I just dropped in to see how this thread was doing after a long while away. Too much negativity attracts the Grimm!

Apparently an unpopular opinion, but I liked Volume 7 and 8, and most of Volume 6 before the final bit with Cordovin. I thought these last few volumes had a number of major improvements.

  • Tighter Pacing. Having 8+ interwoven plot threads sounds neat until you realize that the episodes are less-than-anime-length, which means that very little happens when the scope of the show becomes too broad and tries to follow too many characters in too many locales. This was the big sin of V4 and 5.
  • Characterization: Ruby Rose was a passenger in her own story until V6, and in V7 and 8 Ren and Nora became their own characters instead of slightly less than one character when put together.
  • Villainous Characterization: We never see Raven or Lionheart as they were before they went bad. Some people complained about Ironwood's decline but we're meant to see him the way Ozpin saw Lionheart - we can remember the good even as we watch him go off the deep end instead of his contribution to the plot beginning with treason and ending with more treason.
  • Set Pieces - We are told that life is rough in Menagerie. We are shown that life is rough in Mantle.
  • The White Fang Subplot - This was always a clumsily written plot tumor and the show is much cleaner without it. Sweeping the racism allegory under the rug is not usually a good thing, but it wasn't exactly an effective exploration of the subject, so in this case less is more. The show has used some of the recovered screen time to put little hints of that actual anti-faunus discrimination into the backgrounds of conversations and shots, except in some cases where it still comes in awkwardly.
  • Lore - the show is finally answering about as many questions as it raises, including digging into some pretty old mysteries at the same time.
  • Character relationships - Playing Shake and Bake with the party formula in V8 was great, leading to oddball interactions that were never really covered until now, like Blake and Weiss chatting with Nora or Ren and Yang discussing Jaune.
  • Cinder - Someone finally called her out on being a one dimensional ego machine. Then she extended a massive middle finger to anyone thinking she was getting a redemption arc. We also got a backstory for her that explains why she is the way she is without really excusing her atrocities. All high points.


People are fond of saying "yes yes, individual elements are better but the show lost its way," and variations on that, but... some of those things above are basic storytelling mechanics, upgrades to the series at a fundamental level. Yes, the show got darker, though I suspect this is the nadir of the series for the heroes, especially given how many one-time-use-only advantages Cinder had to burn to pull off her upset win and the fact that Salem is now down two of her lieutenants. And yes, if you want the series to go back to Kawaii Hogwarts with Guns then you're basically SOL, but I'm enjoying the high adventure format.

That's all I had! Have fun!