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(Copy/pasted, with edits/updates, from a post I made to Facebook three days ago and, for some reason, forgot to copy/paste to here, until now. I'll probably post again when I finish through season six.)
I finally got around to (I feel like I say that a lot...) starting RWBYyesterday last Friday. About halfway into the first season. Just finished season two. I have no idea why I never watched this before now, and this is coming from a guy who loved Haloid and the Dead Fantasy series.
RIP Monty Oum 2015.
(EDIT) Oh, and I suppose I should put a massive "SPOILER ALERT" warning here for the comments below. Scroll down at your own risk. (/EDIT)
I finally got around to (I feel like I say that a lot...) starting RWBY
RIP Monty Oum 2015.
(EDIT) Oh, and I suppose I should put a massive "SPOILER ALERT" warning here for the comments below. Scroll down at your own risk. (/EDIT)
no subject
Date: 2019-09-09 12:00 pm (UTC)From:Only thing I'm glad for is that they stopped putting the damned intro/outro sequences between every 15 minute episode like they did in volume 5. I guess they got enough of a backlash against doing that.
I'm pretty much anti-bluray-only overall. RWBY is the only series I've let myself buy as bluray-only. There's probably one or two other anime series/specials I'd consider picking up blu-ray only but thus far haven't bothered with them.
I mainly have a beef about all the DRM they have on the discs, in particular how they have it set up so they can change the drm keys on the fly so to speak - and if you don't connect your bluray player to the internet for a new key if required, you're shit out of luck with the disc. So far I haven't gotten hit with that issue, and buy the bluray/dvd combos so I have a backup that I can expect to work without an internet connection, but I just gotta be hit with that once for me to blacklist a company for the rest of eternity.
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Date: 2019-09-09 01:58 pm (UTC)From:(By the way, if any of my below issues are actually addressed in later seasons/volumes, don't spoil me on them, please, at least not much. ^^;)
And I have to say, I'm kinda salty over the way they killed off Pyrrha (and Penny, for that matter). ¬_¬ I've seen people be like "oh, well, Pyrrha's death was justified because it got Ruby to activate her Silver Eye latent asspull Deus Ex Machina bullshit superpower" or some shit... except that from Pyrrha's point of view, she had absolutely zero idea that was going to happen (and, in fact, she didn't even get to witness it, because she was already dead-then-vaporized by that point). No, Pyrrha went off to get herself killed for no good reason, and pretty much knowingly so, as she basically knew already that she had no chance against Cinder, given that Cinder had already beaten Ozpin[1], pretty much only because she had all that "destiny" bullshit going through her head, mostly thanks to Ozpin and the others filling her head with it due to the Fall Maiden thing. I'm not saying it's bad that the show killed her off, I'm saying it's bad that the show killed her off in such a stupid, pointless, enraging sort of way. It remains (for me at least) to be seen how her (and Penny's) death will affect the characters later, but from what vague spoilers I've seen, it apparently doesn't affect anyone all that much, or at least they don't properly show it if it does. (Speaking of spoilers, sadly, I'd already known going in before even starting that Pyrrha was going to die at some point, I just didn't know how, exactly, it was going to happen, or that it would still annoy me so much when it did happen, despite expecting it and waiting for it to happen. On the other hand, I'd probably be even more pissed off about it now if I hadn't known it was coming.)
