So, in case you missed it, the RWBY Volume 5 Blake Character Short was released on YouTube. I don't know how it went over with the general audience, but there are definitely a couple of Illia weeaboos in RWBY Wonderland now. And, I'm not one of them.
Anyway, I said I was going to do a critique of it for both my YouTube channel and my blog. The critique for YouTube is available here, but fair warning, it kind of sucks. (I don't think I'm going to be doing any more critique videos.) But, the good news is that my blog version is much more comprehensive. So, let's talk about it.
The Character Short starts with Blake and Sun chasing what I assume is a member of the White Fang through the market streets of Menagerie. During the chase, there's a flashback to years ago where Blake asked Illia why she joined the White Fang, and why she chose to fight when she passes for human. Illia launches into a story about how she used to attend a school in Atlas where she hid her Faunus powers and even talked sh*t about the Faunus with her human friends because she claims that she was one of them.
The story takes a turn when Illia and her friends find out about a mining accident where another Faunus was injured: the friends laugh whereas Illia turns blue and starts sobbing. Her friends are suddenly filled with fear, and she breaks their teeth in for some reason. From there, we go back into the present and Blake manages to catch the White Fang member she was chasing, Illia shows up, there's a moment between them where Illia shoots a bunch of crates off a hanging chain to distract Blake, and she makes good her escape along with the other dude. Sun shows up and asks what happened, and Blake apologizes for letting him get away, doesn't tell Sun about Illia, and then becomes awkward herself for some reason.
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| Damn it, Blake! Stop being so emo! And this is coming from someone who claims to be a Gothic emo kid beneath his cool adult exterior. |
As you can probably imagine from the way I retold the short, I didn't like it. The fact that it wasn't about Blake irritated me to begin with, but then when I checked in on RWBY Wonderland and found that Illia had some new fans, I wanted to scream.
Does nobody else see Illia for what she is? A hypocrite and a terrorist? Think about it: Illia sh*ts on the Faunus though she is one (that's low), and then says that it was perfectly fine because she identified as one of the girls she went to school with (double low). But then when she hears about how the one Faunus accidentally blew himself up, she reacts differently from her friends. I'm sorry, but I thought she claimed she was one of them. Shouldn't she have laughed, too? And then, after her abilities are revealed and her friends become terrified of her, she ends up beating the sh*t out of them. They were already terrified of her, did she need to beat them?
So, tell me, what exactly is there to like about this girl? I don't get it. It confuses me as much as people who like Cinder, Mercury, Neo, or Adam. All of these people are murderers or, at the least, unnecessarily violent, and some of them have made attempts on the lives of our main cast. So, is there something wrong with the people who like them, or do they not know how this villain thing is supposed to work? Generally, you're not supposed to like villains. I will admit, Heath Ledger is one hell of a Joker and Spehiroth is the biggest pimp dick OG in the world of video game villains, but that doesn't make them likable. Hell, I don't even like the villains I write for my own stories.
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| Most badass villain ever! |
Now, I admit, the above point isn't a criticism on the character short; it's a criticism of the community. So, do I have any actual criticisms of the short itself? Yes.
It seems to me that Kerry and Miles are setting up Illia to be an emotional block or hindrance to Blake, and I'm against that. Not because I think Illia could get Blake to have second thoughts, but because Blake already has at least three emotional blocks and they are all other characters: Sun, Adam, and Yang. By dint of their very existence and the dealings they've had with Blake, they have all inadvertently prevented Blake from taking some course of action or has forced her to retreat along her path. Why is a fourth one being introduced? Blake has enough problems. She likes a boy, but doesn't want him to get too close in case he gets hurt because of her (which has already happened thanks to that bitch Illia), she abandoned her best friend in a great and confusing time of need without explanation, and then she's got a toxic ex-boyfriend who desperately wants to destroy her. Why do we need a former friend getting in there and mixing things up? This is one the biggest problems I have with Blake as character; though it is through no fault of her own (I'm looking at you Kerry and Miles), she is the least developed of the four, she's the most stock out of the four, and all her problems are the same to which she has the same reaction--running away.
Now, I will admit that there was a part during the short that may point to the possibility of Illia's redemption. When she saved whatever-his-name-is from Blake, she aimed her weapon at Blake, Blake gave her the stink eye, Illia gasped and instead shot the crates above Blake to distract her. This moment hints at a few possibilities: 1. Illia isn't over her friendship with Blake and could be converted, 2. Illia is afraid of Blake, or 3. Illia will come to the conclusion that Blake doesn't care about her anymore and that will turn Illia into an even firmer enemy.
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| I hate you, you bitch! |
However, Blake becoming awkward and apologizing unnecessarily afterward tells me that Blake isn't totally over her friendship with Illia, hence the emotional block I mentioned. It also feels like to me that Blake was actually apologizing to Illia for having left, or she was apologizing to Sun for letting Illia stop her when Illia shouldn't have been a problem for Blake.
Any way you slice it, we are most likely doomed to have more emo moments with Blake in Vol. 5, and this time they'll surround Illia. Which means Sun will probably have to try to convince Blake to take action against her, and that may pit Blake and Sun against each other (temporarily). Now, that wouldn't be too terrible so long as it doesn't interfere with story progression. Blake can feel awkward if she wants, but she better continue moving toward the objective of reclaiming the White Fang. Unfortunately, this also means that my prediction from last volume about how all roads lead to Mistral is wrong because it seems like Blake is going to spend another entire volume away from her friends. And I really hope that doesn't mean something is going to happen to Weiss on her journey to Mistral. I'm going to be so pissed if that happens because it means our story may not actually progress in Vol. 5 just like how it seemed to lose steam in Vol. 4.
So, yeah, those are my thoughts on the character short--it sucks and blows. Rooster Teeth should have led with Blake's and then released Weiss'. But this begs the question: will there be a Yang character short? Probably not; there isn't time. Volume 5 drops on October 14th (my mother's birthday by the way), and seeing as how there was more than a month separating the releases of Weiss' short and Blake's short, they can't fit one in about Yang. Besides which, she's practically in Mistral already and I'd be shocked if Yang wasn't in the first episode.
Speaking of Volume 5, I will continue writing these critiques on RWBY, I just may not to the videos anymore, but I will be releasing my critiques a full week after the fact so I don't spoil anything for the YouTube audience. This will also allow me to keep up my weekly segments of RWBY Theory and Speculation. Which means I'll be doing three RWBY posts a week starting October. (Holy crap.) But anyway, that will be it for now. In my next two RWBY Speculation/Theory posts, I'm going to talk about Blake's (fall in) popularity and why I think Sun won't be another Pyrrha. So, be on the lookout for those. Or just sign up for my RWBY mailing list here.
Keep writing, my friends.
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