Everything Wrong with RWBY Part 3 (Overarching Plot, Characterization and Potential)

The main issue with the writing is one that I'm not sure can be improved - the overarching metaplot. There's too much going on, the world that RWBY set out to unfurl is too complex, and trying to balance all the necessary reveals of information while telling satisfying stories for the main cast (who should obviously be the focal point because, y'know, the title of the show) is difficult to achieve in the chosen format. It's a symptom of the writers being driven by Rule of Cool and wanting to throw everything in, without considering how it would affect the narrative going forward or whether the chosen format was even conducive to displaying the element in question properly.
We've got so many unanswered questions, and even more worldbuilding details that don't particularly need answered in order to tell the story, but would be nice to have explanations for anyway. Where does Aura come from, where do Semblances come from, what are Grimm, who is Salem and what does she want and where is she, who is Ozpin and why was he in particular cursed, what do the Relics do, what do Silver Eyes do, why is the moon broken, what's with the dragon continent, where do Faunus come from, what is Dust and where does it come from, and other things I'm not even bothering to think of right now.
The vastness of the setting and the myriad of preternatural shenanigans reminds me of nothing so much as an epic fantasy series like Wheel of Time or ASOIAF or Lord of the Rings. The Wheel of Time took 23 years and over four million words to tell its story and there were still plenty of questions left unanswered. Tolkien worked on the Middle-Earth setting for over half a century and was still undecided on many background details at the time of his death. ASOIAF fans have been poking at the books for over two decades and have no guarantee that they'll ever see an ending. RWBY averages maybe three and a half hours of content per year.
I think ultimately this is why fanfiction and other fanworks are so vital to the RWBY fandom - they can expand on the world and characters in a way that the show never can. In The Dissonance Trilogy’s very first scene, it establishes an explanation for why Blake can create elemental clones using Dust - something the show hasn't even hinted at explaining and probably never will. That's just one example of fanfiction being better than the show.
I think RWBY is in essence a show of potential.
There are many interest concepts, characters and set-ups that could be capitalized on, however the show has, in my opinion, failed to really play them out, which has become increasingly apparent as the story has been pushed into the spotlight due to the tonal shift in V3.
V4 didn’t perform to reasonable audience expectations. After significant events, both globally and in terms of characters and their relations, come to pass in the latter half of V3, the fandom was theorising all the possible implications, developments and so on and so forth that could happen in V4 — Only for V4 to start after a large time-skip. Audiences were disappointed. Important questions weren't answered either and instead of character development, what some characters received were 'hints' at a change and nothing more.
But alas, Volume 4 done, the outcry over — perhaps our expectations were just too high, perhaps the writers will address these problems in the next. And then comes V5, universally lauded and praised for its — Ah, who am I kidding, large parts of the audience detest V5 with a passion. It has become subject of mockery, from the incongruent scenes, to the pacing, countless 'cliffhangers', forced dialogue etc.
It seemed like the writing pair had not listened to any criticism at all, in some parts just making already prominent problems even worse. Important questions once again remain unaddressed, not even acknowledged by the narrative in favour of addressing some unimportant fan-theory. It was at that moment that RWBY kind of lost face for me. RWBY as a show never had the skill or money behind it as some big-name production, but it had a dream. And it was working damn hard to accomplish it, improving with every volume.
As a piece of entertainment media, I think that is the promise of the show. The small show that wanted to be more. It is the underdog story of Rooster Teeth. And now imagine having an underdog character and the next time he shows up it seems like he had barely trained, becoming weaker in some aspects as before. You'd be confused, disappointed — you'd lose faith in the writers.
I think the writing in RWBY is shallow.
What do I mean by that?
I think all the writing is always surface level, in-the-moment, and planned only to a superficial degree. It is complex to explain if you haven't tried your hand in writing fiction already, but I have suffered from this problem in my earlier writing as well, and I've noticed a lot of my peers write this way in their early works. It is easily recognizable in RWBY's writing.
Essentially, it can be summed up as "pantsing" or "winging it." It involves constantly referencing the base understanding of every character in order to write their dialogue, and there is usually an abundance of dialogue that are not fully useful towards propelling the scene. Most of the dialogue can be treated as banter or reactions, or even acknowledgements that a character still exists in the scene. Everything in this style of writing is mostly written from one flow of conscience, from that exact moment in time, and mostly everything is either hit or miss.
Many people pants because they derive more enjoyment out of writing that way. They like to be in-the-moment with their characters, not necessarily to get in their heads, but to imagine what they'd act like if they were real. They say no to outlining and plotting because it can kill the creative process and drag out writing the story.
There is a balance to these two styles of course, but the hard truth is that the more planning that goes into a story, the better quality it is, and the more the substance of the story will resonate. Even a checklist of major plot points you want to happen is not enough to say you plotted everything out. A master writer who really knows her world and her characters like the back of her own hand will plan out everything to the nitty gritty specifics. Every sentence has been artfully crafted to balance the meaning she intends to communicate. Every sentence makes up every scene. Every scene has been artfully crafted to balance its narrative weight in the story. Even the order of scenes matters. The ordered scenes all coalesce into one complete story, with everything from a beginning, a middle, and an end. Everything matters to the master writer.
But in RWBY, to talk about it so analytically is frankly undeserved. There is an imbalance in the amount of thought put into RWBY than what comes out of it. Pick any pair of scenes from Volume 6 and Volume 1, and see if anything is still 100% relevant anymore. Other shows and other works pass this test with flying colors. The whole main idea of their stories never loses focus at any point in their run. RWBY is barely cogent as a large scale story. Everyone has their own individual interpretation of what the main point of the story is even about, and not one of them is impervious to counterexamples from the show itself.
That's why all this attribution of common tropes to things in RWBY is too nearsighted. RWBY can't consciously sustain a trope for very long because it lacks agency, consistency, buildup, payoff. The trope only lasts as long as the scene it's in. The buildup only lasts as long as the scene it's in. The payoff only lasts as long as the scene it's in. Nothing carries over. It's a cynical outlook, one I'm sure anyone could dispute by picking one petty example from the show after another, but again, that strategy is far too nearsighted to look at the show's writing style as a whole.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't wait multiple seasons after revealing the main character's hidden power to give them a throwaway mentor, who was unestablished and never mentioned, yet everyone is forced to pretend to know them.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't spend multiple seasons letting a pair of characters interact in common romcom ways then leave everything unsaid.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't pair off two characters who have expressed nothing but drama and tension between them after comparatively less screen time.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't spend an entire volume letting one of their characters rebel against their father and escape home, only to waste her efforts by returning there soon after, and not even of her own volition.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't insert filler fight scenes with fodder monsters just to show off animation.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't let a group of high school age kids in training beat the big bad's forces in their very first encounter.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't reveal a mysterious antagonist's scarred face only to discount the reveal in the same sentence, and kill off the character in the following episode without having explored his motivations for his grudge against one of the protagonists.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't kill off a character with a badass design then give her a limited fight scene against fodder guards in somebody else's character short to please upset fans.