Why did RWBY fail?

First and foremost, I would like to start by saying that I've studies literature and most of the points I'm going to point out are gonna be from a completely unbiased view, so please don't confuse this for hate-speech.

I've said "most of the points" because it's actually impossible to completely remove your personal view from opinions, so I'll admit that a point or two will be coming from my own view.

Without further ado, let's begin.

RWBY is a very popular series - for one reason or another - and no one can deny that it started with an incredible amount of potential. A lot of things in the series from the story to the character designs drew the attention of many people. The battle animation and weapon mechanics also played a big part on the series being great.

However, as you all know, RWBY did not truly live up to it's fullest potential, and I'm hopefully going to explain on why that is.

The first reason is the tragic passing of the main creator, Monty. After he passed away, the company itself took over the production of the show and made some changes to the way it was made.

There is more to what they did, but I will not go into the legal issues or political problems. I am here to discuss the show itself.

The first 3 volumes had a few hiccups, but they were still a rather solid build up to the world and the characters' lives. They were also good for showing the direction in which the characters will develop along with solidifying their role in the story.

However, the problem began with the ending of the 3rd Volume, which is the fall of Beacon.

Such an event of that scale was far too soon in the series. I am not saying the problem it being part of the 3rd volume, but the placement in the time-line. By the time the fall of Beacon happened, the students have barely finished the first half of the school year at the academy, which is far too soon to make the characters go through that.

The entirety of the academy and its potential was completely thrown out the window just like that. What made it worse was that after the fall of Beacon, we had no new information on either the academy, teachers, or even the kingdom of Vale.

The entire kingdom of Vale was discarded, plain and simple.

After the 3rd volume, the series seemed far more focused on showing off the characters instead of actually developing them or world building.

Ruby, Jaune, Ren, and Nora were travelling for weeks yet we've seen nothing but trees and abandoned buildings. In a sense, it served to show how much destruction the Grimm leave in their wake, but the truth is that it was also impossible for every place they visited to be completely abandoned and/or destroyed.

Then we get the next volume where they supposedly just stayed in a hotel room for the entire time until the attack on Mistral and Cinder's attempt at revenge. They simply stayed there with the only actual event being the reveal of Oscar's connection to Ozpin.

The next volume was even worse considering it focused on showing how corrupt Atlas politics are. The entire Kingdom's big players were somehow rotten to the core yet the kingdom was still functioning well until the cast showed up and only then did the corruption start having effects.

That was not only unrealistic, but completely unreasonable. Considering the amount of corruption and straight up tyranny in the Atlas kingdom, there was no form of backlash until the main cast showed up. There should have been a form of resistance or at least conflict in powers between the good politicians and the bad ones.

Yet we've seen none of that. We've seen nothing but corruption and abuse of power and somehow the Council was still considered on the side of good, yet all they did was arrest the corrupt power players AFTER the main cast had came in and dealt with everything for them.

This brings back my point on how they were showing off the main cast while completely ignoring the world-building.

The next volume made the least sense between all of them. It honestly felt as if they forced the concept of Alice in Wonderland to Remnant.

I am well-aware that the theme of the series is to take inspiration from fairytales. However, as I said, this one felt forced. As if they didn't know how to add that story and decided to simply make the characters fall into it as a way to make an arc about them being stuck in a fairytale.

The problem is that this volume didn't truly contribute to the overall plot or character development. I'm fact, a lot of it simply removed whatever character development the characters had already made.

And now that we're done with the volumes, let's go to the characters themselves.

I'm going to start with Jaune.

At the beginning of the series, Jaune could not be more stereotypical if they had tried. The boy who dreamed of being a hero so he ran away from home to try being one. The character who awakes their power just at the right time.

Ignoring the fact his fake profiles got approved by Ozpin without ever explaining why, he still had faults.

For the first couple of volumes, Jaune honestly served as a static character with the only character development being his stand against Cardin. He otherwise remained the same as being meek and somewhat ignorant. His crush on Weiss also made little sense because he seemed truly smitten with her despite not having an actual reason to be beyond "she's pretty".

