Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-74.101.236.56-20170321065847/@comment-4010415-20170404075122

The theory is that Cinder has a Grimm beetle inside her, not that silver-eyed people have Grimm in them. To me, it makes more sense that Cinder has the Grimm beetle from the glove inside her than literally all Maidens being weak against SEWs. There's not much of a reason, that we know of, for all Maidens to be weak against SEWs. Meanwhile, the glove dissolved into Cinder's arm and then her tattoo appeared in a similar fashion, and then we have the scene where Salem is presumably doing Cinder's recovery session, and she tells Cinder that "it" can sense her trepidation and she has to make "it" fear/dread her.

I never understood the party girl thing either. She more so acts like the cheerful popular girl but without everyone else treating her like she's popular.

To be fair, Ruby did use her Semblance, judging by the fact that all we saw was her twirling cape and a sword.

I have no clue how Jaune got in, but by the time Ruby got there, the barrier had already been destroyed. The Nevermore broke the barrier when it flew into the arena, so by that point, the barrier was no more. When the Nevermore landed on it, there were cyan shockwaves where its feet and beak hit, and it was flickering from the Nevermore pecking at it. Plus, ther was the robot voice saying "Warning: Safety barrier failing." We can't say that the barrier is only one-way because that would mean the Nevermore would've been able to get in from the beginning instead of sitting on top of it and pecking away at it. So, Jaune getting in was an oversight. In reality, he should've been banging his fists on the weakening safety barrier.

It'd be nice if they could find a way to try to make the RWBY volumes last longer, though that would cause each volume to be longer than a movie, and they seem pretty fond of treating it like a movie. There have been theater showings of it in the US, and the way it's released in Japan is via theater showings followed by DVD and Blu-ray sales. What would they do about the Japanese dub? There could be a mini series about flashbacks that could come out either before or after a RWBY Chibi season.

Ah, Weiss going back to being annoyed with Ruby after Team RWBY forms. Well, when Weiss made that speech after saving Ruby from the Death Stalker, she didn't expect to end up with Ruby as her team leader. Admittedly, it took me years to realize what Weiss' problem was (maybe because it took getting to know her more and careful observation upon rewatching multiple times). One thing in the writing that's actually subtle (as in, easily overlooked) is the fact that Weiss cared a lot about her grades and worked hard academically.


 * Weiss' soliloquy in "The First Step": "This will be perfect! The smartest girl in class combined with the strongest girl in class! Together we will be unstoppable! I can see it now! We'll be popular! We'll be celebrities! We'll get perfect grades! Nothing can come between us now!" In this little speech, "the smartest girl" refers to Weiss and "the strongest girl" refers to Pyrrha.
 * In "The First Step, Pt.2", shortly after being partnered with Ruby: "I will not let my mission be delayed because you're too slow! I swear, if I get a bad grade because of your—"
 * In "Breach": "If we don't get extra credit for that, I'm gonna be seriously disappointed." Once again, worrying about her grades.

And now we know, from the manga, that Weiss trained at home instead of attending a combat school, and the fight against the Giant Armor in the White Trailer was part of a bet that Jacques made with her via his assistant - if she could defeat it, he would allow her to attend Beacon.

Take all of this and look back at what she said to Ruby after Port's class:

Weiss: That's just it - you've done nothing to earn your position! Back in the forest, you acted like a child, and you've only continued to do so!

Ruby: Weiss, where is this coming from? What happened to all the talk about "working together"? I thought you believed in acting as a team.

Weiss: Not a team led by you. I've studied and trained. And quite frankly, I deserve better.

Weiss was over Ruby trying to show off. Her new issue was the fact that Ruby was her leader, and she felt like Ruby didn't deserve it. Weiss worked her ass off to get into Beacon, and then Ruby just walks right in two years early because Glynda caught her stopping a robbery. Ruby acted like a goofy child who didn't take anything at Beacon seriously - not the initiation and definitely not class. To Weiss, this was an insult, a spit in the face of all the work she put into getting into Beacon.

Weiss didn't see the Faunus as trustworthy, so she probably didn't think they were worthy of her being nice to them for the sake of being nice. She even said herself "Do you want to know why I despise the White Fang? Why I don't particularly trust the Faunus?" If you really think about it, any Faunus could be a member of the White Fang. When they're not wearing the mask, you can't even tell if they may or may not be a member. I always thought it would be really interesting if it was revealed that an undercover White Fang member had actually managed to get close enough to kidnap, hurt, or even kill someone close to Weiss, leaving her uncertain about trusting any Faunus whatsoever. The fact that they didn't do that is a missed opportunity.

