Impressed Enough to Wrap Up
A few weeks into its fall season, Crunchyroll added the third series of the computer-animated RWBY. This was just when I had dropped one of the few new anime series I had so much as taken a chance on that season, so I had the time to start watching this more "domestic" production and the readiness to see it as softening the added blow to not playing the game so many others seem to these days of gulping down great quantities of up-to-date anime. However, it was possible that one small advantage of watching RWBY was that it was just a bit easier to avoid the comments of others about it lest they grind down whatever positivity I could manage the way they sometimes do with anime series themselves.
That the people making RWBY were able to continue after the much too early death of the series creator Monty Oum was something, but I still might have been aware that while things hadn't ended with the creeping feeling in the second series that the story weren't moving forward too much and the comment "that it's done at all" was starting to feel sort of inadequate in the face of the criticisms I had seen, those points were still there to start with. When the latest series led off with a "tournament," however, I did sort of have the feeling this could play to a strength. Just as in certain anime series themselves, it could be seen as a good excuse to get to the action without needing a lot of setup or serious consequences. Over the length of the nearly weekly episodes (and the episodes did seem to be getting longer, almost to the length of "regular" "half-hour" television episodes, without dragging too much), though, the perpetual ominous setup that had been kept out of sight of the main characters started to affect larger things, and this built to a pretty serious finale, one that might even have challenged the comfortable safety of the sort of "cartoons" some of those who watch anime might yet dismiss.
From where things left off, I do have the hope some things will be put back together. If everything is "put back together," that might wind up a bit less impressive than they seem as of this moment (a moment I still haven't risked against the opinions of anyone else, anyway...) Still, it was something that could yet be "living up to a legacy."
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/252741.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.
That the people making RWBY were able to continue after the much too early death of the series creator Monty Oum was something, but I still might have been aware that while things hadn't ended with the creeping feeling in the second series that the story weren't moving forward too much and the comment "that it's done at all" was starting to feel sort of inadequate in the face of the criticisms I had seen, those points were still there to start with. When the latest series led off with a "tournament," however, I did sort of have the feeling this could play to a strength. Just as in certain anime series themselves, it could be seen as a good excuse to get to the action without needing a lot of setup or serious consequences. Over the length of the nearly weekly episodes (and the episodes did seem to be getting longer, almost to the length of "regular" "half-hour" television episodes, without dragging too much), though, the perpetual ominous setup that had been kept out of sight of the main characters started to affect larger things, and this built to a pretty serious finale, one that might even have challenged the comfortable safety of the sort of "cartoons" some of those who watch anime might yet dismiss.
From where things left off, I do have the hope some things will be put back together. If everything is "put back together," that might wind up a bit less impressive than they seem as of this moment (a moment I still haven't risked against the opinions of anyone else, anyway...) Still, it was something that could yet be "living up to a legacy."
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/252741.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.