Table of Contents - RWBY Volume 4

RWBY (Volume 4)

Written by Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross

Produced under Rooster Teeth

Alternate Title: The One Where Things Look Half Decent

RWBY, Volume 4.

With some sparse exceptions from the dwindling pile of Monty’s finished and ready-for-release work, this is the first volume done completely without his input. It represents a lot—primarily, for ex-RWBY fans, it marks the latter “half” of RWBY, something markedly different from its predecessors in both feeling and direction.

Make no mistake, it’s definitely not without its writing flaws, and a lot of them major. I wouldn’t cast it as a particularly good entry into RWBY’s history. It’s just that it tends to be forgotten a bit when sandwiched inbetween the explosive Volume Three and the phenomenally bad Volume Five.

Since this one hadn’t been worked on by Monty, it was thus deemed safe to criticize, and thus it is in 2016 and 2017 that the true community criticism of RWBY blossomed.

That’s all I can really say about it, since I wasn’t here for it—like I said in my Volume 3 Final Thoughts, I had quit RWBY by the time Volume 4 started, aired, and finished. I only took the plunge back in shortly before Volume 5 started airing, so I can’t give you my usual overview of the volume’s reputation as I have so far. As such, “hiatus overview” will be absent from this section’s final thoughts.

What is interesting is that this volume has double the amount of World of Remnant episodes as we last saw--eight in total. I’ve decided to cover those first, along with the short. Because yes, there is a short preceding Volume 4 to build hype for the first post-Monty season in the wake of all the drama the story had gone through up until that point. It focuses on Ruby, and character shorts would be used again thereafter for Volumes 5 and 6.

( A new era begins... )

RWBY 24 – Volume 4 Short & Volume 4 World of Remnant

Volume 3 Final Thoughts | Table of Contents | 25 – Volume 4, Episodes 1 and 2
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So, I did something I maybe shouldn’t have before starting this recap. I took another look at the end-of-season fight scenes for Volumes 1, 2, and 3. I almost cried, man. How did we fall so far? How did we have something so balls-to-the-wall spectacular, so seamlessly brilliant, only to end up like this?

But onward we march. RWBY will be on Volume 20 if I keep stalling any longer.

The first piece of media released for Volume 4 is the Ruby-centric Volume 4 short, the first of its kind since the four prologue trailers released in 2012 and 2013. Let’s see what it’s all about.

( Eh, B minus. )

RWBY 25 – Volume 4, Episodes 1 and 2

24 - Volume 4 Short & World of Remnant | Table of Contents | 26 – Volume 4, Episodes 3 and 4
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V4E1, “The Next Step”

We open up not on Ruby, wherever she might be, but in a strange location, the same one we ended Volume Three on. The terrain is rocky and inhospitable, and the lighting is a deep red color. We zoom out from a pool of red, actually a thick, black fluid reflecting the sky, which sloughs off a shape rising out of it—a Grimm wolf. It’s rather disgusting. More can be seen climbing out of similar pools of darkness.

( Starting off with a real meltdown, lovely! )