RWBY: Ice Queendom : Episode 3
Current Episode Score: 5
Oh man, this episode kinda feels rushed and chopped up. Mainly related to the various character interactions that originally happened that don’t in this show. A perfect example for me in the bunk bed scene. The original web animation had an entire skit dedicated to them arranging the room and showing off there stuff and who they are. And it also had comedy and silly moments that made stuff like the crazy bunk bed solution work. In IQ they do none of that, they just suddenly have this silly bunk bed solution for no reason. IQ has no reason for the bunk beds to exist since we don’t see the characters having too much stuff, nor the silliness of the characters that would build these odd bunk beds. So instead it becomes almost this odd reference to the original show, that doesn’t make sense in the context of this show.
Some IQ original stuff is added to the middle here, with the nightmare story starting. This seems like it is gonna be one of the main points of the IQ anime. It has an issue though, why was this so simple and quick. They build up this idea that his team, who are his friends despite us not seeing them grow as a team and friends at all in the anime. But his friends need to enter his dream and defeat a nightmare. Great, a set-up to a cool fight that will give you a taste of future fights against other nightmares. Expect they don’t, there is no fight at all. Team JNPR just walk in and defeat the nightmare off screen, it is just so dull and anti-climatic.
Continuing that trend, the final scene and fight with Penny being reduced to a cut and the ending of the fight is just, odd. Not in any relation to the original show at all, just focused on IQ as an original product. It is odd. If you are going to show the aftermath of a bad-ass fight, you show the fight. It only makes sense, especially in an action show based around fighting. Much like the nightmare stuff earlier, they cut out the fight completely and just hard-cut to the end of the fight when everything is over. Why? The 2 big reasons I enjoyed the original web animation was the music, which they have cut, and the fight scenes, which they have also apparently cut. It just doesn’t make much sense to me to cut out all these fight scenes and just cut to the end. Outside of maybe they just didn’t have the budget to animation fight scenes, in which case why would you animate an action show with a ton of fights?
If that is the case, why are they cutting the character building stuff that happens in the first volume of the web animation, or at least adding there own to flesh out the characters. And show them interacting and building as a team and friends. Honestly I’m not sure at this point, maybe they have a plan and a larger story they want to focus on. But at this point I’m not sure. I am going to stick with the show though, and see how this keeps going.