My best guess is that they just waited all weekend thinking that Blake would come back, and when she didn't, they got worried and decided to search. Weiss said that she did a lot of thinking while they were searching. I'd guess that she finally started thinking because of her talk with Ruby and Yang. When they first started searching, Weiss was still stuck on the fact that Blake was a White Fang member hidden in plain sight sleeping in the same room as her (meaning that she could've assassinated or kidnapped Weiss at any moment), and Ruby and Yang insisted on wanting to hear Blake's side of the story.

It would've been nice if they had shown Weiss slowly getting used to Blake and Sun and growing to trust Faunus. They could've even had her make comments that are considered offensive to Faunus without realizing it and have Blake let her know "Uh, Weiss? Don't say that." But instead, after just one event, we skip to the second semester and she's... suddenly good friends with Velvet? She didn't even look up from what she was doing when Velvet was getting bullied in volume 1.

Weiss' motivation for becoming a Huntress... She didn't say it was about the SDC treating Faunus like shit. It was about Jacques ruining the SDC's reputation. "My father was not the start of our name, and I refuse to let him be the end of it." It was about Jacques, not the Faunus. Now that we have WoR: SDC, we FINALLYYYYY understand what the hell she was talking about! The SDC was founded by her grandfather, Nicholas. What kind of reputation did Nicholas bring to the SDC? He trained to have the skills of a Huntsman so that he could go on expeditions with the other miners, and like Qrow said, people appreciated that he was someone who actually gets out there and is willing to stick his neck out for people. That is why Weiss decided to become a Huntress. She followed in her grandfather's footsteps. That, and like Blake said, Huntsmen and Huntresses are viewed as heroes, so if Weiss takes over the SDC with a heroic reputation under her belt, that will help too.

True, a scene with Team RWBY voting would've been a good place to insert how the tournament progression works. The tournament happens every two years. Port and Oobleck explaining how the tournament works would help little kids in-universe.

Indeed, Weiss and Yang vs Flynt and Neon could've been done better. I'm still disappointed that they didn't utilize the desert biome. I mean, come on, rollerskates + sand = disaster. Have Weiss throw Neon into the desert biome, boom, you just made her vulnerable, eliminate her. Hell, instead of having Neon accidentally end up in the geyser biome where she gets tripped up, they could've had her end up in the desert biome!

It's like they say: "Writers can't do math." Miles and Kerry realized too late that applying an actual defined amount of time without actually thinking it out is a bad idea.

The Volume 4 Character Short even made it seem like we'd get to see them fighting Grimm and doing missions, and that apparently takes place just outside the Kingdom of Vale, still on Sanus... which doesn't make sense with them already having their timeskip appearances. The Geist fight was basically


 * Obligatory "First episode of the volume always has actiony bits!" That's pretty much a pattern they follow. Volume 1 had Ruby stopping the robbery, followed by Glynda and Cinder's witchy fight. Volume 2 had the food fight. Volume 3 had RWBY vs ABRN, which was... "actiony".. And voume 4 had them fighting the Geist.
 * "Look! Ruby now has special Dust clips! We showed you this early on so it won't seem like an out-of-nowhere asspull when she uses the lightning one while they fight Tyrian!" - I really like how they make an effort to show and introduce us to things and characters before they're actually really relevant, so it feels like less of an out-of-nowhere "We need to do this thing/have this thing happen, so let's throw this thing/character you've never seen before at it!" I mean, as awkwardly-worded as it was, they went out of their way to mention "Weiss has a sister named Winter" an entire volume early. Too bad they couldn't do that with Whitley for whatever reason. Lessons Learned was the perfect place they could've done it, what with Weiss and Winter talking about Jacques.
 * Ruby's getting along well with JNR, doing teamworky things, and Jaune is... trying to be strategic and stuff.

Yang's recovery felt kind of... rushed since, once again, they went "This stuff happened off-camera, just trust us."