Just in general, I kind of hate the villains in this. And not in a "these are good villains that I love to hate" sort of way. Especially Cinder, because I simply despise one-note-mysteriously-smug-for-no-properly-explained-reason villains like that. Roman Torchwick (who was, apparently, not even supposed to return after his initial appearance, but was brought back due to fans liking him?) had some vague potential to be interesting... but then he got eaten by a monster out of the blue and that's apparently that for him. I don't really care about Mercury, as he just seems like kind of a dick, especially after the thing with Yang. I haven't been shown enough of Adam to really make a solid call on him yet, except that he opposed Cinder at first and then joined only when she overpowered and threatened him, but then he was an utter douchenozzle to Blake and Yang, apparently for no other reason than for teh evuls of it all, so I'm heavily leaning toward hating him too. Emerald looks like she has the slight potential to maybe do a heel-face turn at some point, so she's the only one I'm even remotely sympathetic toward... but then if she does do a heel-face turn and gets the whole Karma Houdini treatment, I'd probably hate that, too, because she's the direct cause of a lot of the bullshit that went down before (mainly Penny's destruction). And then there's the new white-haired bitch, whoever she is, that they showed at the last second at the end of the season, who I assume is the real Big Bad with Cinder just being a flunky, I guess, which kind of just makes everything even worse, in a way... *shrug + sigh*
On top of that, they make like Cinder with the Fall Maiden powers is some sort of unstoppable badass who even Ozpin couldn't beat... yet Amber, the original holder of those powers, was easily taken out like an utter chump and left in a coma forever afterward until she was chumped by Cinder again in the end? Go figure. So... which is it? Was Amber just a total wuss even with all this supposed power? Or was Cinder just that much of an overpowered character even without the powers, who is now even worse with them? And, for that matter, the whole Seasonal Maiden thing seemed like a bit of a last-minute asspull introduced at near the end of the season (8 episodes into a 12 episode season, after two full seasons before that where it was never mentioned at all, despite it apparently being Cinder's main goal all along). They probably should have mentioned the Seasonal Maiden thing way earlier in the show, or at least shown Amber even if they didn't explain much at the time, maybe even in a previous season/volume.
Let's just say that season/volume three was not my favorite, so far.
[1] - Off-screen, so apparently Ozpin is dead now too, given that Crow (or Qrow or whatever the fuck his name is, I'm still too aggravated over the whole Vic Mignogna thing to even care about the character all that much) had Ozpin's cane at the end, and they didn't even show him being defeated, or at least they haven't yet in what I've watched so far.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-09 11:21 pm (UTC)From:It's also the volume, I believe, where Oum died in RL. Keep an eye open on the battle scenes from this point on out - imo they've become far more subdued in craziness. Case in point, in Volume 6 when I think back I can only really remember 2.5 battles and ultimately they weren't that complicated overall. Certainly haven't seen anything like the food fight from the first or second volume ever again.
It also makes me wonder how much of what's going on was actually a part of what he originally wanted to happen. I highly doubt he had told everyone in great detail where he wanted the series to go after all. It's not like he or anyone knew he would have that allergic reaction that killed him.
I suppose that's the biggest beef I have with the darkness in the series by the end of volume 3 - it feels like that's how others wanted the series to go rather than what Oum might have originally intended.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-09 11:34 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-09-10 05:46 pm (UTC)From:It sounds vaguely sort of like what Teen Titans GO! is to the first Teen Titans cartoon, i.e. a lighter/sillier/more comedic thing (which is sort of what the relationship was between the first cartoon and the original comic version, for that matter).
no subject
Date: 2019-09-11 05:05 am (UTC)From:seasonvolume 4. It almost feels like a completely different show now from the first three volumes, in a lot of ways. Way darker, far less wacky, cartoony hijinks (not necessarily an entirely bad thing, but still), even despite Nora getting way more screen time in this volume than before (then again, if she had been nothing but comic relief, I likely would have started to find her grating, I guess). In any case, it's getting sort of Cerebus Syndrome-ish, almost. Maybe it'll get better when team RWBY reunites in the next volume (or so I assume, since they were all headed toward the same place at the end), but I have a feeling the drama tag for this one has been well and truly pulled for good.On the other hand, while I guess they did sort of touch on the loss of Pyrrha and Penny the tiniest bit, it wasn't nearly as much as I would've expected or wanted them to. The whole thing with Jaune training to Pyrrha's video was a nice touch, but otherwise it was mostly just a teensy, brief name-drop every once in a long while. I mean, I didn't want them to be all mopey and shit the whole time, but I think there could've been a little more moping over it... >_>
As for villains, I still hate most of them. I don't give a fuck if Cinder is all frustrated and angry because she lost an eye and her voice and is weak because of her new powers or whatever. Good. Screw her. And Salem is basically just the new Cinder, just with a slightly different balance of mysteriousness/smugness (a bit more of the former, a bit less of the latter, I guess). I also don't much care for
The JokerTyrian, either. Haven't seen enough of the other two guys to be able to get a bead on them yet. The stuffy dude shittalking Cinder at the beginning sort of made me like him a tiny bit, though I figure he'll probably end up doing something to make me hate him later, as well.And the whole thing with Ozpin's spirit possessing some kid is... weird. I'll just leave it at that and see where they go with it.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-11 02:47 pm (UTC)From:Volume 6 will explain a lot more about Salem. It'll also explain that possessing thing by Ozpin.