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't make their two henchmen characters come off as totally evil, malicious, and irredeemable in a previous volume, then turn around and make them seem sympathetic and remorseful in a later one.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't constantly cut important scenes from a young boy character's development off-screen all the time, to the point of faking out the audience and the cast for worrying about him for nothing.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't make exposition supplementary videos alongside their native work that retcon, contradict, and usurp their native work all the time.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't create four different magic systems in the same fictional universe, and fail to properly explain any of them.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't let the main character's rival antagonist fail to bat an eye at her in their second encounter during a volume finale, then set her out for blood in the immediate volume, and somehow only be able to achieve minimal setup for her throughout the course of the entire volume.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't let their protagonists kill another human and be able to smile the next time they're on screen.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't listen to the fans nor the voice actors for writing cues.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't be so blissfully unaware of all the writing pitfalls they've succumbed to, and proceed to not realize what lampshade hanging is.
Writers that have planned their work well wouldn't do any of that.
So you tell me.
Did the writers plan RWBY well?
"Planning" as we've been referring to it is a bit under-defined I realize.
There's a difference between a physical outline explicating everything the writer wants and the written story itself. The former hits all the beats, but is dead. The latter hits all the beats, but is alive and breathing.
Nobody has to write a 500 page outline with analysis for a 250 page manuscript (unless they want to). No one has to even write down anything at all before diving straight into the first paragraph. In general however, a great writer realizes exactly what she wants in everything she writes, whether heading into writing it, during the writing process, before revising, while revising, and after the second to last revision, or anywhere between.
While it's true that planning everything out can choke creativity, it also has the prime effect of keeping one focused and of letting one's creativity express itself in the areas it is most desired to thrive. Plotting out a solid plan divides the labor and the creative thinking into smaller, more manageable tasks. Writing the outline itself can be a beautiful process where the creativity of plotting your story is allowed to shine. Writing the manuscript then becomes a grand exploration of how to translate the outline to sensation and meaning— giving the story flesh. While doing everything at once might seem like a fun challenge that gets your gears turning in full drive, more often than not, you'll end up looking back on that first draft with at least some embarrassment, and a lot of room for time-consuming revision. Either method is tedious, but planning will always manage to save you some agony down the road.
Just to get a little meta, I didn't plan or outline what I wanted to reply to you in this comment, but I have the forethought to read it over and revise it, and I know what my biggest points are, same as you. Still, I try to make every sentence, nay, every word, matter to paint the bigger picture. Remove one sentence, or change the order of sentences around, and meaning is lost. If you write something and this quality is expressed, then you have mastered writing that certain thing. This is naturally impossible to achieve the first time around in any sort of endeavor.
Inspiration can flow from simply letting your mind wander, and just sitting down and writing may be the prerogative to unlocking new potential. But the most important step after that is to evaluate what you wrote, to decide what to keep and what to throw away, or what to change—how best or how better to portray what you were shooting for, instead of letting it become one way out of many. This demands a lot from a great writer, which is why balance and organization and a healthy window of time is handy.
I understand this is all grounded in subjectivity, but hopefully I've done my best to explain at least in some ways how universal the idea of planning one's writing is.
How are the writers unnecessarily keeping information from us not a problem? Back in Volume 1 there were a shitton of theories about Cinder's plan and what she wanted with the Dust. That was never answered, and everyone had to make a wild guess that it was the bombs on the train. How did they need containers and containers of Dust for those bombs when it was already shown that a small case of Dust in dust form with a sneeze could do the trick? So what was it for? What was the Fall of Beacon for if she just wanted the Relic? Why did she go through this stuff if she just wanted a measly relic? She could've just snuck in and taken Amber's powers and the Relic in the V2 finale when all the students were gone. When the spoiler is so basic plot information then there's no reason for it to not be hidden. Remember, the main driving force for the series was kept hidden from us for FIVE YEARS!
Why did one of the most generic stories which is "get the Macguffins" hidden from us for FIVE YEARS!? That means everything else before was a waste of time given how plot oriented the show is now. And because there's no room for the characters to grow anymore (barring Sun and Oscar), and the world is so poorly fleshed out, there's no bonus to make up for that. In shows like ATLA the plot was simple, but the world and characters and themes were so well developed that it made up for it. In RWBY? Nothing.
I felt the same way about volume 3's ending. The villains sat around rubbing their hand together until the plan was revealed... to simply destroy the town. Why hide that from each other. We have scenes between villains where it took them more time to avoid saying the truth than just spitting it out. We were to believe that the plan was complicated and clever, but was about the simplest thing anyone could of thought of.
So then you think, "but why did they destroy the town? surely there will be good enough reason to all the mystery...", but the villains quite literally went back to rubbing their hands together and acting all secret TO EACH OTHER. it's too much. I dropped Rwby after 2 episodes of volume 4, no regrets.
What Are RWBY’s Strengths?
Monty was all about character design, not just what was good aesthetically but what made for cool stuff in action scenes. That was the show's strongest suit at the start.
If you were to ask me what I liked about RWBY most up until V4, I would say all the potential it had. 3 years later and I can say that the biggest writing lesson I learned from RWBY is that potential is the absence of detail for fans to fill in. Remnant had a lot of cool little things like dust, semblances, Grimm, and a continent shaped like a dragon among other things that gave a lot of people neat ideas. Combine this with how the first 2 volumes did very little worldbuilding (WoR was kept vague and later contradicted anyway so they don't count) and you have boatloads of cool theories and headcanons developed that kept the audience invested even during the off-season. That was a double edged sword though because now that we know what everything is, we're left disappointed with how underwhelming or bad most of the details are.
It's because of this that to this day a lot of RWBY's fanfiction will always be better than canon, I wouldn't be surprised if there are some people reading Coeur's (say what you will about him but he is hands down the fandom's most popular fanfic author) works who haven't touched anything involving RT in their whole lives.
For me RWBY's greatest strength has always been its ability to lay a strong foundation both for the world and characters, and making me interested in exploring past those foundations (which is where the show falters in my opinion). After watching the Red Trailer on the day of its release I wanted to know who "Little Red Riding Hood" was, and who was so important to her that she was willing to stand in ankle deep snow just to visit them, as well as if the shadowy werewolves had something to do with their death. Besides being incredibly skilled with a sniper-scythe we learned that LRRH also had a playful side (and perhaps hints of a dark side) when she smiles at a werewolf before cutting it in half, and it's inferred that she also has a somber-side given the lyrics "Red like roses fills my dreams and brings me to the place you rest". Summer Rose's death fills the girl's dreams every night which is what causes her to come visit, and "red" can be inferred to be blood given that Summer is dead (which is all confirmed in the song's sequel).
To me that's an incredibly strong foundation to build on but has never really been explored within the show, and it's likely not even canon given that Ruby doesn't really seem to have been affected by her mother's death. A missed opportunity in my opinion as I believe Ruby's relationship with Summer should be her main "anchor" in the show as it's what was first revealed about her and the biggest mystery (to me) in RWBY's first year.