Monty kept saying that Dust is not magic in any way, so... I guess Dust is more so "magitek" - something that is merely technology in their universe and seems like magic to us. The crystals contain special energies that are released in certain ways. Aura is also an energy. I guess it helps to know Monty's definition of magic. If I recall, it's something along the lines of magic being something unlimited that does whatever it wants. There is a finite amount of energy in Dust, everyone has a finite amount of Aura, Semblance uses Aura as fuel. But we saw that Amber could still use the Fall Maiden powers even after her Aura was depleted, so if we apply Monty's definition of magic, that means Amber could use the Maiden powers infinitely. Also, the stuff Monty said is why I was bothered by Ozpin's line that was something like "What if I told you there are people who can use magic without Dust?" followed by Pyrrha going "You mean like a Semblance?" Neither of those are magic, and they shouldn't have been referred to as such.

But apparently, Ozpin's group doesn't know who all works for Salem. Qrow didn't recognize Tyrian, didn't even know who he was or why he was there. It wasn't until Tyrian mentioned his "goddess" that Qrow realized Tyrian works for Salem. And I was using the Salem Witch Trials and the Red Scare as examples of innocent people being persecuted because of paranoia about who might secretly be "the enemy". There were various reasons why people accused others of being a witch/communist. Like, one reason that some people were accused of being witches was where the accusor made the accusation for personal gain. "If Billy Joe Bob gets hanged for witchcraft, that means his property will be up for sale, and I can get it and double the size of my property! Yeehaw!" "I hate John Smith and have hated him for the duration of our feud. If I get him hanged for witchcraft, our feud will finally be over with!"

I think they chose 17 because then, the characters are mature but still teenagers, and Ruby gets to still be at a significantly young and naive age without being a literal child.

Yeah, they're Nevermores. They were even doing the Nevermore screeches, and we've got a screenshot of them. And like I said, we were shown in The Next Step that Beowolves come out fully formed in the size that we see them all the time, so who's to say that the Goliaths start out tiny? Who's to say that the Goliaths' birthing pool is next to Mountain Glenn? Oobleck said that the Goliaths are possibly hundreds of years old, as in "It is my estimate that they are, they most likely are, but no one really knows for certain."

The purpose of infecting the CCT was so that they could get access to Amity Colosseum's randomizer program. It was undoubtedly easier for Cinder to get inside the CCT than it would be for her to get to whatever room the computer is in in the colosseum, especially since it seems that the colosseum didn't get to Vale until it was time for the tournament to start going on. Once they executed their plan to have Grimm overrun Vale, they didn't need the CCT and the virus anymore. They destroyed the CCT to cut off instant communication between the kingdoms, thus making it harder for the kingdoms to adequately communicate and prevent confusion and paranoia. Slow communication across continents easily leads to miscommunication, as shown in our world's history, for example in the American Revolution.

How would they get the virus to each robot individually? They were connected to a computer system in Ironwood's ship, which... Cinder wouldn't have easy access to, while she did have easier access to the CCT. Roman's job in the brig in Ironwood's ship was actually literally to get the virus into that computer system to hijack the robots when the chaos began and Neo actually had an opening to get inside. Presumably all of the Paladins that Cinder stole were destroyed in the end of No Brakes. The next shipment of robots and mechs had much higher security, including Winter supervising the shipment.

It's not so much that Ironwood's votes count for more with him being more important, as it is the fact that he has two roles in Atlas - general and headmaster of the Huntsman academy. So, he holds a seat as their military's leader, and he also holds a seat as their academy's headmaster. I don't see why they have it arranged that way. It gives him an awful lot of power, what with Atlas' government, Huntsman academy, and military all being merged, like Weiss said in Never Miss A Beat.

Ah. Yeahhh... If I had to guess why Miles and Kerry did that, it would probably be Miles going "Never again" and wanting to make sure that the fights would no longer cause inconsistencies in character abilities and plot. The downside being that Miles and Kerry may not be quite as creative in fight choreography.

I really hope they get all the kinks worked out in choreographing animation and animating the show in Maya. I still can't get over how... freakish and weird Adam moved in volume 4's opening. Every pose looked like we needed to call an exorcist for him. Like, maybe that was the intention, portraying him as inhuman, but... just... no. Do that with the environment looking more dreamlike, if that is your intention. They also need to redo some of the models, especially the male characters. Many of them have their shoulders too wide so their arms are too far from their body, Ironwood's arms are way too short, and I've seen it pointed out that Sun's torso shouldn't be that narrow with his musculature. Also, male nipples, please, unless that is something that would cause issues in keeping the Japanese dub coming out.