User blog:Deafro/What makes RWBY Interesting

Found this site a few days ago, and I figured I'd wait until this next episode had aired and people had time to think about it before I went to post this. We are getting to a point in the story where we know who the characters are, what they are doing, and how they are going about doing it. We know about Aura and Dust and have a good idea how they are used in combat, and this has all been done before the end of a second anime episode. This level of storytelling is something that really sets this particular show apart from even most professional anime, and perhaps I can explain why the story feels more lackluster now than it did in the previous episodes.

Allow me to begin by pointing out the fight in the Yellow trailer between Yang and the bouncer twins. Up until that point we had just mob fighting, whether it was Ruby against the Beowolves, Blake against the machines, or Yang against the generic people, people just charged in one at a time only to become fodder to demonstrate the superb skill of the progatonists. However, the twins fight was what what really caputred my attention because it was the first fight where a protagonist has a strong possibility of being defeated. Why this fight and not the others? Its because Melanie and Miltia forced Yang into a situation where they were strong. They chose to engage Yang in such a way that Yang had no choice but to break their synergy if she hoped to survive.

Take a look at the fight move for move. Yang jumps down from the balcony firing her gauntlets at the feet of the twins. She wasn't looking to hit them, she saw they had claws and boots as weapons, and forced them to keep their distance while she got her feet under her. The twins are pushed back, but they understand Yang will have a hard time shooting in two directions at once, and so they split and close in from the sides. Now if you look closely here, Yang chooses to focus Melanie down, and Melanie twists and rolls to make herself a difficult target. What does Miltia do while Melanie is getting shot? She sprints! She looks and sees Yang isn't turned to shoot her, so she just straight runs knowing she isn't in danger, and gets into range where her claws will be effective.

I highly recommend watching the rest of the fight critically if you want to know more, but that little detail there, that the opponent is a thinking individual looking to win the fight, is something I almost never see in anime, and it got me rather excited to see the first episode.

It was great, even better than I anticipated, and for anyone who is serious about storytelling I would highly suggest breaking this episode down. I'll start with the first scene after the Narrator finishes and Roman steps into the store. The first thing that caught my attention is the fact that a store exists at all, a store that sells exclusively Dust, Dust crystals, and containers for Dust. There are gift bags, the kind you would see ground coffee pakaged in, there's a magazine rack, the Dust is in massive columns all along the walls. This store right here is a well kept store that must sell quite a bit of this Dust, and considering companies would likely just buy in bulk directly from the manufacterers, this store was made to sell Dust to the everyday man.

We haven't even gotten to a single word of dialogue yet, and from the scene we already know Dust to be affordable, used for everyday purposes, and is used at a good rate. The very existance of the scene itself provides all the details one needs to start their questions. What is Dust used for? How much Dust is needed for that use? How much Dust does the company have to make to keep up with demand? What do the different colors of Dust do? Why buy Dust in crystal form?

This also brings up another question as well. Roman says as a opening jest to the clerk "Do you know how hard it is to find a Dust shop open this late?" We know just from the store itself that Dust must be a affordable product for the layman, but this store might just be able to stay open longer than the competitors. Why would Roman a man in good position in the underground, come personally to rob the equivilant of a gas station? It was a open store at that, and they were seen by the townspeople with swords on their belts. To me, it doesn't make sense, unless Roman has some other plan in mind.

Enter Crimson, a huntress who is so powerful that Glynda Goodwitch, one of the head spellcasters at Beacon itself, could only fight her to a draw. What is she doing here? You do not commit a apache helicopter to steal a few gallons of gas from a local station, and you do not bring a top tier spellcaster to hold up a dust shop. What was her actual goal here? What was Roman doing to give her the opening she needed to get what they really wanted?

There is so much more about that episode as well to check out, and I'll be glad to get to them in another article if you guys want. That got a little off subject though, the point is they use the scenery, the actions, the reactions, and the dialogue to give us a basis for the world, and to demonstrate that the enemy is a thinking human being who works towards their own personal agenda(s). We as viewers can relate to rational characters, we can follow the rules of the world and speculate what it is the characters want and how they go about getting it.

The reason I think why these past few episodes have been so dull however is a alarming lack of rationality. The twins think, Roman thinks, Glynda and Crimson think and react, but the Grimm? The Grimm as we know them are even dumber than the animals they represent. They have no protective instinct, no patience, they don't even take advantage of a unaware opponent, they just die. The snakes are probably the best example. The first one was a 40 foot serpent who rises out from the grass. Now normally a snake can strike out up to half of its body legnth in less than a tenth of a second. It could've lashed out instantly and stabbed Lin with those pearly whites before he even had time to tense.

What does it actually do? It drops, slithers past Lin, twists in a circle a few times in front of the man's face, then sorta lunges at him. It annoys me because the thing isn't even trying to win. Its just lunging over and over again until Lin finally puts the thing out of its misery, all the while letting Lin demonstrate his weapon for the crowd. Its pathetic, and I can't see how these monsters were ever a threat to the survival of humanity.

You want actual scary Grimm how about this? Lin and a man are walking through the woods same as they were, when a sudden blur of black vanishes into the tall grass and the man beside Lin is gone. Lin goes to attack the thing, when the white snake rears up and makes its presense known as a warning. Now Lin either leaves the guy to die, knowing he's in a bad position, or he risks trying to catch the snakes fangs with his Aura the instant it does strike. The Grimm want to see tomorrow just as much as anything else, and they know how to make a potential threat back down.

True animals don't think like humans do, but they still have the urge to survive. They've got a crakerjack job with the characters, the scenery, and some of the world, but I think if the Grimm had that need to survive, then these next few episodes will not so much be filler as actual fights against a dangerous opponent.

((I'll see about posting my thoughts on Aura and Dust sometime in the near future. Thanks for reading.))