After that, his infatuation moved to Phyrra and then he started actually developing. Jaune started realising that being a "hero" is not the same as it was in the fairytales. This was finally showing as Jaune started getting his priorities straight while also making sure he doesn't hold the others back.

That, however was completely thrown out the window in the new volume as it served to bring back Jaune to his delusions of fairytale heroes and ruin the character development he had built up.

And please, before you attempt to defend or say otherwise, the current writers themselves admitted that the point of this was to get rid of the development Jaune got during an interview. There is no possible way to defend this or see it from another way.

It only became worse when, at the end of the volume, they simply returned Jaune to his original age. That doesn't actually change anything considering that, mentally, nothing changed about him. He still spent years in the delusion he's a fairy tale hero.

The next character I will bring up is Ren. He actually has little faults but they're still there. The same faults are shared by Nora as such I will be talking about them at the same time.

The problem with Ren and Nora is that they had very little relevance to the characters around them or development in most of the early volumes. They were hardly present in the first 3 volumes beyond being there for battles with very little interactions and development to them as a team.

This, however, can also be blamed on how the fall of Beacon happened too soon in the time-line as they had little time to actually develop, so it can't be completely blamed on them.

The next character I'll speak of is Phyrra. The prodigy huntress. Phyrra was supposedly the most gifted trainee in all of Beacon, at least in the newer patch of students. She was borderline a celebrity having won a tournament three times in a row, yet for some reason suffered self-conscious issues when it came to emotional matters.

This made no sense because, no matter how modest Phyrra was raised to be, the constant praise and piling victories SHOULD have given her some form of confidence. While she definitely didn't doubt her skills in a fight, the fact is she was struggling when it comes to emotional prospects, always apologising while greeting shyly.

Being modest is one thing, having no confidence in actually presenting yourself is another thing entirely.

The next character I'll talk about is actually Ozpin.

The headmaster was described and built up as this undying soul with centuries of leading experience. He admitted having committed mistakes in the past and implying he has no desire to actually make them again.

Yet we didn't see any of that. Instead, we saw Ozpin taking one gamble after the other because of his "faith in the newer generation". That made little sense because he refused to give them the full truth at any point of their time.

I'll be talking about Seinna Khan next.

The main problem with this character is the absolute wasted potential she brings. Seinna was one of the big players in Remnant, a leader that actually convinced the White Fang to follow her instead of Ghira and believe in her ways.

But she was killed off in her first appearance which did not last a full 10 minutes.

The next character is Raven Branwen.

Raven spent her life as bloodthirsty killer who thought only about her own safety, up to the point of abandoning her family. She was a cold hearted thief that prioritised herself above all else.

That was the build up and premises they made.

However, during the ending of the battle in Mistral, a few words from Yang was all it took to bring her to tears and send her flying back home, despite the fact they already showed that she doesn't care what her daughter truly thinks.

This is not development. This is literally ignoring and throwing away her character just to make it appear as if, in the end, its feelings that matter and that she wasn't so bad.

Now, to bring up the next character, Penny.

Penny was simply thrown away. Plain and simple. After her "miraculous" return, Penny was given the position of a Maiden and then killed off to have that position given to winter.

This is a meaningless plot point because they just made Penny human when that happened despite the fact most of her character build up was about how those dear to her don't care about her being an android.

This means that making Penny human was simply an excuse to have her permanently killed off. This renders her return and her becoming a maiden meaningless and completely unnecessary.

She was brought back simply to be killed off.

The next character I'm gonna bring up is Jacques Schnee.

The main problem with this character is honestly in his design. It was stated for a fact that Jacques is simply someone who married into the Schnee family and took their name, yet for some reason he appears as if he's a full-blooded Schnee.

Neo is next on my list.

For the past few volumes, Neo has been hunting Ruby down in a quest for revenge, making sure nothing stands in her way and trying her best to absolutely break her.

This brought up her character as very vengeful and grudge holding, yet she simply let go of everything in the latest volume along with even helping Ruby and her team.

If she had simply started letting go, that would not have been a problem, but siding with the person she held a grudge against so soon was simply ridiculous.

