User blog:SomeoneYouUsedToKnow/SYUTK's V5E13 - The Fall of the Fall Maiden - Impressions/Recap

SO, as RWBY's disappointing and forgettable Volume 5 gets close to an end, the Winter 2018 Anime Season arrives. Saw any that interests you? ...Do you even watch anime?

So far, I've seen Ito Junji Collection, Violet Evergarden, Killing Bites, Pop Team Epic, Beatless and Darling in the Franxx, and still waiting Fate/EXTRA - Last Encore.

>Ito Junji Collection is an adaptation of Ito Junji's works, the stories from the David Cronenberg of manga, that all have a terrifying concept with the only miracle being the knowledge that none of those things could believably happen in real life.

Examples include Uzumaki, Tomie and The Enigma of the Amigara Fault, though the adaptation also includes the shorter, one-shot stories.

...I hope they don't adapt A Shit To Remember though.

>Violet Evergarden looks pretty good, visuals-wise it's beautiful and story-wise it looks like a good drama.

>Killing Bites, only seen the 1st ep so far...the action looks good, visuals are fine for me, though one warning: It has breasts. As in, nipples and everything, uncensored. They don't focus on them for long, but it still caught me off-guard.

Nipples aside, it's definitely at least trashy ecchi, though the action is good.

>PopTeamEpic...Poptepipic....it's the most Post-Modernist shit I have ever seen in my entire life. There are no words that can describe it well, it's something you must see to understand.

>Beatless....it's fine, I guess. It doesn't look bad but it doesn't feel mind-blowing either.

>Darling in the Franxx is Studio Trigger going back to their Gainax days, to the times of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Especially the former.

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, the Language of Truth, of which 2 colors are particularly notable:

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

Blue means a guess, an hypothesis, a theory.

Due to the (absolute lack of) feedback on the idea of using the images's captions within them instead of below them, I'll assume they were fine and continue to use them.

As before, this is written as I watched the episode. Released rather late because instead of starting watching the episode at 12-2pm....I started watching it at 9pm, due to severe disatisfaction with Volume 5. The number of improvements it has done since Vol.4 are minimal and in many ways it's just worse.

PS: In the making of this thing, I discovered that one should never upload an image that includes an & in their name to a Wikia. I did that, and the pics literally disappeared afterwards. I had to upload them again with a different name. Thankfully, none of this happened in the case where it mattered the most.

In any case, off we go. First thing we get is:

Triumph (or Triumph!)
Volume 5 burned me out too much, so, I have no idea of what to talk about here.

So, enjoy this video of a penguin falling.

2) Furry Warz
........................Wow. What a heart-moving reunion that was................

I mean, seriously, I expected their reunion to be on at least a similar emotional line as Yang and Weiss's reunion, complete with hugs and tears and etc. Optimistically, on the same emotional line as Ruby's reunion with Yang and Weiss, with hugs, tears, and everyone showing a happy face.

...........But here, she just....arrives, mentions Yang's name because apparently she doesn't care about Ruby or Weiss, then she just stands there before leaving without a single word, we don't even see any good facial reactions.

It's........it's like she wasn't even there, you could cut out that scene entirely and I bet nothing would change.

3) Haven's Grandest Catfight
I have to say, so far the fight has just been about 1 minute in the episode, and yet it's already my favorite fight so far. It just...does nearly everything right. Everything I wanted, everything I asked for all this time, is here. Well, except the cool song with lyrics and everything.

Explains why I went overboard with the images. Just this part of section 3 is more than 100 images.

Hopefully it won't disappoint me.

Cinderella vs Rabenmutter Pt.2
..........Oh my god, it's finally over? That shit was intense! This is exactly how this Volume's fights should've been.

It's got the flash and speed Yang's short promised, and the spectacle and visuals Weiss's short promised.

If this Volume's fights had even 1/5 of the quality of this chunk of the fight alone, of that 1-so minute alone, my opinion of this Volume would've been massively different.

It actually makes me feel like they wasted their entire budget on this fight. Explains why the previous fights were so lackluster compared even to Vol.4's, and why they had to take shortcuts with the episodes at times (like using 2D backgrounds and characters to show Mistral in V5E1).

