Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-11362637-20150116232355/@comment-66.116.33.1-20150118231533

Vol 2 was...frustrating. In the beginning, it was much better than volume 1, in terms of animation, dialogue, pacing, and characterization. There are a lot of very clever storytelling devices early on like the card game scene, which is very funny but also tells us a little more about the geography and culutre of their world, shows us how well the girls are getting along with each other now, and establishes that there's something wrong with Blake, all without diving into lengthy exposition.

However as the volume went on things got worse and and worse, I assume because they starting running low on time and had to rush to get the last few episodes out on time. I liked the dance being used as a tool of making Jaune and Neptune face up to their mistakes, but like the Jaune and Cardin story from vol 1, this just went on too long. From then on, it's pretty downhill.

The biggest problem is that the last fight is probably the least spectacular or entertaining in the entire series, because it's basically "characters arrive, fire guns, grimm die" repeated four or five times. It feels like about a tenth as much time and energy was put into this as the battle against Roman in the mech or the food fight.

Beyond that I just feel like there were a lot of missed opportunities and setup for stuff that won't happen till vol 3, or maybe even later. We know Weiss has a sister, but nothing else. We know Cinder did something to the communication tower, but not what. We see the other two members of Sun's team but they don't say or do anything despite being in the opening sequence. Then there are the little character moments I was hoping for that never came, like what Yang and Weiss's reactions when they saw Blake without her bow for the first time were, or Blake getting to know Velvet, since they seem to already be friends when CFVY gets back from its mission.

The good still outweighs the bad in RWBY, but the writers made some miscalculations this year and really need to schedule vol 3 better. I think it would be better if they just released it as a 2 hour movie in the fall instead of doing episodes, for the sake of pacing and time management.