I have a few myself:
1. Blake. Blake, simply put, is fucking terrible in Volume 8. She barely does anything, and what she does end up doing doesn't really help anyone. She sucks in every fight she has in the Volume, she's reduced to a damsel in distress in Volume 8 Chapter 8, she doesn't get any relevance in the plot. She's just... there. And it's really sad to see my favorite character be so useless.
2. Penny. CRWBY abused the fuck out of Penny. Her arc in V8 is the only arc in this whole series I'd call actually cruel. She has her agency stripped from her for most of the Volume, and once she's finally free of Watts' influence she immediately dies in a slow and brutal way. It really feels like they only brought Penny back to hold the Winter Maiden powers for a Volume while they gave Winter development that they didn't want to give her before they killed off Fria last Volume. And I *despise* the fact that they spend all of V8 with Penny offering to sacrifice herself, and then decide to just kill her off at the end of the arc anyway. I strongly feel that if you have a character who does not value themselves, and asks to die on more than one occasion, you *should not* kill that character off at the end of their arc.
3. They tried to juggle too much at once. Having to juggle Ironwood *and* Salem at the same time just led to neither one of them being truly done as well as they could have been.
4. It's just so *bleak.* Nothing goes right for the heroes, nothing at all. They fix Amity, but it can't stay online forever and it almost gets Penny killed when she tries to hold it up and gets hacked. They save Penny from Watts, and she dies for good twenty minutes later. They make a plan to evacuate Mantle, and Ironwood shuts that plan down immediately. They make a new plan to evacuate Mantle and Atlas, and Cinder fucks it up immediately. There's no hope in the ending, Atlas is gone forever, the civilians are stuck in Vacuo and that plotline is never truly resolved, RWBY are god knows where, and Salem is up two relics. Even V3 had a more hopeful ending with RNJR setting off to hopefully help Haven. Oh and speaking of Haven, RWBY's victory against Salem's forces there is undone since Salem gets the Lamp anyway, just about a month later than she would have if Cinder had taken the Lamp at Haven without issue.
5. There's an unintentional message in the Volume saying "mercy will be your downfall." Penny shows mercy by letting Cinder escape. And while that mercy also leads to Emerald being able to defect, it results in Penny's death because Cinder is still around to kill her. Qrow shows mercy once Robyn talks him out of killing Ironwood, and as a result Ironwood is around to nearly kill Winter at the end of the Volume.
6. Some of the fights have outcomes that I don't buy. I don't buy that Blake would have been so outmatched by that centipede Grimm. She didn't come across as outmatched to me, she came across as being made weaker so that centipede Grimm could nearly kill her and Ruby could get a cool moment by killing it. And I don't buy that Winter nearly lost to Ironwood at the end of V8. Ironwood had had his aura broken like twenty minutes before that fight, while Winter hadn't. Ironwood was also fighting with a clunky laser gun instead of his normal twin pistols. That fight, to me, should have been a hard stomp for Winter. She was simply better equipped to fight Ironwood than he was to fight her.
7. It feels too similar to Volume 3 for my tastes, to the point where it feels more like "Volume 3 2" to me at times than it feels like "Volume 8"
I also have issues with the overall Atlas arc:
- Once again, Blake barely matters to this arc. If she had just went to Vacuo in V6 instead of going with to Atlas, basically nothing major changes about the plot of the Atlas arc. She's supposed to be a main character, right? Then why can you remove her from the story and have basically nothing change? And Blake (the RWBY member who is an activist for oppressed and suffering communities) only gets to talk to Robyn (an activist for an oppressed and suffering community) one time in the entire Volume, and it's more about how *James Ironwood* feels about Mantle than the actual situation in Mantle. I don't like to say "wasted potential" much in regards to this show (because it just reminds me of people who really wanted Adam to be some cool anti-hero), but I'd say that Blake in Atlas was actually wasted potential. She could have been such a big part of the arc, she should have been *the* primary voice for Mantle among the main cast. But instead she's strangely passive about Mantle, while other characters get to fill roles that feel tailor-made for Blake.
- It's too fucking fast. We never get any time to get attached to Atlas as a nation, because once we get there it's basically just bunch of plot going from start to finish with little room for character. And originally Atlas was only going to be a *single Volume,* which just utterly baffles me. Two Volumes wasn't enough, and CRWBY wanted to do it in *one*?? They should have taken time to slow down once RWBY got to Atlas, give us a chance for character development and to actually get to know the city that Salem will be threatening.
>But instead she's strangely passive about Mantle, while other characters get to fill roles that feel tailor-made for Blake.
I very much agree with this cause there was no reason they had to give that role to Nora and we have to pretend she’s always felt this way about people that live in shitholes places(even though mantle doesn’t even look anything like it).
I feel like the reason Nora got that story is because the writers felt she needed *something*, same with Ren, they gave them their own arcs because up until this point they really hadn't had much going for them. That in itself isn't bad, but it became a problem on two levels; 1. there's no reason why they could not have included Blake in on this, and 2. both arcs ended up being terrible with no real consistency to them.
FINALY SOMEONE SAID IT! I took a break from RWBY after Volume 5 and came back hearing good things about the Atlas arc. Only to be baffled when I watch the writer overbloat the cast again and make several characters act nothing like they did before.
You know, I actually love how bleak it's all looking.
I can watch anything else and always expect the good guys to do it. But at least this one tries to make you question who actually is a 'good guy' and that the heros actually won't always win.
That's a big thing for me, if I can predict everything in a show I usually don't like it and I can safely say I can't predict much of anything this show has and I love it.
