User blog:SomeoneYouUsedToKnow/A look back at V4

So, the other day, I was on the Fanon Wiki’s Discord, and they got a Clyde Bot, the Neo Bot, that after someone posts commands, it can search images for them on the internet. I then wondered if it could search for porn.

I asked a friend there and after asking the Bot for help (yes), it linked to a page listing all the commands. And yes, it can search for porn, Hentai specifically, in about 4 different websites. So I decided to test it in the Fanon’s Discord’s NSFW channel. I searched for MILFs, and I got Cynthia from Pokemon. So then me and my friend started experimenting.

'And I regreted it heavily. '

First, he searched for Orcs on rule34. As a joke, I asked Neo Bot to search for Shrek on rule34….and it gave me Shrek screwing Rainbow Dash. After much regret, my friend then searched for Yuri (lesbians), and I decided to do the same….I got Yuri. Yuri involving reptile girls. And then it turned out the Chat mods could not delete stuff on the NSFW channel.

Thankfully though, after spending hours using the Neo Bot for fun and glory, those things got buried.

In other news, this thing.

Volume 5 is literally here, RWBY Chibi S2 already ended with a nice bang to Chiruby's head, and Yang's Character Short was released at practically the same time as V5 because whoever decides the schedules was smoking something.

So, I decided to look back at V4, give a general-and-specific opinion about it, and based on it, express what I wanna see in V5. Based solely on V4, not on the trailers, not on the 1st ep. Those tell me V5 will be pretty, and that the fights could be amazing again, and that the OP is TWBTD's levels of badass again, but not that it will actually fix V4's real issues.

Now, I've given my opinion about V4 countless times (Hi 13th), but....we could call this a non-summarized collection of those opinions. Of course you're absolutely free to post your own opinions about V4 too. You're also absolutely free to say my opinion is shit, but the Golden Rule means everyone can say yours are shit too if you do, so don't.

Now, this was actually supposed to be released after my last blog back in February-March......it didn't so-obviously slip though. I was making it, but then felt that a time closer to V5's beginning would be more appropiate.

..........And then it obviously slipped.

Anyway, let's begin. There's much to talk about, so bear with me. This time, no Red Truth or Blue Truth, just text, text, text. And some funny images. One thing to note though, I'm not gonna touch on the animation and visuals much, if at all. Those got better, they look good, that's basically my thoughts of it.

XXI: Za Warudo
We begin with the last because the last is the harbinger of the beginning in the Tarot and I like the Tarot.

Miles and Kerry had the bright idea of trying to write 6 plots at once. On one hand, that led to obvious pacing issues, but on the other hand, those 6 plots happened in different parts of the world so we saw a bit more of it.

A good chunk of this Volume's screentime went to the Power RNJRs Ruby-Red, Nora-Pink, Jaune-Yellow and Ren-Green (all they need is blue).

They were trying to go to Mistral, and took the long route. Based on geographical location between Vale and Anima, pictured left, they started from the bottom-bottomwest side, so we can assume most of what we saw was there.

What we saw of Anima.......honestly, annoyed me. Pyrrha was from Mistral, and so are Neptune, Sage and Scarlet. Pyrrha is overall-greek and Neptune also has a greek name.

........However, all we saw of Anima said "Asian", specifically Japanese. All of the villages and the villagers looked Asian, and all of the ones with names that we saw in V4, were literally named after japanese flowers. Kuroyuri, Higanbana, Oniyuri, Shion.

Before, it was believed that Mistral was Eurasian, a mixture of Greco-Roman and Asian. But now, there is nothing Greek and only Asian remains. Which retroactively makes Pyrrha and Neptune weird. Given that Lionheart and Oscar also don't have asian names, there might be some hope.

Aside from that, much of RNJR's journey was walking through forests because they kept dropping the map. From there, I could infer 3 things about Mistral's environments: 1) Too many trees. 2) Too many dead trees. 3) Too much fog.

After Mistral, comes Atlas. The problem is that by "Atlas", I mean the Schnee manor.

Now, to an extent, it makes sense that we didn't see much of Atlas in itself. Jacques is controlling at the very least, and Weiss supposedly spent months as an hikkikomori, hiding in her room, watching anime and making dank memes.

The problem though is that even in this setting, we could've seen some bits of Atlas. For example, show Weiss looking out the window melancholically, giving us a establishing shot of Atlas. Or show some small areas of Atlas with people walking around before starting Weiss's story, like they did with Vale in Vol.2's Ep1 before taking us to Emerald and Mercury killing Tukson.

But, we never got any of that. So all we know about Atlas is that the Schnee have a manor there, which is titanic compared to the number of people there because Jacques is severely claustrophic, and that the Schnee only know 2 colors: White and Blue.

More seriously though, what if it used to be pretty crowded, but the WF have killed that many workers and family members?

Moving from the colorful "city" of "Atlas", we have Blake's arc in Australia.

Menagerie is that little fish-like island at the bottom-right corner of the world. We saw a good deal already in it's first appearance, with good establishing shots, like the one on the right.

In line with it's youngness and lack of significant support from the Kingdoms, it's mostly jungle and shacks, plus a small market by the one-and-only harbor. Plus the Belladonna manor by the middle, showing everyone who's the only one with money in this place. Menagerie also supposedly is 66% deserts filled with dangerous animals, but they got mountains keeping those away.

Interestingly, despite Blake's whining, they're better off than Vacuo, not counting Menagerie's lack of CCT.

After Menagerie, we go up and left all the way back to Vale: Patch. And by Patch I mean Tai's Cabin in the Woods.

Now, on one hand, it's good that we got to see more of their home. It's bigger than I thought before based on the V3 finale, and the design is......plain on the outside, not so plain on the inside. Not bad looking at all.

On the other hand, we only get to see their home. We don't get to see any other part of Patch or even Signal and especially nothing about Vale aside from a recycled clip from the V3 Finale. All we know is that there are a lot of trees. We don't even see something as small as Tai going to town and buying an apple for Yang.

In hindsight, it's pretty much the exact same problem as with Atlas. Both W and Y never left home, and we never got any good shots of anything that wasn't their home. Interesting.......

Then we have.......what else.....ah, right, Oscar's farm and semi-nearby(?) train station.

Basically a city built around a mountain with a gap by the middle, effectively dividing the city in half outside the top and bottom edges. A creative design that also perfectly justifies the use of Airships

And that's basically what we saw of the world in V4. Logically, we didn't see much of Vacuo or Mistral itself, but Ilogically we didn't see anything at all of Atlas or Vale. The former would've been nice to see and it wouldn't have hurt to make some small shots like in V2E1, while with the latter it was almost-necesary, given everything that happened and the state it ended up in. You can't just say a city is "getting better" after a disaster, show the city itself getting better.

Meanwhile, Salem's castle looks impressive and gloomy, while the Schnee mansion looks the same but less honest about it.

0: The Fools
Now we go to the protagonists of V4's plots sans Cinder. That is to say, Ren, Jaune, Ren, Nora, Ren, Ruby, Ren, Weiss, Ren, Yang, Ren, Blake, Ren, Sun, Ren, Oscar, and of course, Ren.

First, Ruby.

For years, she's had a significantly small amount of development, if any, and in V4 that was not the exception, but rather the outstanding example. The problem lies in the fact that Ruby experiences a lot, but aside from a reaction at the moment things happen, she doesn't show any real changes in her personality or attitude as a result of said experiences.

Meanwhile, everyone else does show real attitude changes, actually expresses their emotions and feelings, like actual people do. And originally, in V1, Ruby did too. Which is what makes this issue even more noticeable. Ruby saw Penny die, saw Pyrrha die, and discovered she's part of an ancient group of Warriors more special than Maidens and capable of petrifying, if not downright killing Grimm, with just a stare.

Yet in Volume 4, we only get some tiny, sound-only Bad Dreams (not even Nightmares) regarding Pyrrha; she never mentions Penny at all; and when Qrow is talking about SEWs, Ruby does not show the slightest amount of interest in the topic or even asks about them. It's like she doesn't care about anything, which in itself is BAD considering her character.

And most irritatingly, by the end of the Volume she did, for a moment, start expressing her feelings like an actual person, like everyone else in the show. BUT, Jaune steals that scene and says what she feels, which was completely unnecesary and takes away development from Ruby to give it to Jaune.

I've heard people say it's a nice call-back to V1E13, when Jaune expressed how he thought he was a failure of a leader and Ruby reassured him. 'But back then, Ruby did not cut off Jaune to express what he'' feels. She responded after he finished expressing his feelings''', which is what should've been done here.

