In canon, we have 6 fictional concepts that play into combat: Aura, Dust, Semblance, the 4-Maidens power (just called “magic”), magitek weaponry and whatever Silver Eye power Ruby has. It is never really made clear what benefits and limitations each of these have, which makes it hard for the audience to put them in perspective.
For example: If three non-maiden people can beat a person using maiden powers, can that power really be deemed legendary? If so, what about it is different from aura/semblance etc? Ozpin clearly explained that Maidens were forced to go into hiding because people hunted them down for their powers. If they are so strong, why hiding? I could understand if it was because such great power made common people uncomfortable, but not because of the Maidens own safety. The same thing can be said about the creatures of Grimm, even if in the opposite sense: they were built up to be these constant threat, cruel human killing monsters and, instead, they ended up being just stupid mooks, for the most part.
Are there any drawbacks to using semblances (as in, does using them drain aura etc)?
Aura: Never display Aura in the form of a health bar. It’s very possible to show someone being at the end of their rope without flashing to a red health bar. The different strengths of different characters could be highlighted/caused by the ways in which they are most adept at channeling their auras. For example, as an expression of their personalities, Yang uses aura to enhance strength whereas Blake has a knack for veiling her aura, thus making her presence harder to detect. Actually, we don't know how Semblance is discovered: is it like magic in "Dragon Age"? Is it accidental? A young Pyrrha started moving metallic objects? Ruby was running a race against her sister and wanted to win really bad? Yang was exchanging blows during training and after being hit a few times just went on fire? Etc, etc.
We don’t need to introduce semblances at the moment, and I would have liked for a majority of these novice hunters to not have special abilities unlocked yet as that would give them somewhere to actually go, power-wise. That's why I feel any rebuild should nerf team RWBY, physically that is. Ruby needs to ask questions on stuff like Dust to a character like Weiss, who is a Dust-expert, while on the flip side letting her be an exposition machine for her area of expertise- guns and weapons and ammunition and other such variations. The heroes at the start don’t have their advanced weapons or their Semblances. They only have basic weapons and their Aura unlocked. Their Auras develop and they discover their Semblances as time goes on. Their advanced weapons cost a lot of money so they don’t exist at the start. Ruby has an axe that Tai gave her, Yang has boxer gloves and a shotgun, Weiss has a rapier and her Glyph books, and Blake has a katana and a glock. Ruby can be fast without a semblance, Yang can punch really hard without a semblance. Blake can be a badass ninja without creating clones. One important change: I don’t think “Glyphs” should be Weiss’ semblance.
Dust: I feel like the concept of dust had a lot of its potential wasted. It was the centerpiece of the opening narration, but never played a truly essential role in how the characters interacted with the world.
So in this take on RWBY, Dust would be a demonstrably powerful source of energy. A fuel which can be used do things that are impossible through aura alone. We’re not just talking ammunition here.
However, it has a clear weakness. Dust is a physical resource that can be used up.
Actually establishing this notion requires that someone, at some point early in the series, runs out of dust. A thing we’ve never really seen happen in RWBY so far. Ever.
Dust should be a powerful resource that requires strategic management to be used optimally, creating a benefit for characters who fight smart. So you have the most basic use of dust: triggering its base form. This is what a soldier does when they ignite the small amount of dust in their ammunition to fire off a shot.
Then there is the more advanced use, which requires years of training by talented individuals: Channeling the energy in dust to create “supernatural” effects. This is what Weiss is doing when you see her use glyphs, just as how we see Glynda doing awesome shit by using her pentagram-looking glyphs in the first battle.
These are not semblances, it’s high-level dust usage. By manipulating this pure energy with their aura, experts can do simple stuff like release the dust’s elemental effects (ice, fire, electricity etc). But for the ambitious, anything is possible with enough energy. This includes creating physical surfaces (like the glyphs Weiss stands on) or counteracting gravity (letting Ruby run up the wall in episode 8). People with this ability can do really awesome things, but their power output is limited by their access to dust.
