Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-108.23.148.194-20140118015155/@comment-9090085-20140118050533

Not to be mean, but I think you came into RWBY with some very flawed expectations: namely, that you were expecting a completely origonal show, with completely origonal characters; while someone like myself expected a cleche storm from watching the trailers, with over-the top anime phisics, melodrama, and so forth. In other words, saying it's bad because it's a cleche storm seems a tad off when that apears be be exacly what it was suposed to be.

I guess the key point to remember is this: a complettely origonal work does not exist; a complettely origonal charater does not exist. "There is nothing new under the sun".

But that's fine.

What is important when making a work is not what tropes you use, it's how you use them. If you're just throwing in the trope, not bothering to flesh it out, then it's bad(especialy if it's an overused trope, which is what a cleche is - but even cleches can be used well). Charater Architypes are a perfect example: an archtype is a good place to start, but a terible place to end; if you don't give them some depths beyond their archtype, then they are flat and all-to-often cleched.

Now, while there are plenty of characters in RWBY who have not shown us their depths yet, there are plenty of characters who have shown us at least some of those depths. Jaune is a good example: He initially fits the "Idiot Hero" archetype; the catch is, he knows he fits that archetype, and he hates it. Even characters who haven't had an episode dedicated to fleshing them out show hints of their true depths: Yang the "Party Girl" acts very motherly around Ruby; "The Stoic" Ren is actually very open with his emotions, he's just (generally)quiet; and even Cardin "The Bully" has some sense of honor, or at least gratitude.

Which brings me to my next point: as mentioned above me, fleshing out characters takes time; it is not something that you can just slap on in less then a minute, you have build it up. And you'll likely want to build each character up; with a cast this large, that takes a lot of time - especially when you take into account character growth.

Your other beefs seem more personal to me. I never understood why people dislike the school setting, for instance, seeing as it's barely used. I'd even go so far as to say it's under utilized.

But the last thing to keep in mind is RWBY is in the early stages, where they're focusing introducing us to both the characters and the world, building up both in the process. They may have left the main plot on the back-burner, but that hardly means their have been no interesting stories: much of the cast has undergone character development over their own "mini-arcs", which, considering this is a character-driven series, is both acceptable and likely necessarily.

Don't forget, we're barely 4 hours into it, and with volume 2 on the horizon, we'll have more room for development of both the cast, the world, and the main plot.