Media Essays: The Rise and Fall of RWBY

Last year, I did a rise and fall story all about Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's. So I thought it was about time I did another one of those rise and fall stories. And all I can say is that I have THE perfect subject for such a topic today. When it comes to rise and fall stories, I doubt any will be more appropriate to cover than this particular series. That series...is RWBY.

Created by the late Monty Oum and released on the Rooster Teeth YouTube channel and Rooster Teeth's own website in 2013, RWBY is easily among the most popular and recognizable web-series ever created. Renowned for its creative animation, colourful cast of characters (literally) and flashy fight scenes, RWBY became an instant smash hit and was one of the defining icons of pop-culture during the 2010's. The series has amassed a huge following and has become so popular that it's spawned an anime spin-off show, video-games, its own spin-off series with RWBY Chibi, novels and wads of merchandise. You weren't truly part of 2010's culture unless you had some kind of exposure to RWBY, and that's no exaggeration. The series was so popular, that the 2019 horror movie Doctor Sleep even included RWBY merch at one of the actress's expense! Oh and let's not forget how the series has had a crossover with DC's Justice League superhero team, both in comic AND movie form! Yeah, to say this little web-series went a LONG way is putting it mildly...

So why is it the subject of a rise and fall story? Well...because RWBY may be a pop-culture icon, but it's also a HUGE discussion point amongst critics and media-analysts for what many perceive as poor writing and very questionable writing decisions regarding the story and characters. Hell, discussions on why RWBY is bad seem more popular than RWBY itself these days! In this day and age, people don't tend to talk very highly of RWBY anymore with some fans even debating if the show was EVER good at all.

It may interest you to know that I am in that camp of fans where I DID like the show at first, but I dropped out after it took a turn for the worst. Volume 7 was when I officially dropped out and reading plot details about Volumes 8 and 9 killed what little investment I had left in the series. Like with Miraculous Ladybug, I have no intention of ever returning to RWBY, not unless we get some kind of new version or a reboot that can improve on what came before. It's such a shame too, because I WANTED to like this series and can see the potential in it. But the show just doesn't have the writing talent it desperately needs to bring out said potential. Either Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross need to be replaced as writers, or they need to learn a lesson in how to accept criticism.

For this essay, I just want to say that it is not my intention to put down or insult RWBY fans. If you still like the show, that's perfectly fine and I have no problems with that. But this essay may not be for you.

So without further ado, let's dive in and cover the rise and fall of RWBY...

Volumes 1-2: A Rough Start Saved By A Lot Of Promise

RWBY begins with Roman Torchwick and his cronies robbing a store for its supply of Dust, but their efforts get interrupted by Ruby Rose, a young girl who hopes to be a Huntress someday. After showing off her fighting skills and Crescent Rose weapon, Ruby gets enrolled into Beacon Academy along with her older sister, Yang Xiao Long. While there, they meet other colourful (literally) characters named Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, Jaune Arc, Nora Valkyrie, Lie Ren and Pyrrha Nikos and with Ruby, Yang, Weiss and Blake together, they form Team RWBY and take on all kinds of Grimm monsters as they train to become Huntresses at the academy.

Volume 1 is...interesting to say the least. As it's the first volume in the series, naturally it has the worst animation in the entire show. Throughout the entire volume, it feels like I'm watching cutscenes from a video-game that's at least a decade out of date than an actual TV show. Now to be fair, this show was originally a web-series, so of course the animation budget isn't going to be the best, so I'm not holding that against the crew at all. To RWBY's credit, the show's animation is still a step above most web-original content you might find out there. As is, the animation is still not very good outside of the fight scenes. Background characters are just featureless silhouettes, character animation mostly has the characters shifting awkwardly and making weird gestures which probably isn't helped by the show possibly relying on mo-cap, some of the effects aren't that convincing and overall, it gives off that feeling that this is a first attempt because of how cheap it looks. As is, the animation does have some saving graces be it very expressive character animation on the faces and bodies, slick fighting choreography at the hands of Monty Oum, distinctive character designs that makes everybody instantly iconic and memorable and fast-paced action that makes the fight scenes exciting to watch. The highlights for me where Teams RWBY and JNPR fighting the Grimm and Roman vs. Blake, Sun and Penny.

