Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25316824-20161013004855

With Volume 4 exploring 4 different story lines with the same number of episodes then many have speculated that the plot won't be able to get anywhere. 12 episodes split amongst 4 girls means that you will only get 3 episodes of your favorite main girl before you have to wait for another year.

I will be breaking down a rough estimate on how much time will be in Volume 4 and then dividing that by 4. Then we will compare how much time each of them has to past arcs to get a feel for how much development they will be able to have. This set of calculations will not take into account how the efficiency of the writers have changed over the seasons.

NOTICE:  Near the end of my calculations I will be using the length of the Volume 4 premiere episode for my calculations and as this was revealed on the NYCC stream then it can be considered a spoiler although I would laugh my ass off if I was banned for telling you how long the premiere is going to be and how many episodes are in V4.

First we sum the minutes and seconds from the first season.

12+6+6+7+4+7+4+13+5+6+4+7+6+6+10+15=118 minutes

21+16+39+36+33+15+48+46+32+59+51+26+10+9+42+30=513 seconds=8:55

118+8:55=126:55

Now we subtract the opening sequence from each episode because Season 1's opening sequence won't be the same length as season 4's.

16*1minute=16minutes

16*17seconds=4:53

16+4:53=20:53

126:55-20:53=106:02  =>This is the run time of season 1.

106:02/10 episodes=10:36 avgerage min/V1 episode

NOTICE: while season 1 ran for 16 weeks it had multiple "half episodes" which would radically throw off this number and since RT has since abandoned these "half episodes" I have chosen to treat them as half episodes in this calculation.

Now the first episode is 12:21 (12.35 minutes) long which is 117% longer than the average episode length in Volume 1. This number is important.

Now we repeat this process for season 2 and 3.

Volume 2 run time-opening titles=159.13 minutes or 159:08

159.13/12=13.25 average min/V2 episode

14.75/13.25=111%

Volume 3 run time-opening titles=180.42 minutes

180.42/12=15.04 average min/V3 episode

17.05/15.05=113%

Now we average (I would do a wieghted average but I don't want to pull wieghts out of my a**) 117%, 111%, and 113% and we get 114%. So, on average, RWBY's premieres are 114% longer than the season average. Also if 114% represents X then X could fall anywhere between 111%<X<117% and I wouldn't be surprised. There is a chance X is outside of this domain but it is unlikely given three years of data.

Now if you don't want to know how many episodes are in season 4 or how long the first episode is then I suggest you skip to the TLDR.

Volume 4's first episode is approximately 18 minutes according to my sources and if that is the case then the average episode length of volume 4 episodes will be....

18min*(1.14^-1)=15.79 min

15.79min*12 episodes=189.47min/volume four

With these calculations I predict that Volume 4 will run for 189.47 minutes without the opening titles and animation.

189.47/4 girl arcs=47.37min/girl's arc

If you wanted a straight forward answer then you have one. For those of you who want to know the domain of our answer then help me repeat these calculations for x=111% and x=117%.

18min*(1.11^-1)=16.22 min

16.22min*12 episodes=194.59min/volume four

194.59min/4 girl arcs=48.65min/girl's arc

18min*(1.17^-1)=15.38 min

15.38min*12 episodes= 184.62min/volume four

184.62min/4 girl arcs=46.15min/girl's arc   

TLDR: => Each girl has between [46.15min,48.65min] of screen time devoted to their own arc with the number most likely being 47.37min. I hope this was helpful for you and I had a lot of fun doing this. If you ever doubt my math credentials then just ask me anything reasonable about Calculus 3 (up to Lagrange mutlipliers) and I should know it.

To put the number 47.37min into perspective that is more time we spent on any arc up until Mountain Glenn but it is not as much time as mountain Glenn, the tournament arc (God, that was long), and the Battle of Vale. Then again we are getting 4 of these arcs so there will be a lot happening in Volume 4.  