User blog comment:ChishioKunrin/RWBY's quality, and how it can be improved/@comment-9090085-20150526084440

Wow... I think, on the whole, I agree with your points.

What you said about "Child-Friendliness" reminded me of the blog "Grimm that can cut through aura" that I made a rather lengthy comment on about the role of Aura in a story. And now I realize it was a lack of understanding about how to use the "tool" called Aura that was part of the reason why Breach was not so good.

What it boils down to(if you can't be bothered to read my post(s)), is that Aura allows characters to get the crap kicked out of them - without actually getting the crap kicked out of them. People can be beaten, slashed, etc. and not be permanently hurt. This causes some problems of its own(that Aura has a lack of visual feedback for the audience, making it hard for them to gauge how much danger characters are in); but the main problem in Breach is that, well...

It was barely used at all.

Only Yang was hit in the episode, and seeing how she just got up and punched a car as if nothing happened, it didn't really create a sense of danger. Several times when someone could have been hit by a Grimm, they instead roared menacingly; despite the fact that Aura could allow a character to be all but eaten alive and still come out of it unscathed.

Of course, that's not to say that those are the only ways to create tension in the scene; for example, having someone who's low on Aura panting from exhaustion would do wonders for Yang and Weiss, the two of them having had their Aura depleted(via unconsciousness) not 10 minutes earlier. And we know from the last 2 episodes that Ruby is useless in a fight without her scythe; having a Grimm "grab" it(say, by accident while trying to bite her), would put Ruby in a vulnerable state that could be quite believable.

-Sigh- Man, now I REALLY want to finish that analysis/re-write of Breach... writer's block is so annoying!