Rwby

[NAJ P. Jackson]

Ruby is literally having an identity crisis and Yang doesn't seem like she notice nor cares.

I have this Theory about what happened to Louis, Alyx's brother. I think Louis was turned into the Jabberwalker. The Tree repurpose Louis into this monster to add the concept of Death into this World to possibly duplicate Remnant as anything it eats basically dies and is remove from the Cycle of this world. The Jabberwalker trying to find something and keep saying "Fix" is possibly Louis trying to find a way to turn himself back into a Human again but unfortunately Neo manage to dominate him into being her Lackey.

Originally Posted by Twi

Yep. Honestly, I'm just interested in Jaune. There's no way he's making it out of this as an adult. Either he stays or he de-ages.

At least Weiss is into that Mature vibe he's got going on right now

[Mach56gs]

Ok, in WBY’s defense, it’s obvious they’re worried about Ruby. But are any of them therapists? No. They are trying their best to be positive and supportive, but they don’t have a compelling answer to Ruby’s despair. Just like how Yang tried to tell Ruby, “you don’t mean that”, because Yang, along with the others, do not want to try and challenge Ruby’s mindset, lest they fall victim to it as well. They are hoping she will find a way out of it, on her own. Like they’ve all done in the past.

Their situation is not good. Even though Ruby is the obvious one struggling, I think this volume has done well to show that everyone is pretty messed up over the events of Volume 8. Even though Ironwood was wrong, that doesn’t mean that RWBY have the luxury of feeling victorious - it rarely is that simple.

Hardly find this to be something worth criticizing RWBY about.

Anyways, what are we going to do about Jaune? I say kill him and let him rest. The poor guy has gone through way too much, probably second only to Salem and Ozpin in the suffering Olympics.


Edits:

I also feel this Volume is filler-y, but I also find it necessary. RWBY have been putting off this existential crisis for long enough. Salem has them far past the despair horizon and as I said above, the only reason WBY aren’t in shambles is because of soft-core denial.

This volume needed to happen. The writers need to give us some reason to believe in RWBY, because by V8 it was obvious to everyone, the writers included, that the situation was utterly hopeless.

But with Jaune, it’s kinda past the point of no return, imo. You’ve shaken the goldfish too hard for too long - a la Finding Nemo. Trying to fix Jaune would most likely just do a disservice to all of the suffering he’s been put through and completely defeat the point and journey of his character.

It’s better, and much less of a risk, to just follow his story to it’s logical conclusion. He’s suffered and has taken L’s since Volume 4. Don’t bail him out like this is Mario Party.

[RDNexus]

Maybe if the writers didn't simply care about the goddamn despairville trip, there'd be no need for such a filler-y volume.
That and I wouldn't have lost all faith and respect about this story. And I hate to drop stories I felt so invested on at first.

[Mach56gs]

Originally Posted by RDNexus

Maybe if the writers didn't simply care about the goddamn despairville trip, there'd be no need for such a filler-y volume.
That and I wouldn't have lost all faith and respect about this story. And I hate to drop stories I felt so invested on at first.

I feel you. But at the same time, I feel the despair is warranted. I think that has always been a theme of RWBY, and they cranked it up to 11 with v7 and v8. The lack of hope is very believable and warranted imo.

Now, this is the problem with “hope-punk” - striking this balance is very tricky and if you go too far into one territory or the other, problems can occur. But I think this despair-trip was warranted for all of the characters, Jaune and Ruby especially.

And doubly so for Jaune now, given what v9 did to him. I think you can dislike this volume for the filler-y aspect, but you can’t really blame the writing of the volume itself - maybe the writing of past volumes for putting our characters in this position.

Or maybe beyond writing, this is more of a problem with the creator’s thematic direction.

[RDNexus]

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear.
If RT hadn't spit on Monty's vision and started despairville trip from Vol03 onwards, maybe things could've gone a bit better.
To me, the story has derailed way too much, can't care about it anymore.

