RWBY Volume 5

Easy

Right Honorable Justice
Member
Well, since the trailer came out today, I thought I'd point it out. I'm actually pretty stoked for S5 myself, since I liked #4. Less good than S3, sure - but then, S3 was always gonna be a really tough act to follow, whereas S4 isn't nearly as much so. Then again, dunno if I find the pre-release material all that promising after all...


Thoughts?
 
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Easy

Right Honorable Justice
Member
Heyyy, c'mon, let's be real... was there really a lot less stuff going on in season 4 than there was in, e.g., seasons 1 & 2? Arguably even combined?

..but yeah, I can kinda get where you're coming from. I think that Season 5 (the beginning of the Haven arc) is gonna be more plot-heavy and also more action-heavy than Season 1 (the beginning of the Beacon arc), but I could be wrong. In fact, if anything, the pre-release materials has me thinking they're moving to stretch out the S4 material even further than they already have...

I'm just hoping that I've been wrong about that.
 

Requiem

Well-Known Member
Member
I wouldn't say that's a fair assessment of the earlier seasons. Seasons 1 and 2 were establishing seasons. We get the formation of the teams, the structure of all the rivalries and friendships, plus moments that make us love these characters (Jaune in a dress as an example), which leads to the dark moments of season 3 mattering to the audience more. It made the deaths feel earned and like actual losses as opposed to just being death for the sake of edginess.

You get to see how the schools work, what hunter and huntress society is like, as well as the overall political/racial climate of the world. You get to see the teams out their training in use and go out on an actual mission that ends up being far more than they bargained for, but had to deal with anyways. That gives us insight into the villains' plans to attack Beacon. This is a lot of meat to chew through.

Then season 4 comes along and it's fine, but what did we really get? Some backstory, Ruby's new team doing a lot of walking in the woods, Yang gets a robot arm, Weiss still hates her family, Blake still has to worry about doing something about the white fang. Not a lot pushed the status quo in last season. I still enjoyed the season immensely, I liked that it was quieter and gave all of the characters time for reflection after the absolute wallop that was the ending of season 3. It still didn't really have much going on though. The plot was pretty slim all around.

I'm more than okay with that since we get season 5 so much sooner than we normally would have. It hasn't been a full year has it? Either way, still seems closer to the end of the last season than normal. I'm excited to see what comes next, but season 4 definitely didn't have more happening in it than the first 3 seasons combined.
 

Easy

Right Honorable Justice
Member
I wouldn't say that's a fair assessment of the earlier seasons. Seasons 1 and 2 were establishing seasons. We get the formation of the teams, the structure of all the rivalries and friendships, plus moments that make us love these characters (Jaune in a dress as an example), which leads to the dark moments of season 3 mattering to the audience more. It made the deaths feel earned and like actual losses as opposed to just being death for the sake of edginess.

You get to see how the schools work, what hunter and huntress society is like, as well as the overall political/racial climate of the world. You get to see the teams out their training in use and go out on an actual mission that ends up being far more than they bargained for, but had to deal with anyways. That gives us insight into the villains' plans to attack Beacon. This is a lot of meat to chew through.

Then season 4 comes along and it's fine, but what did we really get? Some backstory, Ruby's new team doing a lot of walking in the woods, Yang gets a robot arm, Weiss still hates her family, Blake still has to worry about doing something about the white fang. Not a lot pushed the status quo in last season. I still enjoyed the season immensely, I liked that it was quieter and gave all of the characters time for reflection after the absolute wallop that was the ending of season 3. It still didn't really have much going on though. The plot was pretty slim all around.

I'm more than okay with that since we get season 5 so much sooner than we normally would have. It hasn't been a full year has it? Either way, still seems closer to the end of the last season than normal. I'm excited to see what comes next, but season 4 definitely didn't have more happening in it than the first 3 seasons combined.
Well, I said either of the first two and arguably both... but, anyway. I don't diss the first two seasons; I liked them, even if I thought the end of S2 was kinda sloppily done. But I also think that if you take S3 out of the picture, #4 holds up pretty favorably compared to both of them. There are very good reasons they didn't get all that much plot motion going, I'm not denying that - I'm saying that the same thing very much holds true for S4, which both tied up the loose threads torn up by the Season 3 final battle (which took three whole seasons to set up, again, and for good reason) and set up the next big thing to come.