But animation isn't everything of course. How about the story-telling? That too was a rough start. Volume 1 didn't have that linear a plot with episodes flip-flopping between characters and who it's supposed to be focused on and the episodes for Volume 1 were very short, mostly clocking in between 11-15 minutes, so every episode feels like it's pretty much over as soon as it begins. There's not even that much of a story in the first place, it's just "Ruby and Yang join Beacon Academy and stuff happens". The volume also sets up one of the problems that the show has and would continue to have going forward: how Ruby Rose feels like a side-character in her own story. The show sets Ruby up as the clear main character of the series given how Episode 1 focuses on introducing her, developing her personality and little quirks, establishing her goal and her desires in life...and then the show gets bored of her and decides to just play with the other characters instead. Seriously, I feel like Blake, Weiss and Jaune were more the main characters than Ruby herself. People give Liko from Pokémon Horizons flack for feeling side-lined by the supporting cast but give that show credit, at least the show feels like it's centred around and is actually ABOUT Liko! RWBY just doesn't even try and just makes you wonder why they set Ruby up as the clear main protagonist when she's not being written like one.

As is, I didn't think the story-telling was all bad in Volume 1. While it had a weak story overall, it still managed to be entertaining with some of the cast's quirky nature, some decent comedy and of course, the exciting action scenes. Near the end of the volume, we also start getting some world-building that suggests there's more to it than what we think, and the characters start slowly showing more sides of them. It was clear that RWBY wasn't just going to be a typical school-of-adventure type of series and was going to have more to it. I think the moment I finally got engaged in this series was in the last episode of the volume when Blake is revealed to be a Faunus and Weiss, whom previously expressed hatred towards Faunus...is actually OK with that since Blake is on their side. That moment told me "This show may be more interesting than I thought it was going to be." and I wanted to watch more after it was over.

Volume 2 was when things got more interesting. Volume 2 saw the plot being more focused and straight-forward, a slow gradual build-up to a bigger plot beyond school-time shenanigans and more world-building that further made things interesting to watch. While Ruby still remained criminally underdeveloped and still felt like a side-character in her own story, the rest of the cast got the lion's share here with Pyrrha, Blake, Weiss and Penny especially becoming more interesting as we learned more about them and saw their developments play out. Pyrrha was revealed to be insecure about her celebrity status since it makes it hard for her to make friends as nobody sees her as a person, they just see her as a celebrity, Blake learned to fight smarter against Roman Torchwick in their rematch and even worked well with Weiss despite the two getting off on a rocky start, we got more insight into Weiss's family life with the introduction of her sister, Winter, and Penny turned out to be a robot. It was also this volume where Mercury, Emerald and Neapolitan were introduced, which further expanded the Rogues Gallery for our heroines to face. It really was Volume 2 where I fully got into RWBY and was genuinely enjoying it.

Volume 2 wasn't perfect of course. As I said, Ruby continued to feel like a side-character to the point where the only significant thing I can say about her in this volume was that she got a dog companion and it was this volume for me where I really noticed the big problem with RWBY's villains that I feel the show never really fixed as the series goes on: the fact they're just overpowered juggernauts who are instantly better than our heroes and can kick their asses in a pathetic attempt at making them look "cool". It doesn't do that, it just makes them super annoying to watch because they all feel the same as a result. Making your villain overpowered as hell doesn't make them "cool", it just shows they have such little to their characters and their status as villains that you have to make them uber powerful to make up for that. Roman is the worst example of this as he's not even a superpowered being in anyway. He's some ordinary guy with a cane that acts like a gun, yet he's somehow able to hold his own and kick the asses of people with superpowers? This guy isn't Batman for god sakes! Roman is such a nothing villain that the writers had to make him stupidly overpowered just to make him seem cool and powerful, when all it does is make him annoying. Having Neo completely curbstomp Yang while Yang can't even touch her was also bad and just made her annoying too.

As is, I don't have that many criticisms with Volume 2. It was an improvement over Volume 1 in many aspects, especially with the animation in where it's noticeable how things are starting to improve, and it continued to show this series had plenty of promise. So Volume 3 looked as if things would get even better...right?

Volume 3: The Moment Things Start To Fall Apart

It's very common for people to act like Volumes 7-9 were the low point of RWBY and when the show officially died. But I would actually make the argument that while those volumes marked when the show fully fell, it was Volume 3 that marked the beginning of RWBY's end and when the show began to go downhill. Some might disagree here as Volume 3 was considered the last great volume RWBY had, and I'm not disagreeing on that since Volume 3 was pretty good and marked an interesting shift in the status quo that had me curious on what was coming next in the story. But I still say Volume 3 was when RWBY started to crumble, because most of the problems the show had kinda started with Volume 3, especially in how it was here when the tone suddenly shifted and became much darker and more serious...and all to the series' detriment.