[JagdPanther]

Originally Posted by RDNexus

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear.
If RT hadn't spit on Monty's vision and started despairville trip from Vol03 onwards, maybe things could've gone a bit better.
To me, the story has derailed way too much, can't care about it anymore.

Agreed. I challenge that this darkness was always part of RWBY from the beginning. As far as I am concerned, it was not.

I've been thinking about this a bunch the last few days. Part of me feels wrong for not watching this season as it comes out, but most of me feels actually relieved. I hung on with this series for a long time hoping it'd come back around, but it didn't.

I am not going argue that until Monty passed away there was *no* darkness. I do think Monty started the turn from what RWBY started out as, but I think following his death the creative team put the rudder hard over and have never made an attempt to move back toward base course.

I was actually trying to think of how to describe RWBY when it first started, and I think it can be summed up in one word: fun. RWBY was fun. It was a very interesting world with compelling characters and stories. Even if pretty much everyone and everything was drawn from things like fairy tales and fables, it felt inventive and fresh.

Starting from the ending of Volume 3, it started to become less fun, to the point where now it is absolutely not fun at all. I think I've said in this thread before that at some point in the last few volumes RWBY became more of a chore to watch, something I felt obligated to watch because I'd started out fascinated by this series from the first trailers that dropped. Now I dread more content.

The last straw for me was moving to CrunchyRoll exclusively for a year. I never liked Rooster Teeth's proprietary videos, but selling out to CR for a whole year is what lost me. In reality it's a terribly small item, but with all that's built up over the years it didn't take much for me to finally say, "Ya know what, screw it. I'm done."

I've also become increasingly suspicious about the creative team and cast's assertions that they've been carrying out Monty's vision. What does that even mean? How do you prove or disprove that? But, I think even if they are not following Monty's vision at all, from a marketing perspective they *have* to say that they are because they know they'd receive tremendous backlash from the core of the fanbase. Maybe Monty did intend exactly this, but I really struggle with just how far off base course they seem to have gone. If Monty intended it to be THIS bad, then, well, I totally misjudged this all from the start 10 years ago. What I started out thinking was a fun series with just enough serious to keep it honest was a house of cards waiting to collapse.

[Mach56gs]

Originally Posted by RDNexus

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear.
If RT hadn't spit on Monty's vision and started despairville trip from Vol03 onwards, maybe things could've gone a bit better.
To me, the story has derailed way too much, can't care about it anymore.

Yeah, as I said, the thematic direction just to go into pure despairville. The worst part is, is that you have people who get fairy tale endings (Blake, Yang, probably Ren and Nora, Weiss) and then you have someone like Jaune….

That’s the hypocrisy that really makes the change of direction so hard for me to digest. It ruins the whole point of trying to have a gritty story when favorites clearly have plot armor and get preferred treatment.

But, who knows, maybe there is going to be a massive turnaround. I wouldn’t bet on it being done, or done well, but who knows!

[Marcus H.]

I really hope that the intent to add that Bumblebee moment is sincere and not only because they have to bring back the fans of the pairing that had quit watching.

[Chosen_Hero]

If they don't revert Jaune back by the end of this storyline then the only reason they would keep him older would be to stop people from shipping him together with Ruby (not like that will stop anyone on the internet ).

[RDNexus]

Originally Posted by JagdPanther

I've also become increasingly suspicious about the creative team and cast's assertions that they've been carrying out Monty's vision. What does that even mean? How do you prove or disprove that? But, I think even if they are not following Monty's vision at all, from a marketing perspective they *have* to say that they are because they know they'd receive tremendous backlash from the core of the fanbase. Maybe Monty did intend exactly this, but I really struggle with just how far off base course they seem to have gone. If Monty intended it to be THIS bad, then, well, I totally misjudged this all from the start 10 years ago. What I started out thinking was a fun series with just enough serious to keep it honest was a house of cards waiting to collapse.

