Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

Warnings about the impending disintegration of the Warner Brothers studio under uncaring management have been cropping up for a while. I suppose I’ve noticed them with bemused detachment, but also with the thought that fulminating about big companies is both quite noticeable these days yet something that might only depress other people who run into it. The news that Warner Brothers was shutting down the computer animation studio Rooster Teeth, who make RWBY, did jolt me all the same. I’d been willing to hope the series was moving towards its conclusion even after having pretty much dodged it for its latest block of episodes, but now there seems the possibility there might never be a conclusion.
( Getting towards, if not to, the ultimate recourse )

That much more prone in recent months to thinking ahead to what anime I’ll watch once I’ve got through what I’m viewing now, I happened to reflect on plans to spend the last weeks of September on a bus tour. With certain preparations, I’d be able to follow certain series on the road; others would have to be dealt with before leaving. In the end, though, I decided to just finish everything in advance; “taking a vacation from daily viewing” could seem a bit appealing too. When we had to be bumped to a slightly later tour that might have become a bit easier, but I then had to consider how I’d been hoping to at last get back to watching some upcoming shows as they streamed and would now have to catch up on them and, perhaps, not post this summary at the very beginning of October. Then, it turned out the tour had to be cut short, and I returned to my routines and a summary I’d already been typing up. Where sometimes the jumble of titles I report on is organized by the order I began watching them in three months ago, here they’re organized by the order I finished them in.
( A speedy yet rewarding review: Mob Psycho 100 )
( Going theatrical: Belle )
( Augmentation completed: Den-noh Coil )
( Adventures completed: Shinkalion Z )
( The legend continues: Legend of the Galactic Heroes Die Neue These )
( A family caper: Spy x Family )
( Taking a chance: RWBY Ice Queendom )
( Swinging for the green: Birdie Wing )
( A tasty adventure: Delicious Party Pretty Cure )
( Back on stage: Love Live Nijigasaki High School Idol Club )
( More than what might have been: Daltanious )

The abrupt conclusion of the RWBY manga I’d been reading wasn’t quite the end of the spinoffs I was taking note of from the computer-animated series. A fifth volume of the “Official Manga Anthology” had shown up, moving on from the four main characters of the series to four of the supporting characters. However, for all that looking back shows the reactions I set down here improved a bit over the course of the anthologies, having ordered a copy of the fifth volume did leave me with nagging thoughts of “operating on inertia and not leaving well enough alone.”
( Starting off and beyond )

When I saw a notice the eighth series of RWBY would be streaming on Crunchyroll I put that computer-animated show in my queue and started watching it. An instalment or two into it, though, I did happen to think that despite having been very careful for long months to not start watching any “new” anime until all its episodes are available on the chance of production breaking down again, I hadn’t applied that same caution to the merely “anime-esque” series. Rooster Teeth being based in Austin, Texas seemed to raise its own concerns. As it turned out new episodes stopped appearing for some weeks; then, though, they picked up again. After getting to the episode with an extended end credit roll I concluded I’d reached the end of this series, and started getting my thoughts in order.
( Reactions, however personal )

When I last posted here about RWBY, my slow compilation of thoughts about a guidebook to that computer-animated series had had to mention the sudden appearance of the seventh “volume” of episodes where I could watch them without a new subscription to another streaming service. At the close of the sixth series, I suppose I’d imagined the characters “winning through to a redoubt” where things would go better for them for at least a little while. Instead, they managed to get into trouble at once, as “somewhere this nice has to have a dark side too” got something of a new twist with a less prosperous city showing up below the levitated kingdom of Atlas.
( Ups and downs )

Happening on an end-of-the-bookshelf display of RWBY novels in the young adult section of the area bookstore did get my attention. For some years now, should I come across “based on TV and movies” novels I’ll at most glance at their covers before moving on, and that despite (or because of) past interest in some of them. At that particular moment, though, I did think of the translated-from-Japanese “light novels” I’ve read a few series of (being the original source of left-off-past-the-beginning anime series I’ve already seen), and how often their prose can seem to leave me with subtle indigestion. (Perhaps ebooks from J-Novel Club have suited me better than most books from Yen Press.) When I bought E.C. Myers’ RWBY: After the Fall, I might have been thinking of little more than “making a peculiar experiment,” bypassing certain barriers I only have myself to blame when it comes to “reading new fiction” these days, but also suiting me better just for having been written in English to start with. In any case, when I bought it I was still working my way through the sixth series of the computer-animated show; on the off chance the book would touch on it, I waited to start reading.
( The continuing adventures of Team CFVY )

Having made it through three volumes of the “RWBY Anthology” manga did make “finishing the set” seem a little more inevitable. I glanced inside the fourth volume when I saw it in the bookstore, but I suppose it was only a “glance before buying it anyway”; I was still a bit uncertain as I started reading. That the “four-panel manga” that had seemed one of the few really good-looking pieces in the somewhat unfortunate first volume returned quite near the beginning of the fourth wasn’t quite encouraging, somehow.

