User blog:Eres - Mistress of Illusions/Another Volume 1 Review (my own two cents)

I know that countless other people have already done these by now, but I feel the need to give my own take on the matter.



I’ll say right now that I am a fan of the show and think it to be a very good show worth watching and following, but it’s not perfect. It is good, very good even. But, I don’t think I could get away with calling it great and definitely not perfect.



In the weeks after episode 16, after everyone has had time to calm down from the excitement of the show and actually think about it all, I’ve seen a great number of different opinions show up about the show and giving many different views on certain parts.



Some of what others labeled as problems are: the writing, the voice acting, the animation, the episode length, etc.



Honestly, I didn’t see many of these things as being actual problems.



The Writing: everything that happened in the show served a purpose even if that purpose went unappreciated. All amounts of world building and exposition were handled now rather than later. Call it rushed and amateurish if you must, but I don’t see that as a bad thing. Even Jaune’s arc I saw as being unappreciated, but necessary. Jaune was the weakest character in the show at the time in almost every way, serving mostly as a comic relief character that may or may not be funny depending on the viewer. His arc established him as an actual person with feelings and motives for what he does. Something that I think will pay off in the long run.



Voice Acting: I’m talking mostly about the complaints for the trailers. Now, I’m not some professionally trained critique who can detect any and all errors in every work I see, so maybe I missed something in the dozen or so times I watched the Yellow Trailer. Aside from Ruby’s voice being perhaps a bit too squeaky at the end, I wasn’t bothered in the slightest. Since then, only Weiss has occasionally gotten on my nerves with shrillness, but I’m thinking that it might have been the intended effect. In any case, I’ve gotten used to the voices by now and any major changes would probably do more harm than good, in my opinion.



Episode Length: a general complaint silently harboured by all and existent throughout, we’ve all wished that the episodes could just be a minute or so longer. Especially after waiting a week only to be given a four-minute episode, right? But, I’m not worried about the length anymore. Granted, the team at RT probably could do more with longer episodes, but they’ve already achieved quite a bit with what they had and they system they use now has been around since the start of RvB. Sufficed to say, they’re in their element and don’t “need” to change. Besides, a week is not that long and it takes time to form all of those mad yet ingenious fan theories, right?



<p class="MsoNormal">Animation: here is where I deviate from the other topics I’ve touched on in that I actually see this as being a problem. Rather, the animation is both the strongest and weakest thing about the show. It’s strong in that, most of the time, everything looks really nice and the action scenes are obviously this show’s fanservice. But, on the other hand we have all of the hiccups in animation, such as: stiff movements, incomplete character models, anatomical abnormalities (Oobleck’s cup), render cubes, levitating characters (my personal most hated) and others of that like. Writing can be done better, voice acting comes with experience, episode length is a moot point, but I see animation as a legitimate hurdle that will take effort to overcome. Hopefully Monty’s work with Poser® 2014 and the new character rigs will help with any issues, but I’m very nervous about this. While bad animation won’t make me leave the show, I’ll be very disappointed.

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<p class="MsoNormal">Now, let’s talk about characters. Volume 1 introduced quite a plethora of characters and managed to give each of them a very basic role thus far. A few of the characters have actually gotten more development than that however with the main ones being Ruby, Weiss, Jaune, and a little bit of Blake. The other characters have yet to be given more prominent roles in the story thus far, but I only feel that this is an issue with Pyrrha. I sense that a lot iis going to happen to her in the future, perhaps as early as Volume 2 and I'm worried that we'll never see more of her than this. Now, say what you will about Yang being left out despite being in the damn title, but what are you supposed to do about her? With the exception of the almost inevitable conflict, mini-arc she’ll spawn with Weiss at some point, I don’t really know there can be done to develop Yang as a character yet. There is the matter of the person she’s searching for and maybe some ties to the criminal underground. But I’m not worried about those yet and I’m prepared to wait patiently until the writers are ready to give it to us.

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<p class="MsoNormal">Ultimately, I think that is what so many people are finding wrong with RWBY; they think that it’s over or something. It has been the first have of the first season, that’s far from over. If I must make a comparison, RvB took five seasons to really begin cleaning up the messes it had made in that time. RWBY will probably take half as long if that to get its affairs in order. For everything that the writers might have left out so far, they still have plenty of time to tell it.

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<p class="MsoNormal">So, in short, I consider RWBY Volume 1 to be a strong start to what I hope to become a truly great web series and maybe even considered a real anime by all of those purists out there. It has its flaws, but I think that most of them can’t really be attributed to bad writers or bad actors or bad software or anything like that. This is just the start of something that hopefully will finally learn to stand and walk on its own legs instead of floating above the ground.

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<p class="MsoNormal">Numerical Score: 8.5/10