Downtown Rumbles: Sharp's Scotch Bar

[master of read]

[Nik Hasta]

*opens up random chapter*

WTH?

*reads summary*

Nope, that's not what it looks like at all. Nik, what IS this?

So, the author Hiroya Oku likes to look at the horror of everyday human cruelty, nihilism and sci-fi. He's always had a somewhat dark absurdist streak but with Gigant he seems to have really tried to get away from the more conventional narrative stuff and focus more on a pervasive sense of impending dread. It's absurd, really dark, very mean spirited and horribly uncomfortable.

And I'm very... oddly compelled by it?

It's not for young persons, just in case any young persons are reading this.

Like, I'm not recommending it per say but... good lord is it one of the things that I'm most drawn in by because I know it's only going to get worse.

[Cleric of Hell’s Brigade]

So, the author Hiroya Oku likes to look at the horror of everyday human cruelty, nihilism and sci-fi. He's always had a somewhat dark absurdist streak but with Gigant he seems to have really tried to get away from the more conventional narrative stuff and focus more on a pervasive sense of impending dread. It's absurd, really dark, very mean spirited and horribly uncomfortable.

And I'm very... oddly compelled by it?

It's not for young persons, just in case any young persons are reading this.

Like, I'm not recommending it per say but... good lord is it one of the things that I'm most drawn in by because I know it's only going to get worse.

Weird.

To each their own I guess.

[TheLastDalek]

While I feel many of the criticism of RWBY's villains are valid and that most of them kind of suck (out of the current line up the only ok ones are Watts, Tyrion, Emerald and Jacques if you count him as a villain). I never got the claim that they aren't a credible threat to the heroes.

I mean let's look at the main villain groups track record.

Ruby's to confrontations with Cinder in the first two volumes: Both times Ruby is more less helpless and unable to so much as inconvenience Cinder and she is only saved because some one else showed up.

Yang vs Mercury in V3: Merc throws the fight (with the implication that he could have easily won) and successfully destroys her reputation in the process.

Adam vs Blake and Yang: He easily crushes both of them, leaving mental ad physical scares that both of them take a couple of seasons to get over.

Pyrrha vs Cinder: Cinder successfully defeats and kills the most formidable of the main cast and only gets hurt by the Silver Eyes.

Tyrion vs Ruby and friends: He utterly dominates them with the tide only turning when the mentor figure shows up. Even then said mentor barely holds his own and Tyrion only forced to retreat after Ruby takes a pot shot while he's preoccupied with Qrow. Even then his poisoning of Qrow leaves the group in a dire situation for the rest of the Volume.

Blake vs Adam in V5: This one has more legitimate complaints, while she didn't technically beat him, she did humiliate him and destroy whatever menace the character had built up.

Ruby and friends vs the villain group: That bad guys dominate them, Cinder almost kills Weiss, Hazel is more less invincible. Even though it's the only real victory the heroes score over them, they fail to take any of them down.

Now I don't want to sound overly defensive of this aspect of the show, because a lot of the other criticisms of the villains are pretty accurate and the V5 final was a mess. But I just don't see this claim that the villains aren't a threat.

[Dark Soul # 7]

While I feel many of the criticism of RWBY's villains are valid and that most of them kind of suck (out of the current line up the only ok ones are Watts, Tyrion, Emerald and Jacques if you count him as a villain). I never got the claim that they aren't a credible threat to the heroes.

I generally agree with everything you said, so I'm going for the one bit here that made me raise my eyebrow.

Do you not like Salem (since you don't mention her as one of the ones that doesn't suck)? If yes, would you mind explaining why? I'm not looking to start an argument, I'm just curious.

Personally I love pretty much everything about her, though I do hope that she gets a bit more active in future volumes.

[Len Ikari145]

[TheLastDalek]

I generally agree with everything you said, so I'm going for the one bit here that made me raise my eyebrow.

Do you not like Salem (since you don't mention her as one of the ones that doesn't suck)? If yes, would you mind explaining why? I'm not looking to start an argument, I'm just curious.

Personally I love pretty much everything about her, though I do hope that she gets a bit more active in future volumes.

Eh think she's suitably creepy and works fine as the background mwahahaha of the series, but I can't form a real opinion of her until she steps into focus (something this kind of villain never does until the end game)

[Dark Soul # 7]

Eh think she's suitably creepy and works fine as the background mwahahaha of the series, but I can't form a real opinion of her until she steps into focus (something this kind of villain never does until the end game)

That is true.

She has her place in the story (evil mastermind), and while she doesn't go beyond that narrative role, I think that is just really damn good at it. She is one of the creepiest evil masterminds I've seen in a while, and she really has a commanding presence.

But again, I do hope that she gets a bit more active in the plot sooner rather than later. Maybe not to the extent of Zarkon from the current Voltron cartoon, but I at least want to see her fight.