Overall, I've learned a lot about how to lay a strong foundation for characters and their storylines by watching RWBY, in particular by taking note of how expectations often aren't lived up to or much added beyond the initial foundation. The characters are also charming and I've fallen in love with several of them, probably more so than any other story, and I wouldn't be the writer that I am today if not for RWBY or being disappointed by certain events/storylines. The show is no longer for me, which is perfectly fine, but it's a testament to the show's foundation because I still love RWBY and anything reminds me of why I initially fell in love with it.
Throughout all of RWBY, The most consistent in 6 volumes i believe is one thing: the setting/world.
The world is one of the most interesting things i have ever seen or read. Grimm attacking humans, Faunus, literal magic in crystals, auras and semblances, weapons, the academies, the history, I feel is the biggest strength. It is also its biggest weakness. Only reason why is because despite having so much of the world being interesting, the writers never really do anything worthwhile with it in my opinion. They try but it always below average. Despite that the setting I feel will always be the strongest thing in RWBY.
Essentially, it's very good prompts for writing, bad execution.
“Good prompts, bad execution” feels like this show’s motto.
Yeah, Ruby maiming her way through Salem's inner circle one at a time would be great.
You know, I feel like people from "there is no such thing as 'wasted potential' - you are just upset that your headcanons didn't come true" camp don't really understand the issues people from "wasted potental" camp have with the show.
Like, my personal headcanons used to be smth like "Sun's mom is a Shade Headmistress". Will I be upset if it doesn't come true? Well, no. In terms of "wasted potential" thing people are upset that there often is a hole/empty space in the story which could, theoretically, be filled with smth interesting - and, thus, the story could be more interesting as well.
For example, why people (me as well) were upset by the gang being trapped in that cursed Mistral's house? Did it contradict some of their/my headcanons? Well, no. The point was: in terms of storytelling it was not interesting, it was empty. Could filling this screentime with smth like guys exploring Mistral/looking for Pyrrha's parents/... make the whole thing more interesting? It definitely could. Same about Adam, Raven and other characters who are/were just plot devices and nothing more: could treating them, you know, like characters - and not just functions - by writers make the story worse? No, it couldn't. Yet could it make it better? No doubt, it could. And that is the whole point, actually. People wouldn't have been upset if writers simply chose another direction (any of them - not necessarily the most interesting/obvious/desired one) - yet still didn't waste their screentime/characters/opportunities. I like to compare writing with cooking, and from this point, instead of giving viewers a pie with a filling, writers just give them a pie with a hole at the place where filling was supposed to be.
Once again - writing is like cooking. It has its own stages, and if you mess with some of them, eventually you'll get a trash instead of a pie. Let's take a stage where dough is prepared: from this point it may be anything - it may be a pizza, it may be a pie, it may be pancakes and so on. In writing it is a build-up stage. As long as writers start to add context to some events or characters, they are basically adding ingredients to their dough, and at some point you start to see that - hey, it has to be pizza: the dough for pies has a different dough composition. Let's take Adam - the guy had always been somewhere there behind Blake: he had got a lot of spotlight in Black Trailer, he appeared in the opening credit to V1 at the shot with Blake, we were shown Blake's doodles of him in her notebook in V2, he appeared personally at the end of V2 (it was a post-credit scene, I guess), he'd got an appearance in flashback episode in V3, which gave him some context, he appeared at the end of V3 and it was he who pushed the story of two main characters - Blake and Yang. He appeared in the opening credits of V1&3-6, Yang saw nightmares of him, he was a big part of Blake's arc in V4-5, he'd got a personal character short... and don't even mention all that times Blake was mentioning him (V2-3, V5-6). I mean, I am sorry, but it looked like this guy was supposed to be important - it is not smth I wanted for no reason aside from my personal headcanons. The show implied him to be important. And what was the payoff - was it worth it? No. Adam had never been important as a character - he was just a tool, like Leo. Yet Leo wasn't teased as much as Adam was (for six volumes in a row), and we didn't have as many reasons to believe that this guy is important - yet we had about Adam. Continuing an analogy with cooking, it is like writers, metaphorically speaking, prepared a good dough... only to burn the possible pie to ashes in several minutes (instead of baking it properly), so the only thing they could do with it was to throw it in the bin and come with poker face stuff like "nah, we had never even wanted to make this pie anyway - if you thought otherwise, you misunderstood". Is it a success? No, it is a failure.
Same about some misplaced scenes. Like I said, cooking has its stages, and each one has it's own order and requires its own processes for a reason. Let's take, for example, the scene with Jaune and red haired woman: did I hope to see smth like that? Yes I did. Do I think that it would have been better if it was paced in V5 instead of V6? Yeah, I do. Why though? Well, that's all about the purpose: in V5 it could help to make a proper build-up for Jaune vs Cinder confrontation, which actually happened at the end of V5, and which writers started to build back in V4, yet, eventually, half-baked it for no reason. Like, there was an extremely good scene in V4 with Jaune's night training, we had Jaune's shield stuff, we had a Jaune's extreme reaction on Qrow's info, we had an end of the Volume with Jaune sitting alone in the room and staring at his shield, we had a beginning of V5 with Jaune clenching his fists after Cinder is mentioned... yet writers suddenly dropped it till the very end, till the culmination. They started to build an arc yet abandoned it when it had already been done. As far as I see, the whole point was about making Jaune boil, slowly at first, but more and more - and, finally, to make him loose his temper and snap when Cinder shows up. Was it done properly? No. Thus, I believe that putting that scene with RHW in V5 (with a slightly different context) could fill the hole and make the whole Jaune's storyline more logical.
Let's take this scene in V6 - what was it used for? For Jaune to remember about Pyrrha... and not to be mad an Oscar anymore?.. Like, seriously - I liked that scene, yet I have to say that it was misplaced, and it was used mostly to tug on the viewers' heartstrings, and it didn't help the plot at all. It is like... well, adding one more egg to your dough not on the 'dough stage' but on 'baking stage', which is kinda... pointless already.
Same about overhyping the audience for no/little payoff. Surprisingly, it is a cause of several absolutely different missteps writers made, like: the battle of Haven with offscreen fights, Yang's PTSD, Adam's character, BIRDS!, "Ozpin vs everyone" conflict etc. If you intend Weiss and Bake to have major conflicts on two different levels: a general ones (redeeming SDC/WF) and a in-character ones (and ideological and personal conflict with Jacques/Adam) - do not pretend like there had always been only one of them - and I mean a personal one. Do not replace a general conflict with a personal one, if several volumes ago you implied that there are two of them. If I use the logic of Blake's existing arc for Weiss, we will see that 'Weiss vs Jacques' has to be nothing but 'toxic parent vs victim kid' conflict, without any ideological subtext. Will people be pleased by that? I really, really doubt it.
Sorry for the long wall of text, I completely agree on your points, actually - I just wanted to go deeper into it. I also do agree that RWBY is a perfect example of the show with wasted potential, as far as writers too often choice a "do/show nothing" option instead of picking any direction the have and exploring it.
There's a lot of these misleading and outright strawman arguments getting thrown around this sub, and many of them get lots of upvotes and people agreeing to them. This is really worrying for me. Like I can see people disagreeing that Adam's arc was bad, but I think it doesn't warrant blatantly misrepresenting people's arguments for the contrary. But, reddit is a hive mind, and I guess it's a good thing to remind yourself about at times. There's absolutely such a thing as "wasted potential" and RWBY has plenty of it.
My problem with Sienna was kinda the same - her appearance and death were for nothing. Literally: if she didn't exist from the very beginning and Adam became the next WF leader after Ghira - basically nothing in the story would have changed. Well, at least a slow change in WF direction from a peaceful organization into a criminal and, later, a terrorist one, could also reflect Adam's gradual changes Blake had mentioned several times.
I do agree with you though: killing Adam after the direction writers chose about his character was an only option (though the execution left me salty). Yet I also think that writers chose literally the worst possible direction about him starting from V3x11 - and, I guess, that is exactly what saddens people who are talking about Adam's wasted potential now.

