User blog:SomeoneYouUsedToKnow/SYUTK's V5E4 - OHANA - Impressions/Recap

So, the other saturday, I woke up at like 3am. I don't remember what I was dreaming, I think it was just some meh dream.

I raised my right arm to scratch my head......and only my right elbow rised. The rest of my arm just hanged, livelessly. I inmediately panicked: I'm fully right handed, I can't write for shit with my left hand, can barely even make straight lines.

I got up, and basically grabbed my arm - not feeling any sensations in my right arm from being grabbed - and shaked it up and down in hopes that it would wake up and work. After a couple of minutes I felt it get hotter, and finally, it worked again like before.

It hasn't happened again, but that shit was frightening. I've had limbs "fall asleep", but never to the extent that they would literally lose all sensitivity and stop functioning.

.....................Now, you may wonder, if you read my previous blog, "why didn't you tell us this last week?". Well, I was going to, but then Larry happened, and he (along with putting up Christmas decorations in Halloween) was more noteworthy.

In other news, this thing.

For newcomers to this thing, this is basically me, making an informal recap of what happened in the episode, while giving my thoughts about what happens. It also includes fancy color speak. 2 are particularly notable:

Red means truth, fact , in the eyes of the user, le me.

Blue means a guess, an hypothesis, a theory.

Now, this thing was actually done prior to Tuesday, but even if I put a Spoiler Alert on the title, the images I use would show up on the Recent Activity page, and that makes the alert pointless. So for the sake of those voting with their wallets and deciding to not become FIRSTs, but are too Eddard Starky to go pirate, I decided to post this on Tuesday.

As for why it was posted hours after the episode? I got classes on tuesday from 10am to 5:30pm (RWBY episodes are released around 12pm on my timezone). And then I had to put all the images one by one. And there's a lot. A damn lot.

In any case, off we go:

And to start our day, we have....
Triumph. Or Triumph!

Now, the episode is like 16 minutes long. That's already like 5 whole minutes less than the first 2 eps. I knew I spoke too soon when I said the Based Creators finally listened to our prayers for longer episodes.

But I already expressed my reaction to that bullshit in the last blog, which I also linked, so in order to avoid being unnecesary redundancy, I'm just gonna ask: Any news on Triumph's full release? Or Ignite's?

I know we're barely at 1/3 of the Volume and we still have like 10 episodes left, but the song is becoming way too catchy for me. I'm even making up fan-lyrics for it on my mind (like "Send in your best/Rip me to shreds/Burn me down to ashes/I won't die").

Besides, I'm testing out OST-swapping in DMC4 and the best we have regarding this song is FlyntOfRWBYNation's lyric video on Youtube. I could use it, but it'd be even more repetitive than Nero's Normal Battle version of Shall Never Surrender since Triumph is barely 1:28 minutes long.

I need a longer Triumph. At least 3 minutes long. Or an Ignite that doesn't have the sound effects from the Character Short.

Now on to the actual episode.

1) Riding into...who knows where
.....Siiiiigh....Miles, Kerry, you could've had him be someone with so much more depth than just a cheap spiteful drunkass. And so far, everything says you blew it.

I'm still holding out hope in case he really does have more depth to his character and motivation than what we're seeing there. But we've held out hope for GMK to take advantage of RWBY's potential for years, and we know how much they've delivered, so it's not much.

3) The Lady and the Tramp
...Mmm...I just realized. WBY are all "princesses" in a way. Weiss is the daughter of the CEO of one of the, if not the, world's biggest companies whose trade-job doubles as practically a keystone in the world's economy. Blake is the daughter of the Chieftain of Menagerie. And Yang is the daughter of a Bandit Queen.

...Ruby...well, she's a SEW, that's 10 times more rare and special than any of her teammates, but still. They're all Princesses except for her.

...Huh...I didn't expect Freezerburn to rise like that at the very last second. I can only imagine White Rose S.S.'s faces when they saw that.

Conclusion
Regarding Yang's fight with the bandits, like I said, it was terrible. The animation was fine, but just fine, and at times just feels lazy and mediocre.

The animation looks fluid for the most part, and that's good, but the fight in itself is slow, and seriously lacking in flash and style. Which is important, for 2 reasons:

1) Said style defined RWBY.

2) Yang's own Character Short pre-V5 didn't just look good, Red means truth, fact but had flash and style like before.