Establishing this early on, and reinforcing it throughout the show, would make Torchwick’s goal to steal vast amounts of dust more intimidating and intriguing. This alteration becomes a fundamental change to Weiss as a character, which leads into an important point I feel could have been improved in RWBY: The four main characters should have clear strengths and weaknesses that compliment each other, thus creating the need for a team. Each of them can be badass, but having characters be badass in separate ways makes both action and plot more vibrant.
So here is the combat dynamic I would have preferred to see from the heroines (who should obviously be the main focus of the show.)
Weiss was born with a very faint aura. Even after years of expensive treatments and training it is still barely half the level one might expect of an aspiring huntress. However, Weiss makes up for this weakness with a prodigious ability to utilize dust, making her the party’s glass cannon. Depending on whether she has time to focus (and a sufficient supply of dust), she can interchangeably be the team’s weakest or strongest member. I think this a idea has merit, assuming that you want to lower RWBY's starting ability, but you could easily tie in some of the other family issues as well. By emphasizing the Dust based aspects of her fighting style, she would be more dependent on her father and the SDC because of how its success fuels her own. She's already the heaviest dust user we've seen and that can't be cheap. This would make her eventual decision to break from her father that much more impactful because she's giving up so much. Her family is not only mines and distributes it, but are also incredibly wealthy. As heiress, Weiss would likely have a substantial trust, enough that she could burn more Dust in a day than most people could buy with a month's income and it would barely make a dent in her finances. Losing access to this would require her to learn to fight more efficiently and rely on her team more, small ice fields instead of the enormous wall she used to hold the Deathstalker.
Blake is the fragile speedster, a precision fighter who slips out of enemy awareness and prefers well-placed attacks rather than to waste energy.
Yang can be the mighty glacier. With a crazy amount of aura and a penchant for punching she is a fearsome damage-dealer, at the cost of having low mobility. She can use Ember Celica to at least try to catch up with the rest of her team’s pace but ammo is limited and can only get you so far.
Ruby is the jack-of-all stats hero whose childlike joy results in one decisive strength/weakness: Creativity. She blindsides the world by employing outside-the-box strategies that shouldn’t work (and sometimes don’t.) This makes her the believable yet contentious choice for team leader. Her ability as a ranged combatant should matter in the story (for example by having her shoot the cane out of Torchwick’s hand when he’s about to hit Blake in episode 16) and, when she unlocks her Semblance at least, Ruby should also be noticeably faster than the other characters.
These are mainly ways in which the characters distinguish themselves combat-wise, there should of course also be a focus on what each of them brings to the table with their personalities. Each of the four main characters should have been given some story element or trait that is theirs and theirs alone, and then gifted opportunities to explore these throughout the show. This is a problem that is pointed out below:
Ruby lost her mother? So did Yang.
Ruby is supposedly a genius standout at fighting? Pyrrha is that and more.
Ruby is reckless and arrogant in season one? Yang's MO is supposedly recklessness even though we don’t get to see that until after her so-called “development”.
Ruby loses her friends Penny and Pyrrha? All of the cast loses a friend in Pyrrha, and Jaune's pain is even greater because he lost a lover.
Minor Sidenote: I would have liked the plot to include that briefly-touched-upon notion that Weiss is an accomplished, book-smart student (as hinted at in Vol1-Ep10.) She could very well have been the team’s resident dust-expert who actually helps the others upgrade their equipment throughout the series. Her outburst at Ruby knocking over the suitcase full of dust could have been “justified” in that she refines her own dust and gets very single-minded about her projects.
Additional Sidenote: The screentime at Beacon should have included other things than just duels and traditional classrooms. At some point we should have seen lab classes where people work on their weapons (season 2 could have included Weiss and Blake prototyping the ammo-combo she uses against Torchwick in the train fight), maybe training in Survival/Military Strategy, or a Sharpshooting class where Ruby gets to shine. There are so many scenes that occur in cafeterias, classrooms and bland dorms that I feel could have taken place in more interesting settings.