Now, it's not that Ruby is completely devoid of development however. The problem fundamentally isn't that she doesn't show changes, but rather that said changes only show up in tiny, subtle moments that leave no impact, while everyone else does it blatantly and openly. Subtle changes in cases like this works to complement the Blatant changes, they do not work as development on their own.

To contrast and compare, let me point out almost-everyone else (even the bad guys), who showed real emotions, feelings, attitude changes that lasted more than 1 scene.


 * Weiss: While the execution could've been better, she actually ranted at the guests at the charity for seemingly not giving a damn about Vale and defied her father and even insulted him to his face. And after losing the inheritance to the SDC, she decides to train until she can summon the Knight, actually shuts the door on Whitley's face once, and then actually smuggles herself to Mistral to find Winter.


 * Blake: She first appears paranoid and easily startled on the ship, shows less patience with Sun than before, and throughout the Volume she is far more irritable than she ever was before. When Sun keeps insisting on fighting the WF NOW when Blake already told him she's clearing her mind first, she downright yells and slaps him. And after Sun got stinged, she actually expresses her feelings regarding her decision to abandon her friends to keep them from being hurt.


 * Yang: The very first thing we see of her is see her in melancholic depression, a sharp contrast with the Yang from V1-3, followed by her being triggered by a plate breaking. And while there are problems regarding the portrayal of her PTSD starting from V4E5 (mainly, that it seemingly vanishes), at the very least we get a whole Nightmare scene that completely eclipses Ruby's 10 times despite only happening once.


 * Jaune: He's less happy overall, and in that regard his development is similar to Ruby. However, he actually questions Qrow and the Ozluminati, makes cynical assumptions regarding their actions (such as saying Qrow used Ruby as bait for Tyrian). And then there's his whole scene with the Pyrrha training vid, not only showing his resolve to get better, but also showing part of how he feels about Pyrrha's death and the fact that he didn't realize she loved him until it was too late.


 * Ren: Instead of just being that quiet green background prop, he shows more emotion, especially anger, and even shows clear, berserkering rage during the majority of the Nuckelavee fight, along with fear when the Nuck shows up.


 * Sun: Actual changes were small for the most part, since for most of the Volume it was more that his brain took a dive and his personality was flanderized a bit, with Sun mostly just yelling while trying to get in Blake's pants, while seemingly dismissing Blake's own feelings. He did earn those slaps. Though after getting Tazed by Ilia and while reassuring Blake, he is calm, not yelling, being understanding, and mature, a sharp contrast not just to his V4 self but also his V1-3 selves.


 * Oscar: Spends a whole scene refusing to believe Ozpin's existence, or the situation he's in, or what Ozpin wants him to do, while at the same time showing signs that he does, at least, want to go on an adventure instead of remaining in his insignificant farm. Even when he actually does leave his farm, he's not exactly happy about it.


 * Cinder: After spending 98% of her screentime in V1-3 being a smug snake whose plan is so perfect that even when it goes wrong it never goes wrong, we literally begin the Volume with the Council of Evil, with Cinder notably no longer having the smug smile or trying to show any power, instead being in such a weak and sorry state that many people seemingly forgot she killed Pyrrha and is responsible for Penny's death. And then by the end we see her recovering, having more dominion of the Beetlejuice and once again being Badass, only this time she has a serious expression on her face instead of her smug smile.
 * Merc and Emerald: First characters we see in the entire volume, and their first expression seen is fear or at least irk at what they're seeing. Now, Merc doesn't really do anything, but Em acts pretty much scared almost-shitless until the very finale of the Volume.


 * Tyrian: At first he's your generic everyday evil psychotic killer whose very character consists of being an evil psychotic killer. But he does show changes once he returns to Salem to tell her he failed, not only acting full of despair but also showing fear and desperation to please her by saying he poisoned Qrow. And after Salem expresses her disapointment in him, these changes turn into additions and we get a very creepy beatdown of a puppy.


 * Salem: She herself showed more depth than her monologue at the end of V3 implied. Subverting the expectations of an Evil Queen of Monsters who wants to Destroy the World, first thing we see her do this Volume is expertly defuse the verbal gang-up on Cinder by putting down no one and praising everyone. Yet in the very next ep we see that she's not always sweet and nice, instead showing quasi-Fury when Emerald tried to show off her Cinderese skills after she asked Cinder if she killed Ozpin, instead demanding that Cinder responded herself. Her next scenes involving Cinder's training and Tyrian's failure also show us that as much of a Team Mom that she is, she holds no sympathy for failure.

Overall, almost-everyone, if not just downright everyone, either showed Depth, showed emotions Notably, expressed their Feelings, or all of them. Meanwhile, Ruby gets nothing but an annoyed sigh at empty nightmares, a small frown that lasts like 4 seconds, and the one time she tries to express her feelings it is stolen.

But we cannot spend this whole section complaining about Ruby, so let's move on to my opinions about everyone after this Volume, starting with:

The Main 4
Let's start with RWBY. In summary.....

After Vol.4, among the main 4, my opinions about which one I like the most are in constant shift. Ruby is a stick, and the only thing I really love about her is just her visual design and weapon, though I like her Slayer outfit more than this one. Other than that, she's....meh.

Weiss felt like an inmature spoiled brat more than anything, Blake is becoming less emo and more....whiny. Yang....she changed but then she went back to her original self for the most part, and while I don't love that, it does make me feel like she might be the one I hate the least as a result, even if she's not the one I like the most either.

The reason Weiss felt like that to me, I'll explain later. With Blake, I don't mind her becoming less emo, though the "Irritable Blake" is far less charming, I can understand why some people felt like she couldn't make up her mind throughout the Volume, and her whining about Menagerie being a "slap in the face" feels ridiculous when you consider they are better off in less than 80 years than Vacuo has been since before the Great War.

Yang, originally, wasn't someone I liked a lot, I just felt she was fine overall. Average. In V4, Yang started with a depression and PTSD, but after the Adam Nightmare those things seemingly go away, not helped by the huge time skip in her arc. By the end, she's just her old self with better (though plainier) clothes. Not much more to love, but there wasn't much to hate about her that was exclusive to RWBY itself.

Now, clothes-wise regarding RWBY, Weiss's clothes are elegant, good-looking, yet much darker in color than her original and Snowpea outfits, which both fits the situation she's (back) in, how she's back in her father's claws, while at the same time looking fine.

....Though she looks much more obviously like a rich asshole. Which is why I seriously question why the hell she didn't change clothes when she tried to leave off to the nation with the biggest black market in the world, that is also the base of the WF. It's basically asking to get robbed on sight.

As for Blake, I think her outfit looked fine (though not as much as her Intruder outfit), but I do agree that, design-wise, it is basically just a swimsuit with Kaiba's jacket and pants. In an overall sense I still think she looks good like that, but I do understand the complains.

With Yang though, I feel like she got the best, not in terms of looks, but in terms of how it fits her plot in V4. Her first outfit in the Volume, the Don't-Give-A-Shit outfit, is extremely plain and conservative: Just a jacket, tank top and cargo pants, with solid grey, orange, and grey-brown colors. It's the opposite of revealing; in fact, it's so modest that Yang's boobs kind of look like they went down a few cups. This is perfectly in line with her state at the beginning of the Volume, amidst depression and trauma.

Meanwhile, by the end of the Volume, after she got better, she switched those clothes for new ones, which look great - except for that ridiculous collar on her neck that looks like a donut - but at the same time, it's still extremely modest compared to her original outfit; you can barely even see any skin beyond the neck. And if you're in the camp that assumes she's not truly "healed" of her PTSD, then you can say that this outfit's non-revealing design helps reflect that fact.

As for Ruby's, not really much to say. I like hers more than Blake, but it's just the design. I put both of those below Weiss and Yang's since they don't really reflect their characters's dilemmas.

The Sidekicks
Ren stole much of RNJR's screentime, which as a result was a good and bad thing. On one hand, he finally got the development he needed, that's good, but on the other hand the development of the rest suffered a bit. He didn't just get prominence in multiple scenes, he even had almost an entire episode dedicated to his backstory. Not Nora and Ren's Mutual Backstory, only Ren's.

