RWBY review: World of Remnant 2-Kingdoms

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

Hello and welcome to the second World of Remnant review where we get boring world building.

All right, review part first; this is boring as hell. If you are going to do supplementtal side videos to explain the world, make them fun. Another one for the Blazblue jar but let me explain about Teach Me, Miss Litchi.

(no sub this time, sorry)

Because Blazblue has a very complicated story and world, they have to use videos to help explain stuff. What happens is that there is a framing device (teaching Taokaka about their world) and they have characters pop in and out doing their normal thing during the lectures with a few jokes here and there at each other's expense (poor Ragna).

With these World of Remnant videos, we just have a single voice talking over drawings of the world in a monotone and while it's effective, it's not the most engaging. This is a problem in a series that merely makes videos of 15 minute length

I would propose that, we have team RWBY studying for an exam and talking about the topics at hand. Ruby being a bit of an idiot needs help so Weiss pops up and teaches in her usual overconfident way while others pop in and out to make comments and make the review session more chaotic.

Anyway, discussion. Really not much to say, just the fact the the kingdoms seem to be a senate based system and that humanity has really failed to expand past those kingdoms which makes me wonder about the human population count.

P.S. check out a little fun experiment i'm doing here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.860811-Fun-little-experiment-with-RWBY-make-a-charcter]. Basically, try to take any character from any other piece of media and fit into RWBY. I already have done Ragna the Bloodedge and Fate/Zero Berzerker

 

[DirectorK]

I didn't bother watching it because in all honesty I really wasn't interested and I just about had enough of RWBY and Rooster Teeth. I feeling like crying right now because of how let down I am with this series, but I won't since I already did that at the end of Volume 1 last year.

I am SO SICK of poorly made programs, whether in film or video game form and especially ones with sci-fi/fantasy settings, that start off with such great concepts and ideas and yet are ruined will very poor, high school, fanfiction, amateur level writing. It's the biggest reason why I'm stopped watching anime years ago because they're all the FUCKING same! And it's also why I stopped being a fan of certain video game franchises such as Final Fantasy and Castlevania because they're nothing like what they used to be.

Seeing how RWBY's been picked WBJapan now I can't help but wonder if that had been Monty's intent all along: Wanting to create his own anime that rips off every other anime in hopes that it will be noticed by Japan because it falls right into their interests. So he uses Rooster Teeth to get what he wants and once he's up their with the big boys in Japan I wouldn't be surprised if he ditches RT in favor of Toei, Madhouse, I.C. Productions or whatever without so much as a goodbye or thank you.

I know that sounds harsh and unnecessary but in all honesty I wouldn't be surprised if that happened in the future.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Yeah today was a waste of 1 minute 58 seconds. When I read the title, I thought it was going into details of the four kingdoms (like Sun mention that his attire is based on the kingdom he grew up in meaning their clothing style is different from the others) but no, it was just an general outline of what all four kingdom does, no shit do we needed as simple as that?

 

[Halon Chocolate]

I didn't watch it, so I probably shouldn't formulate an opinion about it.

But, judging from your review, it looks like theres no point in bothering. I've made my thoughts on their "world-building" clear from my first post here. Keep treating the world like a toy chest with no overarching consequences and thats what I'll continue to see it as, toys instead of people. I'll wait for the world to evolve with the cast before I take a look at these videos. I really hope it does.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

I didn't watch it, so I probably shouldn't formulate an opinion about it.

But, judging from your review, it looks like theres no point in bothering. I've made my thoughts on their "world-building" clear from my first post here. Keep treating the world like a toy chest with no overarching consequences and thats what I'll continue to see it as, toys instead of people. I'll wait for the world to evolve with the cast before I take a look at these videos. I really hope it does.

I would point to kill la kill which in the third episode has this:

but actually has stakes and small amounts of world building and say it somewhat counters your statement but the show kinds of lives in it's own crazy universe so i'm not sure how the rule of world-building apply.

