An honest critique of FRWBY by someone who actually watched it and was willing to give it a chance
Ok so LF and CS have proven themselves to be disingenuous liars who go out of their way to make rewrites of RWBY look poorly written and bigoted because they have diluted themselves into believing that the show doesn't carry all of the same problems that they accuse these rewrites of having. That being said, Fixing RWBY does happen to carry over a lot of problems from the original show. While I personally believe that Fixing RWBY is a better story structurally from RWBY proper, that doesn't mean that it didn't keep many of the flaws associated with the original show. This is not a defense of FRWBY, nor is it really a bashing because I will come right out and say that I do actively enjoy it and am excited to keep up with its version of volume six. I wouldn't recommend it to any of the people I interact with a lot on Tumblr simply because it's definitely not something they would like very much.
It's impressive how much passion is put into this project honestly, seeing all these fans come together to take the time out of their days without payment just to create something they care about. I definitely think the art and animations are some of the best parts of FRWBY. And I think the story does a far better job of utilizing the amount of characters that the show already had without constantly adding new ones that are completely unnecessary. It also makes a lot of changes to the characters interactions and relationships with other characters that I appreciate. I like that Weiss's time in the Brawnwen was changed from being held prisoner and threatened, to being a taste of freedom and potential new life for herself that she eventually had to ditch for the sake of her friends and the mission.
And I really liked Changing Vernal to be Yang's secret half sister and having her develop a friendship with Weiss, it did a lot more to make her death feel more impactful by making her a character that the audience has to care about because these other characters care about her, and goes a long way of proving how selfish and short-sighted Raven could be where her own arrogance and desires ultimately ended up getting her own daughter killed and the tribe she chose over her own husband and first daughter to leave her.
And I'm actually quite happy with Roman being Ozpin's host, I think it's handled pretty well and in a way that doesn't overshadow Ruby at all. One change that I thought was pretty cool from a story and representation perspective was having Neo use ASL and have Yang also learn it with her during her recovery period (which was actually a recovery period thank God, not just a showcase of her suffering and then just being fine without seeing her journey). And one thing that I like by default is it going out of its way to humanize Ironwood. That's always an A+ in my book as an Ironwood fan.
Now let's get into the bad stuff that is actually worth criticizing and not just sweeping under the rug just because LF and CS are lying liars who lie.
First and foremost, the Faunus plotline.
I don't like it.
There was very little effort put in to change the actual problems with the Faunus plotline in the actual show. The White Fang are still the bad guys, Blake is at the same time, still a rich princess with parents who love her, and Racism in Remnant is explicitly stated to be an individual to individual thing (though in a Livestream Celtic Phoenix said that racism in Atlas is systemic, so I'm holding out a little bit of hope that will at least be treated like a big deal) and still far more fighting against civil rights activists than fighting actual racists.
There's some interesting stuff in the beginning with Cardin starting out pretty racist, but after being forced to do some actual research on the subject and finding that his views have no historical or scientific basis quickly changing his mind about it and growing into a better person, but that's not enough to forgive the rest of it.
Effort is being put in to make Adam a more dynamic character who seems to have an explicit tragic backstory regarding the racism he faced (and not just implied with his nasty hate crime scar) but that actually makes the whole thing kind of worse. Because I kid you not, in the final episodes of the volume 5 rewrite, when the White fang is defeated, Blake tells Adam, "this isn't the world your mother grew up in anymore" and I'm just like, Adam's mom is implied to have been a Slave woman who was abused and possibly killed by her owner! Who is Blake, in her mansion on an ethnostate where she never had to face racism or cruelty or worry for a family member's safety, to tell Adam how he should react to Racism?! And I know that the reason she has to stop him in the rewrite is because the White Fang are trying to stage a cou that would lead to a war that would cost far more faunus lives than do good for them, but that doesn't change the fact that it's extremely tone deaf that it was Blake who is telling him this when her backstory hasn't been changed at all.
Either make the White Fang the good guys, or make Blake an orphan who has had to experience racism and cruelty her whole life, because you can't have both and still have a story that doesn't feel jarring and pro establishment as hell.
Next, the cultural appropriation. Taking inspiration from multiple Asian cultures for Mistral is kind of unavoidable since Mistral itself is fundamentally meant to be based on a multitude of Asian cultures. (I personally try to mitigate this problem by having different parts of Mistral be based on different Asian countries, and do the same for the other kingdoms too) but I think we all remember the thing about the Brawnwen tribe from a few months ago. Since the Ainu people are heavily discriminated against in Japan and stereotyped as being bandits and thieves, having the Brawnwen tribe be inspired by them in some aspects is definitely a bad thing. It was especially a problem when that cultural appropriation was also misinterpreted and used without fully understanding the culture of what the traditional bear was. And then the attempt to crack down and defend that was just a bad look altogether.
And to bring up the Shay D Mann and Ren and Roman bathroom scene, these are things that I think the creator just didn't realize could come across as queerphobic or a bad look for the character. The joke about Roman not realizing that Ren is a man and then having a conversation about all of tells that would have tipped him off about Ren being a guy and then having them be rebuttaled (at one point pointing out that Weiss has small boobs and that doesn't make her less of a woman, which while I think was well intentioned was just uncomfortable in general) was just in poor taste. And Shiloh (as he's called in FRWBY) didn't need to still be showcased sexually harassing Yang. He was actively physically and verbally abusing the man at register anyway in the rewrite, Yang could have just done the heroic thing and punched him to protect the civilian, instead of trying to ignore him while he comments on her figure and then saying something incredibly abelist about her prosthetic before being thrown out by Neo and her umbrella. Although It's not necessary to make all of your important characters good people. So I guess this has a lot more to do with how you feel about bad people still being important and sympathetic characters. Though I wouldn't say Shiloh is that important to Volume 5, all he really does is provide some Vernal backstory, serve as some comic relief, and is the one who ultimately decides for the tribe to leave Raven after she gets his daughter killed.
If I were to defend these choices, instead of trying to claim that Shiloh didn't sexually harass Yang (which was honestly far more present in the rewrite, no actual dialogue but he is described as complimenting her figure) and that lesbians are stupid, I would instead say that a character doesn't have to be a good perfectly squeaky clean non problematic person to be a character who isn't necessarily a villain. Or alternatively I could just acknowledge that it was unnecessary to have him actively sexually harass a girl his daughter's age because there was already something else that could have been used to show that he wasn't a good person and end up bouncing right out of the gas station anyway.
I think that's everything I want to talk about, because combing through all of it would be like rewatching an eight hour show and taking notes the whole time and I don't have much time for that.
But all in all, FRWBY isn't above criticism just because it's a rewrite of RWBY and has some aspects that deserve to be criticized, but it's also not the worst most biggoted thing in the world. I like aspects of it, but I honestly like other rewrites better. It honestly just feels like watching the original show if the original show had a more coherent story but didn't change any of the more problematic aspects.
So yeah, there's my review. I'll tell you how I felt about Volume six when it's over.
