Crossover With Non-anime Series Fan Fiction ❯ Terdwilicker's Anime Reviews ❯ RWBY ( Chapter 27 )

What works in RWBY is the comedy of a school that hunts monsters. The fight scenes are great fun, lots of acrobatics and spitting in the eye of Newton. The characters are clearly having lots of fun, and the comedy is turned up to 11, which works. It really does work. 

Where it falls apart is turning this comedy into a show about bullying, including the attempted murder of a celebrity, the sort of thing that gets the entire family of the perps murdered and their heads put on pikes. No seriously. That used to be the penalty for that sort of thing as recently as the 1800s. The bullying sub-plot doesn't work. The training between Pyrrha and Jaune does work, and is a great romance arc for the characters. It depicts the kindness and devotion of the celebrity girl who likes the shy boy who knows nothing about her, and was very popular with the show's fans. So when she gets murdered by the villainess at the end of season 3 (spoiler? Hasn't everyone seen that by now?) many people were angry and rage-quit the show. Considering the following seasons were consistently worse and more depressing AND boring and not fun at all? Yeah, it is amazing anybody is still making this show because when you kill a character at the height of their popularity, even if you do foreshadow it with a name like Pyrrha Nikos (pyrrhic victory aka sacrifice), you do yourselves no favors. Making your fans rage-quit is also bad for the future of your program, and the jobs of the people working there. 

Additionally, it was around this time that the main creator of the series, and animator of all the fight scenes, and most of the character creation too, that guy had a food allergy to a very common ingredient, yet for some reason did NOT carry what is called an epipen, which is recommended for anyone with similar allergies. He had doctors orders to have one at all times. And he didn't, ate some mystery food, his throat closed up and he suffocated and suffered major brain damage from oxygen deprivation. His family turned off the life support because everything that was him had already died.

Many in the entertainment industry called this a suicide. Extremely oversensitive hypocrites feel that empathy requires them to overlook this obvious suicide as a suicide and insist it was a tragic accident. You don't ignore your deadly allergy and play russian roulette with it, then be shocked when the chamber is loaded with death. Sorry, no. This was a suicide. It is a shame. He was a good animator and very creative and he is missed, but he opted to kill himself and that happens to very creative people sometimes. It is the big downside of creativity. 

RWBY would have been amazing if the entire story was as funny as the first season before the bullying ruined it. It is really terrible because the animation studio, Rooster Teeth, pretty much specializes in comedy and ad-lib, and they're good at it. 

"I wanna be a normal girl, with normal knees!" Ruby Rose.