User blog:SomeoneYouUsedToKnow/Fights - Context and "Homages": An Alternate Reason Why RWBY's Fights Have Gotten Worse

First of all, let me clarify that by "Homages" I mean what Rooster Teeth considers homages. I'm also referring solely to the "homages" in fights, not stuff like Ruby referencing a speech from a real-life president for no discernible reason.

Now, since the original 4 trailers, quite the number of RWBY's scenes, fights, and somethings parts of fights, have drawn base or inspiration from other works. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's blatant. Sometimes it's just the idea, sometimes it's the exact same motions.

For fight scenes, the ideas drawn upon are, understandably, the "cool stuff" kind of ideas. The things that look awesome, entertaining, amazing, etc. Monty did it in Vol.1 and 2 when making the fights, and Miles and Kerry have been doing it for years when planning/directing fights, assuming it's not merely one of the multiple animators throwing something in.

But not all cool stuff, is the same, and not all cool stuff works the same way. In a general sense we can divide cool action scenes in 2 kinds: Those that work without context, and those that stand out because of the context. Let me explain the difference, plus examples.

1) Cool Action That Works WITHOUT Context
Now, this kind of action scenes are the kind that are designed in a way that even if you have no idea who the characters are or what's going on, it looks amazing and jawdropping anyway, the Cool factor is not diminished if the context behind the action is missing or is just plain non-existant.

Examples include quite a number of fighting and shoot-em-up games and so on, things that have plots that are little more than excuses for the characters to do what they do, as well as the Flashy kind of Hack-and-Slash games that generally have some fancy badass dude doing fancy badass things.

There are many examples well outside the realm of videogames, I know, but I'm more experienced with that industry, hence those examples. Which is why, to provide a more visual example of this kind of Action Scene, I summon this: Devil May Cry 3's opening cutscene. I don't need you to compare it with anything RWBY has done, or to even know what Devil May Cry is, I just need you to look at it, and see how awesome it is in it's entirety even if you got no idea of anything.

Within RWBY, the fights in Volume 1 and 2, and to an extent 3, fell into this category, especially the ones made or at least lead by Monty and by extension Shane, which is perfectly sensical since this is where Monty's signature style falls on overall; his pre-RWBY stuff like Dead Fantasy and Haloid fall here too, much more than RWBY ever did.

The fights "just happened" more often than not. Ruby just happened to be attacked by a horde of Beowulves, the heroes just happened to be attacked by a giant scorpion and raven in the Emerald Forest, RWBY and JNPR just decided to have a food fight, and so on.

Sometimes, it makes sense. Like the multiple Grimm fights that happened in the Initiation in the Emerald Forest, or the various fights in the tournament. Sometimes, it makes little sense or no sense at all, like Roman hopping up onto the Paladin and going ramming all the cars on Vale's highway the moment Blake and Sun shoot off the lights at the rally, or Port having an actual living Grimm in his class which he had Weiss fight against just because.

But in both cases, the fights were cool, the action was cool (well, personally I'm not really a fan of Weiss vs Pumba but still). You could have little to no understanding of what was actually happening and it still looked cool and entertaining, sentiment made stronger by the cool music that supported them.

Now, of course, Volumes 4 and 5 also had their fair share of fights that "just happened", and at least try to look passable without the context behind them being required. RNJR vs Geist, Black Sun vs Feilong, Weiss vs Lancers, those are a couple of the recent-ish fights that could be said to fall into this category as well. However, they usually don't fall as hard here as the fights in the old Volumes.

2) Cool Action That Only (Truly) Works WITH Context
This type of action scene can still look good even if you don't know what's going on, but it doesn't become amazing or outstanding unless you also know the context behind the scene.

For example, imagine a superhero fighting a supervillain. Without context, it just looks like your typical "hero vs villain" fight that may be fun, but it's not special. But then you add the context, say, that the villain was the hero's best friend who went insane after fusing with some demon alien substance which he did willingly because he was jealous of his friend. Now the fight gains a tragic and dramatic tone to it, making it more special.

Or as a visual example, Anakin vs Obi-Wan in Revenge of the Sith. This fight just isn't the same if you don't know that they are much more than just "master and ex-apprentice".

This is the type of fights that Miles and Kerry seem to like more. Within RWBY, this was pretty much non-existant in Vol.1 and to a similar extent in Vol.2, but it started showing up in Vol.3. Particularly, Pyrrha vs Cinder.

>Without Context: Some greek-looking warrior girl fighting an evil sorceress with a dragon looking in the background and dying after putting up a fight. Cool, but not special.

>With Context: A prodigial champion undergoing an emotional shitstorm sees that the villain has just killed the Big Good. Thinking that only she is able to stop her, or at least slow her down until the teachers and pros can get to her, she sent her partner away and faced what is esentially a demigoddess alone, knowing the risks.

