#zsweber-studios

That individualism is also seen in those “personal reasons” that led both protagonists to their respective organizations. Ed and Al learn right at the start that the tool they’re using was always corruptible, but they still try to manipulate it to get what they want. It’s only the act of giving up alchemy entirely that gets Ed what he’s always been after, Al’s body, something that was only lost because of these ideas that they could take on the world with that power--literally reverse death. “That’s it! That’s the answer!” he hears when he announces that his friends and family are more important than this power. RWBY quite obviously hasn’t ended yet, but I can’t picture Ruby laying down her scythe with the knowledge that in order to find peace she must distance herself from that corruptible system and that’s partly because Ruby has no identity outside of that system. Her uncle is a huntsmen, so is her father, so was her mother--with Ruby copying her as much as possible--so is her sister, so are all her friends, Ruby is introduced to the viewer declaring that the only thing she wants in life is to be a huntress, gushing over how cool Glynda is. That’s her whole person, being a huntress. Ed? He wanted his mother. He wanted his brother. Giving up alchemy is easy in the end because alchemy was never what he really wanted in life, but being a huntress is what Ruby has always been after and the show has yet to do anything to teach her that her larger goal of helping people can be achieved through other means. And why would it? Because Ruby, as a huntress, is always the hero. According to the story, the problem is not society’s choice to give teenagers lethal weaponry and send them out into the world without any checks and balances, nor is the problem making use of military might to replace those individual fighters... the problem is only when someone other than Ruby tries to make use of those resources. Dumping people out of a plane, threatening a sibling with your sword, taking a headshot at an official, turning your weapons on your uncle... none of the little moments where we go “holy shit??” matter because RWBY functions under the belief that if the group is leveraging their power to steal, threaten, lie, or hurt it’s automatically for some excellent, world saving reason. They’re not corruptible. Never mind the number of people around them who have gone down that road (Raven, Adam, Lionheart, Ironwood, etc.) it’s simply not possible for them to repeat those mistakes. It’s a very Chosen One story and not in the way YA tends to deconstruct the trope. For RWBY it’s a very serious “Ruby is 100% pure and can do no wrong. If it looks like she’s doing wrong, she’s not. If it looks like she’s part of a corrupt system, she’s not. Ruby’s inherent heroism makes any possible action she takes heroic by default”... and that’s a bunch of nonsense that Arakawa understood.