4) ...Nope. THE RIDE NEVER ENDS
Holy fucking shit that neck. She must've taken lessons from Qrow.

On a more serious note, I apologize for the number of images. I'm perfectly sure I broke my old record by more than 100, and I'm aware it's excessive, but I love this fight so much I cannot resist myself.

At least I'll separate it into parts for easy searching...

Such a marathon of a fight...
...Well, actually, it's like 3 minutes long by this point, which is long but I don't think it's as long as the Nuckelavee fight which took...what, the whole episode?.

50 times better though.

I see Yang didn't end up becoming a Maiden. Thank goodness...

Conclusions
Before I say anything, I want to ask....how fast was the episode when you saw it?

I saw the episode through a bootleg website, so it might've been different, though generally they are the same as in RT's website (with a better videoplayer).

The episode entirely, the entire episode, felt fast. Now, I know I've been practically preaching that the fights should be faster. And the Raven vs Cinder fight was quite fast. But I'm not talking about the fight, I'm talking about the entire episode.

Everything. Including the dialogue. Watching the ep at normal speed, it felt like everyone was saying their lines as fas as possible. In fact, they spoke so fast that I had to put it at times at 0.75x speed, for them to actually sound natural and normal.

Of all things I could hate the episode for that one ranks at the bottom, personally, but it did feel very weird. It kind of hurt the emotional delivery at some points.

Okay, now that that's said, let me give my actual conclusions of the episode....

IT WAS HORRIBLE.

There are so many things wrong in this episode on the writing level alone, that I have no idea where to begin and where to end.

Let's start with the good stuff: Raven vs Cinder and the Vault.

The Vault, I already gave my thoughts on it. Honestly, it is impressive, it would've blown my mind if I had never played Fable in my life.

That said....strange that Haven's Vault has a Desert. Makes you wonder what the other Vaults have, since they definitely don't have to match the area they are located in.

Maybe Beacon's is a snowland? Atlas's is a space station? Vacuo's is under or on the surface of the sea?

Haven's Vault has given us our first impression, and as the budget grows it should be expected that the other Vaults are much more.....strange.

Now, as for Raven vs Cinder.....it is the best fight in this entire Volume, hands down, and if you say otherwise I will fight you on the side of the street.

I have my complains there, I noticed mistakes here and there like how the blade's swings's visual effects were often not even close to the blades in orientation. It also had some distant shots that weren't necesary, and personally the 2nd part is not as good as the first.

But, in an overall sense? This is what every fight in this Volume should've been, it's excellent. The flash, the speed, the action, the excitement, the camera angles, for like 97% of the fight everything is done right. IT EVEN HAS AN ACTUAL SONG WITH ACTUAL LYRICS!

I have no idea who or whos made this fight, but whoever guy or guys did it, they deserve a big cake. Not a cheap, simple cake. A Spongey, Delicious Chocolate Cake. They deserve it.

Also, a fancy thing: Raven used Dust Blades. And we found out they're not simple blades coated/infused with Dust. They are actual Dust Crystals. They even shatter like one, and sound just like one shattering (though maybe that was the glass of Cinder's weapons).

You might wonder, "but why?". I mean, they're crystals, not steel or anything. But then again, we got Cinder being perfectly capable of fighting with obsidian swords despite those being very damn fragile, she even parries an actual 2H sword with it with no problem.

We've seen Roman throw a Fire Dust Crystal quite some distance without breaking it. Dust Crystals used as a Dust Blade doesn't sound too unbelievable, though they're definitely not as tough as an actual steel sword.

...Then again Raven was fighting another Maiden and Maidens are powerful, so it's not a good way to measure them.

Now, the bad parts......just about everything else.

Okay, not absolutely everything else. The scene from Raven closing Vernal's eyes and walking towards the door was pretty good by sheer facial expresions alone and the scene afterwards is just fine.

So.........everything before that part, aside from the Raven vs Cinder fight. There are a lot of things to complain about in this episode.

1) Characters being uncharacteristically stupid, doing things they never would've done and have never done before. Such as:

>Emerald throwing herself to stop Yang instead of just using her chain sickles on her like she used them on Ruby.