I was ready to suppose Yang Xiao Long wasn’t that complicated a character in the first part of the animation these pieces are set during, a swaggering, hard-punching, big-sister type. There are a few jokes spun from the unfortunate complications that build up for her near the end of the first plot arc (and that did help make what I’ve managed to see since more interesting), and one piece does invoke the very end of that arc in a more serious way. Still, I got through the volume even with a comment or two at the very end speculating about doing something similar for the villains and supporting heroes. My own thoughts for the moment are just wondering when I might have the chance to see the animation that has been released but not on Crunchyroll; if it is going to get on Blu-Ray the same as the five previous parts, that might be as good as anything for me.

I'd felt a bit stung by a "RWBY anthology" manga, but instead of just swearing off the three volumes I supposed would follow I did go so far as to say I'd look into the next one in the bookstore and see if the art seemed any better. The chance for that showed up, and some quick page-flipping did have me thinking things looked a bit more appealing. As I bought the second volume, however, I still had a few thoughts things might feel unfortunately different in total...

All in all, though, the short pieces about the haughty heiress Weiss Schnee did seem more pleasant to get through than the last time around. I checked the table of contents afterwards to see not all of the pen names were the same (although the artist who'd provided the "four-panel strips" that had somehow looked particularly good among everything had returned). I did get to thinking, too, that Weiss has a bit more in the way of complications built into the most obvious levels of her character than Ruby, which makes it easier to make short pieces about her interesting. At the same time, aware of what details have been added to her character in the last two series made me aware of how the pieces stuck with what had been presented in the "first story arc," even if that sometimes included her competent and successful older sister Winter. With that in mind, I can at least hope the upcoming volume featuring Blake, who has a complicated past of her own, might also show some similar strengths (if requiring the same glance through beforehand), although I'm wondering about the volume featuring Ruby's brash older sister Yang.

Hearing people in Japan were managing to see RWBY caught my attention. The further news of a Japanese-dubbed release of the "web series," computer-animated on this side of the Pacific, seemed to cut through a number of the things tangled up with "people outside Japan getting so into comics and animation from that island nation they try making something like it themselves." It was far from the only thing keeping up my own interest in the series, but it was something.

After having the chance to see at least some of the Japanese version myself, a manga version I'd also heard about became available over here too. I went ahead and bought a copy, convinced by its cover the character artwork would have more personality and liveliness than the somewhat austere computer animation. (In a calendar store closing down as the year rolled over, I saw a RWBY calendar, and as much a revival of the "novelty" that had first attracted me to the series it was on first sight, the back cover had me thinking inside it was all close-ups of the computer-generated characters, not that interesting to me.)
( With a further North American bonus )

The unexpected buildup of its third series, from "I suppose it's playing to its strengths" to "did it just leave a part of its familiar setting behind?", did a lot to revitalize my interest in the computer-animated, "anime-esque" RWBY. I wound up buying its Blu-Rays and watching through them with a full awareness of where they were headed, perhaps still helped along by the thought it was "an indie production" but getting past "it's something it was done at all." (This might reflect a bit on how I did just stop watching the slightly connected "Red vs. Blue" without making a big deal of it.) As the fourth series got under way, I was pleased to see it available on Crunchyroll, even if this might bring to mind "it's perhaps even an all too comfortable way to convince myself I'm not just watching anime."

In any case, as the fourth series got under way the characters did remain scattered and in new places, and that pushed from my mind the wondering I'd done right at the end of the third series of if things might be put too much together again. That did, though, connect to how it might be all too easy to pile up a list of anime series where the characters have fantastic adventures but never have to go very far from the safe base of their high school, although when I think a little bit more about that not all of them can be called "recent" in the way just perhaps used by some for who every "fannish" diversion is forever falling from the heights they started at. Noting the different ways "family" got involved in the plot threads, I stayed interested all the way through. It was only thinking back that I did wonder a bit about the story having taken its time dwelling on large and staggering things having happened, but that might have been inspired by one comment from someone else I did look just a bit for, which may only have reminded me of all those suspicions that to delve too much into the opinions of others for reassurance your own opinions are valid can feel like a zero-sum game. In any case, I'm wondering where things might go next, even with new episodes of Voltron: Legendary Defender available to keep taking that trifling step away from outright anime. (Some of the first episodes in its own new series, though, seem, without having made a big, showy deal of it, to have stepped away from "this is a cartoon; nobody ever dies in a cartoon.")