They are, in recent world of remnants, contradicting prior world building (like why are so many Greek coded characters from an incredibly stereotypical Asian area? Why do we have a Chinese coded character from a vaguely African coded area? And there would be one thing if there had been prior indication that it was like that but before this point everyone from these cultures that we had actual nationalities for was consistent in cultural aesthetic and appearance and now the characters don’t even look like they’re from those areas. Please see Pyrrha Nikos looking decidely not Asian. Sun looking decidedly not African. And don’t forget Blake being coded as a very western civilization street kid, but now she’s Menagerian royalty? It just doesn’t make a lot of sense)
They’re kind of obnoxious
They refuse to answer actual critical questions a fan asked in a panel, so far as letting another audience member curse said fan out.
The writing is derivative and just leaves a LOT to be desired.
We were told that we’d get a canon LGBT character and that we’ve already met said character but there has yet to be a single hint as to who it is or what they are. On top of that every reason they have given for why they can’t introduce them yet doesn’t make sense because we have already had several hetero couples introduced doing the same thing that M&K have said as their reasons for not introducing said character. (Not important to the plot? What about Weiss and Neptune, what plot role did they play other than angst for Jaune? Can’t just come out and shove two characters together? Sun and Blake were all but confirmed the moment he was introduce. There’s been no good moment for a romantic subplot? Then what the hell was the entire school dance arc? Don’t want to introduce someone just to be a love interest? Neptune.) Not to mention they had the perfect moment to have Neptune as a LGBT character but instead they turned away from that and had an obnoxious joke about him being unable to dance. There was literally every sign leading to Neptune being gay, including him being hesitant to admit why he didn’t go to the dance with Weiss and it was honestly incredibly heart breaking when that wasn’t the reason. LGBT community is starved for good representation and M&K are toying with that.
They don’t know how to center the show around Ruby. She has had more screen time than Jaune and yet the reason everyone pegs Jaune as the actual protagonist (and complains about it because it’s honestly upsetting) is because they know how to write Jaune as a main character, they have no idea how to use Ruby and the show suffers incredibly for it. Jaune is a good character, but because of their poor writing with Ruby people honestly hate him, and I understand why because I did too before I realized why. We were promised a story driven by four kick ass ladies and instead got a story that, thus far, has been driven almost entirely by another Aryan nation looking dude with a sword and angst over a lost lover.
Which brings me to the fight with Pyrrha’s death. Pyrrha should NOT have lost that fight. Pyrrha is literally the most OP character that RWBY has shown us (that we’ve seen fighting). She has control over polarity. She was surrounded by metal. Giant metal gears. Cinder was obviously stunned when she got hit with one. Pyrrha is an incredibly smart and talented fighter who has been in fights before. She should have been able to stun lock Cinder and whack her with the gear until her aura was depleted enough to grind her with said gear like a fucking ant. Pyrrha should NOT have lost that fight and it literally makes to sense to have her do so other than “plot demands it” and that is a lazy and terrible reason.
Roman’s death. They have said so themselves that they killed him because he got more popular than they had original planned and he was never meant to be as important as he ended up being…ok? So why kill him? You now have a character which people love. You know how hard it is to write a good villian that people love? And you had one fall into your lap? You don’t kill them off! You capitalize! Ok. Maybe I could understand killing him off if he is now a threat to the established plot. But don’t do it as a shock factor joke. This is a character fans loved. You don’t off him for a joke.
Penny’s death. I can justify Penny’s death. I honestly can. It was plot relevant it made sense. Ok. But then they gave the “word of god” that she wasn’t going to be rebuilt and brought back which makes no sense. She is a robot. Her memory banks are intact. I don’t care if she got attacked with a magnetic blast, if her father was any decent engineer her memory banks would be protected against such things. But, I guess M&K don’t understand how computers work and that there are protections against magnets. I guess they don’t realize google is a thing and they can literally do research while they’re writing. Let’s not forget the fact, she is made out of metal and would form a natural Faraday Cage against such attacks.
The silver eye bullshit. I don’t have as big of an issue with the Maidens, like I’ll leave those be cause it’s honestly a writing move I would have made. But. The Silver Eye Warriors was some bull shit. Every hint they gave us was pointing to Ruby being the Summer maiden. It was obvious. And not in the red herring type way but in the “this is where we want to be leading our fans” type way. And then they come out of, almost, literally fuck off no where with the Silver Eye thing and it just didn’t fit.
Jaune’s weapons literally give him an OP fighting style (People, based solely on weapon choice who have no hope of beating Jaune: Weiss, Cinder, Yang, Mercury, Black, Sun, Neptune, Emerald, Ren, Fox, Russel, and so on and so on) There’s a reason sword and board was great up until the invention of fire arms (which aren’t even that relevant in RWBY due to aura. Not only that, but all the ones in RWBY we’ve seen have been incredibly low power including the “high impact” sniper rifle). Please nerf. Pyrrha, as I have said, has an ENTIRELY OP fighting style. Ruby, is said to have the most dangerous weapon designed, and it ain’t even that dangerous. The most dangerous part of it is it’s a gun and we’ve seen people get shot and walk away thanks to auras. None of this has been explored, or touched on, or even explained. Jaune frequently gets his ass kicked despite the fact that he should be tanking.
Ruby’s obnoxiousness in RWBY V4 E1. That entire scene with Jaune’s shirt just came off as obnoxious and gross. Why would she laugh at her friend for liking a brand of cereal or sending in box tops? Like that doesn’t seem like something she would laugh at, it seems like something she would do. Not to mention it’s a brand of cereal that has emotional context now because of who’s face must have been plastered on every single fucking box. Especially once Jaune seemed to obviously be upset at her doing so she kept teasing him and laughing. It was a terrible scene and not at all like what we have seen of Ruby thus far.
They have literally no idea how to use character development at all whatsoever. We see that with Jaune, Ruby, Tucker (RvB. We should have had a lot more character development for him in the Chorus arc but we didn’t and it was gross.), Pyrrha (who had no character beyond being a good fighter and being in love with Jaune. At all. There was literally no other point to her character.), and lets not even bring up Black, Nora, and Ren having no character development from this season and Nora STILL doesn’t have any.
Jaune’s “WE HIT IT HARDER” and then proceeding to not even hitting it harder and the plan he came up with having nothing to do with hitting it harder. And he’s allegedly the tactics guy? It becomes quite clear that someone on the writing team (M&K) does not understand tactics.
Jaune was gaining agency as a leader, becoming more serious and a better fighter. And then we get to season 3 and he back slide so fucking hard and is suddenly no good in a fight? Alright. That sounds like terrible writing. But alright.
Team SSSN are useless other than maybe Sun. And what we know of them could fill a thimble and it won’t even fully fill said thimble.
Remember that time Neptune ran to the other side of the enemy team and everyone yelled at him? That was actually efficient tactics. Because it put team NDGO in a bad situation because Neptune can now fire on them forcing them to priorities between going after him or going after the rest of team SSSN.
Can we also talk about the absurdity of Neptune only having a fear of water because his VA can’t swim. When literally he is named off of, and takes literary influence from, the god of the fucking ocean?
Also the fact that Miles Luna has a self insert in every single show he’s ever written for and his only real talent is as a VA.
All in all they have ruined a show I was incredibly excited for when it first came out and was incredibly invested in up until season 3 where it went down hill. There’s probably more but this is all I could think of on such short notice.
I’d complain more about RvB but it’s in not so recent memory so I can’t effectively do it.
[screaming externally] 