Now, for Ren that's good, we finally have stuff to like about him beyond "Skinny Black Haired Dude" and "Nora's Only Love Interest", but for everyone else, including Nora herself, that's bad. We found out Ren used to live in a village, that got wrecked, and there he met Nora. In itself that's cool, but we don't know where Nora came from, nor did we see what happened after it got wrecked, how did they even leave.

Ren just saw her being bullied one day in Kuroyuri, later saw her under a building scared, and calmed her down with his Semblance. That's all we know about their relationship, that's all we know about Nora's backstory. Which leads to tons of questions, none answered, likely never answered.

Now, Jaune. There isn't much to say aside from the fact that he's gotten more serious and cynical. I love that he questions Qrow and the Ozluminati instead of just accepting their words and actions with a smile like Ruby does. Honestly, I like this Jaune more than the old one. He's no longer annoying or dumb and he only stole 1 scene instead of a whole piece of the Volume.

And finally, '''Sun. '''Now, in V1-3, I liked this guy. He was fun, he was nice, he was cool, and look at those abs. But in V4.....I seriously hated him more than anything. First, he screams nearly all of his lines. Second, his mannerisms and attitude feel stupider than they ever were before. Third, he spends nearly the entire Volume ignoring or dismissing Blake's feelings while yelling at her.

There was much internal rejoicing when I saw Blake slap him and especially after he got tazed by the end of the Volume. Thankfully, after that, he did shed out all of those bad things I mentioned as he talked to Blake in her home. He didn't scream, he didn't ignore Blake's feelings, and he acted serious instead of stupid. We need more of that Sun.

Clothes-wise, the only one I really like is Jaune here. Just by making his armor whiter and golder, with some modifications here and there, he already looks much cooler. Wearing Pyrrha's sash is also great beyond mere aesthetic.

Nora....well, her current outfit doesn't look bad, exactly, but it is boring, uncreative, not really impressive at all. Her original outfit may not have been the best outfit in the show, but it had a more creative and unique design than her current one, especially with the metal thingies on her torso and shoulders, which, thanks to her Semblance, actually had a practical purpose.

Ren, it gave me the same impression as Nora's but for simpler reasons. While Nora's was more boring and uncreative than her original, Ren's new outfit looks just plain worse. Ren's original outfit had gold and black and pink-cuffs to stylize the coat, and a grey pattern by the crotch to stylize the pants. It looked good.

Ren's current outfit, meanwhile, removes the grey pattern and thus makes the pants duller; the coat is no longer Green with Black and Gold, it's Green with Darker Green and some Grey/Silver, which is a less striking set of colors; but most importantly: The freaking detached sleeves, that start black for like 3mm and very quickly fade to Pink, which doesn't really look cool as much as weird and somewhat off-putting if you stare at it too much.

As for Sun........did he even get a change of clothes this Vol.? I mean....he spent months chasing Blake, and she got a change of clothes at some point. How come Sun looks the exact same....

The Adults
However, given how everyone just laughs it off, I assume it was supposed to be taken as a joke, which is why my anger at the joke is less directed at Tai and more at MK, who apparently think that it was funny. If they do, they disgust me.

Raven, it's nice that we didn't just find out more about her but outright saw her. While we already figured that she was true Mom of the Year material, what with abandoning Yang and Tai and not even showing up for almost 2 decades, V4 shed more light on the topic: She barely even considers Tai and Yag "family", she doesn't care about what happened to Yang, instead all she cares about is her Bandit Tribe's survival. We also find out she Rapes, Pillages and Burns for a living.

Which just makes me wonder just how the hell did Tai knock her up? Tai is like...Jaune with a beard, and Raven's no Pyrrha. The only logical explanation is that Qrow's Bad Luck caused her to pick the wrong drink in a party, get drunk, get Tai, Dangalang, and BAM. Otherwise, it makes no sense. In more important news, where did Yang get that chest? Raven's kind of a board.

.......Maybe she got it from Tai?

Now, Port and Oobleck, El Gordo y el Flaco, Pint and Coffee, Mario Mario and Luigi Mario.....they did almost nothing. They came, had a friendly conversation with Tai and Yang, we discovered that Tai had a prankster side when he was younger, we discover that Qrow was the Codifier for Combat Skirts in Remnant, we discover Vale is still a bit wrecked and Beacon is still taken....and that's it.

It's cool to see them in a more relaxed, casual moment, but really, they didn't do much, the stuff about Vale could've been inferred already, and they just do nothing even remotely important. At least they appear though, which is more than what can be said about Glynda.

Ironwood, is becoming more interesting. He's paranoid, yet his paranoia has a reasonable base, even if it stands on an unreasonable pillar. His decision to become a Dicktator and build a Wall so that no one goes in or out of Atlas (and the fact that Weiss did the very same night he stated that), easily has the potential for a good plot, from the typical "revolution against the dictator" stuff to the discontent of the masses causing Atlas to be ravaged by Grimm, and thus making Ironwood's attempts to protect the people only make things worse........again.

And that's aside from all other story potential he has, like his relation (direct or indirect) to Penny, or how his relationship with Jacques means he can play a part indirectly in Weiss's plot.

And finally, Jacques. Now, most of my issues (or lack thereof) regarding Jacques are more related to Weiss's plot which I'm gonna talk about later, but basically, I'm not sure if Miles and Kerry were aiming for a more neutral portrayal or if they wanted him to be all bad and dictatorial, but he came off to me as a shitty parent but reasonable businessman. We didn't even learn a thing about his views on Faunus aside from "they get paid the same as everyone else", which if anything implies equal treatment salary-wise.

Clothes-wise....QTOP look the exact same as before, so they are ignored. Jacques looks like a white version of Mr. Monopoly and I like his moustache. Raven, we get a good look at her face, and she looks better than she did in Monty's selfish "sneak peek" of her in V2's finale. She still looks a lot like Yang, but she's not a clone anymore. As for Ironwood.....he looks like a poor, drunk man whose wife left him and took all his money.

The League of Dastards (and interested parties)
Merc and Em did nothing.

Cinder, aside from everything I mentioned about her above, honestly she needed to fall off her high horse at some point, get some humble pie. Now, the fact that she ended up that badly due to a bullshit Deus Ex Machina is bad, but at least she showed more emotion than just "I'm sexy" and "All According to Keikaku". And the fire slashes she shows off at the end are cool.

Clothes-wise, I like the style, I like the asian design which fits with Mistral, but I don't exactly like 2 things: 1) Her oversized sleeve, which at times feels silly. And 2) Her new haircut. Mostly because it makes her look like a mother in her mid 30s than a young lady in her early 20s. I liked her original outfit and haircut much more.

Salem, meanwhile, basically proved herself to not be a 1-dimensonal Bigger Bad, showing us how despite being Ebil, she also has great leadership skill, yet at the same time reminding us that she's Ebil between her threatening demand of Cinder to tell her Ozpin died, and her lack of sympathy at Cinder and Tyrian. That's good, the villain won't be boring.

The New Guys
With every Volume, the cast grows another dozen, and V4 was not the exception. We got a lot of new characters this time, about half of which did next-to-nothing this whole Volume.

Klein is a cool guy, I liked every bit of him, though his Eye-and-Personality Swings were creepy. He comes off as a good parental figure to Weiss, and hopefully to Winter and Whitley too, and I loved the moment when he barged into Weiss's room after the Summoning caused a mess. His eye-color shifting is weird though; the only thing separating him and Neo in this regard is that he doesn't go for assymetry.

We need an explanation for that.

Whitley......he's....just there. The most notable thing he ever did was say that fighting was barbaric, "above him and Jacques". Aside from that unpopular opinion that is probably just him bullshiting stuff, he just speaks condescendingly like any "entitled teenager who thinks they know everything" does, while moving in an unnaturally-fluid manner. And he's only done that....what, twice, thrice in the entire Volume? He literally spends entire episodes doing nothing but stand around, not even blinking.

And yet this fandom treats him like he's Joffrey Baratheon 2.0. Says a lot about this fandom.

One thing I don't like about him though, is that nothing implied Weiss had a brother. With Klein we could've imagined, we pretty much assumed, that the Schnee had servants. But pre-V4, we only knew Weiss had a sister, nothing said she had a brother, let alone a smuggy, condescending one.

Then we go to the new Villains: Hazel, Tyrian and Watts.

Watts did absolutely nothing aside from shit-talking Cinder in E1 and sharing tea with Lionheart. Hazel did nothing but say they dealt with a SEW before and punch a machine because paying for a ticket is for pussies. Tyrian is the one who actually did anything.

