Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-2238912-20190322145423/@comment-32346149-20190322195851

73.Anon.52 wrote: I'd just like to point out that as much as V5's climax failed, it was still a climactic season, saying we've had 3 volumes of build-up is false, then again, RT's formula thusfar is trying to do one every other season(V3 was an extension of V2), so it's due, then again I still think they'd do better to extend it to every 3rd season so the world building sticks/is done properly. You could argue that they've always operated on a 2-season cycle, with volume 1 acting as the series prologue followed by: 2 (buildup), 3 (climax), 4 (buildup), so on and so forth. But what I meant before was simply that we haven't had a culmination to the magnitude that we saw in volume 3 since then.

Volume 5 was climactic, sure. But it also lacked 2 of the things that made volume 3 such an effectively cataclysmic event. Firstly, it was procedural and didn't change anything. Adam and Cinder both survived and the main characters were simply presented with the next logical step in a previously established journey (take the lamp to Atlus). Contrast that with volume 3, where their home was basically destroyed and all the characters were sent to the four corners of Remnant to toil in their misery.

Secondly, nobody of consequence died (unless you consider Lionheart or Vernal 'of consequence'), which just doesn't create the same kind of systemic emotional effect that we saw in Volume 3, where they killed off 3 major, likeable characters.

I think what I'm getting at (and this, in my mind, is what's gone wrong with the series) is that we witnessed a significant shift in the tone of this show in volume 3, and since then that tone has been abandoned for a slightly less funny, more serious version of volumes 1-2. And that has effectively turned volume 3 into an aberration, rather than an evolution. We all more or less admit that volume 3 was the absolute best this series had to offer, right? So why does it feel like they're running from it, rather than embracing it?