So as a quick introduction to this review, this was intended to be a comment of my anilist page but I got very carried away and wrote far too much to ever fit in a comment, so I've decided to put it here instead. This was not a formally written review, just me spewing my thoughts onto paper, so it will be very unstructured and probably grammatically incorrect frequently. Needless to say, I'm just spilling my thoughts so I spoil both this and the original, enjoy :)
ok so I’m a massive RWBY fan, full on nutcase, watched all the volumes as they aired, then rewatched dozens of times, crazy mf. So when this got announced I was over the moon, I knew we were never gonna get the incredible tension of volume 3 or the shock of volume 6, but none the less I was buzzing to get to watch the volumes that got me into RWBY recreated by one of the biggest anime studios in Japan. unfortunately for me, that is not what I got. if not even talking about the original story (I'll get to that don’t you worry). I'm talking about the first 3 episodes and final episode, which are adapting volume 1 and a snippet of volume 2 respectively. Immediately looking at the trailer I knew I didn’t like the character design. Something about the shiny skin, overly textured lips and weirdly detailed irises made it look (and I’m sorry I cant find a better way to phrase this) like it was the intro to a hentai. of course the character designs were never going to look quite right to me, I’ve spent nearly 10 years building an association of these outfits and events with the very simple art style of volume 1 and 2. BUT EVEN SO, the character designs were created BASED off the anime/manga style, a simple transpose into 2D would have been slightly uncanny but not actually disturbing to me like these were. Now ill accept, that is quite a subjective complaint and I’m sure that’s not an issue most people will have, but even so I feel like I need to say it. Moving onto the animation. this is where I was expecting shaft to pick up big points. They had the absolute genius of combat choreography that Monty Oum created to adapt, so surely, they COULDNT go wrong. Well. Initially it was promising, the first fight between ruby and the thugs was genuinely incredible. Even through my nostalgia I could tell that this was a GOOD fight. hell, they totally improved on the original here. But that was sort of it for the show. RWBY IS AN ACTION SHOW! ESPECIALLY THE FIRST 2 VOLUMES. Thus, the laziness of the fights that should have been the most engaging parts of this show just meant I was bored through the ACTION. take for example the nevermore fight. I love the nevermore fight in the original, RWBY running up that cliff side with red like roses part 2 pounding in the background still gives me goosebumps no matter how many times I see it. And yet here? nothing. Perhaps this was simply due to the move to hand drawn animation, but the scene was just so static. In the original, the fight flows perfect, each character’s action causing the camera to move with it and latch onto another characters action, characters chaining movements together to interesting move the battle around the field, the characters attacks were dynamic, almost like you could feel every one of yang’s punches through the scene. But here? I was painfully aware of the fact that was just a series of pictures on a screen. The characters attacks at no real weight to them and till the killing blow I didn’t feel like any of the attacks had any substance at all. I also feel like they completely missed the point of this fight. SHOCKINGLY, the climax of the first act wasn’t just there to look cool (story progression through action what the fuck???) it was there to demonstrate the growing comradery not only within team RWBY but between RWBY and JNPR as well. BUT WAS THIS CONVEYED IN THE ADAPTATION YOU MAY ASK (I’ll give you a hint, it was not). The clean flow of this scene that I described earlier was what MADE this scene get its point across, at complete odds to the janky, discombobulating mess that was Weiss and ruby trying to work together at the start of this arc. By not creating this effect within the scene they take away the whole point of the scene, and so because they couldn’t convey any sort of companionship forming SUBTLY (this one is gonna come up later stay tuned) you run into a whole host of issues going into the anime original section because the characters relationships DO NOT EXIST YET. Most of the adaptation continues in a similar fashion, skipping or poorly telling volume 1 events in a way that (while not technically changing the big events) means that that we finish the adaptation with a bastardised version of the RWBY cast, who will CONTINUE to cause problems for the next 9 episodes. A prime example of this is the skipping of the Jaune bullying arc, meaning that the whole reason Jaune has any spine to stand up for himself and do ANYTHING he does in the series is removed. As far as we know, going into the dream Jaune is just a bumbling idiot who threw up on yang’s shoes. Does that sound like the type of person you'd send into a girl who at this point HES DELIVERED NOTHING BUT CHEESY PICKUP LINES TO's dream in order to rescue her (it does not). Now through this section I also noticed that the comedy wasn’t hitting me at all. Now this one I’m willing to accept is just me. The jokes are always very corny and wacky with the only part of them that’s funny being the delivery and the straight man reactions. As I don’t speak Japanese, even if these lines were delivered well, it didn’t do anything for me. However, even so I do feel like I can say that the reason the corniness works is because you feel like you're goofing around with the crew and it’s almost like your dad or uncle making a dumb joke. Because the characters were so poorly developed here there was no homely, goofy atmosphere which