Volume 4 has its up and downs a lot, the dialogue, writing, and animation have gotten a lot better in Volume 5. Although Mounty Oum no longer writes the story of RWBY after his death the writing remains faithful to his wishes. Volume 5 is probably an improvement from Volume 4 bringing back our favorite characters in a big reunion and showing that the adventures of theses huntresses continue.
2 Reviews
Worst Volume So Far
madamemoviemonsterheart6 August 2018
Warning: Spoilers
RWBY has been my love hate show. It has moments I really like and then sometimes it's complete trash. And after the disappointment from Volume 4, I was really hoping this season would be better. But it's even worse.
Ruby Rose isn't a character at this point. She doesn't do anything in this volume at all and she's the main character. She only gets one scene with Oscar and that's all the character development she needs. While her teammates get more characterization than her. Not once does she ever question her Silver Eyes powers to Ozpin, not once does she mention her mother or even ask about her and spends a lot of her time giving speeches because shes the protagonist.
The pacing in this volume is all over the place! At the beginning there's setup for the characters to train. But we get one training scene and that's all we need. But don't worry, we get plenty of scenes of the characters talking inside the house. And the talk is all exposition. The middle of this volume feels so slow because nothing happens or they're building up to something that might happen. But only during the last four episodes are we getting some action. Then when it seems like there's going to be a fight, it cuts away and we're not shown the fight.
A highlight of RWBY has always been the action scenes and they're some good ones. Like the Sun Vs Ilia brawl, Weiss Vs Lancers, Yang Vs the Bandits, Raven Vs Cinder and I even liked Blake Vs Ilia. The finale fight is garbage. You would think it would be a battle royal where characters go all at each other from different sides. Instead we have to deal with fights being cut away, stopping the fight for more exposition or just not showing the fight to show something less important. Ruby doesn't even use her incredibly useful super speed semblance once during that fight, even though it could have helped her! We get one scene of Yang's rematch with Mercury and that's it. Emerald and Ruby's fight is nothing more than Emerald shooting bullets and Ruby blocking them with her scythe. We never even get to see Qrow and his sister Raven fight each other. Some of the fights have completely absurd moments in it as well. Blake freezes both Fennec and Corsac in ice. And doesn't finish them off with an attack. Instead, she stands around talking! What makes this even worse is that Blake already froze Roman Torchwick back in Volume 2 and then immediately after that she knocked him down and beat him! Why does Kali stand in the middle of a room with no protection from people shooting at her? And then she's somehow able to block bullets with a tea tray. I've shot with guns before and believe me, there should be holes in that tea tray. But there isn't because logic doesn't exist.
Now here's some more of my complaints with this volume in quick points.
This volume....ugh. I didn't want to hate it. I had high hopes for this one when I realized we would have more episodes and a final destination for all the characters to be at. But every wrong choice they could have made, they did. And for RWBY's hardcore fans, I'm not a hater. I'm even wearing a RWBY shirt right now as I'm writing this but this volume did the impossible. It made me not want to watch the rest of RWBY Volume 5 until it was over. I was done by the time episode 9 happened and just couldn't be bothered to watch the rest until it was done. I pray that Volume 6 becomes the saving grace this series needs. I'm not even excited for the next volume after this volume ended. Because by the end of RWBY: Volume 5 I was just depressed.
Ruby Rose isn't a character at this point. She doesn't do anything in this volume at all and she's the main character. She only gets one scene with Oscar and that's all the character development she needs. While her teammates get more characterization than her. Not once does she ever question her Silver Eyes powers to Ozpin, not once does she mention her mother or even ask about her and spends a lot of her time giving speeches because shes the protagonist.
The pacing in this volume is all over the place! At the beginning there's setup for the characters to train. But we get one training scene and that's all we need. But don't worry, we get plenty of scenes of the characters talking inside the house. And the talk is all exposition. The middle of this volume feels so slow because nothing happens or they're building up to something that might happen. But only during the last four episodes are we getting some action. Then when it seems like there's going to be a fight, it cuts away and we're not shown the fight.
A highlight of RWBY has always been the action scenes and they're some good ones. Like the Sun Vs Ilia brawl, Weiss Vs Lancers, Yang Vs the Bandits, Raven Vs Cinder and I even liked Blake Vs Ilia. The finale fight is garbage. You would think it would be a battle royal where characters go all at each other from different sides. Instead we have to deal with fights being cut away, stopping the fight for more exposition or just not showing the fight to show something less important. Ruby doesn't even use her incredibly useful super speed semblance once during that fight, even though it could have helped her! We get one scene of Yang's rematch with Mercury and that's it. Emerald and Ruby's fight is nothing more than Emerald shooting bullets and Ruby blocking them with her scythe. We never even get to see Qrow and his sister Raven fight each other. Some of the fights have completely absurd moments in it as well. Blake freezes both Fennec and Corsac in ice. And doesn't finish them off with an attack. Instead, she stands around talking! What makes this even worse is that Blake already froze Roman Torchwick back in Volume 2 and then immediately after that she knocked him down and beat him! Why does Kali stand in the middle of a room with no protection from people shooting at her? And then she's somehow able to block bullets with a tea tray. I've shot with guns before and believe me, there should be holes in that tea tray. But there isn't because logic doesn't exist.
Now here's some more of my complaints with this volume in quick points.
- Cinder is an idiot who doesn't fight Ruby once despite being wrapped up in revenge and then ruins Salem's plan for the sake of her own greed.
- Why were the characters all upset that Ozpin could turn people into birds but they weren't worried when his soul literally took over the life of an innocent person?
- We barely see Mistral and it's culture.
- Weiss getting impaled only for Jaune to get his semblance was lazy and predictable.
- Why did Miles and Kerry think it was a good idea for Ruby to randomly activate her Silver Eyes?
- Why is Yang surprised that Raven killed the Spring Maiden when Raven literally made an alliance with the people who destroyed Beacon and is a bandit?
- Hazel's backstory is forced into his fight with Oscar/ Ozpin and it has lots of holes in it that weren't addressed.
- Adam get knocked in the back of the head by Blake was stupid as was his tiny scuffle with Blake and Sun.
- The forced happy ending where everything is fine and everyone is happy made me skip the post end credit scene out of frustration.
- Sienna Khan is a wasted character killed in her debut episode.
- Ilia's important backstory is only told and shown.
- Adam has gone from a faunus who does horrible things in the name of equality for his people to Blake's jealous ex.
- Why was the confrontation between Cinder and Jaune so necessary when Cinder wants to go after Ruby more?
- The villains become so weak because of the plot.
This volume....ugh. I didn't want to hate it. I had high hopes for this one when I realized we would have more episodes and a final destination for all the characters to be at. But every wrong choice they could have made, they did. And for RWBY's hardcore fans, I'm not a hater. I'm even wearing a RWBY shirt right now as I'm writing this but this volume did the impossible. It made me not want to watch the rest of RWBY Volume 5 until it was over. I was done by the time episode 9 happened and just couldn't be bothered to watch the rest until it was done. I pray that Volume 6 becomes the saving grace this series needs. I'm not even excited for the next volume after this volume ended. Because by the end of RWBY: Volume 5 I was just depressed.
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