Season 4 was all about dealing with loss and moving on, and that was some heavy loss they were dealing with. It seemed like the writers were stretching it out at the time, when I was actively waiting for each next episode where hopefully something big would happen (and therefore always got kinda disappointed), but, going back through it later, I think it actually kinda had to take that long, because all the shit that went down in the fall of Beacon was the kinda shit-going-down that you don't just immediately recover from. That they managed to work in a bunch of stuff about the villains and the Faunus, Qrow/Raven, Atlesian politics, and Ozpin's weirdly Maiden-esque scenario etc., while driving home the emphasis on what a big deal the overarching conflict was, made it actually a pretty well-done season in my opinion.

Anyway. Off to watch Season 5 opening babyyyyy! Here's hypin'[sic].
 

Requiem

Well-Known Member
Member
Eh, you can do all of that emotional recoil and recovery while still moving the actual plot along. I wasn't expecting a massive battle again or anything like that, but most of the characters are all more or less in the same place they were when they started. They got better emotionally, a little bit. They recovered to an extent, but beyond their character arcs, in terms of the story arc, not a lot changed. That's what was disappointing about season 4.

It was good, I still liked it, but character development needs to be fortified with story development as well and there wasn't enough of it, imo.
 

Jeroth

Mach Ambassador
Moderator
Fuck, I just finished watching it. The season 5 opening is so god damn hot.

Overall, god damn. They got a budget and it was super enjoyable to watch. I'm eager to see more fight scenes after the Yang trailer.
 

Easy

Right Honorable Justice
Member
My only problem with the Season 5 opening is that there wasn't goddamn more of it, and it isn't next Saturday yet.
 

13thforsworn

Well-Known Member
Member
So when does the episode become open to the public? I'm logged into the RT website and it's still behind the First Member paywall. I thought it went free to the public on Sunday morning?

EDIT: So apparently it's Sunday for First Members, Tuesday for the peasants. Thought they were Sticking to the Saturday/Sunday release like for season 4.
 

Easy

Right Honorable Justice
Member
There's a 1-month free trial, if you like? Assuming you haven't, already.

Also, goddamn @Jeroth you right bro. That Yang trailer choreography is some of the toppest this show's had so far, and that's saying a lot.
 

Steal Thy Kill

Well-Known Member
Member
Happy Spoiler Alert: Based on Episode 2 it looks like RT is going to consistently give us the 20 minute episodes this show needs. Thank god.
 

Easy

Right Honorable Justice
Member
I read up to "spoiler alert" and stopped, so thanks for that. Gotta get off work first...

EDIT: Oh.
Well, that episode did not satisfy nearly as completely as the last one did.

Weiss sure leveled up, though.

Hazel remains quite obviously the best in that group.

Team RRNJ going rogue next episode maybe?
 
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Tag_Ross

Well-Known Member
Member
I can't stand how little content each volume actually contains (the episodes have been getting longer though so that's great) so I usually don't watch until the entire volume is released.

I totally forgot to watch volume 4, only remembering about it when I saw 5-2 on my YouTube recommendeds, but after catching up I realised that thinking about the volumes as "seasons" isn't correct, to me it feels like vols 1-3 were season 1 and vol 4 was season 2 part 1.

I'm going to try to keep up with the weekly releases this volume though.
 

Easy

Right Honorable Justice
Member
I realised that thinking about the volumes as "seasons" isn't correct, to me it feels like vols 1-3 were season 1 and vol 4 was season 2 part
Pretty sure that's actually how RT describe them.

Volume 5 has just been downright Cliffhangcon 2017 episode after episode so far. :(
 

Easy

Right Honorable Justice
Member
Update: Now on Volume 5 Episode 9.
More build-up happened, somehow.
 
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