hello i am russell and i like to critique things! this is a blog where i'll probably get grumpy about manga, fanfiction, books, or whatever else i can get my grubby little hands on.
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i haven't been here in a looong time but rest assured i've never stopped thinking about critiques. there's still so much i'd love to talk about, and i'd like to get back into my rwby reviewing as well!
i may upload some more critical thought in pieces at some point later on. while my rwby reviews are all liveblogs, i'm thinking i'll do some of this stuff in advance and then make posts about it periodically. if anyone has any thoughts on this--or on the blog in general--feel free to say something. :0
yes, iām still here! iām sorry iāve been inactive--iām a sophomore in college and this stuff eats up my time more than iād like. but i do have a treat for you: some short analyses of the four ācolorā trailers for RWBY! as recommended to me by @hon-b, who i canāt seem to @ for some reason. i need a break from finals work so hereās some good olā-fashioned critique talk~
so letās start out with the Red trailer.
the opening shots of this one are straight-up beautiful. and the fight scene with the grimm(?) is really nice... surprisingly violent for something i thought was intended for teens. i like how itās a red riding hood parallel, especially since i donāt think weāve had enough fairy tale references yet and the lack of them is starting to stick out. watching ruby wield that death-gun-scythe-thing whose name i canāt recall off the top of my head is just fantastic! weāve even got a red-black-white color scheme going throughout the video to tie everything together.
i think the vocals are still kind of wonky though--the singerās clearly having some trouble hitting the high notes. thereās not a lot of substance here since itās basically just an extended fight scene, but it seems to exist to get people hype for the show and it does that super well so iām not gonna fault it for being a little shallow.
my rating: tumblr gifset-worthy! also why do the links to the white and black trailers work at the end but not the yellow one wtf
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moving onto the White trailer now...
so this one opens up with a quote... and even a little bit of dialogue. itās a little distracting after the complete lack of speech in the red trailer, but i guess it works. weissās singing is very pretty--the high notes are spot-on this time, which is awesome!--and the opening visuals are beautiful. not that i want to question the music too hard, but isnāt the āmirror, mirror on the wallā thing referencing the evil queen? at least the instrumentation is gorgeous here, especially the opening piano!
iām not sure if the elaborate fight scene is necessary here, honestly. a fight scene works, yes, but here itās so dramatic and tense that it detracts from the music. i get that itās supposed to be a contrast with the opening and ending scenes, but itās a little too strong of a contrast for me. the fact that the bloodstain on her face disappears at the end is even weirder; like, was that supposed to be an illusion, or something she was thinking about? what i do like, though, is the final visual of weiss curtsying in an empty space--the applause rings hollow. as the lyrics of the song state, she is truly the loneliest of all. i guess this one tried to be a little deeper than the red trailer and it shows. nice work!
my rating: beautiful music, needs some work with the transitions. weissās weaponry simply isnāt as cool as rubyās and that makes her fights less interesting to watch for now. the link to the yellow trailer still aināt workinā
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and now for the Black trailer!
alright, so we're opening up with another quote. these quotes feel a little too abstract to mean anything at this point, so they might not be necessary, but we'll see. i'm not impressed with the fact that blake doesn't get to do her trailer on her own like ruby and weiss did. also the music is subpar at best, and definitely the worst of the ones i've heard so far. the electronic parts just don't work for me, at all.
on the plus-side, the scenery is beautiful, but we spend portions of the trailer inside a train car where we can't even see it! as cool as a fight scene on top of a train is, i don't think the trailer really shows off what can be done with it. i just recently watched the incredibles 2, which has an awesome scene of elastigirl trying to stop a train--coming to this afterward is pretty disappointing, even though i obviously don't expect rwby to be pixar-level. the dialogue here is really hammy and phoned-in, especially with adam. i really don't like the fact that it's here at all, actually. the red trailer didn't need dialogue to tell its story, and it could've been removed in the white trailer too. so why is it here when it absolutely doesn't need to be? also... where was the fairy tale parallel here? did i miss it?
my rating: Unnecessary Man Appearance. let blake handle it herself, dammit. or at least don't have him speak because his voice makes me roll my eyes big-time. ALSO THE LINK TO THE YELLOW TRAILER STILL ISN'T THERE
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finishing up with the Yellow trailer.
yang has a lot to live up to here, being the last of the four to have a trailer. and unfortunately hers follows up on the black trailer's trend of unnecessary dialogue. the voice-acting isn't as bad as the black trailer's, but there's more of it and it doesn't need to be here at ALL. especially with the two girls yang fights--they didn't need to speak, or really do much at all. their appearance takes away from yang's badassery, just a little bit. so does her whole crotch-kick thing, which feels unnecessarily comedic and kinda pointless. it feels as if they tried too hard to make her "cool" and it just comes off as awkward and forced.
on the plus-side, the scenery gets WAY better the moment yang steps into the club (walk into the club like waddup i got a big...uh...heart), going back to those nice color schemes from the other trailers. and my favorite thing about this trailer by far is the music--i love the remixes of the other girls' themes and how they build up to a fantastic theme for yang. once again, though, it's hindered by the dialogue. i'm still not a big fan of the voice-acting in this show, and ruby and yang's exchange at the end absolutely doesn't need to be here! honestly i'd rather just see yang look up, meet ruby's gaze, and then give her a kind, knowing smile. that would do a lot more for us than a cheesy bit of talking. i guess i've hardly talked about the fight scene here, so here's how i feel about it: HELL YEAH HELL YEAH HELL YEAH KICK ASS OUT THERE
my rating: would be my favorite trailer if it weren't for the dialogue. also, if this is supposed to be a "culmination" trailer and ruby and blake appear briefly, where did weiss go? did i miss her? so many questions!
