User blog:Deafro/Episode 14: The Episode I Hated

So I'll be the first to say that I am a huge fan of this series. I go against the notions that the show is a trope stuffed anime replica, and defend that Monty and his crew have a strong narrative basis going into the show. I would say they have demonstrated the potential to make very condensed and well spoken scenes to keep the pace going, and all the while laid out the groundwork for both Dust and Aura.

This episode however, undermines a lot of the base that has established the background of this series. Its not even for "we need more RWBY in RWBY" or "JNPR isn't as interesting". I still think they did a good job with the character building, even Cardin is someone I could see being friends with. My first and biggest complaint here, is how the Grimm have decended into a even dumber plane of thought.

The decapitation was gorgious, and yet that makes the Grimm look even more pitiful than they were before. Up to this point, the only way to cut through a Grimm was to use the recoil from a high velocity Dust round. Now Juane is just able to sever the neck of not just an Ursa, but a alpha Ursa, in one clean motion using just his arm. Maybe Juane's sword is a vibroblade or something, but now killing the Grimm seems all the easier after the end of this fight.

The Ursa to isn't even using its strengths to good effect. The thing is covered with bony plate all along its back, some of it with massive spikes. Why then is it rearing up on its hind legs to swipe with those claws? It exposes its vunurable underbelly and forfiets its heavy back armor. Sure it can do that if it comes down to it, but why not keep its exposed sections to the ground, and let that cumbersome armor work while it swipes with the claws?

I still can't get over this, this Ursa is huge! It has lived for decades at least, in a place where hunters are known to collect. This thing should be a absolute terror that could get the reverence comparable to the Nevermore, and Juane just offs the thing with one glorious strike.

Then Cardin and his team seem to have no grasp on combat. I know they are supposed to be the fluffy bullies of the series, but they still managed to get into Beacon. They should have some sort of plan for dealing with the creatures of Grimm, even if its a one shot attack that doesn't work. Pyrraha, Ruby, and Nora all demonstrate a high standard of quality for the students as new blood. Now I wonder how CRDL even got past initiation.

Then to top it all off, its demonstrated in this episode that everyone has unique special powers as a hunter/huntress. I can understand the enchanced strength given by Aura, and even the use of glyphs to maybe manipulate the energies of Dust, but just writing it off as special powers unique to each character is very much ham handed. It will lead to some bad temptations later on for future powers.

The problem I see here is that there's a lot of stuff in this episode that sort of abolishes the rules of combat they worked so hard to establish. The window that gives context to their actions has blurred, and I'm hoping that the world isn't thrown away to make the characters for a few episodes. People stopped liking Naruto and Bleach because the fights became more important than the actual story. Now I'm worried that Monty is being pressured to go down that very same path, and that his work is going to suffer in the long run for it.