Volume 3 was a tournament arc, because it's an anime-inspired series, of course there's a tournament arc. But what started as a tournament arc shifts into something else entirely as Cinder Fall and her minions sabotage the tournament and manipulate events to bring down Beacon as a whole. I really can say that this is the volume that changed everything and all hell really does break loose here. The tournament battles themselves were fun and enjoyable to watch and also gave certain characters their time to shine whilst allowing for more creative abilities to be shown, but all that goes out the window when the villains initiate their scheme and everything comes crumbling down. And I'm not kidding when I say this volume does NOT end well for any of our heroes. Yang loses an arm, Blake goes on the run at the end, Weiss is taken back home by her abusive father, Beacon Academy completely falls, Penny ends up dead and poor Ruby ends up traumatized by everything that's happened. But the biggest one is this moment:

Yep, you all know what I'm referring to here. Pyrrha Nikos is killed off after a tough fight with Cinder Fall. This moment to me is when RWBY started to go downhill. Now to be fair, Pyrrha's death was planned from the start by Monty himself. But just because it was planned that way, that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Pyrrha was by far my favourite character in RWBY thanks to her badass design, cool fighting style and interesting characterization. She was easily one of the show's best characters...SO WHY THE HELL DID THE WRITERS THINK KILLING HER OFF WAS A GOOD IDEA?!?! I don't care if Monty planned for that to happen, somebody should've told him, "Dude, is this really necessary? I think it'd be better if we kept Pyrrha alive." It just came off as wasteful to me and it was sadly a sign of the kind of tone RWBY would be going with from here on out. Pyrrha absolutely did NOT need to die in order for this story to work. It was callous and unnecessary and is just there to show the story is "serious" and that things are going down. We already saw that with the fall of Beacon and Yang losing an arm! We didn't need Pyrrha to die to further emphasize that! It's the prime example of being dark for the sake of it and it only gets worse from here.

Oh and speaking of unnecessary deaths, Roman Torchwick is unceremoniously killed off here too. Unlike Pyrrha, I don't give two craps because I hate that guy and found him a waste of space, so killing him off didn't matter to me. But the critic in me still has to point out how wasteful his death was since he was set up to be this big villain who's a foil to Ruby Rose and given how powerful he is in a fight, he's clearly meant to be a big shot. So why was he killed off so abruptly? What purpose did that serve? Before anyone says "to motivate Neo into joining Cinder in her plans later in the series", no, Roman didn't need to die in order for that to happen. I think Ruby humiliating Neo by causing her to be thrown off the ship during a fight is enough of a motivator. Also, Ruby didn't even kill Roman, so Neo has a grudge on Ruby for literally no reason.

This was the start of what would become a problem that many fans would have with this series: wasted potential. It all started here in Volume 3 where RWBY just callously killed off characters for no reason and it sadly set the tone going forward that would only cause more problems for the series.

As is, Volume 3 isn't without merit of course. The tournament episodes were the most enjoyable, the villains actually come off as competent and threatening, their plan was well executed and the change in status quo set up a potentially interesting new direction for the series. Oh and Uncle Qrow was introduced here too, that's a plus. But as mentioned, the fact they went too hard on the change in tone and killed off three promising characters for the sake of killing them off was when the show started to fall apart. This is why I say Volume 3 was when the show's fall really began rather than Volumes 4-6 as many would say. Most of the problems people have with the show can be traced back to this volume.

And I need to address the elephant in the room...it was around Volume 3's production when Monty Oum sadly passed away at the age of 33 from an allergic reaction. Volume 3 was the last time he ever wrote for the series. From here on out, Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross were the primary writers for RWBY, and it was clear they were NOT fit for purpose as the show only got worse without Monty there to help them...

Volumes 4-6: Snail's Pace Storytelling Begins To Cause Issues

These volumes for many fans are when the show began to truly fall from grace. While I still feel Volume 3 was when its fall truly started, I understand why people look down on these volumes.

But before I get started, I must comment on how from Volume 4 to the present day, the animation got its biggest upgrade yet and RWBY truly looks beautiful in these seasons. The CGI is much improved and more detailed, character animations are more natural and fluid and less motion-capture like, the colours really pop and make the series eye-catching to look at and the lighting and shadow effects add more depth to everything. It's such a shame how the animation got better and better, but the writing got worse and worse with this series.