But yeah, consequences do need to happen for stakes to be had. Another show i like, Toaru Majutsu no Index, extensively goes into the mechanics of how both magic and esper powers work, the relations between nations allied with those two states and what would be at stake if one overtook another. I would also like to remind people that this is the world that has the strongest on the science side do this
has a reality warper that doesn't even rank among the strongest on the magic side defeated by his own mind,
magic circles capable of rending the earth apart
and has the third strongest on the science side capable of this

 

[LawAndChaos]

Not only boring, gentlemen, but not even that informative. We assumed there were other nations, and we knew about Atlas already, just not the names of the others.

What really gets me is they don't even get what the term "Kingdom" means. It's right there in the name: "KINGdom"

Now aside from that, we get some political structure (which doesn't even go into detail), military (which doesn't go into detail) and hunter academies (which we already knew about).

I feel bad for Jen Taylor. They didn't even give her a significant role outside of these boring narration snippets. Of course, maybe she's just too expensive to get for an actual role.

 

[Halon Chocolate]

Heh, its true Kill la Kill knew what it was doing when their fight scenes came into action. Every fight had a purpose (so far as I can remember), and had consequences that each participant took from it with lasting effect. Of course, it was all over-the-top silliness and the fighting a incredible exaggeration, but KlK was self-aware in that aspect and pretty much ran home with it. Their writers knew what they were doing, and made sure that we, the audience, were aware that there was a whole living realm out there riding on the outcome between Lady Satsuki and Matoi. (Later on, that expands even further, but to say more is entering spoiler territory.)

RWBY doesn't benefit from good writing, however. In my opinion, too much is centered on the inter-personal drama between the students, at a school that claims to be training the next generation of world saviors (or monster slayers, I honestly don't know anymore). But, wheres is the world thats benefiting from the protection of Beacon? One can argue that the peace is the benefit from the "academy". I can agree with that, but I'd still love to see some evidence of that peace in the background, of a globe in motion.

Right now, its all a bit like actors performing in front of a well-constructed backdrop. It tries to immerse you, but you know its just a backdrop in that corner of your mind.

KlK combined "showing" and "telling" very well. RWBY shows us too little, and tells us too much. LawAndChaos said it best in last weeks review; world building and character development is a careful balancing act. They focused too much on character development, hampered by the limitations of the writing team, at the cost of the world, then expect us to be invested in that world by giving us this two minute documentary, completely detached from the characters they've built up in their self-contained environment and most likely won't be brought up again. (Hopefully I'm in the wrong here.)

I think somewhere in there my train of thought got derailed, but I hope the point still got across.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

Not only boring, gentlemen, but not even that informative. We assumed there were other nations, and we knew about Atlas already, just not the names of the others.

What really gets me is they don't even get what the term "Kingdom" means. It's right there in the name: "KINGdom"

Now aside from that, we get some political structure (which doesn't even go into detail), military (which doesn't go into detail) and hunter academies (which we already knew about).

I feel bad for Jen Taylor. They didn't even give her a significant role outside of these boring narration snippets. Of course, maybe she's just too expensive to get for an actual role.

Once again, make it fun by having Weiss teach Ruby, Ruby asking stupid questions and the other characters barging in to poke fun at Weiss and Ruby while talking about their experiences in other kingdoms.

I would be engaged a lot more and it would feel like the characters are more invested in the world.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

I'm looking online for chibis of RWBY since teach me miss litchi uses that style and I just realized that RWBY really does lend itself to chibi extremely well. Fun part is that most of these fanmade images are around 10 times better than the chibi of Ruby they had in the second episode

Spoiler: best images I found

Again, looks better than the cookie eating scene

 

[LawAndChaos]

Here's the funny thing; Weiss is an idiot.

Although that's more a problem with the way the characters are written, so...yeah.

Alternatively we could assign Yang the teacher role since she's the designated team mom.