Grimm: The Grimm needed to be an actual threat. If your protagonists start off with the ability to just rinse through the world’s primary threat, what kind of a threat is that and where can your protagonists improve from there? Here’s an idea to fix this: Grimm that consume their first Hunter can take on their semblance. This would create a sort of balance between the two where Hunters are their own weakness. This could also result in the named Grimm being more memorable since you could trace their existence to a single death, and since a named Grimm is more likely to kill other huntsmen they’d be a growing threat where enhanced Grimm allow for the creation of more enhanced Grimm. This explains why more powerful huntsmen don’t stay in the city (they’re too busy keeping the “raid bosses” in check), and why being a Hunter is more likely to result in an short life. This would also make teamwork more important since the darker purpose of allies is so that they can keep your body from being consumed by the Grimm. Finally, really old Grimm have human-like intelligence and are able to speak.
For the love of Mata Nui, figure out what the Silver Eyes do beforehand. Don't just ex-machina your way out of situations without establishing anything. I get that you're trying to take the Kishimoto route of inventing new superpowers at random to move the plot, but at least the Sharingan started off with one definite thing it was supposed to do.
Maidens: Anyway, the episode opens with Pyrrha having been summoned to the cock tower by Ozpin, with Qrow hovering around in the background. After exchanging a few pleasantries, Ozpin begins introducing Pyrrha to this Maiden business, which...well, I'm going to be honest. I like it. It has its flaws to be sure (particularly how out-of-nowhere it seems being introduced in season 3, and how overcrowded the story already is before adding yet another major thing), but overall I feel that this is one of the best thought-out concepts and most competently handled introductions thereof in the show thus far. It starts off a little more mixed than that, though. Ozpin asks Pyrrha what her favorite childhood fairy tale was, and - after being confused for a moment - Pyrrha answers.
What's nice about this little exchange: the fairy tales that Pyrrha lists as her favorites aren't real ones. I was fully expecting her to list "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" and "Cinderella" and the like, but no. The titles she lists are all in-universe fairy tales that don't exist in the real world. The writers actually bothered to give Remnant its own folktales, or at least make up some titles that indicate that it has them. "The Tale of the Two Brothers." "The Shallow Sea." "The Girl in the Tower." "Glenn of the Mountains." Okay, I made the last one up, but the others are titles that she actually lists, and I definitely appreciate that the writers put just that small bit more effort in than they usually seem to. That's normally just part of my minimum expectations for fantasy worldbuilding, but compared to RWBY's usual it might as well be Tolkien.
What's not so nice about this little exchange: after asking her for her favorite fairy tale, Ozpin interrupts her as she's listing them and asks about a specific one, the Story of the Seasons. So, he never actually wanted to know what her favorite was, and only pretended to for some reason before segueing into the actual topic at hand. It's hard to not read his initial question as pure condescension, in light of this.
As usual, none of the other characters notice when Ozpin is being a dick. Instead, Pyrrha happily jumps into a recitation of the Tale of the Seasons.
Now, this recitation is where the scene starts to really pick up. While the fairy tale that Pyrrha tells isn't a particularly creative one, it captures a very specific feel that I'm sure the writers were deliberately going for. If you flip through a real life book of fairy tales, there are usually three basic genres that jump out at you. There's the stories about peasants, and animals, and rustic doings - often with some lowbrow humor and irreverence mixed in - that almost certainly came from peasant origin. There's the stories about princesses and knights and castles, that feel more constructed. And then there's the weird ones. The ones that you feel like you're just missing too much cultural context to really understand. Those ones, I've learned over the years, are often stories that were once actual pagan beliefs that were turned into "fairy tales" in the wake of christianization. That third category is what the Story of the Seasons falls into, and that's exactly what the writers meant for it to do. Like I said, I was really pleasantly surprised.
As the story goes, an apathetic old man lived in a house by himself and never went outside. One day, four sisters came to his abode. The first of the sisters, who was more introverted herself by nature, thought she could connect to the old man, so she knocked on his door and befriended him, encouraging him to use his solitude for contemplation and higher thought rather than idleness and apathy. Once his mind had opened a bit, the second sister started bringing him flowers from outside of the house, and creating a garden around the house to draw out the old man's curiosity. Once his curiosity was engaged, the third sister brought him out into the sun and showed him the natural world in its full splendor. Then, the fourth sister stepped forward and taught him to be thankful for all that he had, and all that he had been given.
In exchange for bringing joy and order to his life, the old man made the four sisters immortal, and gave them the power to bestow their virtues upon the entire world; he turned them into the four seasons.
As I said a paragraph ago, this story really does a good job of capturing the "ancient pagan myth turned early modern fairy tale" vibe. The old man was obviously some sort of creator god, in the original version, and the four sisters were probably once worshiped themselves at every solstice and equinox.
There is an uncomfortable aspect to this story, though, and one that I'm going to get back to a bit later in this review.
Once Pyrrha finishes telling the story, Ozpin surprises her (though not the audience, obviously) by saying that this story has a basis in fact. Pyrrha is disbelieving at first, but when Qrow backs Ozpin up, and is then joined by OT and General Ironwood who enter the room and do the same, she starts to change her tune. They also add a coda to the story; apparently, the office of "seasonal goddess" is one that's been taken by countless women over the millennia, and Ozpin thinks Pyrrha should be the next Fall Maiden.
An elevator brings them down into a very X-Men like secret high tech facility under Beacwarts, where the three adults and Qrow speak person to person filling Pyrrha in on the details (Qrow's contributions mostly being loledgy complaints about how stupid he thinks this divinely ordained system is, and unsolicited barbs at Ironwood). There are some dialogue oddities and Engrish-isms throughout, but the overall shape of the story is easily the best thought out and most creative thing in RWBY so far.
Basically, there are always four Maidens at a time. When one of them dies, her powers are passed on to another young woman; specifically, the young woman who was most recently in her thoughts before she died. In ancient times, the Maidens were revered. However, eventually people figured out that if you're a young woman and you murder a Maiden, you will probably be the one most recently in her thoughts before dying, and then you'll get her powers. Consequently, there was a dark age of malevolent tyrant-goddesses who got their powers by assassinating their predecessors; as Qrow points out in his one inoffensive contribution to this history lesson, the system ended up self-selecting for ruthlessness and concentrating power in the hands of the very last sort of people who should have it. Worse still, something is happening that has never been seen before; Amber's powers were partially drained by her attacker, implying that Cinder has some kind of magic of her own that she used to absorb part of the Fall Maiden powerset even without Amber dying.
There is a possible way to stop Cinder from becoming the new Fall Maiden. The Atlasians with their aura-manipulating technology have a secret, highly experimental device (which Ironwood has access to) that can theoretically suck out a person's aura and infuse it into someone else. And, apparently, the Maiden title is attached to its host's aura. Remove Amber's aura and attach it to someone else (preferably another young woman, in order to stick to the usual Maiden succession criteria), and they just might be able to trick the Fall Maiden package into following it.
Of course, as this device has never been used on humans, they don't know what effects it might have on Pyrrha. Since aura is an extension of the soul, transplanting Amber's into Pyrrha might change her by infusing her with Amber's personality traits. There's even a chance that Amber might overwrite Pyrrha entirely, essentially killing her and letting Amber inhabit her body. So, the choice is Pyrrha's. Will she consent to the experiment and risk her own annihilation for the sake of preventing a power-hungry murderess from attaining demi-godhood?
...
Man, do I have a lot to say about this. And for once, it isn't all bad. It isn't even mostly bad. So, let's start with the positives.
1. We finally have a plot point that USES part of the established worldbuilding, and even synthesizes three otherwise scattered elements; those being the Atlasian auratech, the spiritual nature of aura itself, and the secret society.
2. The whole history we've been given about the Maidens reflects a much, MUCH better grasp of cause and effect than we've ever seen from the RWBY writers before. If the Maiden status is transferred the way that it is, then naturally people WOULD try to take advantage of that by killing the current Maidens, and that in turn WOULD cause the Maiden offices to be most often filled by terrible people. And, the obvious solution to this problem IS to try to keep the Maidens' identities a secret, regulate their succession events (somehow), and then hope that the world forgets that they were ever more than a myth. If the writers had put this amount of critical thinking into the plotting and worldbuilding we've seen before this episode, something like 40% of the complaints I've made throughout this thread would be gone in a puff of smoke.
