RWBY - Volume 3

RWBY season 3 is totally Wow!! what a humdinger of a series. I can now truly cast aside any doubts I previously had about this title. Volume 3 is incredibly entertaining and ramps up all previous season efforts. What started off as a stiff but promising low budget animation has matured into a full blown epic that I simply cannot stop watching. This season the violence is a lot more graphic. There are also a lot of quite disturbing and emotional scenes. It's also the season where you learn a lot more of the back-story behind the principal characters.

Cinder: delightfully villainous

The first quarter or third of the film (Amazon show it as a continuous film but on YouTube they are all individual episodes) centre around a big school v school sports Battle tournament ala Hunger Games or Battle Royale. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Badly hurt. And that’s where the story takes a much darker turn. Things go bad everywhere. Evil monsters run amok and the small army of human and half human masters that are behind the evil plot are soon in full control. In particular the character known as Cinder is delightfully hammy in her over the top evilness. The voice actor for Cinder is probably the best one in the entire cast. Actually all the bad guys are really cool in a love to hate them but love them really kind of way. Like the slightly deranged girl Neo who carries with the nasty umbrella called Neopolitan or in fact the very Clockwork Orange inspired Roman Torchwick

The rest of the kids fight valiantly - there are plenty of amazingly rendered battle scenes - but it’s to no avail, they are simply overwhelmed. And dammit any resistance I previously had to emotionally connecting with such stiffly depicted cgi characters were thrown out the window when I had to watch bad things happen to characters that I’ve really grown to like. There are two stand out moments that just punch you in the gut and you’ll probably need a tissue to wipe away the tears. The show’s makers really excelled here.

Big sister winding up little sister

The finale is truly bleak. I had that same sense of loss and bewilderment that I had at the end of watching Avengers Infinity War. Seeing some of your favourite characters utterly broken in both spirit as well as body is really hard to watch. But amid all the doom and gloom there’s a tiny ray of hope, it’s all in the eyes of our resident young hero Ruby. Season three ends with a glimpse of a new evil character, possibly the architect of this entire war.

Big tears when someone you hold dear doesn't believe your story

The music as expected really rocks in season 3 and the vastly increased budget and production time spent on the animation really shows. It no longer looks like a cheaply made for YouTube only cartoon and instead really goes to town with great detailing, imaginative camera angles, gorgeous lighting and massive world building. It’s never going to be depicted as beautifully as hand drawn anime but RWBY is taking their style of cgi to higher levels and it makes for better viewing as a result. RWBY borrows a lot from classic stories such as Lord of the rings, the Harry Potter series, Star Wars and the aforementioned Hunger Games so arguably there’s nothing really new in the story itself but for me RWBY’s true strength lies in character development. I’m sure Monty, the show’s creator who died before season 3 was made will be looking down and be very proud of what his team have done.

I can’t wait to watch season 4. The fight back begins!!

8.5/10