Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-32346149-20190606062554/@comment-25936766-20190606192606

ReikaTachyon wrote:

But, to be frank, if you honestly believe that volumes 4-6 have MORE character development than 1-3, then I'm going to have to cut this conversation short. A bit late to the party, but let me point out that V4-6 do have more character development than V1-3. It's a fact, not subjectively but objectively. It's a side-effect of MK focusing a lot more on plot and dialogue over action and awesomeness. And since you seem to love long ranting comments, let me do my own.

In Volume 1, Yang was literally a freaking side-character, to the point of JAUNE, of all people, having more plot importance than her, and more development with 1/4 of the season dedicated to him.

Blake and Weiss's development meanwhile was short and overly quick, and nothing too deep (Weiss learning to be a better teammate and not be racist. Blake learning to trust in her friends). Even then, Weiss forgiving Blake happens entirely off-screen, and Blake's development wasn't so deep that she thought twice about ditching them after Vol.3 without a word.

As for JNPR, aside from Jaune the spotlight-stealer, Pyrrha only started to gain depth as a character in Vol.3, and she got axed in the same season. Ren was a background prop and Nora was hardly any better.

And Ruby is a bit more zig-zagged; she doesn't get any depth at all in Vol.1 aside from maybe that little talk with Ozpin, which is too small to really count. But at the same time she had more depth than in future Volumes (both Beacon saga and Mistral saga), because her flaws and quirks like social awkwardness and weapon-loving were actually present and noticeable.

Volume 2 meanwhile, has no character development at all. It has character expansion, as in "we find out things about them", but that's different from development. Volume 3 has even less, Pyrrha aside, since half of it is tournament fights, a fourth is the villains doing things while Ozpin and co. do nothing, and the last chunk is the big battle that also kills off Pyrrha, Penny and Roman, who had set up potential development in the very same Volume, Roman in the very same BoB.

Compare this with Volume 4, 5 and 6 where:

1) Yang learns to not just punch things and abuse her Semblance to solve her problems in fights, but to use her brain a bit. Which she does, in Vol.5 and 6.

2) Yang also changes as a person, noticeably, and I do not mean the PTSD or shaky hand. To paraphrase what her wiki page says: She learns to not explode in anger after every slap in the face, she acts more guarded, takes things comparatively more seriously, and actually questions Ozpin instead of blindly following him like everyone else (though MK went too far on this).

Note that both of these happen throughout the seasons, gradually, though sometimes off-screen. Much better than in Vol.1-3, where that level of development happened in a single episode or two and the changes weren't so noticeable.

3) Blake learns to trust in her friends (for real this time) and decides to stop running away (for real this time), even throwing away her bow and showing off her ears, even in Argus. Again, this happens over time and not in a quick burst.

4) Weiss starts standing up to her father.....though that could've been handled a lot better. Honestly though, I do admit in hindsight I find it hard to think of any real character growth on her part beyond no longer being childishly melodramatic with her gestures among her friends.

5) Jaune, he already was the one with the most actual development in V1-3 and still ranks high in V4-6, becoming less cheerful and goofy and in their place becomes more broody and cynical, to the point of accusing Qrow of using Ruby as bait, and shows clear sadness whenever Pyrrha is brought up.

6) Cinder.....in her case it's a lot more rushed, but still counts as development; after being Silver Blasted, she is shown struggling and overall dropping her annoying permanent-smug-no-matter-what-happens attitude.

Then comes Vol.5, she got better and stronger but still doesn't have the excessive smugness back. Then comes Battle of Haven and she goes to the other extreme, not quite but instead entitled sadist. Then comes Vol.6 and she's more or less back to how she was in V5E1.

7) Qrow also develops, but to a smaller extent, since the change is him becoming a whiny useless drunk who only exists to look good. It's development, but the kind that could be better.

Overall, not everyone got much development, some like Sun got nothing, but there was a lot more character development than in the Beacon saga. Whether it's good or bad development is a different topic.

Don't get me wrong, you're right when you say V1-3 RWBY was RWBY at it's best so far, and many would agree. But your arguments for why, are just plain wrong. RWBY was advertised as a Monty Oum production, and Monty himself didn't give a shit about plot beyond getting an excuse to show off cool things. Everyone knew this, and no one expected any magnificent plot or writing, instead we expected awesome fights, Monty's forte since forever.

In fact, if it wasn't for Merry, we would've seen things like Raven attacking JNPR in the middle of Beacon's dining hall in front of a crowd, or Blake cutting a train in half before she even started her Beacon studies. Both sound cool on paper, but are awful from a writing and plot standpoint, and would throw out of whack any sense of power scaling.

In fact, Monty was in charge of The Breach, which is widely agreed to be one of the worst Volume Finales yet (not the worst though....V5 dethroned it), with a single 2nd year student (Coco) 1-shot-killing an entire horde of Grimm, including "boss" Grimm like Nevermores and Deathstalkers.

Then, anyone with a brain did the math and guessed, "if Coco can do that, what can Pro-Huntsmen do?", 'meaning the entire fucking premise'' was put in question. If a single 2nd year can annihilate an army of Grimm, a Profesional could do a lot damn more, which makes one wonder how the fuck did humanity struggle so much that they can barely maintain 4 Kingdoms alive, if a single huntsman in training''' can do that much.

But no one watched RWBY for the "amazing plot", or "deep writing". A few, mainly japanese, for the character writing (not development, writing), but the great majority watched it for the cool fights and music. They expected that, and MMK delivered on that.

And that is the same reason why most people see V4-6 as overall inferior. Because the action, RWBY's main draw, was put aside in favor of more plot, which was never that good and didn't get much better until Vol.6, and even then YMMV.

It doesn't help that Vol.4 and 5 fucked up badly in writing. Vol.4, MK tried to juggle like 7 different plot threads at once, leading to a lot of rushed development and/or progress just to get everyone to Mistral for the "big battle". And Vol.5 refused to explore Mistral in favor of having the heroes fuck around in a house, with only 1 training scene in the entire season.

Which is also the reason most people see Vol.6 as a step forward. Because it doesn't do that, it keeps moving forward with little pause, and when it does pause it's rarely a complete waste of time. It also just keeps things simple, with 1 main plot thread and a smaller plot thread on the side.