Anyhow, I don't find Volumes 4-6 to be terrible volumes by any means...but man do they have issues! And their issues can be summed up with three words: SNAIL'S. PACE. STORYTELLING. I'm not kidding when I say these volumes felt like a chore to watch sometimes. Over the course of these three volumes, barely anything happens. Stuff DOES happen, don't get me wrong, but they don't feel like they're really adding to the main plot of stopping Salem and saving the world. The reason I don't hate this entirely is because as slow-paced as the show is during these three volumes, most of it is down to the series being more character-focused at the time. A lot of the story-telling is focused on character development and moving on from the fall of Beacon, helping the cast climb up again now they've hit rock bottom. But it doesn't change the fact that the story moves at a snail's pace and by the time we reach Atlas at the end of Volume 6, it feels like barely anything was accomplished or has even happened. The most significant things that do happen in these volumes are Adam Taurus dying (thank god, he was a waste of space!), our heroes obtaining one of the relics, Team RWBY getting back together, the White Fang being defeated once and for all, Salem's backstory being revealed and Ozpin returning in the form of a boy named Oscar. So, as I say, it's not like nothing happens at all with these volumes. They ARE necessary to watch. Just be prepared for a sluggish pacing that will dull the experience a little.

The highlights for me include Weiss's development continuing to do her a lot of favours, Cinder Fall vs. Raven Branwen, Salem's backstory and Blake and Yang vs. Adam. Those are some of the best moments in the show for me and were the most interesting things to come out of these volumes. But the writing still suffers from other things, and not just the slow pacing. The villains are still uninteresting and once again are overpowered juggernauts just to make them seem cool and intimidating, Cinder Fall somehow survives despite the fact that logically she should've died at the end of her battle with Raven, the conflict with Caroline Cordovin was unnecessary and only happens because the characters are idiots, Sienna Khan is introduced and killed off just as quickly and I really can't understand what the point of that was and Team RWBY come off as massively hypocritical thanks to later volumes in regards to their treatment of Ozpin. They get mad at him keeping secrets and all, YET THEY END UP DOING THE EXACT SAME THING! But we'll get to that in the next three volumes.

Overall, it's easy to see why the fandom began to lose interest in RWBY during this period. The slow-paced storytelling was doing it no favours at all, certain characters continued to be wasted, the fight scenes took a downgrade given Monty was no longer working on them and it just felt like the show was stalling for time instead of getting on with the story. There is value to find in these volumes, but I can't really blame the fans for not liking them. But these volumes are practically Oscar-worthy compared to the next three...

Volumes 7-9: The Moment RWBY Died

And now here's the part you've been waiting for. While I think Volume 3 was the moment RWBY was marked for death, Volumes 7-9 was THE quintessential moment where RWBY finally did die. Volume 7 especially was THE definitive moment where this show was officially killed stone dead and showed no chance of ever recovering. As I mentioned earlier, Volume 7 was when I officially quit the show. Why is that? I'll tell you:

Volume 7 was a marked improvement in terms of pacing at the very least. Unlike Volumes 4-6 where the plot felt like it was slowly crawling its way along, Volume 7 felt like more stuff was actually happening and the plot was actually beginning to progress. Things were getting interesting as the girls and Jaune set up camp in Atlas and were welcomed with open arms by General Ironwood, Penny had been rebuilt so it was great to see her back and the villains began making a move on Atlas. Considering how badly things went down when they got involved in Beacon, you knew that things were about to get serious now they were plotting again in Atlas. So, what went wrong? EVERYTHING!

As mentioned before, Team RWBY come off as massive hypocrites in this volume and beyond. They were mad at Ozpin for keeping secrets from them to the point Yang outright attacked Oscar and they scared the poor kid off for a bit! So what do they do in this volume? Keep secrets from General Ironwood. And yet when Ironwood goes mad later on, we're supposed to think that Team RWBY were in the right here? Granted, Ironwood keeping secrets from the people of Atlas did him no favours as all it did was have Robyn Hill and her cronies constantly banging on his door demanding to know more about the Amity Project and revealing the project to the public ended up not being an issue in the end, so Ironwood isn't exactly any better than Team RWBY were. But it still comes off as a hideous example of Protagonist Centred Morality. Somehow, it's wrong when Ozpin and Ironwood keep secrets, but it's right when Team RWBY do so?

Speaking of General Ironwood, his heel-turn was the moment that officially killed the show for me. Literally, the moment he turned evil was when the show completely and officially died for me. That was the moment that jumped the shark, the moment that doomed RWBY to its fate and made it so there was no chance I could ever enjoy this show ever again. Who was the idiot who thought this was a good idea? What on Earth was going on in the writer's heads to come up with such a STUPID idea and actually run with it?! How did anybody among the creators ever think General Ironwood turning evil was something the story needed? All it did was throw away all the character development he had and destroy what was a genuinely likeable and interesting supporting character. And for what? Just so Team RWBY can look better than him? I genuinely have no idea why this happened or why it needed to happen. This story did not need General Ironwood to turn evil whatsoever. It feels like the writers were trying to make the show seem more complex and nuanced than it actually is by adding shades of grey to the story and characters, but it doesn't work here in the slightest. Ironwood doesn't even have a proper heel-turn, the writers just flip a switch and he's suddenly evil now. There's no natural build-up or anything, it just...happens and we're supposed to go along with it.

