The Victims of Poor Development - Part 1: Ironwood

During a previous blog, I’ve said that I strongly oppose the idea of bashing a show you hate. There is so much less to say when you hate something, and what you have to say is seen through a lens of hatred.

This is all to say that I love Rooster Teeth’s RWBY and have since seen the Red Trailer back in 2012. I love it so much; I talked myself out of writing this blog twice now. However, recent events have changed my mind (i.e. the absolute rage-inducing disappointment of the first episode of Volume 8.) I’m disappointed and angry, and this blog will try to go over a summary of the events and frustrations I had leading up to the moment I ripped my AirPod out of my ear and threw it down at the coffee table before finishing the episode. 

V7: The First Steps Towards Darkness

The General Ironwood Mistake

rOOSTER TEETH — RWBY V7

The first moment that caused me to hesitate and pause was when Ironwood and Oscar/Ozpin were left alone. Though brief, their conflict was telling of the direction the writers were planning on taking and it immediately set off a dozen red flags in my head as it all fell into place. 

The heart of Volume 7’s conflict with Team RWBY and the Atlas Military was a moral disagreement. They both have the same goal; save Amity and protect as many people in Atlas and Mantle as possible. At least, that was how it started. See, the first half of the conflict was simple;

• Buy time to save all of remnant by raising Atlas out of Salem’s reach, but leave some of Mantle’s citizens behind in the process -- as we know there was no feasible way to stop Salem.

• Or stay and try to save Mantle and Atlas against impossible odds, and risk Salem dropping the raised city of Atlas onto Mantle -- killing everyone.

I was super invested in the conflict because at first, it all made sense. Team RWBY and Co. are a group of teenagers, so they believe that they need to stay to save everyone despite almost guaranteeing everyone’s death in the process. The General, a man with more experience in the military than the students have years of age, is of the belief that the best course of action is to get as many people from Mantle onto Atlas before raising the city.

By securing the safety of Atlas, they can confirm the continued safety of all of Remnant. By keeping Atlas over Mantle and within Salem’s reach, they risk handing one of the last of humanity's strongholds over to the enemy.

This was the crux of Volume 7’s conflict, and it started out incredible. I was floored and blown away by the maturity of the conflict and the writers allowing the viewers to choose who they agreed with along the way. Unfortunately, it didn’t stay that way. Though not explicitly stated in the Volume’s final episode, it was strongly implied and shown that the writers were planning to make General Ironwood into the bad guy. Someone who couldn’t be agreed with because his belief in “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” was going too far, and he was going to turn into the Light Yagami of RWBY.

I was worried — because I was on his side morally. We will get to Volume 8 in a moment, but by this point, I was concerned.

rooster teeth - rwby 7

Volume 8: The Pain of Being Proven Right

The Culmination of a Dozen Small Mistakes

One episode into Volume 8, and I feared that all of my concerns from the final episode of Volume 7 came true. The moment in which I couldn’t stomach to sit through, and was entirely unable to finish, was the second that General Ironwood pulled out his gun and shot one of the council members. If I’m honest, I ripped my headphone out so fast that I didn’t hear the whole gunshot over my own scream in rage.

This wasn't the first moment in the episode that made me stop, but it was the last moment of the episode I watched before entirely closing out of the app and considering cancelling my Prime Membership.

rooster teeth — rwby v4

The man we have been shown to have commissioned an arm for Yang after the Fall of Beacon, the man who gave Winter a life she couldn’t have dreamed of before meeting him, the man who did everything in his power to save as many people as possible before Salem came and was attempting to reconnect all of Remnant to communication after Beacon Tower fell. This same man shot an innocent council member for asking questions for the sake of “at all costs.”

He did this with no reason to believe that they have been anything but on the same side as him in protecting Atlas.

Nope.

rooster teeth — rwby 8

He would not. He would never even dream to. He arrested Jacques Schnee not long before, without killing him, when the man single-handedly allowed Salem's forces to get back end access into critical military information and put all remnants at risk. The only crime of either council member was that of asking what was going on when the top Specialist was in the hospital seriously injured and the leader of the Ace Ops was dead. 

There is no world in which I would buy General Ironwood doing this. 

The only way I can believe it is if it was to make team RWBY look “in the right” on their decisions towards the end of their time working with General Ironwood. However, the problem is that the first thing we see of team RWBY and team JNR in this episode is them repeating the same fight they had against Ironwood… internally.

Now, Ruby is basically saying the same thing Ironwood was when the whole reason they left him mere HOURS AGO was for that disagreement. 

Stay Tuned For My Next Blog

In my next blog, I’ll go into the issues that arose with the Winter Maiden arc, and particularly, the systematic shafting of Winter Schnee’s development throughout the final episode.

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Image source — DreamWorks Studios [Catra]

Caitlyn C

Hi! My name is Caitlyn, a 22 year old dreamer whose main interests include: crying over fiction at 1 in the morning (mainly She Ra and Claymore), babysitting kittens, reading, and ignoring the doctor recommended 8 hours of sleep rule. I’ve been writing as a hobby for as long as I can remember but had my first interaction with finishing my first (garbage) novel in 2014. Now, I am a Professional Writing student who works hard every day to make less garbage novels through practice, reading, and calling my obsessions “studying”.