Purpose

The biggest issue is with motivation. A character without a motivation isn't a character, they're scene dressing. I think that's why I liked Raven so much before the final. I had been hoping she would have a proper and compelling motivation for her actions, and it seemed like there was. But no, she's just a coward and I am really, really disappointed in a missed opportunity there. It also doesn't help that we never see the heroes being proactive in improving themselves. We are ham-fistedly told that Yang has an "over relies on Semblance" weakness and Ruby has an "is crap w/out Crescent Rose" weakness by their respective mentors( I use that term very loosely) of that volume. We are never shown Ruby or Yang trying to overcome these weaknesses on their own, which is weird considering their background as monster hunters and their love for fighting would've naturally bleed into them wanting to improve themselves. Also, with this knowledge we are now supposed to believe that none of their friends, family members or teachers sat them down to go over their respective handicaps before things went to shit. Seriously?
This is also a problem with Weiss' Summoning. Namely that we didn't even know that she could summon before V3, we're never shown Weiss trying and failing to summon in V1 or 2 and Summoning is introduced the same way as Ruby and Yang's handicaps- hamfistedly telling us her flaw before showing her trying to overcome said flaw by herself.
It's just like how Yang just kinda gets over losing her arm and Blake leaving her behind. All it took was a few months of depression, two pep talks and she's all good. Or how Blake just kinda gets over the fact Ilia went along with the plan to kill her family. Or the fact that Ruby never once gets paranoid about Qrow dying again in Volume 5 despite the fact he came incredibly close in Volume 4. Or the fact Cinder seemingly tosses her rivalry with Ruby aside (the girl who took her eye, her arm and her dignity) to taunt some kid she barely remembers. Or when Blake says she not there for Adam when that's exactly why she's in Mistrial.