Tyrian himself is just a generic psycho though. He's one of the flattest characters so far, with little depth to him beyond "Crazy", "Creepy" and "Creepy Crazy for Salem". He did get a fight though, which, if you disconnect your brain (which you shouldn't), it's awesome and probably the best of the Volume, but if you don't disconnect your brain, it's freaking stupid, for reasons mostly tied to Tyrian.

I do like how he proved that insect Faunus are a thing though. And, of course, that the biology/anatomy-related questions that come when it comes to Faunus traits are completely irrelevant and no one cares. All we need is a Bird faunus with giant wings.

Now, the Albain brothers, the Assassin's Creed / Team Magma Furries. By themselves, I do not mind them. They're just...fine to me, from what little we've seen of them. What I do not like however, is the implications they brought; before, I thought the White Fang were terrorists fighting for equality-in-name-only, nothing new but something we can take seriously.

Then these guys came, and between their appearance, manner of speech, and how they referred to Adam and Ilia as "Brother Adam and Sister Ilia", they turned the WF from Terrorists to a dumb Cult. And now I can barely take the White Fang seriously.

Speaking of Ilia, she impressed me about as much as the Albains did. She didn't do much in this Volume though. Mostly just show off her terrible stealth skills, revealing she knows Blake, showing us how being called human is a Trigger for her, and tazing Sun with her....Lightning....Laser...Whipsword...Drill...Gun thing.

In hindsight, between her V4 role and her V5 Character Short, Ilia feels like a tiny foil of sorts to Yang. Both got triggers, both turn red when angry, but one is curvy and the other is a plank. If you suscribe to the theory of Yang being an hybrid, even better: Yang is a "half-faunus" Human, Ilia is a Faunus who looks Human.

Also, those spots on her skin just look ugly.

Then we get the new parents, Ghira and Kali. Ghira just looks awesome and badass, yet despite the looks and his grumpyness towards V4-Sun, he proves himself to be an understanding and forgiving parent. Kali is....less outstanding; she's kind, she's not grumpy or serious like Ghira, and she's also forgiving. The most outstanding bit about her is that she's literally named the same as the Hindu goddess of death and destruction who literally wears a necklace of human heads.

Then again, in more recent times she's also considered a goddess of time and change, and even as a benevolent mother goddess by some believers. In some cases she's even seen as the Brahmastra or the Bhavatarini. It's possible MK based themselves more on this version of Kali.

I think they might be too forgiving though. I mean, Blake didn't just run away and not even talked to them for years, she literally became a terrorist and commited crimes of various sorts, likely even including murder. Then again, they spent those years living in a tiny island at the butt of the world that doesn't even have internet, so perhaps they just didn't know.

Now we get Ren's parents....whose presence is so small I don't even remember their names. Ren's Mother was.....a generic kind mother, to be honest. So generic she would be forgettable if not for the fact that she literally gave money to a child and let it run off to do whatever he wanted with it, leading to Ren trying to buy alcohol and weapons without supervision. Raven at least keeps tabs on her daughter.

Meanwhile, Ren's Father is....just as forgettable. He gave Ren some advice, then got killed for trying to play Hanzo. The last bit is the most important, since literally everyone remembers him as "The Discount Hanzo who died", and nothing more.

And finally....Oscar. This kid who, personally, I question why he's even here. First we had Cinder killing Ozpin, alright, the Big Good died, just to prove how tough the bad guys are and the amount of danger they bring. That's good.

....Then, somehow, Ozpin suddenly turns out to be alive, with his soul fused, somehow, to a random kid we had never heard about or even knew existed in the 3 goddamn years the show had been running by then, with no foreshadowing or implications that such a thing was possible. Not to mention the question of how Ozpin's Soul travelled to a completely different continent, let alone how it even ended up on Oscar. Then it turns out that Oscar is gonna become Ozpin. Why him? Because. Why did Ozpin choose him? Because.

Oscar's "dilemma" isn't a bad plot-idea by itself, but Oscar's existence is basically one big Deus Ex Machina, which stings harder because it came right after another, equally-bad Deus Ex Machina: The Silver Eyes, that get about as much development in this Volume.

It's like a cop-out, a desperate attempt to backtrack. But it's just bullshit. It couldn't have hurt them to FUCKING F.O.R.E.S.H.A.D.O.W. THIS SHIT. But nooo, foreshadowing is for pussies.

The New Monsters (and respective fights)
If there's 1 word that could describe the overall fights in this show, probably including the "fight" against Ilia at the end of Blake's arc, that word, is, Stupid.

Geist:
Let's start with Floyd, also known as the Geist (Petra Gigas edition). Now, as a Grimm, I like this guy because despite being a weakling by itself, the fact that it can possess things - including the Knight from the W-Trailer as was revealed (much) later - makes it one of the most creative Grimm so far and the one with the most potential....even if said potential is restricted to "Non-organic objects", which apparently includes Trees and Pies according to Miles....because Trees and Pies are not organic.

I also like that it solidly confirmed that Grimm are not necesarily Evil Animals or Evil Mythological Animals, but can even be purely-fantastical creatures like Ghosts, which can easily pave the way for more Ghost-type Grimm. Stuff like Grimm Yuki-Onna, or Grimm Gasha-Dokuro. Or more conventional ghosts like Banshees. Or maybe even Zombies.

As for the fight...after seeing Cinder getting shit-talked by Watts and Tyrian, we cut to RNJR fighting what is basically a ghost controlling rocks to form a golem. Now, Jaune has no weapon or shield at hand for reasons revealed later, so that leaves Nora, Ren and Ruby to do the fighting.....not that Jaune having weapons at hand would've changed that fact.

You'd expect: For them to realize that: 1) It's a bunch of rocks. 2) Ren has bladed SMGs and Ruby has a Sniper-Scythe, neither of which would be too effective against rocks. And 3) That Nora has a fucking Grenade-Hammer that is 4x effective against rocks. So it would be expected that they would let Nora deal with the Geist while supporting her.

What actually happens: They spend multiple minutes hopelessly slashing at it when any person with a working mind would've realized that blades are not Super Effective!!! against Stone, while the one person with the Hammer and Explosives only actually does what she should've done from the beginning, by the end of the fight.

Tyrian:
More specifically, his fight with Qrow and RNJR. This one is the most stupid fights in the entire Volume.

Now, against RNJR, the fight was cool and fine. He comes in and kicks everyone's asses both before and after showing off the tail, which is how it needed to be because Tyrian is far above their level. Even if not stronger, he's faster and more skilled. RNJR couldn't even land a hit.

However, one thing that was questionable is that with RNJ, who he wasn't sent to capture and thus could kill at will, Tyrian pretty much only pushed them away. Meanwhile, with Ruby, who he was explicitly sent to capture by his so-beloved Salem, he went all out on her and dealt damage that showed the "Aura sparks" multiple times, which at the very very least, imply great damage. So basically, he was practically trying to kill the one he was supposed to not kill.

That's just the tip of the iceberg however, since when Qrow arrives, the fight becomes another level of stupid.

At first it's fine. Basically him and Qrow posing around as they block each other's attacks, buildings falling for no discernible reason, etc. But eventually, Qrow loses his weapon, stuck on a wall multiple meters away. This is where the stupidity gets high. Ruby goes up a building and tries to play Leeroy Jenkins, sniping at Tyrian who blocks the shots without even looking.

Then Qrow just looks at his hand, pulls it back, and punches Tyrian in the face before proceeding with more punches and a kick. All this, despite:

1) Taking quite the number of seconds to even throw the punch.

2) Tyrian's already-proven fast reflexes, even being capable of blocking sniper shots without looking, not to mention kicking RNJR's asses beforehand without them being able to even land a hit.

3) Most importantly: QROW BEING RIGHT IN HIS FACE, LIKE 5cm AWAY FROM TYRIAN AT MOST.

And that's not all. After getting kicked, Tyrian simply 'sits there. SITS THERE DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BUT STARING AT QROW WHILE HE WALKS, LITERALLY WALKS, ALL THE WAY TO HIS WEAPON.'

So basically, they reverted back to the Monty days, and decided to sacrifice logic by making Tyrian stupid, retarded, blind, deaf, moronic and dumb, just for the sake of making things look cool. It's not even funny, it's just stupid.

Now, with the rest of the fight, I've heard people say that the animation quality took a dive. While I personally disagree in that regard, I do feel like the actual fight becomes less stylish and more chaotic, not to mention cartoonish when Tyrian falls into the building for not noticing where he's jumping.