In essence, the fight goes from a simple "hero vs villain, villain wins" fight, into a suicidal heroic sacrifice, which has a bigger impact on the viewer. Much bigger, considering the resulting hordes of sad fanboys who refused to believe she was dead for years.

After Volume 3, this became the main style of action scenes. RNJR vs Nuck for example, looks like your old "heroes fight monster" fight, and the action is not good enough to make it stand out. Instead the main "kicker" behind that fight is how it serves as Ren's personal conclusion as he faces the killer of his parents and hometown, that's what makes this fight what it is.

With Volume 5, well, the whole fight between Blake and Ilia, and the Albains vs Ghira, feels much weaker overall if you don't know what's going on, especially the former. But to be fair, "fights between used-to-be friends" often don't work when you don't even know the characters's relationship.

Now, in those cases, they got action, but the action is weak on it's own. It doesn't draw you in automatically, unlike the previous style of action scenes. Most of the fight's "worth" comes from the context behind them, without that context the fights just feel weak, while with the context....maybe not so much.

Upsides and Downsides of Each Style
Neither style is inherently better or worse than the other. It all depends on the execution, and even within RWBY we have examples that fit all 4 results.

Cool Action Without Context Required
The main upside to this style is that, done right (and Monty generally did it right), it easily draws in interest from the viewers and hooks them in. You can just grab the fight from V2E4, from the highway chase to the real fight, and people are likely to be amazed and pick interest in watching the show.

The downside, however, is that Monty took it to an extreme, and turned it from "Cool without Context" to "Cool at the expense of Context". You can make a fight scene that looks great by it's own merits, but unless it's just that kind of show, the fight needs to make internal sense, otherwise the impact is diminished due to how it tests the viewer's suspension of disbelief.

For example, the Breach, Vol.2's finale.

It looks a bit cool without context, sure, a bunch of cool looking people kicking the asses of random monsters. Not the best RWBY fight but it's not horrible. But in context, you have a bunch of should-be rookies anihilating the monsters that supposedly turned Remnant into a low-key Attack On Titan world without breaking a sweat, which ends up making the very premise of the show stupid due to how useless the Grimms are as enemies. Once you know what's going on, the fight goes from "passably-good" to "bullshit".

In addition, if the action is not good enough for it to work, and it's not trying to be supported by the context, it also ends up really bad, since it doesn't look good enough to attract people both in-and-out of context and the whole thing can well just end up feeling forced and unnecesary.

Monty's skills prevented that scenario but nowadays it's more common, since the action quality has fallen overall making the scenes more reliant on context. RNJR vs Geist, for example, just looks boring and badly done compared to fights in previous volumes, and even on it's own it's hurt by the animation (Ren stopping mid-air before doing a spin attack straight at the Geist, because momentum is not a thing in RWBY apparently) and the heroes being idiots (it's a giant piece of rock, why are you slicing it when you have a girl with a grenade-hammer?).

Speaking of....

Cool Action That Requires Context
Leaving aside the aforementioned issue of "needs to know what's going on to get why it's so good", this is not necesarily a bad idea. It's not something you can just show to anyone and expect it to hook them up in seconds, but to those who have been watching/playing/reading/etc. the work so far, it can amplify the emotional impact and delivery of the scene, and some kinds of fights, like "fight between used-to-be-friends", are as good as they are because of the context behind them.

The real problem is when you focus too much on the context and too little on the action itself. Even if the action is only truly amazing with the context, that doesn't mean you shouldn't put effort into the fight, because otherwise the whole thing will just feel anti-climatic. Even if the context is what is supposed to make the fight shine, the fight itself must still be good.

The aforementioned Pyrrha vs Cinder fight is proof of how this kind of style can work, but Blake and Adam's...."fight" in Haven, is proof of how much it can fail if the fight itself does not deliver.

Without context, the whole discussion between Blake and Adam falls short, and the Menagerian Army doesn't look the slightest bit triumphant or anything, so all we got is the fight itself. Which boils down to Blake sidestepping Adam's slice and him getting down in a single hit to the back, and then some brawl between faceless mooks. Adam puts up more of a fight later, but it still leaves no impact on the viewer.

With context, we have Blake facing her old partner/mentor/abusive boyfriend and High Leader of a terrorist group that she has personal ties to, and Adam himself was a major badass who kicked her ass without trying in V3. So when we see both of them face each other, especially after Blake's speech, we expect a cool and climatic fight. Not....Adam being KOd in a single hit, and then running way after a simple bash in the face.

So without context, it fails, and with the context, it arguably fails even more because now you're just disappointing the viewers.