Read the Document

Everything Wrong with RWBY Part 3 (Overarching Plot, Characterization and Potential)

Try to allude to the fairytale aesthetic they built up in the trailers, with the themes, motifs, ideas and templates offered by their myths. Change their backstories/roles to fit their allusions if you have to. You don't need to retell the fairy tales, but even using them as basic inspiration could be interesting. The focus on trains, as opposed to airships, is brilliant. It's so thematically appropriate for a cyber-punk/fairy tale setting. Trains are much more closely associated with Industry and how it lends itself paradoxically to both progress and oppression. Totally fits the world that I think RWBY is trying to portray. That, and I'm a sucker for fights in tight, enclosed spaces.
The first 8 chapters of the manga by Shirou Miwa are just retellings of the original trailers, and in Yang's, she battles Junior, the twins, and his goons, but only because Junior said she'd have to in order to get the info on her mom...which, in my opinion, is WAY better than sexually assaulting a guy and then punching him after he already walked away (glad to know I wasn't the only one pissed off by that). The remaining 4 chapters are RWBY and JNPR fighting a giant snake grimm together. This is just me, but, honestly, THAT'S what RWBY should've been all along: 8 friends traveling the world to fight villains and monsters, cracking jokes and being fun the entire journey. If it did that as opposed to going down the "dark" route, I feel like the series would've benefitted more.
RWBY’s Storytelling Part 2: Characters.
I wasn’t originally going to do a part 2 to the RWBY’s Storytelling post I did, but the volume just keeps falling lower and lower that as a fan disappoints me; and I want to explain why in a constructive manner.
One big problem RWBY Vol. 5 and to a lesser extent 4 is its character writing; for some reason it seems like the writers are struggling to write characters they created and new ones.
Characters with Nothing to Do
I really have a hard time believing that this volume needed 14 episodes, because we’re over halfway in and the characters have done absolutely nothing to make the story progress greatly. Team RNJR went to Mistral to learn more about their enemies, we had a whole volume dedicated to them walking there (even though they could have took a boat there) and now they are there they are just hanging around and training. They’re are acting like there is no big threat coming, they make dinner, read comics, act like they are in Beacon. Heck Yang and Weiss act like this as soon as they get there, things happen to them in the first couple chapters, but once they get there they stop doing anything plot relevant. The problem I have with this is that it doesn’t seem to make sene with what the characters would actually do or how they’ve changed.
Why would Ruby just sit around and accept that all she can do is train. In Vol. 2 she was the first to suggest going to investigate the White Fang, despite Atlas dealing with it. She is one to do what she thinks is right, even if it goes against the rules. So why is she just willing to accept what Ozpin planned for them despite his original plan to fight the bad guys resulting in the deaths of Penny, Pyrrha, hundreds of people, and the fall of Beacon? Watching Ruby train and make dinner is not interesting, it’s pointless and boring. Wouldn’t it have been more interesting if she got irritated that she spent all this time making her way to Mistral only to be told by Ozpin to train? She would get confused as to why Ozpin would let them do nothing relevant while there is a big threat and decide to go out of her way to investigate more about Cinder and Co.. Through this investigation she would find out that Lionheart is in cohorts with Salem. It would not only be something both interesting and important happening, but make sense with her character. But no, she’s doing nothing important because the length of the season needs to be stretched out. The same logic applies to both Yang and Weiss.
Blake has no strong reason to stay in Menagerie, I know someone is gonna argue with me about, but I don’t care, her logic is flawed. She and Sun try to recruit people to help fight, but in a later she states these people came to Menagerie to live peacefully. So why would you ask them if you already knew the outcome. I get that she wants to rally Faunus, but when she knows that the White Fang are planning a terrorist attack on the kingdom of Mistral, it’s better not to dilly dally like this. Like is the show expecting me to believe that there are not Faunus in Mistral other than Sun? Are they expecting me to believe that there are no humans there that are willing to fight for Faunus rights. Huntsmans and Huntresses According WoR are the protectors of the world. So why not rally people who can fight against the White Fang? The argument that this is not gonna change the way Faunus are looked at is flawed, think about it. If humans are shown to want the same change it may do something. The world finding out that a Faunus united both people and fauna against a terrorist group is gonna cause change. More respect is gonna be given to them, no matter what. Besides, if Vol. 1 proved anything in the first episode that are people outside of Menagerie who are willing to fight to Faunus rights. It feels like the writers are giving Blake a lame reason to stay, just so she can be there for her parents obvious incoming death by her friend. Speaking of her friend...
The character that suffered the most with this is the new character Ilia, she is one of the worst written characters of the show. Every scene she is in highlights just how flawed her character is.
Her Introduction
The way she was introduced shows a bad sign for how her character is going to be like, because she is introduced spying on Blake and Sun. The problem with this is that she is only there so Blake can find out that the White Fang are going to attack Mistral; this raises a couple questions. Why does she have a scroll that has very important plans to a terrorist? That’s something the White Fang would probably want to keep under wraps, not be in the hands of a soldier that could potentially get caught. Secondly how did she caught? She’s a chameleon Faunus, she should be able to hide and not get caught. Of all colors she could changed into she didn’t pick the one that wouldn’t obviously expose where she is? In Vol. 1 they stated that Faunus have night vision, so wouldn’t Blake be able to see a black lump by the trees. This whole scene makes no sense and is a bad way to introduce who Ilia is.
“Blake’s” Character Short
I say that in massive quotes because in reality this is just an excuse to tell her backstory without actually showing it in the show. There are two things wrong with this backstory. One, it’s breaks show don’t tell, the problem with telling about a character is that it doesn’t help get an good impression, we are told that she was oppressed but we don’t see it. We’re only told things about her, but we really don’t get to see it, showing something about a character helps you understand that person more.
Let’s take a look at Miguel and Tulio from “The Road to El Dorado”. We are not told anything about rather we’re shown them doing a con. This entire scene shows the audience everything about them, their reaction towards the map shows their basis of belief, Tulio is a skeptic while Miguel is an optimistic, believing in destiny (similar to Pyrrha). Their luck is shown through them rolling a dice landing on 7, the lucky number. Further emphasized through the fact that they narrowly get away with their con. Their improv and teamwork skills are shown through their “fight.” The dialogue isn’t used to tell use all this, rather it actually enhances the scene, using it to allow Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh to show their dynamic on screen.