And from a writing-PoV, Qrow and Tyrian seem to be fine-enough, but after Tyrian pulls Qrow into the ruined building and Qrow's pushed away, both of them show the Aura Sparkles that imply that their Aura is down. However, afterwards, as Tyrian kicks Ruby's ass, a wooden plank suddenly is about to hit Ruby, apparently having been triggered by Qrow's Bad Luck Semblance.

The problem being, his Aura was supposedly down, and according to Miles, Kerry and Gray, as a general rule of thumb, Semblances run on Aura, it's their fuel, and if one's Aura is down, Semblances can't be used. Yet Qrow's did activate anyway. Overall, just confusing bullshit because RWBY's glorious writers that never do wrong, can't even be bothered to check their own internal rules while directing fights.

Then we get another dose of stupidity when, after saving Ruby from Wooden "Destroyer of Worlds" Plank, he and Ruby stare at each other warmingly. On it's own, it's cute, a reminder of how much they love each other as family, blood be damned.....but they forgot the fact that they have a fucking psychopath 5cm away from them.

So Tyrian proceeds to cut Qrow with his stinger. Keyword: CUT. He only grazes Qrow, he never actually injects the venom like Scorpions are basically forced to do if they want to achieve anything. Despite that fact, Qrow then proceeds to be poisoned to such lethal extents that Miles and Kerry decide to torture the FNDM by dragging on the idea of his death for basically the rest of the entire season.

Then again, it's obvious GMK have no idea how a scorpion tail actually is (seemingly thinking it's fully prehensile like a monkey's), so it's likely they have no idea about anything related to scorpion tails, like how Scorpions basically need to inject their venom to actually poison the victim to an useful extent.

Moving on though, we get the season's requisite finale fight:

The Nuckelavee:
Which I can summarize like this:

This fight is less stupid and more just plain disappointing however. Not so much on RNJR's side, but more on the Nuckelavee's side.

The Nuckelavee, the actual one, is basically the most feared demon in all of the Scottish Isles, a huge amphibian monster who was associated with epidemics and drought and whose name might be cognate with Old Nick, a name for the christian Devil. As such, anyone who actually knew about it and saw the Nuck's shadows expected it to be fierce and powerful.

However, in the actual fight....it's just stupid. It's an "Imp" with a giant zombie horse for legs, and according to Miles IIRC it's basically 2 Grimm fused together. Yet, it is seemingly incapable of moving both parts simultaneously, even when it perfectly logically should since every part has it's own "brain".

Not to mention that despite being a freaking titan Horse, the Nuckelavee barely moves at all throughout the fight, instead just extending it's wiggly wavy arms and slamming them randomly while turning around, screaming every once in a while. The few times it does move around, it's basically in a straight line. It's like if GMK have never seen a horse in their lives.

I've seen people say that this thing is Nightmare Fuel, and honestly, I think those people are like oversensitive children who would be scared by stuff like Teletubbies as well. It's only a Nightmare in the sense of a lame pun.

Now, that's not to say that the Nuckelavee isn't "creepy". It's design is sufficiently creepy in the Imp half, not so much on the Horse half, and the screams are well done. But, it fought so needlessly lazily and stupidly that it's impossible to see as a true "Smart and Powerful" Grimm, while the Imp acts so much like a Wacky Waving Inflatable Tube Man that it's impossible to take seriously.

Then again, that's what happens when you literally use the rig of a fucking SEA SERPENT for the arms.

Speaking of Sea Serpents, I decided to leave the fight against this thing for last.

Sea Dragon
Why? Because I feel like, out of all V4 fights, it was the best, by virtue of being the least stupid on both sides.

With the Geist, RNJR was stupid. With Tyrian, Tyrian and Qrow were stupid. With the Nuck, the Nuck was stupid.

But here, the only one that was really stupid was Sun, acting like he was in Devil May Cry and could show off, ignoring the safety of the people onboard (including children) just to look cool so he could get in Blake's pants. Thank goodness for that slap he got.

Now, on it's own, I do agree that the fight was a bit of a chaotic mess, hard to keep up at times, especially when Blake and Sun start jumping on the rocks nearby while being chased by Ao Kuang. In this regard, it is far behind the others IMO. However, the Sea Dragon actually proved it's power and danger in an honest manner.

Unlike the Geist, it wasn't tough because the heroes were dumbasses. It was tough because it was, mainly being a flying snake that could serpent around in the sky while shooting beams of lightning. That gave it a huge advantage over Black Sun, and even when the ship's crew decided to join the fight instead of just watching, it's agility made the cannon useless.

And instead of waiting long after getting trashed to fight smartly like with the Nuck and Geist, Black Sun decide to fight smartly before being trashed by launching Blake towards it so she can cut it's wing and reduce it's agility. And even then, it still gives a bit of a fight before being sucker-pierced and then blasted in the face.

Contrast with Tyrian, against who Qrow only even managed to kick his ass for a moment because Tyrian was turned into a dumbass by the based Creators.

As for the Sea Dragon itself, it's design is conventional, in a good way. It's basically a dark Asian Dragon with wings that can shoot lightning. It's not as unique or creative as the Nuckelavee itself, but it does look more directly-impressive, and unlike the Nuckelavee, it doesn't make any ridiculous wacky movements that make it a Memey Joke more than a Monster.

In an overall sense:
The animation in the fights is much better-looking than it did in previous Volumes. It's effectively what we could've gotten if Monty didn't insist so selfishly on using Poser because he didn't want to "waste" time learning Maya's shortcuts and interface, nevermind how the majority of profesional animators are trained in and use Maya because it's Industry Standard.

However, it is definitely true that the fights lack the style and flashyness of previous Volumes, let alone compared to the fights made by Monty himself and the ones done by Shane. This is bad because while a more fluid animation looks good, flashyness is more entertaining, and while improving fluidity is good, losing style in the process is bad.

And at the end of the day, Flashyness rules over Fluidity. A work with much Flash but little Fluidity can still be entertaining and enjoyable by force of Flash as well as it's other aspects, while a work with little Flash but much Fluidity may look great, but everyone knows looks are not everything, and the overall result can easily not be as entertaining or attention-grabbing.

For comparison:

-This, is when Flashiness > Fluidity.

-This, is when Fluidity > Flashiness.

Watch them both, and you'll see, which one is cooler, and most importantly, entertaining.

Returning to RWBY, I understand perfectly why the fights lacked the impact previous fights did. For starters, Vol.4 was a transitory Volume designed to setup Vol.5, even if it did so rushedly, and as such the fights lacked the amount of drama and scale that we got in fights like in No Brakes or Vol.3's finale, though they were never supposed to anyway. At the same time, they had spent 3 years doing animation on Poser, so they had to (Re)learn how to use Maya.

This is something that we know will improve, however, so it's not an indicator that the show will forever be ruined (hopefully). If anything, that would've been the writing, and so far the atrocious writing hasn't ruined the show yet.

Speaking of the writing, let's go to the last section: The writing.

So Many Stories, So Little Time
Writing-wise, there were an horrendous number of problems regarding Volume 4, and while the FNDM may debate about some things, from what I've seen, most agree that Vol.4 has terrible issues at least somewhere in this regard.

One of the most noticeable problems is the timeline. We are not given an exact date to know when things happen in relation to other stories, or even events in the same story. Only on rare ocassions do we get any vague indication of the passage of time, that being "it's been weeks since last time".

However, that does not happen in all the multiple stories happening at once. As a result, despite happening in the same episode, it looks like Bob's story went from X day to weeks later by the next time we see him, while Larry's story went from X day to the night of the same day by the next time we see him.

This is a terrible writing decision, since it only makes things confusing and harder to collectively follow. When most, if not all, of the audience must stop for a moment and try to think when X and Y happen in relation to each other, you fucked up. Dates and Timeframes are the kind of things the audience should easily be able to tell by themselves.

Another problem with the Volume's writing was the fact that they decided to make Vol.5 ASAP, and as such were in a hurry to get there. But at the same time, they had 6 plots going on at the same time, all designed to get everyone ready and off to Haven. Those plots being:


 * Ruby, Jaune, Nora and Ren travelling aimlessly through Anima on their way to Haven, constantly dropping the map, while being watched over by Qrow.
 * Weiss being "trapped" in her family's Mansion in Atlas, under the rule of her not-as-horrible-as-was-implied Tyrant-of-a-Father Jacques Schnee.
 * Blake going off to Menagerie to clear her head before going off to fight the White Fang, accompanied by Sun "I'll follow you like Morning follows Night" Wukong.
 * Yang suffering depression and PTSD for roughly 1 episode before switching to Yang undergoing training and getting a metal arm.
 * Cinder on Salem's Fortress of Evil and Malevolence, undergoing training to dominate both the Grimm Beetlejuice inside her and the Maiden powers.
 * Oscar, somehow, having Ozpin inside him, for whatever reason, and his unwilling decision to go to Haven to become the new Ozpin.