would have made these jokes work even in a language you speak. So, to sum up, moving into the anime original content we had a set of shallow, 1 dimensional characters whose personalities and quirks have not been established or developed, who've not formed any meaningful bonds or connections to other characters and who've not had really any backstory attributed to them (looking at you here Weiss) to base an 8 episode arc on. SO, SHAFT SAID FUCK IT, LETS WACK IN A MILLION VISUAL METAPHORS THAT NO ONE BUT FANS OF THE ORIGINAL SHOW WILL GET AND SPEND 8 EPISODES FARTING AROUND LOOKING AT THE SAME VISUAL METAPHORS, NOT DEVELOPING THE CHARACTERS AND NOT MAKING AN ATTEMPT TO TRANSITION THIS INTO SOMETHING THAT WILL LEAD TO AN INTERESTING ENDING. (I really am doing my best to stay calm I promise). so, for the next episodes they dip in an out of Weiss’ dream, observing her locked away heart and lonely self as she is controlled by her father into a certain personality and way of thinking (A SCENARIO I WOULD ADD THAT THE ORIGINAL MANAGED TO CONVEY IN A SINGLE SONG). Then, even if you ignore the scuffed things that are included in this dream (big Nicholas???) actually wait I want to touch on that for a moment. In the original Weiss is renounced as the heiress and tears down the company, her whole view of the Schnee name is Jacques Schnee and what he does. This protection "big Nicholas" who presumably is her grandfather, clearly was not part of the all-encompassing solitude that the Schnee name brought her. But that’s beside the point. Weiss’ character is extremely simple in volume 1. She is a stuck-up racist snob. That’s the point, you aren’t supposed to like her yet, she is there to make you sympathise with and understand Blake. Blake is the focus of the story. Then, through the LITERAL NEXT 8 VOLUMES, you learn more about her, why the way she is, and by the end of her story you realise how similar to Blake she is. We didn’t get that chance here. We got Weiss’ backstory dumped on us in one big shafty mess and were left to figure it out. so, what you end up with is not a subtle comparison that is revealed slowly, but a jump that makes the point being made so incredibly sharp and hard to miss that the entire meaning behind it is drained out. THEN, JUST IN CASE THAT WASENT OBVIOUS ENOUGH, THEY LITERALLY STRAIGHT UP SAY IT, HAVE THE WHOLE NEGATIVE BLAKE THING HAPPEN AND TRIVIALISE THE STORY EVEN MORE. As well as this, by rushing in much a fashion you skip over both Adam and Jacque as characters, meaning that the actual comparisons between Weiss and Blake are actually not that strong. So, they cram a story arching over 8 volumes of RWBY into 12 episodes for some reason, great. This next one isn’t actually relevant but I just wanted to point out the Casey Lee Williams out sung both of VA's who sing mirror mirror in this when she was 12 (Casey Lee Williams my beloved please do a new recording for the dub of this :pray:). I could spend hours picking apart the minutia of these episodes and explaining why they suck ass, but I feel like if anyone watched it they speak for themselves. The story is boring for the reasons I’ve already stated, the action dipped REALLY hard through these episodes, so that was boring as well, comedy wasn’t attempted, nor was the further development of any characters (Weiss excluded but we've been over that). My next point is solely from the viewpoint of a picky fan who loves the original way too much but I’ll do my best to relate it to a more general point as well. So, in episode 11 ruby defeats the nightmare Grimm... using her silver eyes -_-. The same silver eyes that were first opened by watching her friend die before her eyes as a huge Grimm circled overhead, cinder started obtaining the power to destroy the whole of remnant and basically all of mantle was in immediate peril. In contrast, here she did it... just cause? because she was going to die? You could make the argument that it was for Weiss, but in that case, we'd need these 2 girls to have a very strong bond that was never formed. In reality, they were used as a big finale because they look cool (which, in fairness, they really do). Not only does this make canonically no sense, but it also makes no sense from a storytelling purpose. Ruby’s eyes are important in the original and so they are eluded to multiple times before activation, as is her clear importance to the future of remnant. They are built up, revealed at the climax of the fall of beacon, and then expanded on further into the show. Here they are mentioned once by Ospin in first episode as he says his famous "ruby rose... you have... silver eyes" then used meaninglessly at the climax of the season for a quick surprise. This whole arc is completely predictable. Weiss = stuck in dream. RBY + JNPR, go into dream, Weiss = not stuck in dream anymore. Nothing swaying away from exactly what you expect the first time the dream is introduced happens, the story is completely linear and predictable, something that could never be said for the original. As well as this, the cast of characters we get at the end of this show just feels like hollow cut-outs speaking while dressed as RWBY characters (admittedly less so for team RWBY themselves but it does still apply). The ONLY compliment that I’m gonna give this show is that the opening is solid (although worse than any opening in the original).
Now if you sat through all that, first off you need a better way to spend your time, else I hoped you enjoyed and hope that I was able to convey why I gave this anime such a terrible score. I'd also like to say that although many of my points revolved around the original, I don’t think my opinion would be too different if this was first introduction to the franchise, It’s just that that works as a good frame of reference to base my points off.
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