User blog:Zolnir/RWBY Episode 6 Review

Okay, I was supposed to gloat while cackling like a maniac about being right that the forest are crawling with Beowolves, snakes, bears, whatever (and oh, I was wrong, the students weren't actually that capable of handling the Beo-beasts despite some obvious victories - they are in very, very real danger and could very possibly die! Awesome fuck Ozpin, you're the man!) - basically creatures of Grimm and that a certain someone was completely off with his assumptions.

After watching the episode however, that cheerfulness had taken such a steep drop that this blog post would probably have more rants than any of the previous ones before.

The Review

Now, I've known Monty Oum's work since Dead Fantasy 2, which was arguably the most epic group battles (Even Kairi from Kingdom Hearts dual wielding, and she's not even a fighter - though I guess only a fan would understand this excitement) I've ever seen in my life. Throughout the years, my belief that he was the absolute best person in composing 3D Action/Battle scenes has never been shaken, even though for a period of time I've even forgotten about him since the Dead Fantasy series were taking too long.

Today that belief remains unshaken. But my confidence in RWBY however, has taken such a terrible hit that for a second I was thinking about quitting the series altogether and just wait for the Blue Ray revamped version.

Let's first list the good points of this episode,

1) Multiple action scenes and insight into various character's fighting style.

2) Phyrra and Jaune scene when revealing the information about Aura.

3) Ren's fight against the Snake.

4) The Grim in general. Very cool, very dangerous.

5) Ren and Nora's interaction. Sweet.

And that's about it. That's the only very few things I can actually appreciate in the episode, and nothing else. Perhaps it was because my hopes were running too high, but this is the single, most disappointing episode I've watched out of all the releases, and the reasons are obvious. The action scenes.

My god, the action scenes that were supposed to be so fucking good, were in fact super fucking bad. It's like watching Monty Oum's very first published work where he was still a greenhorn, but even that at least have some reasonably correct physics. The entire 'Emerald Forest' episode however felt like I was watching an 18 years old last minute attempts to rush an impossible deadline. Which it most likely was, because there's no other explanation for this extremely mediocre work, given Monty Oum's standards. If this was my first time seeing RWBY and someone told me Monty Oum did it I would never have believed a word.

The experience was just jarring. When Yang multipunched the bear into death it completely lacked any of the power, speed or explosiveness we saw in the Yellow Trailer. None. Nada. What I see is a bear somehow pinned at one spot of the screen, flailing helplessly as some invisible force tugged it around like a puppet until it finally got blasted away at a relatively slow and weird velocity.

And when Blake stepped in, apparently killed the bear using the kusarigama style and pulled Gamble Shroud back into her hands, the entire motion is just wrong. Dead wrong. No matter how many times I rewatched that part I could not change how bleeding wrong it was, not to mention too slow. How could I enjoy the episode when the action scenes that I highly regarded for so long were so poorly done?

And did you notice how the characters walk? It's like that they were walking on some invisible, flat platform instead - which they are, but good god I am definitely not feeling up to explaining those at the moment - and that the landscape itself, slanted or rough or whatever, doesn't bleeding exist. Just look at how Weiss ran up the slope around 2:55, it's off. Plain off.

And then there was Ruby cutting off the tree. Again, no recoil, no strength, just no... physics in general. She could be cutting at a simulated tree hologram and I wouldn't know any difference.

The only reason the experience during Ren's battle scene wasn't that jarring was because the combatants and cameras were switching around a lot, hence reducing the length of all disparities into a passable 'feeling'. And even then there were many flaws in the scene itself. Just what the heck was that weird sound when Ren fired his mini guns? For a second I mistook it for the sound those cutesy toy guns make, and even those didn't sound quite that lame.

Speaking about sound, Yang's voiceacting this episode was lame. No wait, I was wrong, her voiceacting is good, but the animation itself didn't quite match - couldn't catch up, my god this is Monty Oum we're talking about and the failure here was actually the animation - the playful tone of her voice, which resulted in a jarring mismatch when the whole thing was presented. Blake shouldn't be looking directly at the 'audience' but sideways instead to better match the impression that she's looking at Yang. Ruby's cut in wasn't nearly sharp enough. How ironic that Weiss' expression (very, very cute in fact) and misfire was the best animation in the entire episode. Tree bursting into flames without being affected by the force - this isn't goddamn cartoon ffs - Snake pouncing Ren and nearly biting him scene looked weird in general, the Aura blocking fangs looked weird, weird, weird - this is terrible. This is so, so so terrible and not up to Monty's usual standards. He himself should understand the best, and I hope to God that he talks to Rooster Teeth about this. He needs to, or I don't know how else he's going to look himself in the mirror, nod to self and say, "I'm proud of it," because he can't. It's just not good enough to be proud of after all his accomplishment. It's like writing a rushed shitty fucking third grade story with no plot and generic character and wrong grammar for the money, and then publish it to the world. My god, the shame is almost unthinkable.

Long story short, they cannot make 1 episode per week without butchering RWBY into horridness. Even Monty Oum's trademark battle scenes suffered terribly from the ridiculous deadline, and unless Monty somehow manages to improve by leaps and bounds or hire an actual, good animator to help him, RWBY is going to suffer. The future Blue Ray versions will be fixed and it wouldn't look nearly as bad, but as of now?

RWBY is suffering. And it will continue to suffer unless they do something about it, and they had better figure out something fast. Even the super old, 2D, very first Gundam animation look better than this.