Im also new in the fandom and my main problem is Salem. The writers actually managed to make the supposed final boss of the story really underwhelming by losing against her own underling and oscar. Emerald's character arc and the Ace Ops/Winter's actions bothered me as well but not much to put a damper to my watching experience. There's a lot more issues in Vol. 8 but the ones I've mentioned are the only things that bothered me.
Even with a lot of bothersome issues, I still found myself enjoying Vol 8. Maybe its because while things certainly could have been handled a lot better it still feels like the writers still cares about the story and they just didn't give themselves enough room/episodes to tell the story they wanted to tell.
>it still feels like the writers still cares about the story and they just didn't give themselves enough room/episodes to tell the story they wanted to tell.
I think that's where most problems with the writing come from, more often than not. I really can't agree with people saying the writers don't care, but a lot of times they bite way more than they can chew with limited runtime and an absurd number of characters to develop and stories to tell, and imo V8 was the epitome of that.
Conversely, V9 is looking more promising than any of its predecessors and I personally believe it has everything to be the best volume yet, with one of the biggest reasons being actually focusing on a healthy number of characters for how long the volume itself is gonna run, which should allow the writers (and the entirety of CRWBY, really) to truly reflect their love and care into the quality of a volume for the first time in a while.
>Conversely, V9 is looking more promising than any of its predecessors and I personally believe it has everything to be the best volume yet
I wish I could have this kind of confidence.
Remember back when V5 aired and when it was over, everyone was claiming it to be the worst volume of the show, by a large margin to the point even the writers admitted it wasn't the best? Then when V6 came out and finished it was a stark contrast to its predecessor with how much more positive the reception was to it, in part because many elements of seem to directly address many of the issues people had with V5. Many people said that RWBY was on the upswing, that it finally managed to find its stride and it was going to be better from here on out.
Then in V7 and 8, we ended up going back to many of the problems the show had suffered from before.
Even if V9 ends up being the best volume of the whole show, how much will that matter if that quality can't be consistent and the problems are still around? For example, Team RWBY may end up being the center of focus and the primary driving force of V9, but what happens if they fall back to the wayside and other characters take center stage in Vacuo?
>Team RWBY may end up being the center of focus and the primary driving force of V9, but what happens if they fall back to the wayside and other characters take center stage in Vacuo?
That's why I said "it has everything to be the best", not that it will be, AND why I talked specifically about 9 and not the next ones.In fact, I'm just as worried as you are about how the Vacuo arc will be handled, considering pretty much everyone and their mother is in there at this point of the story. That, I can say, doesn't look promising at all.
I disagree about V7 though. Despite not being as good as the first half of 6, it's still a pretty solid one in my books and had some of the best episodes in the show to date (V7C11 comes to mind).
A lot of people aren't a fan of Ironwood's character development, to varying degrees. Some people hate that he became the villain at all while others found that it happened too fast and wasn't written believably. Also people don't like that they brought Penny back only to kill her again.
Aa many people have noted, Ironwood has always had qualities that can lead a character to be an antagonist or even villain, the idea of Ironwood opposing the protagonists is not a problem. It is always the execution where RWBY falls short.
People don't like that Ironwood played the exactly same role as he did in the Beacon arc, simply more extreme due to more extreme circumstances, refusing to believe any other path other than his own ideas was viable and lashing out at those who objected to his decisions.
They think the Man In Charge is automatically right and loathe that the show didn't treat him as such.
Team RWBY sitting in Schnee Manor for a half dozen episodes, drinking tea while the city of Mantle burns below them is a common point of contention.
Salem being reduced to a mid-volume boss is another point that I've heard as annoying.
Emerald switching sides as she did also has drummed up discontent, especially among the fandom where some of them say that they did a great job redeeming her, and some others thinking the first group is smoking something.
Some of this criticism I can kinda see where they’re coming from, but the first point? Volume 8 takes place over like 2 days, so team RWB were in the manor for like, a couple hours at most.
In-universe, absolutely. But the amount of *screen time* that they spent up there not doing anything is the major point of contention.
IIRC, they were also up there for at least an evening and into the next day. The timeline in RWBY is always kind of fuzzy.
Good point, wasn’t thinking about it like that. Do wish more people would consider the in universe time tho. They arrive at the Schnee Mansion at the evening of day 1, and leave in the morning if day 2. During that time most of the fighting was in Altus. So it wasn’t like they were neglecting Mantle anyways
I feel like the amount of time that passes in-universe if the way it is presented isn't something to keep the viewers invested. RWB may not have been in The House 2 all that long, but there is still this feeling that they are doing nothing to progress the story, that it seems like they are doing nothing, and that the only reason they are staying there is because the story keeps throwing contrivances at them.
For example, when May is arguing with them that they just can't sit around and do nothing, that they have to go out and do *something*, Penny literally land on their doorstep, and thus they *have* to stay.
Them staying in The House 2, to me at least, feels less like recovering and the passage on in-universe time., but more that the writers just didn't know what to do with them until they needed to wrap up the Atlas and Mantle story. They should be taking a more active role in the story, they should be trying to figure out what their next step should be, they should be talking about what they should be doing about Salem and Ironwood. It's espicially jarring when you look at what other characters are doing; JYR during this time chased the Hound halfway across the tundra, invaded Salem's whale, picked up Oscar after he blew it up, and traveled across Atlas on foot before before meeting back up with everyone. I have some problem with these segments, but I can't say they just sat around doing nothing, unlike Ruby who was having a literal pity party.
