This is literally ripped from a cheesy South American Soap Opera. They really went all out on every major character death cliché and tropes on this one too. They really want to peddle you how sad this scene is, sad music, character crying, moments of flashbacks and what-could've-beens, BE SAD. Literally Penny and Pyrrha's deaths in V3 had more impact than this shit without the need to drag it on like that.
Deaths scenes should ideally be short but the sting lingers within the story and the audience. The audience should be haunted by the knowledge that this character could've shifted the story greatly but now they're gone, and the stakes just got higher and/or the following plot points get incredibly tense because the audience are now assuming the worst. In other words; the writer should utilize the small voice inside the back of the audience's heads against them.
I don’t think I have the words to describe how proud the Fixing RWBY team is of everything they did involving Vernal.
Fun fact about that track, Raymond specifically told me to slow down the end
just so he could do something like this. After I was kicked off, it's the
only song he kept aside from the opening. A part of me wants to hold some pride in that, since it implies he couldn't find anything better for the job after replacing everything else with FF music. But at the same time, it sucks knowing that a piece I'm really proud of was used to beat
BE SAD over the audience's head. Vernal in FRWBY has the same exact role in the plot and dies in the exact same place, except this time she got something of a personality added so she can stupid
and a giant waste. FRWBY Vernal barely even got a personality besides being shipbait for Weiss. The team thinks they created the second coming of the girl from
Bridge To Terebithia when in reality I've seen more powerful death scenes in Paper Mario games.
And their fans agree with them, they're all crying over it and I ever got comments on my music that said stuff like "RIP Vernal." These people who claim to be high-brow media critics still fell for the a trite, cliche, and melodramatic death scene. I know I've said it before, but if Raymond loves Final Fantasy so much, he should've taken more cues from it. Aerith's death didn't sadden me in and of itself, the
actual gut punch was seeing Tifa's reaction if she's in your party: she kneels down, touches Aerith's face, and runs off sobbing. It lasts all of 10 seconds. There's no flashbacks or sad piano music (Aerith's theme, surprisingly, is written in D major). You're just feeling the real-time pain of someone in mourning. It's still an overblown and melodramatic scene, but that little bit got to me. If Raymond truly wanted that kind of effect, he'd have
Raven be the one to break down, because that's
her daughter, and seeing that kind of character break would
actually hurt because we understand the kind of relationship a mother and daughter would have, even if the mother is Raven. Yang didn't even have a conversation with Vernal, so she's just sad over some vague concept of "what could've been" and that's why it feels trite. Even Weiss isn't particularly affected. He just wanted that Yang flashback scene that badly.
As an aside, I don't know why we're discussing Arcane. It's in a different realm. It's like comparing Gumby to Coraline. It's really unfair, too. LoL was able to give an animation studio 6 years and like 80M euros. RT doesn't have anywhere near that. Plus, I wouldn't say Arcane's plot is just "better RWBY" because it's not exactly an uncommon story. Wow, the futuristic city has class issues. Breaking new ground here, I'm sure Rooster Teeth is losing sleep at night over it. Seriously, this is like trying to drop a sick own on a peewee baseball team by saying they can't play like the Los Angeles Dodgers.