This one was, for comparison's sake, like this, looks fluid, looks good, but it's slow and dull. RWBY fights need to be like the way Monty introduced them: Fast, flashy, stylish and cool, like this.

If they hadn't released her V5 Trailer, then I would've assumed they still haven't quite got used to Maya enough to deliver awesome-awesome stuff. But they did, and the fight in that Short was cool like the old ones - if silly at the end - so they have no excuse here.

They also missed a great chance for making a deeper character with Jackass Steve, the only bandit we know that doesn't look like an NPC. Though that fact makes me think he might serve a better purpose.........maybe. Sienna looked more unique and got offed in less than 10 minutes, so we cannot expect much.

Regarding the 2nd part...not much to say that I didn't say already.

The spar between Ruby and Ozcar was fine, we can't really expect some grandiouse fight between 2 noobs, or between a noob and a guy who already said that his current body needs to go to the gym. It was, however, pretty cathartic, at least for those who hate Ruby for one reason or another.

The explanation about Aura and Semblance was about 2/3 known info, and dedicating a whole third of the episode to it felt excessive. The small bits that were actually new, should've been stated years ago, especially because World of Remnant is a thing, designed so that exposition about general things doesn't need to be done in the show and thus end up taking screentime from the plot and characters.

And regarding Yang's meeting of her mother and reunion with Weiss....with the former, she was being an ass because the plot demanded it.

She gets angry, and yeah, between Raven's achievements as a mother and her condescending, uncaring personality, anyone would be annoyed. But she wasn't exactly expressing unwillingness to help Yang until Yang decided to be an asshole and insult her right in front of her.

For comparison, back in V4 with Weiss and Jacques. Weiss <font style="color:#DC143C">had almost killed someone and yelled at people who, regardless of reasons, would've donated money that Vale needed. <font style="color:#DC143C">She showed no remorse over anything she did, not even potentially killing someone had Ironwood not been there, and demanded to be given what she wanted: To leave Atlas. And when Jacques said "no, you're grounded", she just attacks him where it hurts him the most.

Here, Yang has, at worst, beaten up bandits in self-defense, and Raven, instead of giving her a sermon over it, <font style="color:#DC143C">praises her for her "strength and determination". And Yang demands something from her, which is not 100% unreasonable given the circumstances and she doesn't firmly say "Hell no". And Yang still gets angry and insults her for no good reason, which would've really led her to refuse Yang's demanded request if she and Weiss didn't shit everyone's pants.

....What was it that Tai taught her in V4? That she didn't have to solve everything by hitting it from the front with aggressive brute force, that she could try to find a way to circle around the problem? Yeah, she's really learned her lesson.

Speaking of Weiss....what was she doing while all that was happening? I thought she had the Knight hitting the bars to break them, but when she was "revealed", <font style="color:#DC143C">Red means truth, fact the Knight's not really doing anything. So...what the hell were they doing?

Also, regarding the animation in that scene: <font style="color:#DC143C">It was terrible, and terrible with an H of Horrible.

Literally everyone who is not Yang or Raven is <font style="color:#DC143C">standing around, with the exact same motionless pose, with the exact same expresionless face. They aren't even looking at Raven or Yang, they are just standing there, like statues someone threw randomly without a care.

The only difference there is the 3 bandits with guns behind Yang...<font style="color:#DC143C">who are all doing the same pose, with the same neutral expression, not even aiming at Yang.

This is seriously BAD, and "time/money" is not an excuse. This shit, is literally the level of shit one would see in a 1/5-Stars Adventure made in Spore by an 8 year old. "Oh, we need to make this place look populated. Let's just throw a bunch of characters who will do nothing but stand around, not even show emotion".

The only time they really start doing anything is after Yang punches the dude and Weiss breaks out with her Knight. All those minutes before that, <font style="color:#DC143C">they are just painted statues, and at this point, this is just retardedly lazy.

Literally, the crowd in Menagerie in the previous episode, had more animation, more variety of poses at the least, and the people doing the "generic standing pose" were relatively few, and pretty separate from each other.

If I had to rate this episode in a 1-10 scale, I'd give it a 3 and that's being optimistic. Plot-wise, only the last 8-so minutes matter, and only story-wise. The fight at the beginning was meh, and the 2nd part is mostly info we already knew + info we should've already known.

<font style="color:#DC143C">This is terrible.

Number of images used: 274. Still haven’t broken my previous record.