely on electronics for that too? Communications got brought down by the events of Volume 3, but one of the villains is checking a Scroll (*twitch*) and the Vol 4 character trailer has Ruby apparently using a LAN function with her Scroll. One character says Ozpin is missing, Salem says he is dead. Cinder apparently never prepared for Ruby's Silver Eyes power even though she made note of it in Volume 2 and her ingroup has had generations' worth of experience in dealing with them. Rrrgh, Miles and Kerry...

I'm not going to argue on the rest of your points because I don't think the episode was the greatest on many of them, but I'll contend on some of these story details because I don't think anything was anything particularly logic breaking.

Regarding the villains meet up, that would heavily depend on how far they have to travel, and how they have to do it, seeing how the villains' location isn't revealed. Considering how badly it appears that Cinder got fucked up, they may also have had to delay any all-hands meeting until she could recover. Plus there's nothing that actually says there isn't an additional time skip sometime between when they meet and the scene with RNJR. The large difference in geography and focus, and the lack of any scenes before it means there's no specific reason their scene needs to necessarily be the present, but nor does it really require some text at the bottom saying when exactly it takes place because that's not especially relevant. Hell, the fact that the green-eyed mystery farmer snaps awake from a nightmare at the end of it could indicate that the meeting itself was just a dream he had, if said mystery-farmer has the potential power to dream of past events.

Ozpin's fate was left up in the air at the end of volume 3. Everyone saying he's missing is one of the good guys who has no way of knowing what happened to him. Salem's the only one saying he's dead, and she's clearly going off of a report made by Cinder that we the viewers aren't privy to, nor can we even confirm the accuracy of.

Hazel and Watts were just as baffled by Ruby's ability to kick Cinder's ass as Cinder herself, which means Cinder's weakness to silver eyes (caused by her newly acquired fall maiden powers) wasn't information Salem bothered to give them previously. Silver eyes is supposed to be a rare trait, so an oversight she made assuming it wouldn't come up perhaps? It certainly wouldn't have been relevant prior to that exact moment, and still wouldn't have come up if literally anyone other than Ruby had showed up.

And finally the fall of the Beacon tower shuts down inter-continental wireless communications, not all electronics in general. Their scrolls wouldn't suddenly cease to function entirely, their communication abilities would just be hampered. Their data management/PC functionalities would remain unhindered, and presumably short-range communication would work as well.

Devil's advocate however, I think the farm boy is Amber's brother and he'll play a role in the story. Could have made it more obvious, however.

I doubt he's her brother, but I do think the fact that it focused on him at all, and had him waking up from a disturbed looking sleep the moment the villain meeting ending, does foreshadow some future plot significance. I've seen some people hypothesizing he could actually be a very boyish she, possibly the spring maiden mentioned in the villain meeting.