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Date: 2019-09-11 07:43 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-09-13 05:52 am (UTC)From:Man, the two gods of this world have to be just about the shittiest, pettiest, stupidest gods I've ever seen in a work of fiction. One of their creations comes up to one of them and throws what is basically a childish tantrum about how unfair it is that someone they love died (like that's never happened to anyone else), he tells her to fuck off, she goes behind his back to the other, eviller god, tricks him into bringing her love back, which he inexplicably does, then first god shows up, rekills dead dude a bunch of times with dark god repeatedly bringing him back, they almost fight until first god tells second god "hey dude she actually came to me first," second god is like "oh, wait, this changes everything, my bad," and also tells her to fuck off after rekilling dead dude yet again, then they incredibly stupidly curse her with immortality, instead of just, like, winking her out of existence or something (pretty much an explicitly dick move on the part of the gods specifically meant to keep her from reuniting with her love in the afterlife), she throws an even bigger tantrum which winds up getting all of humanity wiped out by the gods just because a small army was tricked into attacking them by the woman they cursed, then the gods just fuck off to somewhere else.
But then the light god makes matters worse by bringing Ozma back (um, wasn't it the whole fucking point that the light god didn't want to bring him back in the first place, and also didn't they make her immortal for the express reason of keeping her from being with him, or so claimed the dark god anyway?) and leaving the relics in the world, promising/threatening to come back later.
And to top it all off, even though Salem, in the end, got pretty much everything she'd wanted (i.e. she had Ozma back, which was the very thing she'd asked for to start with), she decided to be evil anyway and kill Ozma, the very dude she challenged the gods to bring back to life. (Though, to be marginally fair to Salem, this was only granted to her after she'd dunked herself in the evil water and then lived like a hermit no telling how many years/centuries/millennia.)
Also, how the hell did humanity come back if Salem was the only human still remaining in the world after the gods murdered everyone else? When she jumped into the pool of darkness, I was expecting that to be the explanation for where second humanity came from, but apparently not? Or at least they didn't say so in that scene if it was? Maybe that's a plot point that is explained in a later episode or something? Or is this just a case of "it's magic, ain't gotta explain shit"?
So... what's Salem's plan now? She gathers the relics, the gods come back, kill everyone all over again, lecture her a bit because she's still immortal, and then start the whole process all over again? Or she gathers the relics, they show up and kill her along with everyone else, which would basically negate whatever "lesson" they were trying to "teach" her. (I guess in the latter case, Salem would technically "win" but still, what the actual fuck.)
I'm figuring in the end, they'll have to "redeem" Salem somehow in order to fulfill the conditions set by the light god for when the gods return after the relics are combined again. Either that or the gods themselves will somehow become the new Big Bads when they return, find that the world is still a shithole, and try to destroy everything. I actually kind of hope that is the case and that those gods get their shitty, petty, stupid asses kicked. But it'll probably be more like the gods come back, and then team RWBY lectures them on the power of friendship, the gods see the error of their ways, and then fuck off again, roll credits, happily ever after. None of which will likely happen for at least another three or four seasons, I'd guess.
I just... I don't know, I might have more to say, more coherently (maybe), later when I've had time to process it more (and, more importantly, watch the rest of volume 6), but just... urgh. So fucking stupid. I mean, lots of actual mythology (e.g. Greek) often portrayed their gods as petty and stupid and evil and all of that, but this has to rank up there with that, except that it's some action/dramedy show on the Internet and not ancient mythology. Well, the entire plot of the show wouldn't exist without the intense stupidity of the gods, but... well...