>Mercury throwing a punch at Ruby instead of a kick. This despite Mercury's fighting style being 100% Kick-based.

They had absolutely no reason to do that. But they did, because the show demands it.

2) Characters's abilities being completely ignored and forgotten. Such as:

>Adam misses his hit on Blake, and gets pwned in Slow-mo. Despite how, based on the speed he showed in the entire show since his first appearance (fast enough to block freaking bullets), he should've had enough speed and reflex to at least try to block Blake's attack.

>Nora gets her head grabbed by Hazel's lightning hand and gets shocked. SHOCKED, with convulsions included, despite having a Semblance that makes her absorb electricity with no harm, including a LIGHTNING BOLT.

>Raven never freezes Cinder instantly during the fight, or even tries. The only time she freezes her, she throws a ball at her first, and only freezes her feet. Yet she shortly shows afterwards that she could freeze her entirely with no need to throw anything even after taking quite a beating. This is the worst since this ability is shown in this very episode, after the fight.

3) Characters being just plain stupid.

>Hazel was thrown through a wall by Nora. Ruby and Yang are fighting Merc and Em. Next shot inside, everyone is tired and Jaune is still healing Weiss, while Mercury and Emerald are nowhere in sight and even less doing anything. It's like they just.....decided to stop fighting and give them a rest, for whatever reason. Which doesn't sound in-character for either of them, especially not Mercury.

>Hazel, again. After doping with Fire Dust, he tells Adam to deal with his own mess. And then he just....stays to watch for entire minutes, completely ignoring the people he was fighting just a few minutes ago with full intent to kill. Cue giant stinger to the belly.

>Carrying over from the previous episode: RNJR sees that Hazel has Lightning punches. They know Nora absorbs electricity. They send Ren to deal with Hazel instead of Nora. Cue Ren getting KOd in like 10 seconds. Something completely retarded, done purely just for "DRAMA" with no regard for trying to make it make sense.

4) Wasted oportunities or just plain bad writing.

>No explanation of any sort, not even a hand-wave, is given to explain how Blake managed to get an island's worth of people from Menagerie to Anima and then to Haven, in just 2 weeks, while also training them well enough to fight terrorists, not to mention making equipment for every single one of them while at it. Hell, how did they even contact the ship's captain? They could've at least just said "Corsac helped us".

>Blake enters the room where RWY is fighting. She only mentions Yang's name because apparently Ruby and Weiss don't exist (you'd think she would be astonished that Weiss is out of her home at all considering who her father is). Aside from a derpy face from Yang, no one does anything, and then she just leaves without a word. Did you expect some emotional moment? Me too, but apparently they couldn't be bothered.

>Completely leaving out 99% of Yang and Ruby's fight with Merc and Emerald. We saw some snips of Ruby fighting, but we didn't see Yang do shit. Which makes her feel quite like a loser; we haven't seen her fight at all, and when we do she gets her ass kicked.

Which makes the implications that she might fight her mother in the next episode, with 1 arm, look........well, if they do fight it's gonna be a combination of Weiss getting Javelined and Merc trying to punch Ruby.

All of this? It's not even all of the messed-up stuff in this episode, probably not even half.

Overall, this episode is a mess. It's rushed like hell, it's got tons of problems ....I actually seriously wonder if it's worse than Known By It's Song.

I mean, that episode's flaw was that like 90% of it is just wasted time, but aside from that, it's a just-fine episode, not the best but it's not so overly-filled with horrendous mistakes (though it does have THE most horrendous shot inconsistency in the entire Volume).

This one, meanwhile, isn't a waste of time in terms of story, and it has a cool entertaining fight and an interesting moment with the Vault. But it's horrendously written to the extent that it's just sad.

At the very least it's more fun to watch. But if you ask me, it's overall quality is worse than Known By It's Song.

Speaking of song....I didn't really like Swann Song. It's the way the lyrics are sung, it just doesn't feel good for my ears.

......It did sound rather similar to When It Falls, though. Maybe that's why.

FUNNY V5E13 PICS!!! :D
...Dude, there are already too many pics here, don't you think there's more than enough?