User blog:Zolnir/3 Things RWBY V3E2 Can Improve On:

1) The Narration / Pacing Can be Better.

Unlike the first episode where the choreograph and narration are excellently done, Episode 2 leaves a lot less to be desired. For example, the scene where Nora's Semblance was explained was dragged out too long. To compensate for that the explanation should've been made shorter, and if not the Electric Aura fighter's expression needs to change accordingly to Port's explanation (doubtful, to not understanding, to shock, to horrific realization etc) instead of being frozen most of the time.

The break in between Team JNPR and Team SSSN's fight is also rather poorly done. It could've been used to depict more than just Qrow's visit at the bar, and be paced better with additional scenes from perhaps Team RWBY. In fact the fight themselves can be paced better with some in-between breaks where Team RWBY – or someone else – talks about strength, weaknesses or strategies etc about the teams – which is a pretty common thing done in Japanese animes and is done well.

Perhaps when watched as a whole series Episode 2 wouldn't feel so awkward, but as a single Episode it's like watching a body with no head or tails, or the head and feet sewn together without the torso.

2) Jokes Shouldn't Drag Out Longer Than They Should, Lest They be Awkward.

Joke presentation has always been a problem in RWBY – they're either out of place or overly lengthy, kind of like the English version of tsukomi – and in this case it presents itself in the form of overly long 'funny' scenes. Jaune's outburst could've been cut short the moment he yells about a being in a 'Team Meeting', or at least the babbling about how Flower Power and Arkos sucks as a team combo names can be shortened. There really is no need to hear them talk so long about utterly random things.

Same goes with Neptune's fear of water, though this is more of a problem of presentation. It showed great characterization (the man child Neptune, I'm going to call him from now on) make no mistake, but there just… had to be a better way to pace it.

3) Too Many Impact / Close-up Shots, Fight Scenes are Disappointing The fights, I put it bluntly, could be much better if there weren't so many close-up and impact shots. Episode 1 did the fight scene well because there are at least a few seconds dedicated to show off some sweet moves by each combatants with appropriate impact shots only when it needs to be.

But Episode 2 does the complete opposite by having a tonne of impact, close up shots, but no actual meat to them. For example we know Pyrrha is an awesome fighter, but hell if we saw more than a glimpse of the awesomeness that was shown in V2E5 despite having several segments of her saving the day. Here's what I think: - They showed her parrying and counterattacking a bit when they clashed, but it's really hard to appreciate it when the camera's so close up that the impact did not feel impactful. - There was a part where she parried away an incoming pancake boomerang, but many people probably missed it because it happened way too quickly. That scene is supposed to be fast so they can keep the speed, but they can enhance Pyrrha's performance there just by having the boomerang zoom towards (before passing through the back) the camera. Two or three frames ought to do it.

I was excited to see Sun Wukong do some sick martial arts with his shotgun staff, and perhaps it is sick, except that I really can't appreciate them when instead of a full fight animation like say when Roman vs Sun, we have countless 'face shots' combined together to make a glorified slideshow that doesn't really show how awesome he outskilled and took out his opponent.

The shot in the Trailer where Sage clashed blades and knocked him and his opponent from each other? Not nearly as cool as the Trailer made it out to be. I was expecting something like, on a horizontal line both combatants build their energy, slowly moving towards each other from the opposite end of the screen before clashing epically at the center. That portion is missing when instead we jumped right into the center of the clash after a few face shots, making it a lot less epic than it could've been. This will be the perfect place to use the Jackie-Chan shot Monty once talked about, where the shot is repeated twice before and after the impact to make the audience understand better what happened during the fight.

Speaking of face shots, almost everything in Team SSSN battle are close-ups. Let's talk about the best fight in SSSN vs Indigo, Scarlet's fight. It's great, but if I have a word to describe it it'll be disorienting. It's the first time in a long while since I experience motion sickness watching any kind of shows on a computer screen, because not only the camera is constantly on the move – which is not the actual problem, it just amplifies it – it is always placed right in front of the character's face. What is this, a shake cam or something?

Hook scene could've been better. Feels like the classic follow-the-head-and-show-object-in-motion will do better than seeing a cable vibrate right in front of the viewer's eyes. Even when depicting something as simple as Sun Wukong running the camera sticks so close that we can barely see down his neck, which is not good because people want to see how he runs, how he moves along with the action; not how his head vibrates. This is not a confined compartment like Neo vs Yang, this is a huge arena with a large space and even given a theme of a pirate's freedom, so why does the perspective feels so cramped it's like they're fighting in a closet??

There's also this feeling of overusing 'super dashes'. Nora super-jumped up the hill really quickly, followed later by Neptune doing even faster super-dashes. Feels like it can use a slow Nora (heavier, more dynamic, more impactful) and fast ( it's fine the way it is, although it'll be better if we can see him zoom up when the camera shows the background behind Team Indigo) Neptune.

Conclusion: It is probably an issue of rushing the deadline I guess. The animators probably have a better way to present the scenes in their mind, but had to compromise because they couldn't spare the time to test and implement them. I just hope this doesn't carry over the rest of the many fight scenes we're promised to have, because I'd rather have a few awesome fight scenes than many mediocre ones.