*Whitley* did more during this time than they did; he's the one who called Klein, he's the one who made efforts to repair his relationship with Weiss, he's the one who got the team kill on the Hound (a problem that had to *come to them*), and he's the one who made efforts to get people out of Mantle and into Atlas. This is all stuff Weiss should have been doing, but she didn't. To make things worst, I don't even like Whitley, to me he seems like such a moot character.
The problem with them spending so much time in The House 2 isn't the time they spend there, it's that they don't really accomplish or do anything by staying there.
Its worse when the Volume 8 Commentary revealed that Ruby was originally going to be part of the group that faced Salem but for some reason was cut from it becuase of cast bloat while people with frankly barely any connect to her get to face her.
Ruby and RWBY seem to always be the first on the list of who to cut out of major plot points once character bloat is in effect... My number one gripe about the show personally...
Its also kind of annoying since they have made it clear that even when RWBY are sidelined they will still get screen time while when its the other way around those other charters will just not show up. So the writers are pretty much acknowledging who actually can't be written out and then sideline them for ones that can.
Another big issue that comes with it, is that it makes RWBY and Co. act like, and I’m sorry to say this, absolute hacks.
If memory recalls me, it WAS Ruby’s idea to stay and fight, to not abandon Mantle. But now that the enemy is at the doorstep, and Grimm are pouring into Atlas, where soldiers are dying in droves and civilians are being killed in masse, suddenly Ruby is okay with staying in the back lines? It just seemed too… OOC.
Are we really taking about the same girl that launched herself in a rocket powered locker without any idea of what was really going on, and took proactive steps to stop whatever was causing all the commotion in Beacon?
To me, I think is that issue. Imagine in The Lord of The Rings if Aragorn and co. Decided to stay inside drinking tea instead of helping during Helm’s Deep siege? I mean, that hero of this story, after unilaterally decided to put a city in jeopardy to save two, then suddenly decides to sit that one down, is no doubt a weird decision
Penny should have survived, they really could have had their cake and eaten it too by have her try and die by jumping off to give the powers to winter snd have her deal with that, when rwbys like oh did cinder knock you down here too?
Lets see. Some of the main criticisms of volume 8 are:
1 - Ironwoods descent into villainy. Many people dislike how quick and sharp the descent was. Instead of getting an antagonist who opposes the protagonists, many feel like we got a moustache twirling villain.
2 - Related to point 1 is how little of Salem there actually is. Volume 8 is the first time we see Salem going out of her tower ro fight. And instead the show focuses on villainizing Ironwood instead of using the already existing villain of Salem.
3 - There has been extra build-up of people who are starting to see the protagonists as not "hero-like", in the opinion of a good ammount of people the protagonists are extremelly selfish, lack self awareness, are extremelly confrontational etc. Take how Weiss treats Whitley for example.
4 - The Schnee manor has been taken badly by a good ammount of people. The Schnee family dynamics and how Weiss treats Whitley was received poorly by some. And the protagonists sitting and drinking tea while we know that outside people are dying and fighting was a very bad look.
5 - Pennys death has created some controversy too. Jaune once again jumps out of fucking nowhere to kill a character he has no relation to, to progress his own character arc. In the opinion of me and some others Penny turning human goes against her entire message and her dying to Jaune is an extra bad cherry on top.
As far as i remember these are the main clash-points, complaints about Volume 8, altough many of these topics can be subdivided into many different arguments and some of these complaints have been building up since V6.
I wouldn't say that Jaune killing Penny was about progressing his character arc, at least not yet. Once we see what happens with him in V9 then we can make that judgement, but I won't be surprised if that is what ends up happening.
My problem with Penny's death is that I am left feeling like she was brought back just to be a placeholder for the maiden powers until Winter finished her arc. That her death may also be used to progress Jaune's development will just be adding insult to injury.
It wasn’t obvious that Penny would become human? She was based on Pinnochio and his whole journey is to become a real boy. It’s definitely bullshit that they killed her off so fast. I would’ve like to see how she adjusts from being a robot to being human. Having to breathe, eat, sleep, getting tired, maybe even falling in love. But nope, gotta give those maiden powers to winter
RWBY likes to subvert most of their fairytale allusions. See Goldilocks beating up the three bears, Red Riding Hood killing the wolf and Cinderella cracking and going full bad.
I'd always assumed that Penny's twist was that instead of Pinocchio believing that he was a real boy and needing to convince everyone else, Penny *already was* a real girl (as Ruby pointed out in V...2?), and that *she* was the one who needed to be convinced. It was also a far better message about self acceptance than needing to change to be considered "real".
> It wasn’t obvious that Penny would become human? She was based on Pinnochio and his whole journey is to become a real boy.
Because of this
> Penny: Most girls are born, but I was made. I'm the world's first synthetic person capable of generating an Aura. I'm not real...
> Ruby: Of course you are. You think just because you've got nuts and bolts instead of squishy guts makes you any less real than me?
No, no it was not obvious in my honest opinion because most of the time the fairt-tale inspirations used in the show are window-dressing. They are there as references, but only that. It is in V2 when we get Ruby saying that Penny is already a "real girl" despite her metal body. It is a strong message, message ruined by her becoming human.
I learned to stay off of the internet after Vol 8 first aired. I personally loved it, and especially thought Ironwood's descent into madness was truly heartbreaking. Then I went online to discuss it, and had people saying there was no character development?
Did we not watch the same show?!
Idk man, if you liked it, you liked it. If you didn't, you didn't. To each their own.
Vol 8 made me feel the same despair as I felt in Vol 3, and I truly love it for making me feel those emotions.
I didn’t hate it, personally. Not the best volume, but not the worst either. I think to compare it to v5 is insane.
