Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-74.101.236.56-20170321065847/@comment-4010415-20170511074124

@Cinder's back tattoo - Indeed. I've actually repeatedly wondered what they had planned before the Maidens thing, to be honest. It seems that they have adapted the Maidens plot in a way where it became connected to the tattoo on her back, but what was that originally about? Was it originally nothing more than a simple tattoo that showed us her personal emblem? Was she always going to, for some reason, do something with a Grimm beetle? How was she originally going to end up chased off or defeated at the end of volume 3? Did the original plan have Ruby damaging her with her Silver Eye powers due to something about a Grimm beetle or something else? As for her hair, there are people who claim that her hair looks more like it was burned off rather than cut off, though I don't personally see it. But it does look uneven, like she cut it herself without trying to keep everything the same length.

Penny's sword - You do see the parts of Penny flying through the air with Jaune and Pyrrha in the first screenshot, but then they mysteriously disappear in the second one. No telling why the wires were magically severed, unless she had some kind of fail safe, though that kind of thing really should've activated when she was being cut up by her own wires. Arkantos' explanation of the mechanism regulating the spools for the wires being inactive because she was destroyed could make sense.

Port's "blablablah" - When Port finally stops speaking the language of Blah, he says the following in response to the bell ringing: "And then I— Oh. Timed that one wrong, I guess. Well, the stunning conclusion to this story will have to wait. Until next time!" So, yes, there is telling what he was saying; he was telling a story... about himself... just like in the very first class he taught in The Badge and the Burden ("But first: A story. A tale of a young, handsome man... Me! When I was a boy..." followed by lots of "blablablah"). He told Weiss he has been working for Ozpin for a long time, so... favoritism? And like Arkantos said, he might not do nothing but blab on about his hunting expeditions.

"We're here to fight monsters" - The theory back in the day (read: 2013) was that Weiss said that as a way for the writers to infer to us that combat schools (read: pre-Huntsman Academy) like Signal Academy are mainly sparring and practice, and Huntsman Academies are when they start the real deal and begin actually fighting Grimm. And to be honest, Weiss made that statement because she recognized that Ruby wasn't 17 yet, so she was questioning why someone who should really be attending a combat school for 2 more years was there at Beacon. Literally, that's what she said: "What are you even doing here? Aren't you a little young to be attending Beacon?"

To be honest, I really hope that RWBY Chibi being a thing gives Miles and Kerry a good outlet to redirect their "Because it'd be funny!" shenanigans. It's one reason that I'm fine with its existence, even though the skits are sometimes hit or miss.

@Weiss' rapier - Yeahhh.. One of her moves is actually to use a glyph to send herself rushing forward to stab her enemy, but once she does that, she starts slashing... I guess because "Omg gotta keep attacking". Though, she did actually use Myrtenaster for a lot of stabbing against the WF Lt, like when she flew down at him from the ceiling and stabbed the floor (because he dodged) and, especially, when she used a time dilation glyph to pull off a move where she bounced between glyphs repeatedly stabbing at him. So at least she does stab some of the time.

The running animations were so bad... I can't watch that one part in Players and Pieces where the camera sweeps along the field of ruins with everyone running because they're really just running in place while the ground and camera move. Ugh. Just stare at the Nevermore, just stare at the Nevermore, just stare at the Nevermore... On the other end of the spectrum, there's that moment in volume 2 where they rescue Ruby from Roman and the WF, Ruby jumps into Yang's arms, and Weiss... slides across the screen in the background. Um... unnecessary use of a glyph...?

Yeahhh... I was actually rather bitter that they didn't even mention anywhere in in volumes 2 or 3 that the CCT system relies on all four towers being operational. Would've been nice. Instead, we got "The tower cannot fall!" (Why?) "No communication with the outside world..." (What? Why??) "*Volume 4 comes along* Without the CCT, we can't do the phone call thing blablablah" (what really?!!!) Volume 2's WoRs were mostly things that were already mentioned or insinuated in the show, while volume 3's WoRs had stuff that wasn't mentioned or insinuated anywhere in the show. Wonderful. Volume 4's WoRs... were a mixed bag, to be honest. Between Kingdoms was useless because we already saw what Qrow talked about. WoR: Faunus and WoR: SDC contained info that would've been nice to have years ago and should've been somehow delivered to us in the show.

@Jacques' weird school issue - I dunno, man, maybe it was an issue of "If you're really going to insist on attending an academy, at least attend the one close to home so I can keep an eye on you" but Weiss was like "Fuck you, dad, I wanna go to school on another continent where you can't be on my case all the time!"