All that, cramped into 12 episodes that don't even reach 20 minutes on average.

Some anime even struggle with just 3 plots at once, and while other anime do manage to juggle with a similar amount of plots in the same, or even less, amount of screentime, said plots tend to be much smaller and not demand as much screentime for each to develop appropiately.

And that's before including the fact that Miles and Kerry already struggled to write the show with reasonable quality (which only really happened 2 years after RWBY began, in Vol.3, and even then it had it's problems).

Now, in an overall sense, multiple plots are rushed. I'd say 4 / 6 of them are rushed. And individually, they have a variety of problems in them, as well as much wasted potential. Let me explain:

GO GO Power RNJRs!!!
This was probably the most Main-plot relevant plot in the entire Volume. RNJR going off to Mistral, specifically Haven, because that's the villains's next target.

Now, for the most part it was aimless wandering. To an extent, it was to be expected since they were trekking a continent, but it's aimless mainly because they kept dropping the map for no good reason. However, the problem is that the aspect of a Journey.....was almost-entirely skipped.

We saw them sleeping a few times, we saw them walking down a road a few times seconds before reaching a razed/abandoned village (With Higanbana being the only exception), but....that's it. We never even got to see them actually fight Grimm on the road, which would've been expected given what they've said about Grimm in the WoR, of how the young ones attack on sight, of how the Grimm practically flood the world.

But even then, we got nothing. Sure, Qrow was helping them, but he wasn't eliminating all of the Grimm on the road, so they could've at least shown a small skirmish with a few Beowulves like in the opening. But noooo, they had the perfect excuse to throw in a fight, and they did not use it.

In the development department, this Volume was taken by Ren. Jaune got some bits, Nora got even-smaller bits, and Ruby got nothing. Ren literally got almost an entire episode dedicated to his childhood, specifically the day his home was razed. However, there were problems there.

For starters, there's the fact that up until now, we had never had even the slightest idea about what Semblance Ren had. But then we get his childhood episode, and it turns out that he not only unlocked his Aura at the most convinient time, but even discovered his Semblance at the same time too, all this when he was like 10.

The way it happened already felt like a Deus Ex Machina, but then it brings the question of why he never used it in Vol.1-3, since it's effect is calming down emotions, which (as proven by the Nuck later on) is effectively Invisibility against Grimm, even when used right in their face.

Because apparently Grimm cannot see shit without emotions. Which is stupid, since the Grimm WoR said that they are lured by negativity, not that they literally can't see shit without it.

Another problem, involving the Grimm, is that supposedly, they pretty much like to wreck anything man-made, such as the support towers of the CCT. In fact, we were literally told in the CCT's WoR that this trait of theirs made ground-based technology less reliable than it otherwise would've been.

Yet, every single village we've seen that was razed by Grimm.....was not razed. There was some damage, but for the most part, the buildings were fine. Oniyuri looks like it barely was midway through constuction, while Shion and Kuroyuri looked more like ghost towns than ruins.

See the images, now tell me if they really looked razed and ravaged to you. To me, they definitely don't. At this point it feels like almost everything they said about Grimm was a lie. They aren't lured by negativity, they literally can't see shit without it; they don't actually wreck human stuff except possibly by accident.

The problems don't really end there, but the next one is much smaller.

First, there's that time when they were walking up to Shion. Jaune mentioned how his family often went there on vacations, something he had never really mentioned or implied before, and not really anything of note. And then Shion turns out to have been ruined long before they got there.

The reason this is a problem is 2 reasons, actually: 1) It makes it feel like Miles and Kerry just added that bit at the last second for a cheap emotional punch. And 2) This isn't the first time they did this.

The first time was with Roman. He literally said "As for me, I'll do what I do best: lie, steal, cheat, and survive!", literally seconds before a Griffon swallowed him. Having someone say that they will survive, literally seconds before they die. It feels cheap and lazy.

With Roman though, it was mostly fine. It could be easily justified as him just being angry due to what Ruby did to Neo, and after surviving a exploding crashing train in a tunnel full of Grimm, he had every right to say it. But with Jaune, it came literally out of nowhere, had no real base to stand on, it was just a small, meaningless detail added in for cheap emotional spicing.

"The cold always bothered me everyday"
-Weiss Schnee.

Now, her arc had a very simple premise: Weiss was back at her home, with her monster-of-a-father, whose company has been said to treat Faunus like shit. There's a lot one can do with just that premise alone. Like for example:


 * Show how Jacques is on a normal day, show us how much of a monsters he was to Weiss.


 * Show us Jacques's questionable business practices.


 * Show us how the SDC actually treats their Faunus employees.


 * Show us the White Fang attacking the SDC, even if not the mansion itself.
 * Show us Jacques being an abusive asshole.

..........Sadly, most of it was discarded by GMK. We never actually see or hear anything about Faunus aside from Jacques saying they are paid "the same as the rest of the staff", which at worst implies they don't have Faunus in positions above miners, and at best implies that the whole "he treats Faunus unfairly" stuff is bullshit.

We don't really see Jacques managing his business, actually. We don't really see anything, hardly anything is even said about it. You could've cut out Jacques being the owner of the Dust Industry's dominating company, and pretty much all of Weiss's arc's first half would've been the exact same, as well as much of the 2nd half.

As for Jacques's abuse.....we see enough to say that yes, he is a shitty parent, not a nice guy. He basically tells Weiss that she's going to sing for the Charity whether she wants to or not (not that Weiss really hated the idea though), and then there's the way he grabs hold of Weiss when she tries to walk away during the Charity Party, as well as his harsh manner of grabbing Weiss when she makes a ruckus later, not to mention the slap to her face and giving the inheritance of the company to Whitley.

Out of context, this makes him abusive, a monster.....But in context?

Weiss, during the party, screamed at the guests out of nowhere, at least from Jacques's PoV. She had a valid point; most, if not all of them, didn't seem to care about Vale, they were just using it as an excuse to gather and PARTY HARD. However, their reasons aside, they were still there to buy the paintings, and the money would've gone to Vale, even if Jacques's reasons for doing so were solely to keep up a good PR.

Then, after Jacques grabbed her to stop the ruckus, she fights him off and falls flat on her face, summoning a Boarbatusk, that almost injures or kills a guest, and would've done so if Ironwood wasn't there to save the day with his big and mighty gun.

Now, this was an ACCIDENT, that cannot be denied. But what cannot be excused the same way, is how, while being given a sermon by Jacques about the potential consequences of her actions (which focus less on the potential money loss and more on the potential PR loss), Weiss does not show any shame, guilt, remorse or responsibility over what she did, over almost killing someone.

That in itself is bad, and makes Weiss feel less like an innocent victim of abuse, and more like a spoiled brat. But what cements that feel of her, for me, is how inmediately after, she dismisses everything Jacques said, '''and demands to be allowed to leave Atlas. '''

And when Jacques does not let her go - which is something any person with a sane mind would've done, since she just almost-killed someone and shows no regret over it at all - Weiss proceeds to sting him in his biggest insecurity, at which point does Jacques actually slap her, once. And then he gives the inheritance to Whitley, with a lie (though one that sounds reasonable, to be fair) as the public reason.

Basically, Jacques was controlling, but he only ever got actually-abusive after Weiss started acting like an imature, spoiled brat with big temper. Even the slap can be excused due to the "trigger" behind it; Weiss basically gave Jacques one of the biggest middle fingers she could give him (saying he's not a real Schnee), only because he didn't give her what she wanted.

While obviously, your mileage may vary on this, some parents - and me - believe that sometimes, "hard measures" are needed when disciplining a child, particularly when they're being too bratty. Like hitting them. I think the term was "whoping", but don't quote me on that. Now, whether this counts as abuse depends on who you ask. Personally, I feel it's only abuse if:


 * The whoping is disproportionately harsh.


 * If the "trigger" for the whoping is too small to justify it.


 * If it's done too often.