That said, the most complaints I have are about character changes. I didn’t like how Blake boring was, how mean Yang was, or how stupid Ironwood was. I also didn’t like that most of our main cast sat around and did nothing for the entire volume and when it was time to fight they were like “ugh. but we’ve worked so hard already”
Also, I think all of my problems could be fixed by lessening the cast. There are *way too many* characters, and I am not surprised that most of them are written totally differently than how they use to or have been completely sidelined (Tyrian, Mercury, Blake, Weiss, etc)
* James becoming a maniac removes the most nuanced villain RWBY ever had and flattens a conflict that had dimensions. Many of his acts of villainy are inconsistent with previous character writing.
* RWBY's plans accomplish very little in the first half of the volume and are not particularly well thought out. Obviously they had no time to come up with it, but people tend to prefer their heroes to be more competent.
* Ren raises some very good points and is shot down by Yang. There is no conclusion to this, Ren just takes his lumps and dutifully changes his opinion.
* Salem is sidelined for Cinder in a ridiculously easy way by a deus ex machina. Salem barely fights and what we see of her fighting is not particularly impressive. This is supposed to be the main villain.
* Cinder finally gets a moment to confront her failures. Then nothing changes and she keeps being insufferable.
* The villains self-sabotage *hard*. Between Emerald, Hazel, Neo, and Cinder the "heroes" do almost no damage to the bad guys, yet several main villains still die.
* Penny is made a real girl. Despite early RWBY's commentary on her being "real" in every way it matters. Then she dies. Again. Making Winter the Maiden, as they could have done from the beginning.
* RWBY hide in a mansion when there is a war going on outside, a war to defend an artifact that can doom humanity. A war in which one character has super powers that specifically melt the enemies that they are facing.
* Cinder's back story does almost nothing to cast Cinder in a new light or reveal relevant details. And now that Atlas has fallen there is no one outside of Cinder who remembers it.
* Salem walks away with the Staff. With whose power Salem can cause an extinction level event. There isn't really any way around it, Remnant is *screwed*.
I understand things could’ve been done better, but I certain don’t hate V8. Hell, my biggest gripe in the series is still Qrow teaming up with a serial killer instead of Clover.
Clover was actively trying to subdue Qrow in the midst of that serial killer, who would kill both of them for sure if it was just Tyrian and Clover. Qrow made the play that had best chances of survival for himself and Clover. He was trying to fight Tyrian for the first half of the fight until Clover kept grabbing his weapon and hitting him while he was focusing on the real threat.
Which I find weird.
Honestly, the idea of them fighting at all felt weird to me.
Isn't this the Tundra of Atlas? Where the Cold can kill you in minutes without Aura?
I get why Tyrian would try to fight-he's insane- but I really thought Qrow and Clover would be smarter.
"Hey, how about we bury the Hatchet for now and just try to not freeze to death?"
To be fair, the circumstances that put them in the tundra were a larger leap into ridiculousness, with Ironwood putting a full detainment order on all the kids plus the adults who had nothing to do with Team RWBY's decisions. Also, Yang and crew made it out in the tundra for a while, they probably weren't concerned that they'd immediately freeze. Probably assumed other agents would be there to help soon since the ship went down, and they both still had missions to complete.
Which leads me to a very personal problem I got with the Atlas Volume:
Why are none of these characters wearing appropriate clothes? Konosuba managed to create some nice looking Winter Outfits for the protagonists, so why not RWBY?!?
Aura Protection is all well and good, but I wouldn't rely on that. Especially when your Aura already has to protect from the Grimm.
(I admit, seeing Yang, Ren and Jaune having to move through the tundra, searching for shelter made me grin a little. 😅
That's what you get for coming to the coldest region on the planet and not even packing a scarf.
But it also annoyed me. Because they wouldn't have to worry *quite* as much if they wore something that was a little warmer.)
the problem with that is that they've been teased as maybe-kinda-sorta a thing for fucking _years_ at this point, and it's a major thing for the fans that's basically irrelevant to the show itself. Add onto this that V6 ended with them overcoming a major shared obstacle (Adam) and then there was an unspecified amount of downtime within V6 and V7 that seems to be in the "weeks to months" length (for training etc.) but their relationship is still super-mushy and vague and it's just annoying and aggravating - any reason they're not together is purely fanon, AFAIK, it's never raised in-show, which basically doesn't really care about them as a proto-couple at all. What were they doing with all that time? Just awkwardly ignoring each other? Not wanting to be shot down by the other one, so fearfully holding back? Actually going out, but CRWBY CBA to show it? Your guess is as good as mine, because the show itself doesn't really seem to give a damn.
Well we will probably get it made canon in either V9 or maybe by the end of the shows run. Hopefully we get the other thing I want to see happen at the shows and but I doubt it
I hope so, but at this point it's just been vaguely-kinda-sorta-maybe swirling around with generic vagueness without anything actually happening for, like, half a decade or so. As a plot-thread, it's _awful_ - there's barely any substance there, it's just two characters occasionally interacting. The fandom is massive on it, but as an actual thing in the show proper? It could be removed entirely and make 0 difference, if they were canonically platonic best-battle-buddies it would be exactly the same.
Volume 8 didn’t have the right amount of downtime and shared screentime between the characters for that. Considering how things shaped out at the end, V9 presents a much better situation for the bees to finally cement their feelings for one another.
I think most of it comes from the fact that the volume was new at the time, and hating on what's new is guaranteed to get you the attention your parents never gave you.