Next up is Ironwood and Lionheart.

The problem with these two is the same, which is the fact they were supposedly hand-picked by Ozpin to help in the war against Salem AND chosen as the headmasters of their respective schools.

The position of headmaster requires more than being good in paperwork, yet Lionheart simply showed close to not combat prowess and completely gave in to Salem after a few threats at his life.

Ironwood was basically forced into the position of being an antagonist with the only excuse being his Semblance. This brings back my point on how things in Atlas somehow only became chaotic after the main cast.

The biggest problem here is that no one addressed or seemed to have a problem with Ironwood despite his semblance and this is disregarding the fact it was shown he doesn't always go for the "hard decision". It's as if he didn't have his Semblance until the problems in Atlas started.

Now, finally, we come to the main cast:

I'll be bringing up a major problem with the fans first: the relationship between Blake and Yang.

This relationship has been a major source of the fans complaining despite the fact it was something they asked for in the first few volumes.

I will not defend this relationship nor will I claim it's justified.

However, I WILL point out that: if your problem with this relationship is because you believe Blake should have ended with Sun, then I'm sorry but you're wrong.

From a writing perspective, Sun had less reasons to be Blake's romantic partner than Yang did. Not only is the belief Sun and Blake should have ended together just because Sun showed interest in her is ludicrous, but there was actual reasons for her to not see him as a romantic partner.

Sun was everything a Faunus who wanted to help other Faunus shouldn't be. He stowed away and stole food without needing to and this is disregarding the fact he practically spat in the face of authorities.

As someone who wanted to show the world that Faunus are people, Blake had every reason to outright hate Sun and this is disregarding the fact he followed her home and tried to force her to keep investigating the White Fang.

Now, some are going to claim his suspicions were warranted, but they actually weren't. His suspicion was based on a couple of White Fangs having their masks and that's not really grounds to work on since they can easily say they just came back and didn't have the time to take off their equipment. That alone would stop the investigation right then and there.

Basically, if you believe that Yang and Blake being together is a mistake, please make sure to have an actual reason because simply believing the latter should be with Sun is not one.

Now, onto Yang herself. At the start of the series, despite her problems such as being violent and obsessed with finding her mother, Yang still served as an older sister figure to some characters.

She did a great job at guiding others and sympathising with their position, such as her talk with Blake on being obsessed with finding someone.

However, in later series, her role in the story slowly shifted away from that status and started focusing more on her development with Blake, if you can call it that. There was hardly any moments of her acting like an older sister, example being the many emotional problems Ruby had which she barely helped with in the latest volumes.

The next character I'll talk about is Weiss. At the start, Weiss' character was honestly solid and the development was great. She was an high born heiress with lots of expectations on her from others and herself. She had problems connecting to others and needed time to develop.

Her character, thankfully, didn't actually suffer much of any downgrade with the exception being the latest volume where she simply became smitten with Jaune at first sight of his adult form.

This is completely ignoring how the beginning of the series showed for a fact she has no interest in him whatsoever, and it's even worse by the fact she had no similar reaction to the fact he saved her life during the battle in Mistral.

The last character I'll be talking about is of course the main character, Ruby.

Ruby has many problems with the first starting that they ended Beacon's arc halfway into the school year. She had already skipped two years of education because of Ozpin and the time at Beacon could have made for that but she simply didn't get the chance.

The next problem is her 'Silver Eyes'. She seems so determined to play a role in the war against Salem yet she for some reason doesn't truly put effort into exploring that power nor does she confront Ozpin or anyone else about that.

She shared some knowledge with another Silver Eyed warrior and left it at that.

The newest volume is also a problem as it addressed the many issues Ruby suffers. The problem here is that those problems should have been addressed way before, such as Phyrra's death. Even Jaune had dealt with that long before that Volume and yet Ruby supposedly still had it.

It felt as if they forced those problems to stay simply to tackle them all at once at this volume, which is not good at all because it neglected her of development while also not fitting since she should have broken way before then from the piling problems.

And with that, I conclude my research. RWBY, as a series, had great potential, but it was all practically thrown out of the window.