3. We now have a good justification for our benevolent secret society to exist. It doesn't justify any of the shit we've seen them pull until now (and especially not Ozpin's actions in season 2), and it doesn't fix any of the problems with how they seem to place loyalty to Ozpin and martial strength above any actually desirable qualities, but at least this conspiracy now has at least ONE non-idiotic reason to exist. Someone needs to make sure that the ability to command the seasons doesn't fall into the hands of psychopaths, and they must necessarily work in secret.
4. Finally, we have a difficult moral choice in front of us that doesn't fail in the spectacularly horrific manner that RWBY's attempts at dealing with moral issues always have in the past. Better yet, it’s a choice that gives all the agency to Pyrrha, a character who previously had none. And, if she survives the experiment, she will be given much more material to develop into her own character with. She'll be much bigger than Tomah when she's in charge of regulating 25% of Remnant's climate (if that is what Maidens actually do; more on this subject in the following list).
5. Speaking of moral choices, the framing, music, and general handling of this scene doesn't actually read the way you might be imagining based on my written summary. Ozpin and Co seem downright sinister at times. Pyrrha's presentation is vulnerable-looking in a way that you normally see from someone who's about to become a victim in a horror movie. The way the camera sometimes interacts with Ozpin in particular during this scene screams "villain."
I said in my review of "Its Brawl in the Family" that the only way this show can save itself from the label of authoritarian wank is by acknowledging that Ozpin is a bad guy. And, well, if the cinematography of this scene can be taken as any kind of hint, the show might just end up saving itself after all. So, yes. Please acknowledge that Ozpin is evil, show. Please.
6. Finally, there's some very interesting worldbuilding possibilities connected to this Maiden thing.
There are four kingdoms that have somehow stood the test of time where others did not. One of those kingdoms, Atlas, is in the subarctic, and heavily associated with snow and winter( which will be retconned to having the Snowy Forest from the Red Trailer in my rewrite. It’s name is Everlasting Winter). Another, Vale, is located near the Forever Fall forest. ( In my rewrite there will also be an always sandy desert in Vacuo called the Yellowbrick Desert. The Mistral location counterpart to these is called Unending Spring). I wonder if each of the four kingdoms has historically housed one of the Maidens, resulting in both their prosperity and some unusual environmental effects in the surrounding areas? This would have to be retroactive worldbuilding, since the Maiden concept was apparently only introduced by Monty Oum during season 3's production, but even so it's a great way to clean up part of the mess.
And, if Ozpin's secret society was instrumental in setting up the Hunter organization, maybe the four man teams have a cultic symbolism? And, Team RWBY in particular is made up of four girls, two of whom have already been directly or indirectly associated with seasons. Hmmm...
But. As I said before, I also need to voice a few misgivings. Don't mistake the greater length of this section to mean that the problems outweigh the good points, necessarily; it’s more that explaining why something is broken nearly always takes longer than explaining how it works.
1. While this plot does make efficient use of some of what used to be the show's more pointless high concepts, it’s STILL introducing another major thing into a story that's already juggling way too many. Worse yet, its introducing another POWER SOURCE when we're already tripping over the distinction between Dust and Aura in every other action scene even before you throw scifi supertech on top of that. There's one point where even this very scene stumbles on that:
Ozpin: What if I told you that there were four maidens existing in this world, that could wield such tremendous power, without Dust?
Pyrrha: You mean... like a Semblance?
Ozpin: (looks bemused for a moment before answering) Like magic.
I feel like the writers somehow forgot all the bullshit they had made up since the episode one pilot when they first wrote this scene, and only realized the glaring omission at the last minute and quickly edited in Pyrrha's line here. After all, why WOULDN'T Ozpin have included Semblance in his initial question, especially considering that Semblance seems to be a hell of a lot more like magic than Dust is?
If the dialogue is already tripping over the show's overabundance of supernatural MacGuffins, I don't think you can blame me for having some concerns about the decision to introduce yet another.
