Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-11362637-20150116232355/@comment-66.116.33.1-20150119203620

I'd also like to weigh in a little more on the Jaune and Neptune thing, which I think a lot of people are way too hard on. Yes, it goes on too long, but when you really look at what happens it's a pretty good addition to the story.

The thing is that most media pushes the idea that if you try hard enough, you can get any girl to like you, and doing this is some sort of passage into manhood. Our culture teaches males that women are prizes to be won if they try hard enough, which is why so many movies end with the hero "getting the girl" regardless of whether or not she has any actual reason to be attracted to him.

The cliche thing to do would be if Jaune "won" Weiss by doing something impressive and that someone instantly made her fall in love with him, but instead Weiss stands her ground and falls for Neptune instead. Whether or not she should like Neptune is beside the point because the important thing is that Weiss decides which guy she likes, as does Pyrrha, totally independent of what the guys want, which is actually very progressive writing.

See, Jaune believes all that crap about being able to win a girl over by impressing her, but what makes this scenario special is that we aren't supposed to agree with him. The writing mocks his mindset instead of glorifying it, and in the end he learns his lesson and gives Pyrrha a chance instead.

Meanwhile Neptune does and says a lot of pretty bad things that all ultimately boil down to him being selfish and cowardly, which he too gets over when he mans up and talks to Weiss even though he's gonna have to admit to her at some point he can't dance. The infamous "she's all yours" line is pretty obviously him desperately trying to wiggle out of that encounter, not a sexist declaration to be taken at absolute face value that Weiss is his property like angry tumblr users seem to think it is.

So in the end, the men are bumbling doofs who learn their lessons the hard way and the women know what they want from the beginning and end up looking pretty smart for just letting the problem work itself. It's a nice little take on a classic and usually sexist coming of age story, but like I said, it would be better if like a third of the season wasn't dedicated to it.