I guess what I'm saying is that (from an in-universe standpoint) the gods could have handled things a lot better than they did, and (from a meta standpoint) it could have been written a lot better and in such a way as to not make all parties involved seem like colossal dipshits. And given that the story of Ozma and Salem was, apparently, one of the very first things ever written for RWBY (or so Google tells me, and, again, assuming the current writers were being truthful), this can't be blamed entirely on the other writers taking over and fucking things up after Monty Oum's death.
In any case, it's almost like that episode of The Simpsons where Lisa accidentally creates life in a bowl of soda and one of her teeth. That's about the level at which I view these gods, and even that might be giving them more credit than they deserve. ¬_¬
Aside from all of that, I still enjoy the show, for the most part, and will keep watching. No, really, aside from my previous rants about Pyrrha's and Penny's shitty deaths, and how I've found the villains to be rather one-note (though I did like that, finally, we got a heel-face turn in the form of Ilia, at least, though that was counterbalanced by Lionheart being a cowardly shitheel), I've pretty much liked everything else. Mind you, I wouldn't have minded at all if Cinder and Raven had both killed each other at the end of volume 5, but yeah... besides that everything was great.
On a slightly less expansive topic, I don't know/recall if you've ever played Brütal Legend but I'm going to spoil a bit of that here. If you don't want those spoilers, stop right here. ^^;
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I feel like the Salem dunking in the black pool thing is similar to Ophelia when she threw herself into the Sea of Black Tears (which was, itself, sort of inspired by Hamlet). She came back out and became one of the main villains and led campaigns against both the good guys and the true Big Bad Doviculus. However, at the end, it turned out that the Drowned Ophelia was just a copy, and the real Ophelia was still in the Sea of Black Tears, and Eddie saved her from it. Of course, the only difference in this case is that Ophelia was still good, whereas Salem had become a pretty hardcore evil bitch even before she dumped herself in the pool of darkness. As such, even if the "real" Salem is still floating in the pool, I don't think it would matter much if they "save" her. Still, while I'm probably wrong, I have a feeling that might be where the story will go, in the end.
(Also, if what Google tells me is true, the creator commentary for RWBY apparently claims that the whole Salem in the dark pool thing was indeed inspired by that scene from Brutal Legend.)
no subject
Date: 2019-09-13 09:20 pm (UTC)From:And blah, none of my questions/complaints in the previous comment were addressed in the later episodes, but whatever, I wasn't expecting them to be.
I found it kind-of-but-not-really odd that I was somehow able to unintentionally skip an entire episode (the one with the Apathy monsters) and not even realize it until after watching the episode that came after it. I only realized it because when I reloaded the volume 6 page and noticed that the little red progress bar at the bottom of the thumbnail for that episode wasn't there, which was the only thing that let me know I hadn't watched it yet, as otherwise I probably wouldn't have missed it at all. Aside from Ruby using her asspull silver eye superpower again and revealing that the old woman had silver eyes as well, it was basically filler anyway.
So... yeah, on the whole, I liked the show well enough, aside from my specific complaints that I've already expressed at great length in previous comments above. I still don't care much for the villains in this, but they're not quite as completely obnoxious as they were when it was just Cinder and her two flunkies, pre-Salem-reveal. And fuck Adam Taurus, may he rest in piss (assuming he's really gone for good, of course).
The good guy characters I like a lot better, though, aside maybe from Qrow. (And that's not just because his voice actor was a reprehensible shitgibbon, which will be a non-issue in volume 7 regardless, given that RoosterTeeth kicked Mignogna to the curb. They can get pretty much any gravelly voiced guy to replace him and little would be different, as far as I'm concerned. I still won't like Qrow all that much, at least unless he changes quite a bit for the better in the next volumes.) I'm also kind of glad that Ozpin decided to peace out for a while, though he'll rather obviously have to come back (or more fully merge with Oscar) at some point.
I guess now I'll watch the Chibi thing. *shrug* Or, rather, before that, I'll dive into the TVTropes pages for RWBY, which I'd been avoiding like the plague up until now.
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Date: 2019-09-13 09:27 pm (UTC)From:I doubt it. No body to confirm = he's most certainly going to come back again.