There was that colleague of Monty's stating out loud that RT tried to mess with his vision since quite early on, before his passing.
The guy even said he and Monty's fiancee had notes of his regarding the world, lore, cast and events going forward, but RT spat on all that and went on their own way.
And those results, we can see them even to this day...

[Endscape]

Monty's vision was anime girls with transforming weapons. The show is following that just fine.

[JagdPanther]

Originally Posted by Endscape

Monty's vision was anime girls with transforming weapons. The show is following that just fine.

Considering it was a much more upbeat show while he was alive, it's possible that it isn't.

[NAJ P. Jackson]

Anyone else think this wonderland arc won't be just limited to one Volume? There are only 3-4 episodes left and there's still a lot more the plot haven't focus on. We still haven't met any of Neo's shadowed henchmen in the intro. I feel like this arc will be stretched to at least two Volumes which I don't know if I like coz I was just expecting one Volume before going back to Remnant.

[JagdPanther]

Originally Posted by NAJ P. Jackson

Anyone else think this wonderland arc won't be just limited to one Volume? There are only 3-4 episodes left and there's still a lot more the plot haven't focus on. We still haven't met any of Neo's shadowed henchmen in the intro. I feel like this arc will be stretched to at least two Volumes which I don't know if I like coz I was just expecting one Volume before going back to Remnant.

Tangentially related, having not watched any of this volume but still following along, this might already have been in the volume, but I have to think that there will be no time passage (or very little) on Remnant once the gang gets out of Wonderland.

[NAJ P. Jackson]

Originally Posted by JagdPanther

Tangentially related, having not watched any of this volume but still following along, this might already have been in the volume, but I have to think that there will be no time passage (or very little) on Remnant once the gang gets out of Wonderland.

Well we already know that time between the two settings are vastly different because Jaune met Alyx 20-30 years ago in Wonderland but it's been what thousands of years ago in Remnant when she returned there, long enough to make Alyx' story become a Fairy Tale in Remnant.

[Twi]

It just occurred to me that Weiss is the only one who knew what Jaune had to do on the bridge with Penny.

[NAJ P. Jackson]

Originally Posted by Twi

It just occurred to me that Weiss is the only one who knew what Jaune had to do on the bridge with Penny.

Yeah. She knew what Jaune was alluding to about killing Penny when he snapped at Ruby. I'm not sure if the others know the whole detail but probably not. I think Weiss and Jaune just told them that Penny sacrificed her life to give the Maiden Powers to Winter. They didn't go into detail that Jaune was the one to literally kill Penny on her request.

[JagdPanther]

Originally Posted by NAJ P. Jackson

Well we already know that time between the two settings are vastly different because Jaune met Alyx 20-30 years ago in Wonderland but it's been what thousands of years ago in Remnant when she returned there, long enough to make Alyx' story become a Fairy Tale in Remnant.

Right-o. Thanks.

[Twi]

Originally Posted by NAJ P. Jackson

Yeah. She knew what Jaune was alluding to about killing Penny when he snapped at Ruby. I'm not sure if the others know the whole detail but probably not. I think Weiss and Jaune just told them that Penny sacrificed her life to give the Maiden Powers to Winter. They didn't go into detail that Jaune was the one to literally kill Penny on her request.

If I recall, she only said that Jaune tried to help but Ruby passed out. In general, the entire party failed with Atlas, but Jaune having to kill Penny with his own weapon was easily by far the most personal. Him snapping after an extended period alone without anyone else and being betrayed by Alyx makes it clear he's only barely coping. I really don't see him making it out of this volume as is.

[NAJ P. Jackson]

Spoiler:

So I guess Jaune was right in the Cat having an Ulterior Motive. This makes me wonder if the Cat ever tried to break Jaune to possess him but never manage to coz Jaune's belief on his Friends arriving was strong enough to keep him going, as mentally unstable as he is, he never lost his hope on seeing them again.

This Episode is very Dark. Props to the VAs for killing it with their performance.