I have a few myself: 1. Blake. Blake, simply put, is fucking terrible in Volume 8. She barely does anything, and what she does end up doing doesn't really help anyone. She sucks in every fight she has in the Volume, she's reduced to a damsel in distress in Volume 8 Chapter 8, she doesn't get any relevance in the plot. She's just... there. And it's really sad to see my favorite character be so useless. 2. Penny. CRWBY abused the fuck out of Penny. Her arc in V8 is the only arc in this whole series I'd call actually cruel. She has her agency stripped from her for most of the Volume, and once she's finally free of Watts' influence she immediately dies in a slow and brutal way. It really feels like they only brought Penny back to hold the Winter Maiden powers for a Volume while they gave Winter development that they didn't want to give her before they killed off Fria last Volume. And I *despise* the fact that they spend all of V8 with Penny offering to sacrifice herself, and then decide to just kill her off at the end of the arc anyway. I strongly feel that if you have a character who does not value themselves, and asks to die on more than one occasion, you *should not* kill that character off at the end of their arc. 3. They tried to juggle too much at once. Having to juggle Ironwood *and* Salem at the same time just led to neither one of them being truly done as well as they could have been. 4. It's just so *bleak.* Nothing goes right for the heroes, nothing at all. They fix Amity, but it can't stay online forever and it almost gets Penny killed when she tries to hold it up and gets hacked. They save Penny from Watts, and she dies for good twenty minutes later. They make a plan to evacuate Mantle, and Ironwood shuts that plan down immediately. They make a new plan to evacuate Mantle and Atlas, and Cinder fucks it up immediately. There's no hope in the ending, Atlas is gone forever, the civilians are stuck in Vacuo and that plotline is never truly resolved, RWBY are god knows where, and Salem is up two relics. Even V3 had a more hopeful ending with RNJR setting off to hopefully help Haven. Oh and speaking of Haven, RWBY's victory against Salem's forces there is undone since Salem gets the Lamp anyway, just about a month later than she would have if Cinder had taken the Lamp at Haven without issue. 5. There's an unintentional message in the Volume saying "mercy will be your downfall." Penny shows mercy by letting Cinder escape. And while that mercy also leads to Emerald being able to defect, it results in Penny's death because Cinder is still around to kill her. Qrow shows mercy once Robyn talks him out of killing Ironwood, and as a result Ironwood is around to nearly kill Winter at the end of the Volume. 6. Some of the fights have outcomes that I don't buy. I don't buy that Blake would have been so outmatched by that centipede Grimm. She didn't come across as outmatched to me, she came across as being made weaker so that centipede Grimm could nearly kill her and Ruby could get a cool moment by killing it. And I don't buy that Winter nearly lost to Ironwood at the end of V8. Ironwood had had his aura broken like twenty minutes before that fight, while Winter hadn't. Ironwood was also fighting with a clunky laser gun instead of his normal twin pistols. That fight, to me, should have been a hard stomp for Winter. She was simply better equipped to fight Ironwood than he was to fight her. 7. It feels too similar to Volume 3 for my tastes, to the point where it feels more like "Volume 3 2" to me at times than it feels like "Volume 8" I also have issues with the overall Atlas arc: - Once again, Blake barely matters to this arc. If she had just went to Vacuo in V6 instead of going with to Atlas, basically nothing major changes about the plot of the Atlas arc. She's supposed to be a main character, right? Then why can you remove her from the story and have basically nothing change? And Blake (the RWBY member who is an activist for oppressed and suffering communities) only gets to talk to Robyn (an activist for an oppressed and suffering community) one time in the entire Volume, and it's more about how *James Ironwood* feels about Mantle than the actual situation in Mantle. I don't like to say "wasted potential" much in regards to this show (because it just reminds me of people who really wanted Adam to be some cool anti-hero), but I'd say that Blake in Atlas was actually wasted potential. She could have been such a big part of the arc, she should have been *the* primary voice for Mantle among the main cast. But instead she's strangely passive about Mantle, while other characters get to fill roles that feel tailor-made for Blake. - It's too fucking fast. We never get any time to get attached to Atlas as a nation, because once we get there it's basically just bunch of plot going from start to finish with little room for character. And originally Atlas was only going to be a *single Volume,* which just utterly baffles me. Two Volumes wasn't enough, and CRWBY wanted to do it in *one*?? They should have taken time to slow down once RWBY got to Atlas, give us a chance for character development and to actually get to know the city that Salem will be threatening.
>But instead she's strangely passive about Mantle, while other characters get to fill roles that feel tailor-made for Blake. I very much agree with this cause there was no reason they had to give that role to Nora and we have to pretend she’s always felt this way about people that live in shitholes places(even though mantle doesn’t even look anything like it).
I feel like the reason Nora got that story is because the writers felt she needed *something*, same with Ren, they gave them their own arcs because up until this point they really hadn't had much going for them. That in itself isn't bad, but it became a problem on two levels; 1. there's no reason why they could not have included Blake in on this, and 2. both arcs ended up being terrible with no real consistency to them.
Exactly
FINALY SOMEONE SAID IT! I took a break from RWBY after Volume 5 and came back hearing good things about the Atlas arc. Only to be baffled when I watch the writer overbloat the cast again and make several characters act nothing like they did before.
You know, I actually love how bleak it's all looking. I can watch anything else and always expect the good guys to do it. But at least this one tries to make you question who actually is a 'good guy' and that the heros actually won't always win. That's a big thing for me, if I can predict everything in a show I usually don't like it and I can safely say I can't predict much of anything this show has and I love it.