The plot itself isn't all that great to begin with, even without Ironwood's moronic heel-turn. We have very obvious political commentary that is very obviously based on Trump vs. Clinton that only dates the volume heavily, especially since Trump vs. Clinton stopped being a thing when the volume came out, Robyn's an annoying idiot who is a waste of Christina Vee's amazing talents, The Ace-Ops team were cool at first but are reduced to idiots who blindly follow General Ironwood's orders and the villains only succeed in their goals this season because everybody else is an idiot. Seriously, Neo gets the relic away from Teams RWBY and JNR because Ren somehow falls for Neo's shapeshifting act, Ironwood turns evil...because and despite Tyrian being the obviously evil one, Clover idiotically tries taking down both Qrow and Tyrian together instead of teaming up with Qrow to take down Tyrian. Nobody comes out of this volume looking good and it just solidified that this was RWBY now: Idiot Plots carried by characters who are either idiotic or hypocritical (or both) and full of wasted potential as characters are just disposed of and a tone that gets aggressively bleaker and less fun because dark and edgy equals "better" somehow. So yeah, this was why I quit RWBY after Volume 7. This volume told me this show wasn't for me and I wanted no more of it. I'm sure I'm not the only one who quit after Volume 7 either. So, when it comes to Volumes 8 and 9, I haven't seen them, but I DID read about them. And what I've read is...um...not good to put it bluntly. In terms of what I've missed we have:

Cinder Fall's backstory reveal that should've happened earlier and is a blatant rip-off of Cinderella's backstory while also failing to make her sympathetic.

Salem being all talk and no show.

Penny becoming human...and then getting killed off for a second time with the whole thing essentially being a suicide as she asked Jaune to kill her.

Ironwood continuing to go further and further down the sanity slope just so he can look worse than our heroes.

Another ending where the villains win and everything goes horribly wrong for our heroes, because who wants a happy ending in their stories, am I right? =P

A filler season where our heroines and Jaune are wondering around a Wonderland style world for...reasons.

Blake and Yang officially becoming a couple several volumes too late.

Yang seeing Ruby is having a mental breakdown...and doing nothing to comfort or help her little sister, instead just yelling at Ruby to not yell at her girlfriend.

And finally, Ruby Rose committing suicide and coming back more powerful than ever...great message to send to your viewers Rooster Teeth! X( The fact that they not only did it TWICE in this show, but would also do this again in their other show, Gen: Lock, just paints a really, really messed up image of this company...

So bottom line, this show is dead to me and I have no intentions of ever returning to it. I don't want this edge lord nonsense that portrays suicide as a positive thing to do, continuously makes the tone bleaker and bleaker to the point it's impossible to care what's going on anymore, potential that's constantly being wasted because of said tone, storytelling that feels like its spinning its wheels trying to make something happen and characters that are only continuing to lose their likeability. This is a show I want no more of and I'm not the only one as many video essays on YouTube have discussed how problematic the show has become in recent years. It shows no signs of improving and the only way to save it now is to just cancel it altogether and reboot the series. Put the show in better hands and allow more talented writers to execute the plot and characters better than what's currently going on now. Carrying on as is, RWBY may as well be fed to the Grimm at this point...

Conclusion

And that's the rise and fall of RWBY. What else needs to be said here? It's a show that should've been great and while it had the potential for it, it was squandered by an unfortunate passing that left the show in the hands of people who clearly weren't qualified to handle something like this. Then again, the show may still have gone down the route it went even if Monty Oum hadn't died. As far as we know, he was all for the show going down this darker route, so chances are the show might still have suffered even if Monty was still alive and still working on it. If the show kept its lighter tone from the first two volumes, wasn't so obsessed with killing off characters for shock value, didn't keep making the villains overpowered to make them seem "cool", had better pacing and handled its cast better, then the show could've been something truly incredible. As is, it feels like some grimdark fanfiction that was brought to life and it suffers horribly as a result. Given Rooster Teeth's recent closure earlier this year, I genuinely have to wonder what's next for the franchise. Is RWBY done for? Or will it continue? If it does continue, then don't expect me to be there to witness it. The writers will muck it up somehow, I guarantee it...

And that's it for this essay. I hope you enjoyed it and I invite you all to share your thoughts on the matter. When did RWBY officially die for you? Do you still enjoy RWBY, warts and all? Did you find this an interesting read? Do tell me.

Next week, it's back to Robot Wars with the career of X-Terminator. See you then media fans!