2. To be short and frank, Pyrrha’s voice acting could use some work.
3. This one isn't a problem yet, so much as it’s a fear of what the writers might do in the future. I've been pleasantly surprised by this plot's unveiling, so the quality might hold out, but in light of RWBY's previous failures I can't help but be wary.
I really, really, REALLY hope that being a Maiden doesn't give you a bunch of combat powers.
3-a. Dust, Semblance, and advanced technology are already way too undefined in what they can do during combat. Adding divine magic combat techniques to the list could turn the fights from virtual gibberish into absolute gibberish.
3-b. We've seen Cinder fight Ruby in the CCT. It was a very brief exchange, but the two appeared to be more or less evenly matched despite Ruby being allegedly hampered by her high heels. If Cinder is supposed to have already stolen a fragment of Maiden power, then...well...the show is going to have its work cut out for it in convincing me that said powers are anything to write home about.
Furthermore, the plot specifically establishes that Cinder attacked and nearly killed Amber in a direct encounter. If Maidens are combat monsters, how could Cinder have done that? How could people murdering Maidens and taking their powers ever have become an issue in the first place if Maiden powers make you unkillable?
3-c. Following from the above, if Maiden powers ARE primarily combat based, then that means that they're not powerful enough to prevent the Maiden from still being overwhelmed by a small group of elite fighters. Which means that becoming the Fall Maiden will only be a slight boost to Cinder's threat level, and definitely not worth this amount of concern.
3-d. Think about the possibilities implied by Maiden powers being more along the lines of weather control, wide-scale environmental manipulation, and a subtle ability to change the hearts and minds of entire societies. Think about how much more terrifying that would be in a villain than just having better kung-fu magic than they did before (especially in a series where people's kung-fu power levels already fluctuate so wildly from scene to scene). Think about the kind of responsibility that would now fall on Pyrrha, the kind of philosophical and moral problems she would have to confront, as she seeks to use this kind of power responsibly. How awesome could this kind of story potentially be?
Like I said, they haven't done anything to suggest that Maiden powers are mostly of the combat-focused variety yet. I'm just afraid that they will. It is possible that my fears are misplaced, and indeed I very much hope that they are.
4. This is the issue I took with the Story of the Seasons that I deferred earlier.
In the story, we have an old man (or god or whatever he's supposed to be) living by himself and not interacting with the surrounding world. Then, OUT OF NOWHERE, these four young women show up and start spending all their time and energy on him for no given reason. And then, once he acknowledges them, he gives them powers and instructions on how to use them, which they happily obey.
If I found this story in a book of real life folktales, I'd think nothing of it. Both because I wouldn't know what (if anything) to read into the characters' genders without knowing more about the culture this came from, and because you kind of take it for granted that ancient myths are going to have archaic gender politics. But, this story is supposed to be literally true to some degree within the world of RWBY, and RWBY itself has given me plenty of context for its use of gender. The seasons are titninjas.
Consider this as a counterpoint to what I said about potential character growth for Pyrrha in the previous list. TT has already behaved pretty much exactly like the four sisters in the story in her interactions with Tomah, to the point where I'd think that was deliberate foreshadowing if I didn't know that Monty pulled the entire Maiden idea out of his ass after season 2. So, its very easy for me to imagine how Pyrrha could become the Fall Maiden without actually being empowered as a human being; she might just change from being Tomah's accessory to being Ozpin's accessory.
The fact that Pyrrha is so controllable might actually be why Ozpin picked her, in-universe. She certainly seems an odd choice otherwise; being a high-profile tournament champion with a lot of public attention isn't exactly a selling point in this situation. I don't blame Ozpin for choosing the most controllable person possible to become the new Fall Maiden (it's exactly what I would do in his situation), but that doesn't make it any more pleasant to watch.
(Actually, you know what, let's take it one step further. Have the Maidens be the original warrior-mage-queens of Remnant, magic-users who managed to harness the forces of nature to carve out true civilisations rather than scattered tribes of humans. They managed to create the first settlements that could be truly safe from Grimm, and then turned their ambitions on each other. The kingdoms can't exist without them, because their power made them in the first place; but people didn’t particularly want god-kings, either.)