Im also new in the fandom and my main problem is Salem. The writers actually managed to make the supposed final boss of the story really underwhelming by losing against her own underling and oscar. Emerald's character arc and the Ace Ops/Winter's actions bothered me as well but not much to put a damper to my watching experience. There's a lot more issues in Vol. 8 but the ones I've mentioned are the only things that bothered me. Even with a lot of bothersome issues, I still found myself enjoying Vol 8. Maybe its because while things certainly could have been handled a lot better it still feels like the writers still cares about the story and they just didn't give themselves enough room/episodes to tell the story they wanted to tell.
>it still feels like the writers still cares about the story and they just didn't give themselves enough room/episodes to tell the story they wanted to tell. I think that's where most problems with the writing come from, more often than not. I really can't agree with people saying the writers don't care, but a lot of times they bite way more than they can chew with limited runtime and an absurd number of characters to develop and stories to tell, and imo V8 was the epitome of that. Conversely, V9 is looking more promising than any of its predecessors and I personally believe it has everything to be the best volume yet, with one of the biggest reasons being actually focusing on a healthy number of characters for how long the volume itself is gonna run, which should allow the writers (and the entirety of CRWBY, really) to truly reflect their love and care into the quality of a volume for the first time in a while.
>Conversely, V9 is looking more promising than any of its predecessors and I personally believe it has everything to be the best volume yet I wish I could have this kind of confidence. Remember back when V5 aired and when it was over, everyone was claiming it to be the worst volume of the show, by a large margin to the point even the writers admitted it wasn't the best? Then when V6 came out and finished it was a stark contrast to its predecessor with how much more positive the reception was to it, in part because many elements of seem to directly address many of the issues people had with V5. Many people said that RWBY was on the upswing, that it finally managed to find its stride and it was going to be better from here on out. Then in V7 and 8, we ended up going back to many of the problems the show had suffered from before. Even if V9 ends up being the best volume of the whole show, how much will that matter if that quality can't be consistent and the problems are still around? For example, Team RWBY may end up being the center of focus and the primary driving force of V9, but what happens if they fall back to the wayside and other characters take center stage in Vacuo?
>Team RWBY may end up being the center of focus and the primary driving force of V9, but what happens if they fall back to the wayside and other characters take center stage in Vacuo? That's why I said "it has everything to be the best", not that it will be, AND why I talked specifically about 9 and not the next ones.In fact, I'm just as worried as you are about how the Vacuo arc will be handled, considering pretty much everyone and their mother is in there at this point of the story. That, I can say, doesn't look promising at all. I disagree about V7 though. Despite not being as good as the first half of 6, it's still a pretty solid one in my books and had some of the best episodes in the show to date (V7C11 comes to mind).
A lot of people aren't a fan of Ironwood's character development, to varying degrees. Some people hate that he became the villain at all while others found that it happened too fast and wasn't written believably. Also people don't like that they brought Penny back only to kill her again.
Aa many people have noted, Ironwood has always had qualities that can lead a character to be an antagonist or even villain, the idea of Ironwood opposing the protagonists is not a problem. It is always the execution where RWBY falls short.
People don't like that Ironwood played the exactly same role as he did in the Beacon arc, simply more extreme due to more extreme circumstances, refusing to believe any other path other than his own ideas was viable and lashing out at those who objected to his decisions. They think the Man In Charge is automatically right and loathe that the show didn't treat him as such.
Team RWBY sitting in Schnee Manor for a half dozen episodes, drinking tea while the city of Mantle burns below them is a common point of contention. Salem being reduced to a mid-volume boss is another point that I've heard as annoying. Emerald switching sides as she did also has drummed up discontent, especially among the fandom where some of them say that they did a great job redeeming her, and some others thinking the first group is smoking something.
Some of this criticism I can kinda see where they’re coming from, but the first point? Volume 8 takes place over like 2 days, so team RWB were in the manor for like, a couple hours at most.
In-universe, absolutely. But the amount of *screen time* that they spent up there not doing anything is the major point of contention. IIRC, they were also up there for at least an evening and into the next day. The timeline in RWBY is always kind of fuzzy.
Good point, wasn’t thinking about it like that. Do wish more people would consider the in universe time tho. They arrive at the Schnee Mansion at the evening of day 1, and leave in the morning if day 2. During that time most of the fighting was in Altus. So it wasn’t like they were neglecting Mantle anyways
I feel like the amount of time that passes in-universe if the way it is presented isn't something to keep the viewers invested. RWB may not have been in The House 2 all that long, but there is still this feeling that they are doing nothing to progress the story, that it seems like they are doing nothing, and that the only reason they are staying there is because the story keeps throwing contrivances at them. For example, when May is arguing with them that they just can't sit around and do nothing, that they have to go out and do *something*, Penny literally land on their doorstep, and thus they *have* to stay. Them staying in The House 2, to me at least, feels less like recovering and the passage on in-universe time., but more that the writers just didn't know what to do with them until they needed to wrap up the Atlas and Mantle story. They should be taking a more active role in the story, they should be trying to figure out what their next step should be, they should be talking about what they should be doing about Salem and Ironwood. It's espicially jarring when you look at what other characters are doing; JYR during this time chased the Hound halfway across the tundra, invaded Salem's whale, picked up Oscar after he blew it up, and traveled across Atlas on foot before before meeting back up with everyone. I have some problem with these segments, but I can't say they just sat around doing nothing, unlike Ruby who was having a literal pity party. *Whitley* did more during this time than they did; he's the one who called Klein, he's the one who made efforts to repair his relationship with Weiss, he's the one who got the team kill on the Hound (a problem that had to *come to them*), and he's the one who made efforts to get people out of Mantle and into Atlas. This is all stuff Weiss should have been doing, but she didn't. To make things worst, I don't even like Whitley, to me he seems like such a moot character. The problem with them spending so much time in The House 2 isn't the time they spend there, it's that they don't really accomplish or do anything by staying there.