But of course RWBY doesn’t follow this, the backstory doesn’t tells us anything about her character other than she is a White Fang member who wanted equal rights and that she may be a nice person, which is something the audience isn’t stupid enough to figure out on their own. This is only characterization she is given with the exception of the show stating she is not like Adam. We know nothing else about her personality, and the show isn’t even bothering to show us who see is, instead it’s taking her through an arc, despite her being incredibly flat. It’s writing her like the audience knows her like Blake does, which is not the case. Just because she is Blake’s friend doesn’t mean we immediately care for her, we need to know who she is in order to care for her.
And no, just because the show reveals her sexuality doesn’t mean there’s a 3-dimensional character. That scene falls right on its face because it’s suppose to be an emotional moment, these two friends could have been so much more. But I ended up not caring because all I kept thinking was, “I know nothing about you, why should I care that you’re in love with Blake?”
The only thing I can describe her as is the female Adam, even though the volume tells us, not show us, that they aren’t alike. Even though the only things we’re shown of Ilia are her hurting someone Blake cares about, and saying that fear and violence gets resulted. I don’t know about you but that sounds like something Adam would say. Which brings me to my next point.
Why would they go out of your way to create a new character when in hindsight Adam could fit the role. Think about it, the show has spent years building him up, to be this monster, so they don’t need to go out of their way to make a character from the White Fang that’s sympathetic. Just make him tragic, Ilia is pointless to the overall story. She is someone Blake knew from the White Fang, Adam, she had romantic interests in Blake, Adam, and she argues with her about what’s the right future for the Faunus, Adam.
Also this is just a minor nitpick, but why is the show taking so long to have JNR meet Pyrrha’s parents? You think they may want to meet them, since she is from Mistral. But they have yet to show any acknowledgement of this obvious fact.
It’s Still Running
An argument I keep hearing is that the volume isn’t over as a reason to not worry about this, but I don’t see this as a good reason, because we’re over halfway in the volume. We got 6 episodes left and the first 8 were terrible. Let’s say they do turn it around, that still doesn’t excuse the fact that most of the volume was so poorly written. I don’t want 8 bad episodes and 6 potentially good ones, I rather have an 8 episode volume where they all are great. And besides, based on the track record of this volume so far, I doubt the last 6 is going to be good. I didn’t say the character short showed us nothing about the character, I said it only showed that she was a White Fang member and she was potentially a nice person. The reason I only said these were is because they’re the only ones that are shown to us and actually make sense. I should have made that part clear in the post. The other possible points either don’t work or is told to us.
And she doesn’t want equal rights, if you just watch that short it actually seems that way, but the latest episode destroys that being a possible character trait. Her saying she wants what’s best for the Faunus, that there is no right and wrong, and that fear is the way to go isn’t equality. That’s superiority, and that is something we’ve seen the White Fang show this entire series. It contradicts her possibly wanting equality, so that trait is thrown out the window.
And again her whole backstory isn’t shown to us but rather told to us, we aren’t shown that she liked fitting in we are told that. “Felt like I was one of them.” We are never shown her childhood, her history with the White Fang, we are told it all.
The reason is a big problem is because 1) it's a visual medium, why not actually use visuals to tell the story, it makes it seem pointless to make it animated. I get you need dialogue and can't just solely rely on visuals, but for the most part I writer should only use dialogue for when it's necessary. But like most of the scenes and characters. Ilia's backstory doesn't need to be told to us, it needs to be shown; and when a writer solely relies on having characters tell us the plot, instead if crafting a scene that shows us the plot it comes off as lazy. The show might as well just be a novel. 2) Telling the audience about doesn't mean they connect with the character. Mr. Plinkett said it best himself, better than I could.

And no, I didn't just look at Ruby on a surface level, first off she is proactive, because if she wasn't she wouldn't have gone out of her way of Mistral. She would have stayed at home with Yang. And the reason Ruby is so subdue and calm in the story is told to us, breaking show don't tell, once again.
And I'm not saying she would act as immature as she did in the previous volumes, just because she may decide to go investigate Lionheart and Cinder doesn't mean this goes against the progress she may have made. Maybe when she investigates she takes it a little more seriously and plans it out a lot better, showing a difference between the way she responded to fighting the White Fang in Vol. 2. My problem is that her doing nothing goes against one of Ruby's character trait. Her morality, in a comment I made a comparison between her and popular literature character Hercule Poirot, here's what I said.
"They have faith in the law and authority but they don’t follow it completely. They also choose what they think is morally right instead of what they are told first. When Hercule found out all the passengers committed the murder in “Murder on the Orient Express” he chooses to let them get away with it because he knew they weren’t evil, but people who suffered great loss. The law would have punished them harshly when they arguably shouldn’t. When Team RWBY was told by Ozpin to not worry about the White Fang in Vol. 2 Ruby decided to let the team investigate anyways because she knew they could some good. When Penny was being chased by Atlas soldiers she helped her get away because she was her friend and wanted to help her. She went after Torchwick in Vol. 1 the best she could and defeat most of his goons, she could have called the cops, but she decided to save the shop owner. She is arguably one of the most morally strong characters of the show." And to add to it she went to Mistral to investigate who Cinder is, despite her dad obviously not wanting that to happen.
So based on that big character trait of her she would want to investigate as much as she can about Lionheart and Cinder, especially after Ozpin said this.
And based on the conversation she had with Oscar her motivation to investigate is to make sure to the best of her abilities that not another Fall of Beacon happens. That isn't immature, that'a heroic. This would create a much more interesting story, than her just training. I think I should rephrase what I said dialogue, because I realized I was off from the point I was trying to make. Some stories can work with a lot of dialogue, they just have to follow these core elements. The dialogue should be mostly used to show us things, if they’re stuck in that position where they have to use exposition make it quick and don’t linger on it, make the dialogue actually good.
One movie that follows these qualities greatly is Clerks, when introducing Randall there are only two bits of exposition on him, he is late, and he sleeps, they’re also very indirect, so that’s a plus on my book. When he has a conversation with the lady at the video store screwing with him the conversation isn’t important but rather the things it reveals everything about him, he messes with people, he is sarcastic and could care less about anything, just to name a few things. And the dialogue is witty and funny, with great deliveries from the actors.

But Ilia’s backstory is written so poorly, it’s entirely made up of exposition, so it comes off as just being fed information rather an watching a conversation. The dialogue isn’t used to show things about Ilia, and it’s just uninteresting to watch. That’s a problem with this volume most of the dialogue is not only but sometimes deliver so poorly.