Replacement title, huh? *Thinks back to the tweeted photo of a printed-out volume 4 script with the cover page entitled "The Day X Gave it to Them"* Heh... wouldn't be the worst placeholder title. That thing even had joke names for Miles and Kerry on it. I think Miles' was something like "Miles Tuna".

Honestly, if they went with non-timeskip volume 4, we also could've gotten to see more of how Weiss interacts with her family and how they interact with each other and - gasp - we could've seen her mom. Like, if, for timing purposes, they put off the "removal of heir status" thing until it was closer to time for her to leave and get to Mistral. Then, Weiss' storyline wouldn't have been basically this:

"I sat in my room for 6-8 months, save for eating meals and using the bathroom, but then my dad called me to his office to tell me he was planning a charity event for Vale. On the way there, I ran into my little brother who I apparently have barely spoken to in the past 6-8 months, and our mom is 'drinking in the garden' (take that how you will). Anyway, so we do the charity ball thing, and I chew out snobby rich people. Dad got angry, we argued, and now I'm not heiress anymore. I found out Winter's storyline is probably more interesting than mine right now and Ironwood is closing Atlas' borders. But anyway, I stowed away on a ship headed for Mistral so I can join Winter's cool storyline."

They said years ago that they want RWBY to steadily grow more serious and mature, so they're not gonna dive right in.

Dude, that SEW breeding thing... that's like... something I would expect from a Gen Urobuchi anime, tbh. Holy shit.

Jaune wanting revenge... I recently passingly wondered if that scene where Ruby wakes up and hears Jaune's training video is supposed to foreshadow someone in the group eventually going astray because of grief for Pyrrha. The little blue lights floating around were like will-o-wisps, and while they have a wide variety of mythology about what they are and what they do, there are some myths and folklore about them connecting them to the dead, and there's a common theme of them leading travelers astray. Add that with the fact that the recording of Pyrrha saying "Follow these instructions" initially sounds like "Follow me"... But I feel like this is just hopeful thinking.

All in all, a story is all in how you execute it. Puella Magi Madoka Magica takes the magical girl genre and makes a dark story about it, with a cutesy art style typical of the genre. Meanwhile, I walked into Sword Art Online expecting a cool adventure of people fighting their way toward escaping the VR MMO while trying not to die for real, and I ended up with... Kirito the Marty Stu and his timeskip-filled story of how this epic OP virtual god accidentally wooed many womens and then... I dunno what happens after that because I stopped watching and wondered why it got so popular.

They said no panty-shots and that they made the models in a certain way so it's not so pervy when you do inevitably see up their skirt. Because reasonably, that's kinda gonna happen with people in skirts leaping around, dodge-rolling, doing high kicks, etc, and even if they deliberately set camera angles so you don't see up their skirts, they can't always notice/catch when it happens, since this is 3D animation, rather than 2D where you actually draw every frame and therefore consciously know if the camera can see up the girl's skirt since you're drawing it happening. The "Ren accidentally sees up Nora's skirt and she acts embarrassed" bit was hypocritical, but "It would be funny!" - Miles and Kerry.

Ironwood's dumb. Stick Roman in a regular jail cell-- (Ironwood: Noooo they're incompetent, I want to be in control of this while I interrogate the criminal who attacked Vale!) Oh yeah, you did say that you were going to be doing a lot of talking with him. Was that all off-screen? (Ironwood: Well, uh...) What intel did you get from him during those interrogations? (Ironwood: ...)

@Government positions - That's what I said. It was a bad idea to let Ironwood have both positions, especially since he's a "Shoot them before they shoot me" type. Like I said, they really should've sat him down like "Listen, James. You can be headmaster or general, not both. Pick one of those, and this guy will pick the other." But they didn't... because... I dunno. *Draws a rainbow* Atlas? On top of that, Ironwood apparently has the military working with the SDC. (During his presentation in A Minor Hiccup: "So, our kingdom's greatest minds, in cooperation with the Schnee Dust Company, are proud to introduce... the Atlesian Paladin!") Possibly one of those "questionable business partners" Blake mentioned back in volume 1? I dunno, Ozpin seemed like he was just trying to figure out what exactly Cinder was doing first to make sure they weren't gonna walk into a trap. Which, putting Ironwood in charge of Vale's security for the festival actually played really well into Cinder's hand. Good job, Vale and Atlas' councils.

Wait a second. Vale's council told Ozpin they had spoken with Atlas' council and had come to the decision, together, that Ironwood should be in charge of security for the festival. Atlas' council. Which Ironwood has two seats in. *Facepalm* These governments...

Ohai, Ark and SYUTK.