RWBY Vol.4

Beacon has fallen.  In the wake of a devastating battle that cost them their school and some of their closest friends, Team RWBY has been scattered to the four winds.  Without an arm, Yang languishes at home with her father.  Blake returns to her home across the sea with an unexpected ally.  Weiss finds herself home as well but a captive of her ruthless father.  And Ruby travels with Jeanne, Ren and Nora to try and prevent another catastrophe.  As the forces of darkness grow stronger, Team RWBY will have to face their own inner demons to find the strength needed to reunite and take on the enemy that has been watching them from the beginning.  All out war seems inevitable and the legends of Vale may be the only hope for salvation.  School’s out.  The real journey now begins.

At times, it felt kind of hard to think about going into Volume 4 of RWBY after the successful and incredibly heartbreaking Volume 3.  And in a way, that same feeling is one that’s shared throughout every single member of the core cast members.  The time for jokes is (mostly) over and done with and the doom and gloom feeling that kicked off the second half of Volume 3 is ever present in the entirety of this one.  It doesn’t quite hit the same emotional gut punches of the prior season.  But Vol. 4 is still a very fun and rewarding watch.

The biggest flaw of the season is also the biggest strength of it.  The core team the show is named after is apart for the whole season, never once do they reunite or show any signs of getting there anytime soon.  However, spreading them across the world and putting them all on their own personal journeys was the smartest move in the long run.  The fall of Beacon rocked Ruby, Yang, Blake and Weiss to their cores.  Yang lost an arm, which Blake feels responsible for, and Ruby couldn’t save poor Pyrrha.  Moving forward, it was time for everyone to do some serious thinking.  And by the end of the season, the lessons were learned and all given their proper due.  The dour feelings of each girl was more or less dealt with and all were put on the path to a reunion…which hopefully comes sooner rather than later in Volume 5.  I did miss the team together.  I especially wanted some resolution to Yang’s troubled heart after Blake just upped and left.  Of the four main arcs, I kind of enjoyed Blake’s and Weiss’s the most.  Blake learned to open her heart to Sun (who offered most of the seasons only comic relief) and I loved her reconnection with her parents.  Weiss, meanwhile, stood up to her father and showed once again she isn’t the same bratty girl from Vol.1.  Plus, everyone got a costume upgrade with the time skip and I like Weiss and Blake’s looks the best, both hot and bad ass in many ways.

Splitting up the crew also gave us a chance to see the world at large.  Seeing Blake’s homeland of Menagerie is the highlight of these new visits but there’s plenty to be found in Team RNJR (Ruby, Nora, Jaune and Ren)’s treks through the forests of vale.  Theres a notable darker quality to the animation (which looks the best it ever has, I mean watch the first episode of RWBY then go right into this, the progress is staggering).  And it works with the growing darkness of the story.  No where is safe and the deeper you get in, the dangerous the setting gets.  The tinting of the animation by season finale is pretty scary, especially when RNJR fights a Grimm that is the stuff of freaking nightmares.  Here’s hoping Volume 5 brings back some brightness, both in animation and in humor.

We also got a huge info dump of lore and kind of points towards a series end goal (which depending on how long they drag things out in Volume 5, I could easily getting a Volume 6 as well).  The Vale equivalent of Genesis or the Big Bang Theory is fascinating and the writers are having a lot of fun putting a tone of mythology into this little world that Monty Oum created.  RWBY has always felt like a big show from the get go.  But now it feels larger than life talking about Gods and Maguffins that could resurrect their power.  Plus there was plenty of backstories to go around.  Yang’s mysterious mother was fleshed out a bit more, but only a bit.  Most of the development went to Ren and Nora.  That stuff of nightmares Grimm I mentioned is tied directly to their pasts and how they met.  The way it’s hashed out, it’s ok to fear they might end up being the next Pyrrha and Penny on the list of the dead on this show.

However, for all the good the inner journeys and the mythology lessons do, it does feel like Volume 4 is taking a step back from Volume 3.  After Volume that gave me the payoff I expected from Volume 1&2, I expected there to be a bit more earnest progression in the plot.  Instead, we’re kind of back to the slow plodding build up that was in the first two seasons.  The stakes were made pretty clear at the end of Volume 3, so I figured it would be more full speed ahead.  There were developments, and good ones too.  I just expected a bit of a bigger payoff.  Also, I miss the shows humor, which has been mostly absent since the middle of the last season.  It’s a dark time a joke or two wouldn’t hurt anyone.  It makes me enjoy Sun’s character more, mostly thanks to his voice actor, Michael Jones from Achievement Hunter (which is part of Rooster Teeth, the studio behind Red vs. Blue and RWBY).  Sun knows when to be on the level but he knows when to crack a joke or do something to break the tension, testament to Jones’ ability to be the smart ass he is in his own videos but also a well meaning guy.  He’s clearly my MVP for this season.  And maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t think the songs were as good this time around.  The opening theme is probably the weakest of the four so far, though Volume 2’s “Time to Say Goodbye” is really hard to top.  The music overall is still great, it’s just not my favorite this time around.

RWBY Vol.4 continues an epic journey begun four years ago that continues to entertain and ensnare with visual wonder, beautiful action and a cast of characters that is really hard to hate…unless you’re the bad guys.  It wasn’t as good as Volume 3 cause it just felt like prep, good prep, but prep overall.  But it’s still a season full of good ideas and some of the best scenes in the show so far (Blake’s reconnection with her family, Ren and Nora’s backstory).  I understand why the team had to be split up and I cant wait to see them (hopefully) reunite in Volume 5 and FINALLY get some payback against the forces that have torn them down so badly.  Overall, seeing this show now compared to it’s beginnings, you gotta admire how far it’s all come and smile at what awaits Team RWBY in the future.

Monty Oum would be so proud…I’m sure he is.

8/10

RWBY Volume 5 premieres in the fall.  So expect a review in about a year…see ya then and see ya tomorrow as we’re back to Gundam Month Mark II with more Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory.