Feb

11

The Fake RWBY Volume 4 or Writing Issues and Pacing

Volume 4 of RWBY ended. We saw our favorite team being split through entire world and embarking onto journeys in entirely different continents, interacting with different characters. Yet for the scope the Volume 4 undertook, There’s a surprising lack of substance. Or Should I say, surprising lack of NEW substance.



Now many who followed my posts might have an inkling of thought on why I chose Ruby with the map as a opener picture to this post. Whether you do or not, let me tell you a tale about Volume 4, the Volume that as far as Narrative and Characters are concerned could as well not exist. In fact if we look from character point of view it literally does not exist. Why?

A long wall of text accompanied by images, charts and schemes waits you after the cut.



Introduction - Too Much Cause Not Enough Effect



Now to start talking about volume 4 first we need to remember where Volume 3 ended up.



I doubt anyone would try to contradict me in saying that Volume 3 ending was a game-changer. The core four characters were thrown out of comfort zones and out of their normal routines being supposedly forced to confront things they were running away from.

I mean Yang literally lost an arm and fell into depression, Weiss was forced to confront her abusive father, Ruby’s whole worldview crumbled and Blake felt guilty that Yang got hurt and ran. That’s gamechanger, by definition. The old setting falls apart, characters die, the main characters are thrown into four different directions. This is perfect point to DO SOMETHING with those characters right? There’s so many tragedies piling up in their lives that htey can’t simply run away, right? The very basic narrative structure would require them to face what happened. I mean YANG LOST AN ARM, how do you ignore that?



What’s more the characters are split up into separate groups, meaning giving character focus should be EASIER now, right?



And yet beyond Weiss struggle against her abusive family, Volume 4 fails to address any of what happened. Its like Ruby and the map. You can see her walking episode by episode, but they are still in the same forest road, as if walking still. And that term describes the problem with this Volume.



Walking Still - Or Going in Circles

The show is stuck. Volume 3 presented lots of cause for changes, yet there’s no effect to be found. There are some tries to shake up the status uo but ultimately the characters are either sitting still or walking in circles, retreading the old ground, walking down the paths that narrative and the writers seemingly forgot already having taken the characters through before.



Now to explore why Volume 4 ultimately is pointless and disappointing, let’s look at the journey of each of the four main characters and the writing issues that exist in each of the plotlines.

Ruby Rose - A story drowned out by white noise

Now Ruby had the best set up and most potential from where Volume 3 left off. Her worldview was shattered to pieces, two of her friends died in front of her eyes with her unable to save them. She was destroyed mentally by everything that happened. Again, I wrote abut her characterization before many times so I wont clog this up with that. Perfect set up that any capable writer would say needs to be followed through. You don’t put the characters through such issues and shrug it off.



And Writers do seem to remember that. Ruby is clearly not okay. She is suffering. And yet while Plot is realizing that, the narrative itself is willing to shy away from it because of how screentime in Ruby’s scenes is structured. To start talking abut that one has to use the terms of Narrative Foreground and Narrative Background.

Narrative Foreground is the main stage of Now and Here plot storytelling, where events are happening.



Narrative Background are where the meaning to the said events are assigned, where characterization sits, where character depth comes, where the author delivers clues and information about HOW Characters are and how it relates to what is going on.



If we are to visualize Ruby scenes via these concepts this is what we get:



Ruby and Jaune both share a role in the foreground, participating in the events, however when it comes to Narrative Background, Ruby’s characterizatin is drowned out. When it comes to character focus, Jaune and the rest are getting it far more than she. Ruby is relegated to observer role which is ridiculous considering the build-up.



For 12 episodes all we really see of her are some clues that she is not okay told via foreground and then her just either looking at others or at the map.While others around her are getting active proper development and focus

The flaw with writing of Ruby’s character this volume is possibly best showcased by Volume 4 Chapter 10. Namely the scene which starts with Ruby Opening up for the first time in the volume:

This is a perfect way to segue into exploring how SHE feels, perfect opening for that and yet Narrative does not allow her that:

In a single split second moment the focus shifts away from developing HER and how SHE FEELS to developing how OTHERS feel. In a single moment the scene that starts as a chance to develop her as a character and give some needed and albeit very late development to her. Yet we do not get that. Its crazy but she is literally an observer in a scene ABOUT HER. And in turn we learn more about what Jaune thinks about the journey and what is going on and what Ruby must be going through than how Ruby herself feels. Mind you this is literally the only scene till the finale that bothers even addressing Ruby’s emotional state and characterization. That’s it.

In whole Volume Four Ruby exists as solely an element in development of OTHERS. She is a backdrop element for Jaune’s development and then she is backdrop element for Ren and Nora’s journey and story. And any capable writer would be pulling their hair out of frustration when thinking about the complete lack of follow-up to what happened and waste of PROTAGONIST this way.



Weiss - The Star of the Volume 4

I am not joking when I say that Weiss is easily the upper-limit of writing quality of this volume. Not only she gets logical follow-through from where she edded up i n Volume 3 but her story does not feel as disjointed and fits her character and respects her character.



Yet her storytelling as logical as it is is not without issues. Hilariously the issues with the overall season structure and with other characters hurt her own story, because as insane as it sounds, Show just does not have the time to give proper screentime to volume’s most coherent storyline and is more interested in showing others walking still.



The thing that trips up Weiss story i s how disjointed it is. We are jumping forward in time an unclear amount of weeks each time she gets screentime. One chapter she learns about the upcoming charity concert. The next? Oh look its suddenly week latter and she is in it already singing. So while her overall characterization is continuous and makes sense, the viewer has to fill in blanks on actual plot that is going on, from which her storyline suffers. The show never tries to establish Atlas beyond the charity event and the abusive father and brother. The show never bothers to set the tone of what is going on because it is frantically struggling to use the screentime to do that in the other stories that have NOTHING going on. In turn Weiss interesting stay at home and confrontation with her issues feels incomplete, because Show jumps away from showing it.



Which hilariously is the opposite of a problem with the plotlines of last two members of team RWBY

Blake - And Walking in Circles through Old Paths

I have to admit, at first I was confused and intrigued that my guess about Blake deciding to take over White Fang because of Yang getting hurt was incorrect. I was intrigued on where the show could take her and what kind of plot will she have at home. And yet as volume progressed, I was less and less excited for it.



Because I realized I am watching a weird Rerun of TheStray/Black and White with show having forgotten it happened already.



I am conflicted at deciding what could be the possible reasons of what they did with Blake this volume. Did they just have no idea what to write for her?



volume starts off with inventing an issue. An issue Blake already faced, an issue about running away. Volume ends with resolving that issue. Again.

Its just redundant. If I were to put whole Volume 4 Blake story into a scheme of narrative structure I would have something like this:



Let me ask you, what is the point of the red rectangle elements?

For Blake? NONE. We are retreading the ground already walked with her character towards the same outcome that is already possible. She walks full circle to where she was at the end of Volume 3. None of what happened in Volume 3 is addressed. Not in any time in the story does Blake address what happened to Yang. The most you get is vague friends speech(which goes against Volume 3 having singled out Yang in terms of Blake narrative) which is LITERALLY A COPY FROM Volume 1 Finale. You could start Volume 4 with where Blake is at the end of it and nothing would be lost.



The only one “benefiting” from it is Sun because this whole detour literally is there to place importance on him. I say “benefiting” in quotation marks because there’s no benefit to him as a character. In fact problematic and creepy behavior of his here feels out of character and weird. Its a disservice to him as a character, it does not develop him and it just (rightfully so) paints a target on him because of his character giving off wrong vibes in the story.There’s a scary dissonance between what writers seem to WANT us to view Sun as and how they write it. Because stalking and disrespect for personal boundaries is “charming and cool’ y’all. It literally accomplishes nothing beyond placing importance on a character with barely any screentime and development before(Let’s be frank, the last time Sun was important or got focus was mid-Volume2.)

I am not saying they did this detour storyline solely to have plausible deniability for their queerbaiting of Blake/Yang with how Volume 3 ended, but….screw it that’s the only logical explanation I can muster at this…



Yang - The Pointless Screentime

Let’s make this clear. I Like Yang’s character a LOT. She always was under-represented and her issues were always in the background, so with what happened in Volume 3 I was excited. Because Yang was second to only Ruby with the amount of things that have happened to her to throw her off her status quo. You can’t just disappear her depression and lost arm, right?



Turns out you can.



Now to give the show credit where its due, the start of her story sets up PTSD perfectly. The way a trigger is portrayed is perfect. The way her detached behavior is is PERFECT. And then show fucks it all up. How?



Let’s imagine you take the problems from Ruby’s side of story, problems from Weiss side of story and problems from Blake’s side of story and throw ALL of those mistakes into single storyline.



This is Yang in Volume 4:

See the problem with this? I did not even bother to add proper labels because of how pointless a schematic is this . Not only her plotline is even more disjointed than Weiss, but there’s zero actual characterization there too ANd whatever there is is pointless.



Okay I can try to make a clearer schematic to showcase how such a fusion would look:

The Above timeline is with most of Yang’s Volume 4 events removed.

The Below timeline is how it happened in show.

See the red bits? They literally are pointless. The only difference between the above fictional Volume 4 with those bits removed and the actual “fake” volume 4 that happened is that it took 12 episodes of screentime wasted to get to the same point without accomplishing anything else.





The pacing is awful. Yang’s screentime jumps around weeks into future and feels very disjointed. One episode she is with PTSD and being guilt-tripped into training, the next? She is suddenly training and totally fine. The story is problematic. People yelling at Yang to STOP MOPING? Port comparing PTSD to fear of mice? The narrative treating Yang being guilt tripped into accepting a robo arm to be useful as thing to be celebrated, a positive?! The show devolving into magic prosthetics territory via just pretending all of Yang’s problems faded away just because she got this “totally feeling natural and totally great and strong prosthetic arm”? The story ignores Yang’s issues and trivializes mental and physical disability.

The story is essentially pointless. We learn nothing about Yang, we develop nothing. In fact the set up from Volume 3 is just DROPPED. You literally would not lose anything by starting the volume off with where it ended - at least with offscreen healing proccess, the viewer would not have to deal with ableism in show.



Department of Redundancy Department



Now problems and all, at least something happened, plot-wise, right? WRONG.

Let’s sum up the plot progression of all four storylines in one big image, shall we?

What a shocker, we started and ended Volume 4 on relatively same point as Volume 3. And majority of what happened is literally a rehash of what already happened. So what is the point, again?



Conclusion

When it comes to plot progression or character progression, the only purpose Volume 4 serves is background info that could have been delivered in World of Remnants or actual storylines.

Ren and Nora storyline could have easily been a miniseries between Volume 3 and Volume 4 showing them traveling to Mistral and rest of what we saw in Volume 4 not being shown and nothing would be lost.It would have been better even as most of the narrative mistakes and inconsistencies would be avoided.



Instead what we got is essentially flawed and pointless Volume that does noting of substance, wastes multiple narrative set-ups Volume 3 left and has serious pacing and writing issues and lots of problematic elements. It does not feel like a real Volume. It feels like a fake volume that fills in the season between Volumes, ala RWBY Chibi.

In fact you can most likely skip Volume 4 and you would not be lost in anything from the indications so far.

I ended Volume 3 excited for what is ahead. I ended Volume 4 worried for writers capability of executing whatever ideas or plans they have.