That speech Ren gave was just hard to sit through.
RWBY Vol. 5 isn’t terrible to me because of the writing, it’s terrible because all of the fundamentals that make a great animated work isn’t there. I would have to write another lengthy analysis of what makes a great animated work in my eyes to explain it, but I’ll leave it at this. It lacks that imagination and spark the show had before, and resulted in everything being flat, boring and uninterested. It took a complete step backwards, despite it technically looking the best ironically. And that’s why I think it earns being called terrible. No it would make sense for Ruby to get suspicious after not only finding out the people she thought was her friends, Emerald and Mercury, were bad guys, but Ozpin saying this. I should rephrase my point on Ruby reading comics, that isn't the problem, it's that she and many other characters don't do anything inherently important to the story. In hindsight the comic example was probably a bad one, and a better one would be the way they are acting in the story. Ruby and Co. are acting like there is no rush to stop the bad guys. Thanks for writing this post out, friend. I pretty much agree with all of the points you made so this comment's going to be "short".
I want to say that I can't thank you enough for pointing out that it was Ruby who took initiative in V2, not Blake. All Blake did was just continue to mope until the rest of her team got her out of her funk. Even then she didn't contribute much.
What makes Illia's character even worse is that they are completely contradicting what little information we got about her. Yes, they managed to screw that up too. In her "cafe scene" with Sun she says:
"Her[Illia's] chameleon traits meant she could pass as human. She could have lived a normal life. But she didn't. I always admired that."
This is completely false. It wasn't that Ilia choose not to live a normal life as a human, its that she couldn't. She said so directly. She snapped due to the emotional strain/panic then lashed out in violence. But Blake admires that? Admired a failed assimilation attempt that she would then mimic years later even though her best friend was a first hand example of the risks of such a plan? This does confirm my feelings that Blake is pretentiously feigning depth, but that's something that I would've liked to have been wrong on though. You see what you have there is a contradiction in the writing. It’s like they didn’t proofread the script before sending it off to the animators and actors. There is a contradiction in the writing and I'll prove it, Blake's choice of diction in this scene implies that Ilia chose to not live a normal life.

But in the short that came out months before when Ilia is telling her backstory she states that she snapped and lost control of her abilities.

That isn't the same thing as a choice, and therefore a contradiction.
The show's weird obsession with character/plot 180s. This has been brought up before but it's been something I've been thinking about for a while.
RWBY has this weird...thing it does where it sets up a character or plot as being one way. Let's take Adam. He's set up as Blake's mentor who took the cause too far and became a monster. He doesn't get a whole lot of screen time overall, but he's seen and mentioned in a certain light.
Then late Volume 3 he's suddenly screaming and hates Blake and wants to make her suffer and had a romantic relationship with her.
Hazel! Hazel starts quiet and intimidating, but also pretty amicable all things considered. He doesn't care for needless violence, and again doesn't get a lot of screentime but it's enough to get a sense of what kind of person he is.
Then WHOOPS SCREAMING HYPOCRITE OZZZPIIIIIN OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE.
There are other instances of this in the show. What I think the show tries to do is subvert the audience's expectations about a character to make it more impactful. It's this weird as fuck pattern that just regularly confuses people more than anything.
Like, it's like the show wants us to go "holy shit I never would have expected that from him but it makes sense" but instead it ends up "what the fuck that came out of nowhere"
And the way it's set up allows for people to go "well no one ever said this character/plot WASN'T that way!" and like. Sure. But right now there's nothing saying Salem isn't secretly just a random girl who happens to be Ozpin's screaming raging bitch ex who is doing everything just to make him suffer due to their bad breakup, and all nuance to her is thrown out the window for a brief "whoa wasn't expecting that from her".
(Not saying that Salem can't be fucking pissed with Ozpin, because it's pretty clear that she is.)
The 180s of these characters seem to serve to...overwrite the character in a way that is supposed to subvert expectations, but instead just makes half the audience confused. It's weird. Couple of weeks ago, that essay about how the Bird Transformation twist felt so flat. I had a friend characterise that in the best way for me.
"Ozpin, you forgot something. You didn't tell us that you....... had two sets of cutlery in this house instead of one!"
"Oh I'm sorry. I didn't mention it because it's in no way pertinent to anything we have ever discussed and you didn't ask. I will now tell you freely and without fuss"
"WHAT! How could you!"
Like, I cannot tell you how perfectly she nailed it. It's so freaking random and irrelevant. I mean it's consistent with Yang because she's still dumb and charges in.(But that isn't on purpose) But you couldn't give her anything but that? Also Blake having a loving (and living) family who are important despite her being set up as a nobody who had to find her own way on the streets. Total 180 that makes no sense no matter how you look at it. It makes no sense but it makes many of her v1-3 lines sound hilarious in hindsight. "I was raised outside of kingdoms. If you can't fight, you can't survive."-Girl who was raised in a tropical island so fantastic that civilians can easily survive without academy or tower.
I personally always thought that the ''simple start'' for most characters originates from the fact that their ''creation process'' character-wise wasn't finished before the show started, like: They may had their design and basic traits, but nothing much deeper (yet)
And that is the fly in the ointment, because (at least that's how I see it): A character can be ''established'' on from the beginning of the story and still develop over the course of it. Get it? A character basically can be/seem ''fully-developed'' in one way at the start, but that does not rule out any changes over time, maybe even into a completely different direction.
Long story short: I believe that one should figure out the entire path of their (main) characters before starting/writing the plot, and then ''build'' said plot/story around those paths, follow them, this way you can have consistent writing that makes sense in the eyes of the world and story.
“There are no real threads indicating these things about the characters exist”
Exactly!
“Raven to me is a character who is more ‘convoluted’ rather than ‘complex’. And that is perhaps the main reason why I can't get invested in Raven's character. Because she’s convoluted; I can't figure out her traits, goals, etc. clearly to ''visualize'' her character in its entirety. I've been trying throughout V5, but never really succeeded.
In the end, it's always the same crux of the matter: RWBY has so much potential in basically every single aspect that makes a show, but the way they capitalize on many of them just isn't good, once you take a closer look at it.
People thought Blake was an orphan, is actually the daughter of the founder of the WF (and Menagerie). I'm still waiting on Weiss's "ExcUUUse me, princess!" moment with Blake. Hidden Depths are not bad, as long as they make sense for the initially established character and are planned in advance. Which to me, don’t seem to apply to characters like...
Adam the Butthurt Boyfriend, or Hazel the Dusty Bane, or Raven the Maiden of Mystery, or Princess Blake.
But, in all seriousness, when looking at a character in one scene, and then their next appearance, it sometimes seems like a completely different character. And that makes it hard to like them. Here’s to hoping they learn from their mistakes like they say, I guess. I'd believe that a lot more if usually the mystique and implications weren't thrown away for, more often than not, a one-note, flat caricature of a villain. It's the opposite of their philosophy: start with complexity, become one-dimensional.