[TheLastDalek]

That is true.

She has her place in the story (evil mastermind), and while she doesn't go beyond that narrative role, I think that is just really damn good at it. She is one of the creepiest evil masterminds I've seen in a while, and she really has a commanding presence.

But again, I do hope that she gets a bit more active in the plot sooner rather than later. Maybe not to the extent of Zarkon from the current Voltron cartoon, but I at least want to see her fight.

Speaking of that kind of stuff I kind of hope Hordak is more threatening than his 80's counterpart in the She-Ra reboot.

[master of read]

[Siriel]

While I feel many of the criticism of RWBY's villains are valid and that most of them kind of suck (out of the current line up the only ok ones are Watts, Tyrion, Emerald and Jacques if you count him as a villain). I never got the claim that they aren't a credible threat to the heroes.

Let's look at what happens in V5. What we actually see, that is, not what the show claims happened:

1 - Emerald when trying to stop Yang from running right by her with her guard down is reduced to just kind of ineffectually lounging for her, instead of just shooting her in the back or anything. Meanwhile Mercury is busy being stoned out of his mind or something.
2 - Mercury is so busy gloating for absolutely no reason that Ruby gets one up on him when unarmed.
3 - Cinder can be rendered utterly powerless with a literal glance from Ruby and instead of just kind of winning when they have the heroes outnumbered and outmatched decides to fuck around with Jaune for a bit, shoot Weiss, then walks off with Raven and Cinder, making the fight go from unwinnable to pretty easily winnable for the good guys for absolutely no reason.
4 - Adam falls for the most awkward impractical strike in the history of the universe (which he had more than ample time to dodge) after Blake spontaneously develops video-game invulnerability frames for no reason. Ends up being run off by a crowd of untrained civilians who barely have a real weapon between them, despite the fact that by all previous feats he could kill them all in one Moonslice.
Also it turns out the only thing that was required to bridge the gap between Faunus and humans caused by generations of conflict was a few badly written friendship speeches, so who knows why the White Fang was ever a thing.
5 - Hazel despite repeated character claims as to being amazingly dangerous has possibly the worst choreography in the entire show, to the point that it looks terrible even compared to the rest of V5's terrible choreography (to the point that a lot of his punches would miss even if the target didn't move), and the only times he ever manages to hit anyone is either when they literally stop looking at him to look elsewhere or when the camera cheats and we only see the blow without any previous motions. He is, literally, an incompetent clown onscreen but apparently a fighting god offscreen.

Also the battle between the actual protagonists and the villains was so inconsequential it happened offscreen.

So...yeah.

RWBY doesn't have threatening villains because Volume 5 is terrible at presenting any kind of opposition, resulting in a lot of tell and then us seeing the opposite of what is claimed, sinking the credibility of previously established villains into the dirt.

[TheLastDalek]

Let's look at what happens in V5. What we actually see, that is, not what the show claims happened:

1 - Emerald when trying to stop Yang from running right by her with her guard down is reduced to just kind of ineffectually lounging for her, instead of just shooting her in the back or anything. Meanwhile Mercury is busy being stoned out of his mind or something.
2 - Mercury is so busy gloating for absolutely no reason that Ruby gets one up on him when unarmed.
3 - Cinder can be rendered utterly powerless with a literal glance from Ruby and instead of just kind of winning when they have the heroes outnumbered and outmatched decides to fuck around with Jaune for a bit, shoot Weiss, then walks off with Raven and Cinder, making the fight go from unwinnable to pretty easily winnable for the good guys for absolutely no reason.
4 - Adam falls for the most awkward impractical strike in the history of the universe (which he had more than ample time to dodge) after Blake spontaneously develops video-game invulnerability frames for no reason. Ends up being run off by a crowd of untrained civilians who barely have a real weapon between them, despite the fact that by all previous feats he could kill them all in one Moonslice.
5 - Hazel despite repeated character claims as to being amazingly dangerous has possibly the worst choreography in the entire show, to the point that it looks terrible even compared to the rest of V5's terrible choreography (to the point that a lot of his punches would miss even if the target didn't move), and the only times he ever manages to hit anyone is either when they literally stop looking at him to look elsewhere or when the camera cheats and we only see the blow without any previous motions. He is, literally, an incompetent clown onscreen but apparently a fighting god offscreen.

So...yeah.

RWBY doesn't have threatening villains because Volume 5 is terrible at presenting any kind of opposition, resulting in a lot of tell and then us seeing the opposite of what is claimed.

1 and 2 fairpoint.

3: I fail to see how the fight became easily winnable considering that they failed to take a single villain down even after that.

4: I already mentioned Adam.

5: No matter how poor the choreography was, it dosn't change the fact that Hazel curb stomped the entire cast, everytime it looked like someone was turning it around on him, he just no sold it and continued to kick their asses.