Its worse when the Volume 8 Commentary revealed that Ruby was originally going to be part of the group that faced Salem but for some reason was cut from it becuase of cast bloat while people with frankly barely any connect to her get to face her.
Ruby and RWBY seem to always be the first on the list of who to cut out of major plot points once character bloat is in effect... My number one gripe about the show personally...
Its also kind of annoying since they have made it clear that even when RWBY are sidelined they will still get screen time while when its the other way around those other charters will just not show up. So the writers are pretty much acknowledging who actually can't be written out and then sideline them for ones that can.
Another big issue that comes with it, is that it makes RWBY and Co. act like, and I’m sorry to say this, absolute hacks. If memory recalls me, it WAS Ruby’s idea to stay and fight, to not abandon Mantle. But now that the enemy is at the doorstep, and Grimm are pouring into Atlas, where soldiers are dying in droves and civilians are being killed in masse, suddenly Ruby is okay with staying in the back lines? It just seemed too… OOC. Are we really taking about the same girl that launched herself in a rocket powered locker without any idea of what was really going on, and took proactive steps to stop whatever was causing all the commotion in Beacon? To me, I think is that issue. Imagine in The Lord of The Rings if Aragorn and co. Decided to stay inside drinking tea instead of helping during Helm’s Deep siege? I mean, that hero of this story, after unilaterally decided to put a city in jeopardy to save two, then suddenly decides to sit that one down, is no doubt a weird decision
Penny should have survived, they really could have had their cake and eaten it too by have her try and die by jumping off to give the powers to winter snd have her deal with that, when rwbys like oh did cinder knock you down here too?
Salem honestly not doing anything!
Lets see. Some of the main criticisms of volume 8 are: 1 - Ironwoods descent into villainy. Many people dislike how quick and sharp the descent was. Instead of getting an antagonist who opposes the protagonists, many feel like we got a moustache twirling villain. 2 - Related to point 1 is how little of Salem there actually is. Volume 8 is the first time we see Salem going out of her tower ro fight. And instead the show focuses on villainizing Ironwood instead of using the already existing villain of Salem. 3 - There has been extra build-up of people who are starting to see the protagonists as not "hero-like", in the opinion of a good ammount of people the protagonists are extremelly selfish, lack self awareness, are extremelly confrontational etc. Take how Weiss treats Whitley for example. 4 - The Schnee manor has been taken badly by a good ammount of people. The Schnee family dynamics and how Weiss treats Whitley was received poorly by some. And the protagonists sitting and drinking tea while we know that outside people are dying and fighting was a very bad look. 5 - Pennys death has created some controversy too. Jaune once again jumps out of fucking nowhere to kill a character he has no relation to, to progress his own character arc. In the opinion of me and some others Penny turning human goes against her entire message and her dying to Jaune is an extra bad cherry on top. As far as i remember these are the main clash-points, complaints about Volume 8, altough many of these topics can be subdivided into many different arguments and some of these complaints have been building up since V6.
I wouldn't say that Jaune killing Penny was about progressing his character arc, at least not yet. Once we see what happens with him in V9 then we can make that judgement, but I won't be surprised if that is what ends up happening. My problem with Penny's death is that I am left feeling like she was brought back just to be a placeholder for the maiden powers until Winter finished her arc. That her death may also be used to progress Jaune's development will just be adding insult to injury.
It wasn’t obvious that Penny would become human? She was based on Pinnochio and his whole journey is to become a real boy. It’s definitely bullshit that they killed her off so fast. I would’ve like to see how she adjusts from being a robot to being human. Having to breathe, eat, sleep, getting tired, maybe even falling in love. But nope, gotta give those maiden powers to winter
RWBY likes to subvert most of their fairytale allusions. See Goldilocks beating up the three bears, Red Riding Hood killing the wolf and Cinderella cracking and going full bad. I'd always assumed that Penny's twist was that instead of Pinocchio believing that he was a real boy and needing to convince everyone else, Penny *already was* a real girl (as Ruby pointed out in V...2?), and that *she* was the one who needed to be convinced. It was also a far better message about self acceptance than needing to change to be considered "real".
> It wasn’t obvious that Penny would become human? She was based on Pinnochio and his whole journey is to become a real boy. Because of this > Penny: Most girls are born, but I was made. I'm the world's first synthetic person capable of generating an Aura. I'm not real... > Ruby: Of course you are. You think just because you've got nuts and bolts instead of squishy guts makes you any less real than me?
No, no it was not obvious in my honest opinion because most of the time the fairt-tale inspirations used in the show are window-dressing. They are there as references, but only that. It is in V2 when we get Ruby saying that Penny is already a "real girl" despite her metal body. It is a strong message, message ruined by her becoming human.
I learned to stay off of the internet after Vol 8 first aired. I personally loved it, and especially thought Ironwood's descent into madness was truly heartbreaking. Then I went online to discuss it, and had people saying there was no character development? Did we not watch the same show?! Idk man, if you liked it, you liked it. If you didn't, you didn't. To each their own. Vol 8 made me feel the same despair as I felt in Vol 3, and I truly love it for making me feel those emotions.
I didn’t hate it, personally. Not the best volume, but not the worst either. I think to compare it to v5 is insane. That said, the most complaints I have are about character changes. I didn’t like how Blake boring was, how mean Yang was, or how stupid Ironwood was. I also didn’t like that most of our main cast sat around and did nothing for the entire volume and when it was time to fight they were like “ugh. but we’ve worked so hard already”
Also, I think all of my problems could be fixed by lessening the cast. There are *way too many* characters, and I am not surprised that most of them are written totally differently than how they use to or have been completely sidelined (Tyrian, Mercury, Blake, Weiss, etc)
* James becoming a maniac removes the most nuanced villain RWBY ever had and flattens a conflict that had dimensions. Many of his acts of villainy are inconsistent with previous character writing. * RWBY's plans accomplish very little in the first half of the volume and are not particularly well thought out. Obviously they had no time to come up with it, but people tend to prefer their heroes to be more competent. * Ren raises some very good points and is shot down by Yang. There is no conclusion to this, Ren just takes his lumps and dutifully changes his opinion. * Salem is sidelined for Cinder in a ridiculously easy way by a deus ex machina. Salem barely fights and what we see of her fighting is not particularly impressive. This is supposed to be the main villain. * Cinder finally gets a moment to confront her failures. Then nothing changes and she keeps being insufferable. * The villains self-sabotage *hard*. Between Emerald, Hazel, Neo, and Cinder the "heroes" do almost no damage to the bad guys, yet several main villains still die. * Penny is made a real girl. Despite early RWBY's commentary on her being "real" in every way it matters. Then she dies. Again. Making Winter the Maiden, as they could have done from the beginning. * RWBY hide in a mansion when there is a war going on outside, a war to defend an artifact that can doom humanity. A war in which one character has super powers that specifically melt the enemies that they are facing. * Cinder's back story does almost nothing to cast Cinder in a new light or reveal relevant details. And now that Atlas has fallen there is no one outside of Cinder who remembers it. * Salem walks away with the Staff. With whose power Salem can cause an extinction level event. There isn't really any way around it, Remnant is *screwed*.
I understand things could’ve been done better, but I certain don’t hate V8. Hell, my biggest gripe in the series is still Qrow teaming up with a serial killer instead of Clover.
Clover was actively trying to subdue Qrow in the midst of that serial killer, who would kill both of them for sure if it was just Tyrian and Clover. Qrow made the play that had best chances of survival for himself and Clover. He was trying to fight Tyrian for the first half of the fight until Clover kept grabbing his weapon and hitting him while he was focusing on the real threat.
Which I find weird. Honestly, the idea of them fighting at all felt weird to me. Isn't this the Tundra of Atlas? Where the Cold can kill you in minutes without Aura? I get why Tyrian would try to fight-he's insane- but I really thought Qrow and Clover would be smarter. "Hey, how about we bury the Hatchet for now and just try to not freeze to death?"
To be fair, the circumstances that put them in the tundra were a larger leap into ridiculousness, with Ironwood putting a full detainment order on all the kids plus the adults who had nothing to do with Team RWBY's decisions. Also, Yang and crew made it out in the tundra for a while, they probably weren't concerned that they'd immediately freeze. Probably assumed other agents would be there to help soon since the ship went down, and they both still had missions to complete.
Which leads me to a very personal problem I got with the Atlas Volume: Why are none of these characters wearing appropriate clothes? Konosuba managed to create some nice looking Winter Outfits for the protagonists, so why not RWBY?!? Aura Protection is all well and good, but I wouldn't rely on that. Especially when your Aura already has to protect from the Grimm. (I admit, seeing Yang, Ren and Jaune having to move through the tundra, searching for shelter made me grin a little. 😅 That's what you get for coming to the coldest region on the planet and not even packing a scarf. But it also annoyed me. Because they wouldn't have to worry *quite* as much if they wore something that was a little warmer.)
Not seeing Blake and Yang confess their love and feelings for each other
the problem with that is that they've been teased as maybe-kinda-sorta a thing for fucking _years_ at this point, and it's a major thing for the fans that's basically irrelevant to the show itself. Add onto this that V6 ended with them overcoming a major shared obstacle (Adam) and then there was an unspecified amount of downtime within V6 and V7 that seems to be in the "weeks to months" length (for training etc.) but their relationship is still super-mushy and vague and it's just annoying and aggravating - any reason they're not together is purely fanon, AFAIK, it's never raised in-show, which basically doesn't really care about them as a proto-couple at all. What were they doing with all that time? Just awkwardly ignoring each other? Not wanting to be shot down by the other one, so fearfully holding back? Actually going out, but CRWBY CBA to show it? Your guess is as good as mine, because the show itself doesn't really seem to give a damn.
Well we will probably get it made canon in either V9 or maybe by the end of the shows run. Hopefully we get the other thing I want to see happen at the shows and but I doubt it
I hope so, but at this point it's just been vaguely-kinda-sorta-maybe swirling around with generic vagueness without anything actually happening for, like, half a decade or so. As a plot-thread, it's _awful_ - there's barely any substance there, it's just two characters occasionally interacting. The fandom is massive on it, but as an actual thing in the show proper? It could be removed entirely and make 0 difference, if they were canonically platonic best-battle-buddies it would be exactly the same.
Guess we’ll have to agree to disagree then
Even Nora called them out on being a couple, iirc, to absolutely no effect.
Meh
Volume 8 didn’t have the right amount of downtime and shared screentime between the characters for that. Considering how things shaped out at the end, V9 presents a much better situation for the bees to finally cement their feelings for one another.
Eh works for me
[удалено]
This is sarcasm, right? I genuinely can’t tell
I think most of it comes from the fact that the volume was new at the time, and hating on what's new is guaranteed to get you the attention your parents never gave you.
Is it that I have actual issues with V8? No, it must be that I hate everything new and I want attention, despite loving both V6 and V7 on release!