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Date: 2019-09-13 10:02 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-09-14 02:33 am (UTC)From:Seeing the bad guys, especially Cinder, act just as goofy is... well, to be expected, I suppose, but still beyond weird. o_O
no subject
Date: 2019-09-14 02:44 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-09-14 10:22 pm (UTC)From:On another related topic, have you played the video game? I vaguely recall seeing it showing up in various sales over the past couple years but didn't really care at the time given that I hadn't seen anything of the show prior to now... but now I'm actually taking a look at it. It looks kind of interesting, for a character action game. Won't be buying it at full price, but I'll start keeping an eye out for sales, as per usual.
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Date: 2019-09-15 01:53 am (UTC)From:On the other hand, it's a game in which like half the roster or more are apparently DLC characters, including more than half of the RWBY characters. Oh well. :/
no subject
Date: 2019-09-17 03:37 pm (UTC)From:I bought the Utawarerumono Zan game yesterday since I'm a fan of the overall series - this particular game is a re-imaging of the original visual novel/war strategy game (Mask of Deception and probably Mask of Truth in particular) as a hack and slash Dynasty Warrior styled game. Not sure what I think about it yet but I'm sure I'll play it til completion at the very least.
Anyway, the game has 27 odd dollars of DLC (more if you don't buy the batch pack) and I noticed on PSN there were no download sizes for any of it, which is unusual or new - you'd think people would want to know how much space it's going to take up on their system amirite? Two of the items are temporarily free for a few weeks so I downloaded those - an outfit and an extra level. And they both 'downloaded' instantly. Meaning it's likely nothing but an unlock code.
More damning to show that it is just an unlock for something on the disc is that the game -starts- with Kuon wearing that particular outfit in a semi-playable cutscene. (You have to make her move down the trail yourself as she talks.) So yeah, most definitely an unlock code.
And I ain't paying for an unlock code.
We'll see if they actually have real outfits to switch to that you can actually earn during the game or if they added that entire mechanic purely to sell the DLC. I've seen devs do that before which if anything found a way to just piss me off even further - as it shows they wasted a lot of time developing the system just to sell DLC at the cost of overall game quality.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-17 04:06 pm (UTC)From:Honestly, I just find myself no longer interested in fighting games in general, regardless of DLC or whatever. The last one that I actually enjoyed to any real extent (which wasn't either MK9 or Injustice, as playing those was around when I started to realize I was pretty much over fighting games) was probably that Persona 4 Arena game (and I never bothered with the rereleased-with-more-shit Ultimax version of that), and that's the only reason I was vaguely interested in the BlazBlue thing, given that it's made by the same company (and even that only for RWBY and Persona because I give zero shits about BlazBlue itself). But with half-plus of the roster locked behind DLC, they can fuck off, too. At best, it's just another "if I can get the game and all DLC for like $5 then maybe, otherwise to hell with it" thing.
I still haven't even bothered with Street Fighter 5 yet and at this point probably won't. That's around when the whole thing with locking most of the roster behind DLC thing really started to hit its stride. I think it mostly started with the X-bone Killer Instinct game, though.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-17 03:27 pm (UTC)From:"RWBY: GRIMM ECLIPSE is a 4 player, online co-op, hack and slash game based upon Rooster Teeth’s international hit series RWBY."
It's primarily online multiplayer only as far as I can tell. If you were an "achievement whore" you'd apparently -need- to play the game in co-op mode to finish getting the achievements unlocked as well. The discussions page on steam is littered with people looking for a team to play with.
I ignored it back when it was still a perpetual early access game. If I were to see it on sale for a couple bucks I might consider it, but otherwise I think I'm good.
The -minimum- requirements state the need for a network connection, so I'm guessing even if you were playing solo you'd need to be connected - ie: probably using it as DRM.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-17 03:40 pm (UTC)From:While I was seeing on the forums that it's apparently possible to play singleplayer, it's talking about shit like "start a game lobby but set it to private to keep randos from jumping in" and bullshit like that, and it's like nah, never mind. If you can't just include a base-level singleplayer that doesn't require jumping through hoops to access and doesn't require still being online to play, then fuck off.
And a lot of the reviews are saying that it's pretty basic even for a beat-em-up game, kind of half-baked, and that "only hardcore RWBY fans will like it," which I don't really consider myself to be, and that there's not much story on top of that, which would be pretty much the only real reason I'd have been interested in it to begin with.