Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-410526-20160206155158/@comment-26206856-20160207025957

Minomelo wrote:

I didn't mention body count. "Breach" was an awful episode for a HUGE number of reasons. This episode had a huge amount of awesome moments, heart-wrenching moments, awesome fights, plot development and insight into characters while also leaving the story in an awesome place for the finale of this volume.

Everything about it was better than "Breach". (although, to be fair, most of this volume has too) It was better than Breach, but by no means awesome. In essence, it IS the breach of this season with how rough it was, but at least held twists and plot to counter some of it.

The reveals weren't perfect either for impact. Velvet's reveal to me was very meh, especially with the blatant re-use of animations, though I could see how some found it awesome. Weiss just happened to look over her shoulder and be like 'Oh! I guess I can summon now. Let me try to block a blow and sacrifice myself before even knowing what I can do'. And then was immediately brushed aside. Cinder just stood watch and let Jaune/Pyrrha walk away which seemed very out of character to not even try to spook them or test her new strength.

What WAS handled well was Adam's temprament and brutality. Ironwood's arrival and interaction with Qrow were handled well too. Ruby's fight was kind of up and down, but was pretty fluid so it passes. (Ruby had a few scythe twirls out of her own reach and I heard no semblance sound for Neo's shatter.)

We've managed to flop the animation quality from good fights and bad exposition to meh fights and good exposition. It's understandable, but after two seasons of it happening I wish they would push the series' air off a month or so to to extend production to finish the polish and not rush the last few episodes due to time crunch; especially when the last few episodes should be given the most detail and finish due to what is going on. You usually see it in anime where the quality will drop off around ep 7-9 so they can spend extra time for the good stuff in ep 11-12/13.