This is the main problem with RWBY's fights nowadays. The action on it's own generally doesn't deliver, it depends too much on the context to make the scene great, but due to the action's lack of excitement factor, it ends up making things worse because now it just feels disapointing instead of merely "boring".

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Overall, the reason RWBY's fights have gotten worse now is (in part) because they used to be cool on their own, like Players and Pieces, and at RWBY's Apex (Pyrrha vs Cinder), the context behind them made the fight even better, with the downside that multiple times the fights themselves happened "just because", which wasn't seen as bad in itself because the show wasn't as Story-Focused at that point, and almost everyone came and stayed because of the action, not the plot.

But now they are overall more boring than before. When the fight has no real context behind it it generally doesn't manage to deliver by it's own merits, especially when they will always be compared to the old fights. And when the fights do have context to them, more often than not the fights's lower quality hurts the overall impact. The bigger focus on Story at the expense of the Action ends up in a lose-lose situation.

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Now that that's settled, there's still the other point of this Blog: Homages.

RWBY and it's "H O M A G E S"
Now, Rooster Teeth, or at least Miles and Kerry, seem to think that a Homage means to do the exact same thing, just rip-off the idea, and slap it into their thing. Now, this isn't bad in itself, that's how we got our modern Operative Systems, multiple Superheroes/villains were made that way, and sometimes the different team gives it a different touch, and so on.

Thing is, the original ideas all fall within the aforementioned styles: They either work without context, or require context. Or better said, only worked because of their original context.

And RWBY, of course, has examples of both.

An example of an "homage" that works without context is one that has been pointed out at many places and needs no words or descriptions beyond this: They really love Hunter x Hunter.

Now, this, is something that works perfectly here. "Guy B punches Guy A, lifting them up the ground, and then punches them back into the floor", that idea works in many kinds of works.

That, looks cool on it's own, it's fine. Sure, the characters are completely different, and so is the situation, but the move doesn't become less cool to watch because of the new setting or characters. It works by it's own merits.

...........Now, something that is the opposite of this scene, something that gave an "homage" to another work's idea but it failed to work because of the different context in this new setting with new characters.

For that, we can simply look at Ghira vs Corsac, specifically the part where they cross-counter punches, clashing fist against fist consecutively multiple times, an "homage" to All-Might and the Nomu doing the same in MHA at the end of Season 1.

It's literally the very first example shown in the video I linked at the very first line of this blog, just so you know.

Now, in this case, we could say that it fails because the hits have no impact and the motions are too slow, and that's true, but that's not the only reason it fails. It fails because it doesn't have the original context that made it amazing, instead the new context only makes it weaker.

Without context, the original scene in My Hero Academia has a muscular guy and a muscular thing clashing punches, first with heavy impact and then at high speed. That looks cool, but in the realm of Shonen Anime, normal.

With the context, you have the world's greatest hero, All-Might, facing a monster genetically-engineered with the specific purpose of killing him, loaded with dozens of Quirks all to make it withstand his All-Mighty punches. All-Might himself is weaker than he used to be, and he's reaching his limits.

And yet, he decides to go all out and break said limits, to save his students. The clash, thus, ends up with a much heavier sense of triumph and awe. That context is what makes the scene as amazing as it is.

Now, we move to Menagerie, where Ghira and Corsac do the exact same thing during their fight in the BellaHouse. Leaving aside the weaker impact part, the same scene just doesn't work.

Ghira was presented as someone tough and strong, with him literally slamming mooks against the wall and sending them flying with just his fists. Corsac, meanwhile, was presented as more of an agile fighter, with more emphasis on skill and Dust than on raw physical strength, accentuated by his choice of weaponry: A Dust....Rapier-knife thing.

So when suddenly Corsac turns out to be able to clash fist-to-fist with someone like Ghira without much effort (note that Ghira also uses his non-injured arm, so the stab means little), it just doesn't work. Some people feel it diminishes Ghira's badassery by making him look weaker, while others feel their suspension of disbelief is hurt by Corsac's sudden power-boost.

In other words, you no longer have Superman vs Anti-Superman, you have a random muscular guy and a magic monk that somehow is just as strong. Another issue here is that it's done as merely just another piece of the fight, with no triumphant music in the background or anything, so it ends up losing all of the original's amazing and climatic feeling.

Basically, it feels, and looks, like it was thrown in for the sake of it, without any regard for what made the original so good.

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In summary, RWBY has multiple homages, which is fine even when they are more rip-off than actual homage. But when the thing that was homaged was something that worked because of the original context behind it, and there was no effort made to make it work with the new context, it just fails, and ends up making the CRWBY look not just unoriginal, but also bad because they can't even make the original cool thing cool in RWBY.