Spoiler

I haven't really enjoyed the fights at all this season. Compared to the Yellow Trailer or Pyrrha's fights they all just seem ridiculous, people jumping to absurd heights and then just hitting things hard. They don't really have the sharpness. The trailer fight was fun, but so far nothing has really measured up and we're three episodes in.

 

Yeah, Monty left some very large shoes to fill. The new team is trying to make up for the lack of that skill with a lot of camera cuts to reduce the amount of choreography actually necessary, but it's not really working.

(Take a look at the earlier fights and see how many actions were taken without a cut. Then compare it to the newer ones.)

 

After the darker turns RWBY has been taking, I'd find it terribly amusing that Sun was actually a stalker obsessed with Blake. She gives him a chance, only to realize a little too late that she got herself another crazy boyfriend.

The fights are a big disappointment for anyone that still remembers the likes of Yang x Neo or Pyrrha vs CRDL. It doesn't stop me from enjoying the show - I'd rather see more of the characters anyway - but RWBY has apparently lost its appeal in that regard.

 

The fight with Ruby in the preview thing was good. The one in episode one was okay. The one in episode 3 was pointless and horrible, with a blatant rip-off from Advent Children in the choreography.

The bits with Yang were good but pretty much every single thing centered around Blake felt poorly handled.

 

The change in animation seems to have its pros and cons. On the one hand, every season has a sharp uptick in quality of expressions--Blake has shown more expression in the latest episode than I remember her showing in all the previous seasons combined. On the other, the (presumably) new animation engine has smoother animation, but it feels too slow and soft. A dozen or so scenes feel like they could have benefited from the sharp and harsh movements of the earlier series.

The series seems to be continuing its trend of focusing so much on the fight scenes and character designs that it neglects the pacing and flow of the narrative. The side-villains definitely could have been introduced better. That being said, some scenes are still quite good. The scenes involving Jaune and Pyrrha were handled very well, and Sun's banter was genuinely amusing. I really hope that they don't try and bring back Pyrrha, despite how I had wanted that plotline to continue. Penny would be okay, because a robot is supposed to be repairable.

And btw, what the hell happened to Ren's hair? Went from reasonable to 80s super-mullet.

 

I kinda liked this episode. Not a lot happened but the characters and their interaction was nice. I don't see why they couldn't squeeze a bit more of team RWBY into the mix, or show stuff from the other characters and get the episodes a bit longer.

Still.. It's an improvement and Qrow remains a frickin' boss.

 

Spoiler

Raven's a nasty piece of work.

I'm curious what this tribe is. I assume the Grimm iconography is related to them.

 

Well, from the convenient World of Remnant episode from last week, I think we can assume that Raven is part of a group of Raiders. The leader, in fact.

Qrow remains the best side character, and Port's dramatic speech about mice was fun as hell. Pretty good episode, overall.

Also, 'Hello, I'm Professor Ozpin!"

 

So this newest one was interesting.

Spoiler

Turns out Blake is the daughter of the chieftain of Menagerie, which brought her previous 'origin story' into question until the reveal that her father only became chieftain after stepping down as high leader of the White Fang. Honestly still doesn't quite seem to add up to me from what we'd heard previously, but I might be confusing commonly accepted fanon for canon.

Second big reveal of the chapter is that the White Fang is claiming the Vale branch is a splinter group and operating outside their control, and while I'm not sure how I would've felt about that it doesn't really matter because it's almost immediately after revealed that that's just the public story and they're still in touch.

 

And today we learned that the Schnee family is a walking talking cliche factory and that apparently RT can still make a decent fight scene. Wish they stopped doing so many action shots facing the character just swinging into the camera but hey baby steps.

 

You know Is it me or trying to live in Remnant is like trying to live in Dwarf Fortress? So many destroyed cities and sleeping horrors.

 

(Please note that I am not english native)
RWBY has improved since season 3, we all agree on that I'm sure.
But it feels like something is wrong with the pacing. And while we see many new aspects of the characters' personalities, we don't dwelve enough on it to make it worthwhile in the long run. That was what made the "charm" of the first three seasons of RWBY I think.

Spoiler

The explanation for Weiss' relation with her family is overlooked for petty argument with her "evil" father and brother. Why does her brother became a douche ? Why was she the heir and not Winter since they are both hunters ? That is the kind of question I would like to be answered.
The same can be said about Blake, Yang, Jaune, ...

Although the animation is good in general, having a new engine should make combat scenes much more intense, not the opposite. With only pieces of lore between episodes and few explanations of what is going on, I at least wanted impressive fights, not ... this.

 

Finally got around watching the few episodes I hadn't yet and the last one highlights the greatest problem RWBY has, specifically Ruby's letter talks like it was a great journey to get to Mistral yet it felt more like a small trip.

In volumes one and two it was already an issue but it was still passable. Three really suffered from this and now four is even worse in that they are spending several times less than they need to properly show the story.