Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-4141313-20190119003858/@comment-25936766-20190207152702

HotSwappableGaming wrote:

1) How is a scythe better? Especially in the manner that Ruby used it? Scythes are meant more commonly for stabbing and then ripping, not for chopping.

2) Plus she's also a speed type like Adam, not a strength type.

3) Are you ignoring the context on purpose?

A) Ruby fought exclusively melee opponents.

B) Yang fought exclusively melee opponents until the one on one with the DJ and then the 2v1 Melanie and Miltia.

C) Adam and Blake were 2v1 against less than 20 mechs in a narrow passage. Numbers don't compare. RWBY fought a 5v50 in a narrow passage - numbers don't compare.

D) Ruby slays fights like less than 10 grimm - numbers don't compare.

E) Weiss fought exclusively melee opponents.

3.2) I'm trying to explain that the show isn't a one-man army trope.

3.3) Numbers mean something when they're trained - even mildly. And Adam wasn't facing a dozen enemies - he was fighting upwards of 100.

3.4) When did Monty say that?

3.5) And regardless, the show's canon differs.

3.6) He would still be taken down eventually when facing those numbers. The shots of the enemies aren't puny, they're just like the main characters.

3.7) It makes him dumb when using it - like real painkillers. Let's number it to clearly show what I'm saying.

4) You take that back, you monster! Obviously I mean the combat is imaginative. Look at the Nevermore battle in volume 1.

5.1) But he doesn't dodge. He absorbs and counters. I'm not saying he's incapable of it, I'm saying he wouldn't.

5.2) Not a waste of energy if it distracts Hazel enough to kill him. 1) If you think scythes are even remotely meant for stabbing, you're an ignorant who should just shut up, because that's just factually wrong. They're meant for cutting and slicing. If you "stabbed, then ripped" you're doing it deadly wrong.

And Ruby's scythe is not the farming tool kind, it's the kind you see on TV with a blade easily 2-3 times bigger than the usual farming scythe. And Ruby's can also rotate a bit to function more like a war-scythe.

In either case, when the question is efficiency at cutting a tree, scythes are better than swords, especially a japanese one, simply because physics make it easier for a scythe like Crescent Rose to do it compared to Adam's chokuto.

Not saying you could just cut a tree with a scythe as well as you could with an axe. You wouldn't, it would still be difficult. Which is why I pointed out CR's sharpness.

Or do you have any galaxy-brain idea for how Ruby cut off that tree so easily without a thought?

2) In terms of fighting style, yes. But that's just plain ignoring the weapons.

3) No, you're just ignoring the point on purpose and have been doing it for days, which is why you're so antagonizing.

A) Ruby fought Grimm. Even baby Grimm are much stronger than the civilians Adam could've fought back at Haven. There's a reason humanity only got so far with Dust. There's a reason why Huntsmen are the ones dealing with Grimm and not just any random guy with a gun.

To get an idea: The weakest Grimm, individually, is the Creep, which even pre-Ozpin Oscar could handle. And again, individually, not in numbers which is usually the case.

B) Which is ignoring my point: She was a rookie just out of combat school, not even an Academy, and she still beat a whole room full of mooks on her own with little difficulty. Because 1 badass vs dozens of mooks, the badass wins, and this show is not an exception.

C) The narrow passage means they have far less room to move and dodge than both Adam and RWBY had in Haven. Animal Abuse fought AKs, which even outdated are still much more of a challenge than scared civilians that can barely hold up a shield. And RWBY fought WF mooks, which are also stronger than scared civilians that can barely hold up a shield.

D) Read point A. Actually, consider that said "less than 10 Grimm" (not including any others at the end of the short), had already pretty much wrecked the village. A village full of villagers. Which, in terms of combat strength and skill, wouldn't really be too different from the Menagerians.

E) You would have to be completely blind to think the Lancers are "exclusively melee" after they shot their stingers like roped javelins and especially after the Queen Lancer shot spikes at the ship. Not to mention, still ignoring my point. In this case, we saw on-screen how just a few Lancers completely took out a Mistral airship, before being somewhat-easily defeated by Weiss, before the Queen Lancer showed up and gave her a challenge.

3.2) Which is factually and objectively wrong with the entire show as proof of how wrong you are.

You have the delusion that RWBY is some sort of realistic show where numbers actually matter. The reality is that RWBY is the kind of show where if you got a badass, even a rookie in-universe, they can defeat entire hordes with no problems, and only have a hard time if they face someone "outstanding".

3.3) If the training is too mild, it makes no difference. And that's a fact. Soldiers who barely knows how to fire a gun don't mean anything even if you brought 100 of them. They would only make a difference if the oponent was either extremely low in numbers, or of the same quality.

Which is the only reason the WF lost at Haven. A dozen guys dealing with a villageful of Menagerians. And faceless, nameless mooks don't get the permission to kick ass in spite of numbers. Not to mention, they also had Ilia and Sun fighting them, and they do get that permit.

But that's the WF, not Adam individually. Adam has the power, speed and skill to mow down groups of mooks. Anyone tries to shoot, he blocks that and gets stronger. Anyone at melee range who isn't Blake, Sun or Ilia, he just slices them because they're afraid of even puny bullets hitting their shields while Adam gives no fucks. And the moment a few start going down the rest just panics.

At best, Adam only loses if they leave the fight to Black Sun and leave Adam alone (which is what they did in the show, though Adam ran away too quickly anyway). At worst, Adam kills some Menagerians, the group panics, Grimm swoop down and Haven becomes Beacon.

3.4) Back in Volume 1, when the complains about RWBY being generic and cliché were at their apex (IIRC Anime News Network even outright refused to call RWBY anime from how shamelessly cliché it was).

3.5) In terms of character writing? Yes, it usually differs from the usual anime. In terms of tropes used in fights? Quite the opposite. The only thing it's missing is people screaming their attacks. Minutes-long pauses in fights to talk or explain someone's attack? It's done that. Flashbacks during fights? It's done that. If you saw it in an anime, 9/10 times it's in RWBY too.

3.6) If you think the shots fired by faceless mooks with weaksauce generic guns are even remotely comparable to those fired by the main characters with their customized weapons, you have never seen this show at all.

3.7) You are assuming it makes him dumb "because it works like painkillers". If you're so certain of it, where was it stated that it makes him dumb? All we were told was that he blocks pain, not that he simulates the effects of a painkiller down to the letter. And your numbers are so arbitrary and with nothing even resembling a calculation, that they're literally meaningless.

If Hazel is "dumb", it's due to anger.

4) Yeah, now look at the Neon/Flynt vs Yang/Weiss fight. Yang went after Neon, Weiss went after Flynt. Flynt keeps pushing Weiss back, Yang can't land a hit on Neon. They were perfectly capable of switching foes, but they never did. They were perfectly capable of going 2-on-1 or just helping each other, but they didn't.

"Imaginative" would be having Weiss freeze the floor or use her Glyphs to make Neon trip, or at least stop her. "Imaginative" would be Weiss leaving a Glyph for Yang to rocket at Flynt from the side. "Imaginative" would be Weiss saving Yang from the lava geyser by launching herself with a Glyph, grabbing Yang away from the geyser, then dropping her down on Flynt.

What happened instead is that our heroines insisted on continuing despite both being utterly useless against their chosen partners. Weiss just awkwardly shoves Yang away and gets blasted in the face, dropping out like an idiot. And then Yang just wins by what's practically dumb luck with her Semblance.

5.1) So I guess that for all your talk about how RWBY "is all about imagination", you cannot imagine something as simple as that.

5.2) Which it would never do, because Aura protects in all directions while it's up. If Hazel saw a tree going down in his direction he would keep his Aura up, especially if it's more than one tree. And since he would know Adam's still there, he wouldn't turn it off just for a few fallen trees.

Adam, meanwhile, would end up spending quite the amount of energy to do that. Energy that he could've used on an actual attack on Hazel instead, potentially causing decent damage.