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so there you have it, folks. just some casual musings on the color trailers. no individual screenshots or anything because these are too isolated and there isn't much i can comment on. but overall i liked them and i think (aside from the wonky dialogue and such) they're a great way to get you hyped for the show! now if only the show would follow their example and try to be a little more, uh... intense? maybe?
see ya later! and sorry for the wait! iāll try to be more active soon, i promise!
-russell <3
i really wish there was a gender-neutral term they could use here, because casual nonbinary erasure really stings. but, i meanā¦ Huntspeople? Huntsfolk? awkward.
Justā¦ stop. Donāt. Let there be some phrases that donāt appeal to everyone. And FUCK gender neutrality. Crap like that is the reason the LGBT community keeps getting shit from the internet
Iād say theyāre worth a watch. To be honest I think theyāre 90% Monty showing off, but itās still a fun time, and will add some context to a few later scenes.
hm, alright! iāll keep that in mind then! thank you very much :)
Have you watched the four RWBY color trailers? They're not mandatory for the plot but they each contain their own story and do add a different perspective for the main characters.
iāve got a lot of responses here for @dark-guerra !! so iām gonna number each of my replies to make this simpler.
1. it seems odd to me that oum would have made a show entirely as an outlet for animating a bunch of combat scenes, but thatās also totally plausible. i mean, the story is pretty weak so far, and the worldbuilding is fragile--i want to see more of that and less of some of the more awkward banter--and the animation is faulty outside of fight scenes. but iāve been told it all gets better with time, so iām gonna stick it out!
2. really? i hope sheās not too static. i want to see her grow and change, if only a little bit :(
3. thatās especially weird... like, as a kid i wouldnāt have enjoyed this. i understand trying to appeal to a broad audience but iād say this showās primary demographic is preteens/teens. not kids. and given how many spoiler tags you just used, something tells me the stakes will be raised quite a bit over time. so hopefully theyāll drop the kidsā show angle too?
4. oh, so that wasnāt just a fault of the animation? awesome! in that case i can give them full marks for some awesome foreshadowing leading up to yangās actual fights!!! :D
you know itās been a rough day when your first thoughts are āat least thereās some skin tone varianceā andĀ āglad theyāre not using shadow-people again!ā
Vomit Boy wearing bunny pajamas just makes him look like even more of a mamaās boyā¦ that combined with theĀ ānice guyā behavior worries me.
oh my god??? thank you for giving me a laugh today @rwby-fan-number-183 !!! and i guess if this is to be believed he really does get better later, and thatās a super-exciting prospect! canāt wait to see where the show will take us!
alright, that was rwby chapter 3. it was an alright episode, but i guess itās a pretty big tell when the things i liked the most about it were blakeāsĀ āofficialā introduction and the designs of the girlsā pajamas.
itās not a bad episode by any means; however, i think it would have benefited a lot from just being tacked onto episode 2. combined, theyād be about the same length as the first episode, removing the episode-length problems iāve been having. not to mention that theyāre literally listed as beingĀ āpart 1ā andĀ āpart 2,ā as if they were once together and have been split apart for whatever reason.
also i still donāt see anything redeeming about weiss. she has a lot to apologize for at this point (unlike yang, who i believe has managed to redeem herself to some degree by being a good older sister--maybe she realized she messed up and is now trying to compensate without admitting her wrongdoings?).
weāre still in an exposition phase at this point, i think. i wish things could progress a little faster, but i guess the show needs time to find its footing and show us the way the world works. maybe?
next episode coming... whenever i can, i guess? see ya!
so we finally see all the girls together, and theyāre fighting over nothing while people are trying to get some rest around them. i guess that shows the lack of harmony between them at this point, which i presume will change over time... but itās still kind of wonky here.
i do like how this scene cuts out--and the episode ends--with blake blowing out her candle. given the chandeliers in the background it wouldnāt actually darken the room that much, but it does a great job of showing us that sheās just as done with this fighting as we are.
...and then the show loses all its built-up brownie points by trying to be silly with a fight-scene dust cloud. :/
like... really? the transition is too abrupt, and given where this is happening theyāre probably surrounded by people and would cause a major disturbance before they can get into anything. i also donāt get why theyāre fighting at all when yang just says sheās proud of her sister--i know that can be annoying, but itās nothing worth starting a fight over!
honestly this would probably be better if it was a cute little slap-fight, or a quick exchange kind of like wirt and greg in the first chapter of over the garden wall:
itās funny how theyāre talking like this when iām fairly sure a bunch of this show is based on fairy tales (e.g. the main character being little red riding hood, etc.). but seriously, this is another nice moment!
on the downside, though, the zoom-in is bland and uninteresting and ruby is super generic here. i wish she was a little more specific about what interested her so much.
i absolutely love this little moment of ruby asking blake about her book. you can see blakeās eyes widen a bit, and some of her cold persona drops when she realizes sheās being asked about something she likes. maybe sheās not used to talking about her interests, or finding others who share them. itās sad because iāve met so many people like that and i think iām one of them.
but i really like this. blake is either purposely antisocial or has no idea what sheās doing, and thatās an interesting balance to have at this point in the show.
āYes. Itās lovely. Almost as nice as this book... that I will continue to read... as soon as you leave.ā
so is she being purposely antisocial, or does she have no idea what sheās doing? the plot thickens. also i love the comedic switches from the Sister Squad to blake and back again.