(You know, I wish RWBY was about a world ruled by four tyrant God-Queens doing great and terrible and kinda petty things like turning a bunch of political prisoners into a forest that forever locked in autumn or cursing the land with eternal winter, etc.. The plot could be about la resistance plotting to kill one of the queens and put her power into the right hands -and fighting bad guys who also want to kill a queen and put her power into the wrong hands. Coolman229 did a discussion on how stuff like this made Historia from Attack on Titan interesting and how diving into the politics is important for stories like these.)
What the hell is with all the characters forgetting what their powers are?
Ruby has super speed she barely uses. She's fast enough to create actual vortexes with enough force to crack a wall and just likes standing around all the time. She can change her scythe into spear form and create literal tornados but we've only ever seen her use that in the shorts. She can snipe with her gun from far away, meaning half the fights she's in could be over in like ten seconds if she sees them before they see her. And she can make a freaking rose petal smoke screen for cover. Her rose petal thing is just never utilized. AND HER DANG SILVER EYES.
Wiess, holy crap, Weiss should be one of the strongest huntresses in the world. She can summon dead Grimm, has energy shields that basically gives her two health bars, can ACCELERATE FU*KING TIME, glyphs that can be used as solid platforms, can hold or prepel things, and can even be used for elemental stuff. WE'VE SEEN HER ENCHANT RUBY’S BULLETS WITH ELEMENTS. She can enchant her teammates weapons and give them boosts! Weiss basically is a master of buffs that she hardly ever uses.
Yang is a heavy hitter that's supposed to be super fu*king strong. She can tank being punched through a bridge. This girl should be a damn near immovable tank. Her defense and attack should be so dang high right now that a measly kick should barely phase her. We’ve seen her punch the ground and send a shockwave through the ground knocking down anyone nearby. She can dish out damage twice as hard as it's dealt and we NEVER see her try to utilize different dust either.
Blake is supposed to be like a ninja right? Fast and she can make shadow clones right? We've seen her turn her clones into basically bombs with fire dust. BOMBS. And she can dual wield! She can make statues of herself out of rock and ice like shields and we haven't even SEEN her use other dust. Oh right and her weapon also has a whip-like function that's basically nonexistent now that she would use to slingshot her teammates for extra oomph. And she's a cat faunus so she should have night vision super reflexes and perfect acute hearing.
Don't even get me started on the villans, but they nerfed this cast WAY too hard.
The thing I see is that RWBY has way too many power sets that they introduce to use without really explaining them in depth before switching to the next power set. First, we have Technology. How advanced is Remnant in general compared to us IRL? Are there any limitations to their tech? Then we were given Aura, and by extension Semblance. Then after that we were handed Maidens (AKA Magic). And before we could find out how Magic is as a power system we were given Relics.
Why aren’t robots more heavily relied on in Remnant, like using them to gather resources?
I missed the chance to ask about the Queen worm. That was the last episode of the show I watched, because it was SO unbelievable that I went wiki-walking to see if the show got better (and boy did it not).
It is completely absurd that someone could break into the main terminal room of a network as important as the CCT, be personally witnessed doing it by the leader of the country in charge of this system, and then… nobody does anything about it? Either they have the access records of her uploading some mysterious program to the system, or, there's no record, so she must have deleted it and therefore has definitely messed with the system.
There isn't the slightest chance that there's no contingency plan for this. This is the freaking CCT. Tampering with international communication is a global crisis. Even if the worm covers its tracks too well for them to find and delete it, they would just wipe everything and start over. Send out a public advisory that service would be slow for a bit, shift to the isolated backup system, and do a full factory reset on all the equipment. At minimum. I'm not in networks, maybe they have something even better.
The entire plot of season 3 is predicated on this working, and it just doesn't. The whole "fall of Beacon" is built on a foundation of nonsense! Cinder couldn't get shit from the worm after like 15 minutes, because that's how long it would stay operational, and ONLY if she handed out free concussions to everyone on site that knew anything about how the system worked!
Comments