...Now, I considered the fact that Jacques only did it once, and only after Weiss deliberately hit him in his biggest insecurity, as indication that Jacques does not routinely hit his kids, but rather only did it this time because Weiss went too far after already pissing him off.

Of course, you can argue that Weiss is not a kid. And that much is obvious. Doesn't change the fact that she was acting like a spoiled brat however. There's also the question of whether keeping Weiss locked in her room was "a crime, inprisonment, she has the right to leave".......well, for starters, we don't know if she's truly 18 by the time that scene happens. Thanks to GMK barely giving basic info, like birthdays, or timeframes. And even if she was 18....'''she almost killed someone, you ignorant hamsters. And she didn't give a damn afterwards. Any sane person wouldn't let someone like that go where they please inmediately.'''

Even giving the SDC's inheritance to Whitley cannot be considered abusive. Weiss yelled at the guests out of nowhere, she almost killed someone, she has no damns about it, she doesn't give a damn about the consequences either, and she inmediately demands to be allowed to leave, and when that's denied, she inmediately proceeds to give Jacques the biggest middle finger she can give him.

For comparison, Whitley did literally nothing. He just stood there, watching, and let Weiss be Weiss. While that doesn't say he's prime CEO material, he's at least better than current-Weiss. Less likely to do something stupid and ruin the company. And the SDC is exactly that, a company, and basically the keystone of Atlas's economy. Besides, Jacques didn't disown her. She's just not getting the SDC specifically, she still can inherit the other stuff, and work with the SDC, just not as the CEO.

Now, I'm not saying Weiss is injustified in her actions, or that she's unsympathetic. She doesn't have the best everyday-life, and she still gains some sympathy-points from me, I know what it feels to have an abusive, controlling parent over your shoulder. However, it is exactly because of that, that I know what what Jacques has done, based on what we were shown, is controlling, but not abusive exactly. He's a shitty parent, but NOT a monster like it was implied in previous Volumes.

Speaking of Whitley....something that pissed me off a bit was how Weiss, almost inmediately, accused Whitley of having planned all this. '''Even though he literally did nothing, NOTHING. He just sat there and let her be herself. I don't know what her reasoning was, but it basically tells me that the only Schnees that may tolerate each other are Weiss and Winter, with everyone else they're basically playing Game of Thrones - Family Edition. And that''' lack of trust makes Weiss lose sympathy points with me.

The last part of her arc is rather rushed, though it's not as terrible as everything mentioned before. After losing the inheritance for being a brat, or at least not being exactly-emotionally stable, Weiss decides to start her training with her Summons.

The thing is that we first see her starting her training, and by the next time we see her, she manages to summon the Knight from the White Trailer. When before, she could barely summon an arm. We have no indication of how much time passed between Punished and Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back in Weiss's side, but it's very rushed to see her just starting to train in one episode, and already manage to summon the best Summon she could summon literally in her next appearance.

It's like jumping from Level 1 to Level 8, skipping all levels in between. It feels rushed and lazy.

Then she sneaks out to Mistral. That, in itself, I feel was fine, even if her decision is extremely short-minded ("Find Winter. What comes afterwards? IDK"), and even if her idea of stealth gives Ilia a huge run for her money. It's always good to see pro-active heroes that don't wait for things to happen.

......................Now, that all was related to Weiss, but there's also Ironwood. With him, there isn't much to say that I haven't said before. This Volume shows that his paranoia and extremism is becoming more extreme, and while nothing's really done with it in this Volume, it has great potential in the future.

So, we just have to hope they put it to good use.

Da Land Down Under
Blake's arc........I personally feel it was the best written of all 4, or at least the least-worst written one. It doesn't feel particularly rushed at X point, it doesn't demand us to feel sympathy for her while making her do unsympathetic stuff, we don't get giant revelations that make us question past Volumes, it shows development in her character, and so on.

Said development of Blake's was already mentioned, so I'm skipping that.

I liked Ghira and Kali, especially Ghira, and while this Volume doesn't give us much about Ilia, the worst I can say about her is that she's ugly. I don't mind the Albains individually, but I hate how they turned the WF from a Terrorist group to a fucking Cult.

....Sun however....'''they fucked him up. '''In V1-3, he was charismatic, rogue-ish, cool, charming and funny. In Volume 4, he spends nearly every scene screaming his lungs out, he acts dumber than he's ever been before, and he becomes far more unsympathetic, at first by prioritizing wooing Blake over saving the lives of the passengers on the ship.

And later, throughout the Volume, by constantly dismissing and ignoring Blake's feelings regarding the White Fang, even after she pretty much stated what she was going to do: Take some rest first, clear her head, then go after them.

Now, sure, Blake herself dismissing Sun's info regarding WF activity in Menagerie was foolish, but, the fact remains that Sun was doing that while not giving a damn about Blake's pre-stated feelings on the matter. Now, I'm no Bumblebee fan, but I do have to admit that if Sun is gonna stay like that for the rest of the series, I wouldn't mind Black Sun being sinked.

Black Knight trumps all though.

Now, I've heard people say that Blake couldn't make up her mind at all throughout the Volume, constantly shifting between "I'm gonna fight the WF, they goin down bro!" and "I don't wanna talk about the WF, I just want to relax". Basically, constantly shifting between Yes and No on the matter.

I personally feel like it was more "I'm gonna fight the WF, just not now", but the former does add more depth to her, by adding a sense of indecisiveness, internal conflict, probably born from fear.

The Melancholy of Yang Xiao Long
Now, at the end of V3, Yang had been abandoned by her partner and friend, at her darkest hour, after literally losing an arm while Beacon went to hell. As shown in the Finale, she's pretty affected by that, doesn't even give a damn about Ruby going off months later to who-knows-where.

At the end of V4, we start Yang's arc with a show of depression, melancholy, and triggering. And it was excellent. Her practically zombie-like attitude towards reading books or watching TV, including news about Vale, is a great portrayal of real Depression: Depression is not "feeling sad a lot", depression is Apathy. Literally not giving a shit about anything. That everything tastes grey now.

Yang's trigger when the plate broke was also good, to show us her PTSD. No PTSD is complete without triggering. And in her next scene, she has a nightmare, and not a cheap one like Ruby's. A real Nightmare, with weird and creepy imagery, like Adam.

So far, so good, right? Yang's arc is definitely going to be good and provide much development, right? ........................................................................

Right after the nightmare, Yang hears Tai talking with Port and Oobleck, and joins the conversation. At this point, I felt like Miles and Kerry forgot what PTSD even is, because Yang acts and talks in a manner that, while not as "energetic and happy" as in previous Volumes, it's still fine. Fine, yes. And that's a problem, because PTSD is not some small traumatic thing. It literally affects and difficults a person's ability to function in society, including conversations, even with friends. Yet here, she not only holds a pretty good conversation, she and Tai literally joke about her trauma.

Now, it's been months, at least 2 seasons (V3 happens in Fall, Ruby leaves in Winter, it's Spring by the time V4 begins), since this PTSD and Depression started. And while PTSD has no real cure, it can be alliviated, and the victim can recover enough to function somewhat-well, even if not to the extent of before.

Logically, one could say that Yang got better, right? That would be a perfectly-logical assumption......if literally the first 2 scenes we have with Yang didn't show a level of depression and trauma that makes it obvious that no, she hasn't gotten better.

Now, a question often thrown around pre-V4 was if she would put on the arm, or stay 1-armed and become One Punch Woman. Literally by the end of her 2nd appearance, she puts it on, and her training starts.

Once again, this is rushed, perhaps much more than Weiss's own training.

We see her putting on the arm, approaching Taiyang, and their training begins. Literally the very next time we see her, it's been weeks, she's already used to the arm to the extent it feels natural, and she no longer shows any traces of trauma or depression.

This is horrible. This arc, had an obscene amount of potential. Just for starters, we could've gotten stuff like:
 * Yang trying to get used to the arm, if only because she spent months without one and must re-learn how to use one.

And that's just the basic stuff. A berserker-like Brawler, who was dismembered, was depressed, had PTSD, and tried to start climbing her way back to badassery. Hell, you can make a whole plot with that alone.
 * Yang being almost-incapable of fighting at all at first due to her PTSD, and/or not giving much effort due to her depression. Then we could've gotten her gradually overcoming both things to the extent that she can fight like she did in Ep9.

But all of that is skipped, and we go from the literal beginning, to the very end, where she can go practically toe-to-toe with Taiyang, with no trace of depression or trauma left. And literally the next time we see her after that, she's already in her new cool V5 clothes and heading off to Mistral. So much potential, wasted. Hell, she probably had the most potential out of RWBY.