6: The Choreography that was all that bad in V5 was the multiman brawl. Yang and Weiss character shorts were both good, yang vs the bandits was good, Blake and Sun vs Ilia was underwhelming but still had it's nice moments and Raven vs Cinder looked great.

[Sharkerbob]

Why does he have a Super Nintendo cartridge in his forehead.

That's too square to be a SNES cartridge.

[Siriel]

3: I fail to see how the fight became easily winnable considering that they failed to take a single villain down even after that.

They in fact took all three of them down, and Emerald had to let them make a ninja escape via Salem illusion.

Instead of y'know, just winning by having Cinder kill everyone while Ruby was unconscious.

5: No matter how poor the choreography was,

No, it does matter. I'm stopping you right there.

Choreography and story-boarding is what sells someone as a threat in a fight.

Having someone who gets curbstomped onscreen and is hyped to be strong is how you get Yammy from Bleach, who started out underwhelming and only became more so every time Kubo claimed he got stronger.

We've seen what the characters, properly handled, can do. If you want to sell that someone is threatening, they have to be good relative to that.

it dosn't change the fact that Hazel curb stomped the entire cast,

No, he didn't. Whenever the person he was attacking was actually looking at him (instead of letting themselves get distracted by some random other thing) he utterly failed to hit them and looked like a moron.

Additionally his big awkward punches, when the stars aligned and they actually landed thanks to either the writer or the cameraman cheating for him, left zero impact on anyone because they invariably were back up by the next time the screen moved over them. This doesn't make him seem threatening.

everytime it looked like someone was turning it around on him, he just no sold it and continued to kick their asses.

Every time someone turned it on him he got pin-balled around in an humiliating manner then got back up and failed to hit them, you mean.

Yang and Weiss character shorts were both good,

Not actually part of the volume but yeah they were pretty good. Sadly Weiss' character short just makes it all the more obnoxious that Weiss during the show became just an ineffectual summon spammer, just like Ruby's trailer and character short continue to make her in-show performance embarrassing.

yang vs the bandits was good,

It featured a lot of "let's conveniently group together so she can hit us all with one kick!" but yes, it was enjoyable.

I just wish that the only fight in the season with decent choreography wasn't "Yang beats up a bunch of random mooks".

and Raven vs Cinder looked great.

It was actually pretty bad as a fight, featuring an utter lack of personality, fighting style and choreography in favor of big swords booms. It was alright in terms of looks.

Look I know you think the show is irredeemable now because the second half of V5

Most of V5 was bad, not just the second half.

But don't put words into my mouth, thanks. I'm actually hoping against reasonable expectations that V6 will be good; I was explaining why nobody finds the villains threatening, and the answer is that V5 handled them terribly.

[TheLastDalek]

They in fact took all three of them down, and Emerald had to let them make a ninja escape via Salem illusion.

Instead of y'know, just winning by having Cinder kill everyone while Ruby was unconscious.



No, it does matter. I'm stopping you right there.

Choreography and story-boarding is what sells someone as a threat in a fight.

Having someone who gets curbstomped onscreen and is hyped to be strong is how you get Yammy from Bleach, who started out underwhelming and only became more so every time Kubo claimed he got stronger.



No, he didn't. Whenever the person he was attacking was actually looking at him (instead of letting themselves get distracted by some random other thing) he utterly failed to hit them and looked like a moron.

Additionally his big awkward punches, when the stars aligned and they actually landed, left zero impact on anyone because they invariably were back up by the next time the screen moved over them. This doesn't make him threatening.



Every time someone turned it on him he got pin-balled around in an humiliating manner then got back up and failed to hit them, you mean.



Not actually part of the volume but yeah they were pretty good. Sadly Weiss' character short just makes it all the more obnoxious that Weiss during the show became just an ineffectual summon spammer, just like Ruby's trailer and character short continue to make her in-show performance embarrassing.



It featured a lot of "let's conveniently group together so she can hit us all with one kick!" but yes, it was enjoyable.

I just wish that the only fight in the season with decent choreography wasn't "Yang beats up a bunch of random mooks".



It was actually pretty bad as a fight, featuring an utter lack of personality, fighting style and choreography in favor of big swords booms. It was alright in terms of looks.



Most of V5 was bad, not just the second half.

But don't put words into my mouth, thanks. I'm actually hoping against reasonable expectations that V6 will be good; I was explaining why nobody finds the villains threatening, and the answer is that V5 handled them terribly.

So are we just going ignore the part where he ragdolled Qrow and Nora or were he one shotted Weiss' summon? As for Weiss' poor showing, it was pretty clear that she was meant to becoming over reliant on her fancey new toy and her beatdown here being a wake up call to tell it won't win every fight for her.

L