#lys posts

SPOILERS AHEAD, obviously.

So, I was incredibly disappointed with this third chapter. I was very hopeful after the first two, and I was looking to this one, but I think it felt flat in many ways. I’m probably going to make multiple posts about this, but right now I’d like to address the main failure : making Ozpin a morally ambiguous character.

They’ve been building up the idea that Ozpin was someone with secrets, someone we shouldn’t easily trust because of his dishonesty.

Their multiple attempts during v5 all fail. Hazel’s reason for hating him was irrational at best, and the whole bird thing is never actually shown to be a bad thing (how is it inconvenient in any way?).

The way chapter 2 sets the tone for chapter 3 led me to believe that we were finally going to be given a reason to distrust Ozpin. It all made it seem like he was hidding a big secret that would make people stop following him if they knew.

This chapter almost manages to do the opposite.

He was shown to be a good, kindhearted man, who just so happened to die (life be like that sometimes). He was brought back against his wishes, was given a task by a God (the one that’s supposed to be the good one mind you) out of nowhere. The one choice he had to make was either leave or stay with Salem, and he chose to leave as he couldn’t bear her turning evil.

So, what, he used to shag the villain, are we supposed to see him negatively for it? Are we expected to blame him for leaving her? What about all of it should make RWBY (and by extension, us) distrust him?

Anything bad that happened was shown to be either Salem’s or the Gods’ fault. Never Oz. Yes, he upset her when he left her, which apparently caused her to swarm Remnant with creatures of Grimm, but that’s on her. Not on him.

The only reproach that team RWBY and Oscar (and Qrow?) can make is that he is sending them to fight an enemy he knows to be immortal, but he hid that from them. But story-wise, it’s still done rather poorly. We’re given a 20-minutes-long story that essentially affirms that Oz is a good guy, and we’re supposed to have the last three seconds overshadow it all?

I’m disappointed. Like many, I was expecting Oz to play a direct part in why Salem turned evil.

The whole situation with Weiss and the bandits makes me think that they are seriously underestimating Weiss.

I don’t think it’s just because they have a maiden on their side + Raven flipping Branwen...

Perhaps it’s just that no one knows that Weiss is able to summon now. And tbh I’m sooo eager to see how every character out there reacts to finding out what Weiss can do.

We would have our new “Jaune”.

A faunus, dorky dude. Raised in Vacuo, but started attending Beacon. He would still befriend Ruby on his first day and would still be the leader of his team.

Rather average in combat, below everyone else we know, but not helpless. Still clueless about auras and history, so still the audience surrogate.

Instead of wanting to be a warrior because of his family, he would have lied his way into Beacon to escape the poverty in Vacuo and make something good out of his life. He didn’t have the means to attend a school like Signal, so he couldn’t build a weapon like everyone else, instead using a simplistic baton and training as much as he could by himself.

So, his only way into Beacon was a fake school application.

Learning about this would spur Weiss’s racism, leading to the Blake arc.

Instead of having a monkey faunus introduced out of the blue, our new Jaune would have been there already. He would have admitted he had suspected that she was a Faunus all along. His crush on her would have been made clearer at that point. He would genuinely spend time with her, who also enjoys his presence, instead of harassing Weiss. He would still be oblivious to Pyrrha’s crush on him.