Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-107.167.112.74-20170228120401/@comment-26018514-20170410024733

I wonder if it might not have been Monty's design and development process... which is to say that the story spiraled out of visual cues he endeavored to copy faithfully, meaning that merely watching those first few seasons essentially put fans through the design process, and all we lacked was the mindset and cultural references of the source to really see where RWBY was going... I anticipate that were that to be the case, that ship sailed when Monty passed(as Merry will not have the skillset nor intent to make that occur again).

This isn't to say RWBY will be worse off for this, just that because we now have a disconnect between the intent(writing), and the product(animation), there will be less clues to the intent revealed through the viewing of the product.