• Adam looks like he was a revolutionary who went down a dark path, but still believed himself noble? Crazy ex-boyfriend who was always a murderous psychopath, also he's a Nazi.

• Raven looks like she's intelligent, savvy, and looking out for number one and will do anything for her tribe? nah mate she's a coward and that's the long and short of it.

• Cinder's personality coincidentally lining up with how Salem acts, has finally been cowed, forced into a position of total weakness, and wants Ruby dead? Riiiiight back to being 'mwahaha' the second she can talk.

• Hazel the calm and collected, desires as little death as possible, yet still works for evil? "How many more children must die," screams Hazel at Ozpin, electrocuting a teenage girl's head while she screams in agony.

The thing I love most is when they 360.

• V1-4: "Yang charges in too much and needs to learn"

• V5: "Man look at Yang charging in and taking shit head on. Isn't that great?"

Like the character didn't change. The writers just decided what she was doing was suddenly fine. I can't remember, was that in reference to her going for the vault and potentially fighting two maidens and bandit? And charging into the bandit camp. And fucking with the bandits and getting shot when she could have just one-shot them. And just bull-rushing into the bird stuff without thinking about it. And likely with many more examples coming in V6 to prove that Yang has learned nothing but not to smile and fight at the same time...... because muscle strain or something.
In media, What was some wasted plot point/ Characters?
Rwby. A good concept with good character designs wasted on a production company that can’t do a good job. The seeming lack of editors for the script, the short episode time, wildly inconsistent writing, poor animation ect…
Going to second this. They have become pretty good at building up to something, only for that "something" being mediocre resolution at best and complete letdown at first. Animation is getting better, but for me animation wasn't the biggest problem with the show.
I mean, that's because most of the main characters do bugger all, and are only barely relevant to the main story. This traces back as far as volume 3 that the fandom considers the best, but main characters were pretty much irrelevant for the entire volume, except for few bits and n the end.
Look at what you said about Weiss and try to trace back to the last moment where she's been showing any of these qualities? That'd be V4 and even then she's not smart and frankly doesn't do much to prove the capability for making her own decisions. And Ruby's "young hero with optimism" is so hamfisted that even David Cage has more subtlety in some of his characters.
I don't think JNR is much better, though. They straight up have no idea what to do with Ren and Nora and what purpose do they have in the story, so Nora is cracking jokes and Lie "This is bad" Ren is being "wise"... Jaune is the only one who has something going for him really.
Yeah thats fair, i mean thats one of the problems, as you said, with Weiss it took 4 bloody volumes for her to grow as a character, it simple feels like wrote the characters names and wrote what 'type' they'd be without actually showing anything but the basics. They clearly had no idea how to make teenagers without following established tropes and as with the plot i'm not sure if they even had a plan or thought lets just roll with it. Although, that could be due to the death of one of the main creators, Monty Oum, so that may be why the plot feels dodgy.
But with JNPR, the Ren and Nora stuff is only acceptable because they have significantly less screentime compared to RWBY, in volume 1 and 2 the majority of screentime was split between RWBY doing piss all and the plot rolling by when the slice of life bollocks overstayed its welcome. But again, it took several volumes for Ren to become anything more than the silent "ugh Nora" guy with the whole avenging family thing. As for Nora, i have no idea, does the fact she wants Rens D even count as character development? I mean at first it was a crush but now its become the childhood friends are destined to be together shtick. And yeah, this show is as subtle as a brick being thrown through a window into a china shop.
I'm actually fine with Weiss's development earlier in the story, but then it stalled, and at this point she's barely a character. Nothing of her qualities that were a part of her characterization early on (V1-2) are in place anymore. And that wouldn't be a problem if she have changed and now she has different views on the world or different flaws or whatever, but no, she pretty much doesn't exist. Like Ren and Nora.
Like you say that they don't know how to make them without following tropes, but even when you follow tropes it is possible to create interesting and likeable characters - tropes are tools, after all. They don't even do the tropes correctly - and that's not subverting them, it's just... I don't know... it's missing what makes the tropes actually worth using at times. (Overly Sarcastic Productions and looking at the Reference part of Wikipedia are great ways of learning how to make certain tropes function)
Like I've seen shows doing similar things RWBY did - something like "Yuki Yuna is a Hero" - it has character interaction, character archetypes, slice-of-life elements - a lot of them, heroic motivation, then "dark" twist... But in that show it fucking works. Sure it's not the best show ever made and it has its issues, but I'll probably take that story over RWBY. Especially if you include WaSuYu, the prequel.
I agree with the Weiss part, it was better when she gradually opened up at the start of the show but now it feels shoehorned in. And when I said tropes, I didn't mean that's a bad thing, I like some tropes in characters, but in RWBY at least in the earlier volumes these tropes seem to be the only defining feature of the cast. It's fine to have characters based around tropes but at least try to make them unique you know, when the characters follow the trope and its all they have, young optimism etc it just gets boring.
You can be young and optimistic but also have more going on for you than cookies and liking weapons, and the fact that these things are done jokingly is also annoying. Hell, both Ruby and Yang have actual issues, Ruby with the death of her mother and Yang with her abandonment, but these only become relevant when the plot calls for it. As you said, its missing the spark that makes the tropes entertaining.

Close