In a more nitpicky sense though, I would've really liked it if Taiyang accompanied her. I know it would've diminished Yang's perceived growth, not only from her previous PTSD state but also as a fighter, but....I really want a Taiyang and Raven scene. It simply must happen at some point, it must.

I love Re:CREATORS, but I have to admit that it wasted the perfect potential for an scene between Sota and Altair by never giving us one. I don't want that to happen again....

"This Gril is on Fiiiireeeee!"
Cinder's arc is short, but simple, and in fact it's not so different from Yang's in terms of premise and potential.

We start with Cinder, scarred, practically-mute, acting like a scaredy cat with no backbone, her smug smile gone with the wind. While Team WHT is off to do their assigned missions, she stays and receives "training" from Salem.

First thing we get is Salem asking Cinder if she killed Ozpin, and basically forcing her and her alone to say it, not allowing Emerald to say anything for her. While she's giving Cinder 0 sympathy, I see the positives too: Cinder needs to be strong again, but she won't get strong if she depends on others. She must be strong herself, be independant. And it works.

Salem forces Cinder to fight multiple waves of Grimm, from little puppies to poor men's King Kongs, dominating the bug inside her and gaining more control of the Maiden powers to the extent she showed in V3, if not even more. At first, we see Cinder struggling, noticeably being tired. Literally the next time we see her, she's being an ace, cutting down Grimm with fire slashes like nobody's business, with no problems at all.

Like Yang's, we went from the beginning to the end with no real intermedium anywhere. It's not as bad as in Yang's case; Cinder was weaker than before during her 1st training session, but the difference between her performance there and in her 2nd training session shown is less about power and skill and more related to energy and determination.

Basically, the jump in growth and recovery between the starting and finishing points was not as big. While it's still rushed and skippy, it's not as bad as with Yang's.

"You're an Ozpin, Oscar"
This.........is probably the worst of all the arcs in Volume 4, for multiple reasons.

First, Ozpin turns out to be in Oscar's body and they'll gradually, eventually, become 1. This was never even slightly implied, foreshadowed or even mentioned to be possible.

Apparently, Ozpin's soul suddenly travelled thousands of miles all the way to the body of a random boy in the middle of nowhere, and he'll basically become Ozpin. Why? No one knows. Why him and not someone else? No one knows. How did Ozpin's soul even end up there? No one knows. What is Oscar's relation to Oscar? Of that, we know even less.

For the entirety of his arc in Vol.4, we get these questions, and they aren't even hinted a bit. Like, we were told all that and basically told to accept it without question. Just because. Even though Oscar's very existence is a fucking Deus Ex Machina for Ozpin.

Moving on from that, Oscar's dilemma is interesting, and with more proper development could even be a series of it's own. He's got a voice in his head out of nowhere, their memories are merging and supposedly his thoughts are Ozpin's, their souls are fusing/fused and that in itself could have many implications....yeah, you can make a whole series with that.

Sadly, he's another case of rush.

First time we see Oscar for real, and by that I mean Oscar actually being plot-relevant, he's in complete denial about his situation. He dismisses Ozpin, he thinks he's going crazy, and even after recalling Lionheart's office despite never stepping there in his life, he still rejects the situation.

Literally the next time we see him, he's already leaving his home, saying it feels "right" (though not being particularly thrilled about it either), and gets on the train.

You know what I said above about Yang? Well, grab that, make it five times more rushed, and you get Oscar's entire V4 plot. With Weiss and Cinder, it was training-related. With Yang, it was training-related potential that was left out. With Oscar, it's his entire V4 development.

But what's the basis for all this? Simple.

GOTTA GO FAST
Like I said, V5 was already in the making as V4 went on, and GMK wanted to get there ASAP. V4 was a transitory Volume whose overall plot was sending everyone there. But in their rush to do so, they skipped too much, rushed too much, and at times I wonder what the point was in separating RWBY then, if they're gonna reunite so soon.

The best solution to the writing problems in V4, would've been to simply separate it in 2 Volumes. They already did it with Volume 2; once they realized they didn't have the time to do it all, they cut it in half, and the second half is what we know as Volume 3. Can you imagine how Vol.2 would've been if they didn't, if they tried to put the events of both volumes in just 1?

Really, the idea of separating it into 2 parts fixes almost-every problem:


 * RNJR: We see more of Anima, more of their journey, maybe including the part of it in Sanus, we see RNJR interact together more, we see RNJR fighting Grimm on the road like in the Opening, and Ruby....can actually receive development since the extra screentime would mean more time to show Ruby's growth and change due to her experiences.


 * Weiss: We see more of her everyday life, including the way she interacts with her brother and/or Winter in more casual situations. We see more of how Jacques treats them. We see Jaques's "questionable business practices". We see Winter being sent off to Mistral by Ironwood instead of it literally being told to us without any way of us to know otherwise.


 * Blake: We see more of her own journey prior to getting on the ship, including Sun chasing her from the shadows like some Organization XIII member. Hell, maybe even have Sun's stalking of Blake be part of the reason why Blake is so jumpy and angry when they meet again. We could also see more of Menagerie itself, maybe have Blake and Sun have a simple, normal walk to the market, where Sun sees the WF dudes and tells Blake about it.


 * Yang: We see her actually training. Instead of skipping to the end, we see her gradual progression and recovery, slowly becoming less triggerable and depressed until she becomes much like her former self.


 * Cinder: Basically the same as Yang.

But of course, that never happened. And Volume 4 shall forever be remembered, at least by me, as that Volume that visually got much better, but writing-wise, it got much worse.
 * Oscar: We see Ozpin's appearance in his head affect his everyday life, like some montage that resembles what he did in his very first scene, but with Ozpin's pestering affecting his work. We could also see more of Oscar's development, in a more gradual manner, see him go from "This can't be happening" to "LET'S GO OZPIN, MAH BOY" in a more gradual and natural manner.

So, after all this, comes the most important question:

What do I hope/want to see in V5
And some other stuff, but that's most of what I hope.
 * A different approach to the number of plots. Instead of aiming for wide, aim for tall. Having too many plots, combined with their apparent fetish for not giving a concrete timeline of events between those plots, means that the quality will suffer. We need a smaller, more developed amount of plots. Quality > Quantity here.
 * Related to the above, if one character is being developed, don't develop just them at the expense of others. Made development more even.
 * Gradual development, not rushed and skippy development.
 * I want Ruby to be noticeably affected by her experiences, like a real person, like everyone else in this show.
 * I want more info on the Silver Eyes, and on why the hell is Ozpin in Oscar. Most importantly, I want Ruby to show interest in the former.
 * I want Merc and Emerald and Hazel and Watts to actually do something, be relevant.
 * I don't want for more characters to be introduced just for them to do almost-nothing for the entire Volume. That's already a major problem, how they keep introducing characters instead of developing the current ones. Quality > Quantity here, Miles, Kerry, Gray.
 * I don't want for fights to be stupid. If one side is kicking the other's ass, I want it to be done in an honest manner. Not that one side kicks the other's ass because the other side was made dumber just for the sake of "drama". This happened with the Nucklelavee, this happened with RNJR against the Geist, and this happened with Tyrian and Qrow. I don't want it to keep happening.
 * While not particularly demanding it, we need a Taiyang and Raven scene.

Based on the trailers, we've already been guaranteed the expected: The animation got better, the visuals are stunning, and while Weiss's V5 Trailer had a lame fight and animation so fluid she looked like a snake, Yang's V5 Trailer implies that things will be awesome and flashy like they should be.

V5E1 also gives me good hopes on some of the things I want in V5. Ruby being more of a person, a more condensed amount of plots. That's good.

The opening, I'm ignoring it in this regard, since the openings lie. V2's implied Junior would be a villain on the lines of Roman and Cinder; he never did shit. It implied Weiss and Emerald would fight; They never even see each other. And V4's implied the Team Magma Furries would be more active villains, actually do shit this Volume; they disappear until the very finale without even the smallest slap thrown.

Now: Thanks for reading all this (or skipping to the end). Feel free to post what you want to see in Vol.5. I do not mean the Bingo, I mean what you want in Volume 5, based on your opinion of Vol.4 in an overall and specific sense. What do you think should be changed, should be fixed, and so on.

And now, as congratulations for myself for finishing this shit, and for you for hopefully giving a damn and reading it, here's a reward: