LOOK! A rant!

The aforementioned Weiss rant to be precise!

 

Actually this will likely be a mishmash of pretty much any topic relating to characters I like. You see recently I've been marathoning a very silly, mindlessly fun cliche show for about a few weeks. No it's not a Nickelodeon sitcom, though I am still bummed that a supposed rift between the two lead actresses of Sam and Cat caused it to end prematurely. In fact the very last episode, Cat was arrested and Sam chose not to help bail her out for her own gain, so she could keep rooming with Cat's grandmother who acts like a mother Sam has never known, since her own mom is a pretty terrible mother. While a terrible ending for a series it's sort of fitting for how the show ended, via a feud between the lead actreses and for the last scene of the series to be a scene wherein a lead character does not help another. A broken friendship ended with a display of bad friendship, alas.

 

I do feel some sense of happiness that the actress for Cat, Ariana Grande, broke into the music scene because I've been watching these Dan Schneider shows for a few years now and Cat has always had the best voice. In the crossover episode between iCarly and Victorious for instance, there's a karaoke party at the end and I wanted everyone to shut up except Cat because her voice was so majestic. It's super awesome she's getting the recognition she deserves. Unfortunately I'm not too big on the R&B genre but one of her songs, Break Free, sounds pretty good regardless of my music tastes. 

 

Anyway back to the point on hand, the cliche show I've been marathoning is actually by a company based in France called Marathon. That's right, I've been numbing my brain with constant Totally Spies episodes these past few days and even gave myself a headache when I watched a whole bunch of the newer episodes in a row due to for some reason the voice actresses' being far more squeaky than usual later on. Now I keep the volume fairly low but that causes me to be unable to hear certain characters like Jerry who has a rather soft-spoken voice. It's sad. 

 

When I watched this nostalgic show back in my adolescence, despite the show representing all things stereotypically girly I truly was entertained by the episodes. I never had a favourite character at the time either, though it may have been Clover back then because if I have no favourite usually the most comedic takes the cake. It's sort of like why I love Venus the most in Sailor Moon, but with Crystal airing that can easily change. Having complained about the terrible romance and the flat male characters in RWBY recently, Totally Spies is a far more serious offender in this department and there are certain mini-arcs where I have to skip a few scenes so the girls would not always be obsessed with some sort of perfect flawless guy. 

 

Yet, having marathoned so many episodes in a row, I don't seem to mind it quite as much as in RWBY. Most probably because the show truly is a whole bunch of mindless stereotypical fun and with the constant influx of cartoonish villains seeking revenge in every episode, it's sort of silly to have high expectations of such a show. On the other hand, RWBY being an internet webshow it has the freedom to do whatever it wants no matter how controversial it might be because of the lack of meddling TV producers what with being, well, a webshow. And yet the most recent episodes we have very safe and annoying cliche tropes that I would usually expect in some sort of mediocre cartoon for children on TV. 

 

But I can only sigh in defeat as it does nothing out of the ordinary despite its unique platform and just hope it improves later on and all the issues I've had with it would dwindle eventually. However the biggest ongoing problem I have with RWBY is Weiss. She is no doubt my favourite character and still is, if only because I don't really like any other character more than her so far, so it seems no matter how strange I find Weiss being she's still better than everyone else. After season one ended, my expectation of Weiss' character was sort of like a female Vegeta. It is an animesque show so I thought expecting animesque writing would be reasonable, but unlike Vegeta who took many years to go from a murdering psychopath to a proud family man, Weiss seems to have drank some bad water between seasons one and two and is now as goofy and dorky as can be in season two. 

 

What the hell happened?

 

An ongoing theme with the characters in RWBY is that a majority, if not all of them are massive dorks. This seems to represent a lot of the people writing the characters. I don't mind dorky characters, but if EVERYONE is a goofy dork no one is unique and it begins feeling very tiresome. This is why when Blake joined along with Ruby and Yang in parading around their room annoying Weiss after moving in, I was extremely surprised. I really expected Blake to be a serious character who had no time for such goofy nonsense, but at least Weiss' exasperation towards their behaviour gave a sense of fresh air. However by season two it seems their roles have reversed, with Blake being the serious one and Weiss having taken up the teambuilding silly mantle. Obviously one can always explain Weiss having gone from the bitchy lady screaming at Ruby for bumping into her luggage to someone standing on a chair calling out Blake for hiding her problems to be character development, but where is this said character development?

 

Aside from episode ten where Port gave her a rousing speech, every time Weiss acts far less confrontational it's more like this is what Weiss truly is rather than she became less confrontational. So rather, the oddity is why Weiss acted like how she did in the beginning at all. It was so refreshing to see someone with such a soft gentle-looking design actually be a ticking time bomb, but if that ticking time bomb is a facade over her true personality which no doubt is also a facade for something else considering her trailer, then who the hell is Weiss? As every episode goes on she feels less and less unique to me and more like every other character with their silly goofy behaviour. This is sort of the opposite of Yang who I expected to be very goofy and silly, but she seems more down to earth and even discouraged Weiss from puns after the episode four fight. Yang for some reason was extremely serious at the end of the fight, but why? She has no personal investment to the conflict like Blake does, and is the one who calms down Blake from going overboard about this issue entirely. In fact she said something equally as silly after the season one episode eight fight, so why the fuck is Yang acting like this too? Is she the only one allowed to make goofy quips at the end of major fights or something?

 

The inconsistency truly baffles me.

 

I almost think Weiss' behaviour is a direct response to some people disliking Weiss initially and they wanted to tone her down. Except they sort of went way overboard and now both Yang and Weiss, not being quite that extreme of a character as I expected instead mesh with the rest of the characters and now they all feel far less interesting than they could have been. The ideas that radiated around the fandom throughout all of this including the long hiatus gave them better character than the show has so far, which has also decided to devote seven episodes to fleshing out a side-character, so my expectations really can't be that high anymore. It's sort of a shame how fandom builds up expectations but the show itself falls flat so very severely. 

 

As an example of Yang feeling inconsistent, she remarks earlier about how she's going to "turn heads" at the dance, and then shows up at the dance in a very conservative plain white dress that looks similar to Weiss'. She then dances with Blake for about a second then is shown observing the dance for the rest of it, so where the hell is that turning head part? She is not in anyway unique or flashy in the dance at all and again meshes with everyone else who all have very similar styles of dress as well. RWBY does a lot of telling but very little showing. The showing often contradicts with the telling as well, like how the creator mentioned that the world of Remnant is not prejudicial to say, the LGBT community but during the dance every guy was hooked up with a girl. If a world is super accepting of this issue then wouldn't people in that minority be very open about their orientation? The only other possible explanation is that they are an extreme minority like sadly a lot of ignorant people seem to think and so they had no representation at a dance. I also hardly think there wouldn't be prejudice considering the continuing issue of hating the faunus which is a very obvious analogy to racial problems in reality.

 

Another example of telling contradicting showing is Ozpin's speech in episode eight, where he talks about accepting and diversity and we see the crowds of the four schools that have gathered for the tournament, and very little if at all faunus are among the crowd. Either hiding one's faunus heritage like Blake does is super common and Velvet's super duper brave, or they aren't there at all. This doesn't even touch the skin colour issue. Obviously making huge crowds takes a long time and a lot of copy pasting is involved, considering a Ruby clone and many Jaune clones are in the crowds, but if you're going to say something and then not even give an example of it during that very speech, there's something seriously wrong with the directing. Whoever is responsible for the crowd scenes must communicate more with the writers and realize there is something seriously amiss with the scenes not matching the writing.

 

But y'know as stereotypical and cliche Totally Spies is, it does some things right. One of the episodes highly regarded as the best in season four of My Little Pony for instance, is Pinkie Pride. Now I do like my fair share of proud characters. Miko is probably one of the most prideful characters I've ever liked and I expected Weiss to have more dignity but she doesn't, so. But to me Pinkie is not an especially prideful character. An episode regarding pride feels more like a Rainbow Dash or even Rarity-type of episode to me instead. Pinkie feels like someone who would always go with the flow so long as it's fun and when Cheese Sandwich showed up probably would've loved him and joined along with him as opposed to feeling jealous and attacked by his presence. That is probably my biggest problem with the episode and why I do not regard it as one of the best unlike so many others. Sure it has a highly acclaimed guest star in Weird Al and has a wondrous amount of tunes, but because of that fact I simply couldn't enjoy the episode as most did.

 

Totally Spies on the other hand also had a similar episode, Alex Quits, where Alex well, quits because a super cool better-person came and made her feel like she was replaced. This time the issue isn't because of pride, but because Alex's character involves having low self-esteem. She is of the three most often bullied or considered the most uncool, and later on it is established despite her prowess in athletics, a rather clumsy person. So when she screws up and someone else appears much more capable, she quits. Now an episode similar like that for Pinkie Pride may have been more fitting. Pinkie, as evidenced from say, Party of One, goes ballistic when it feels like she is unneeded. She does seem like, despite her initial appearance, someone who is very fragile in terms of self-esteem. Instead of pride, the episode could've been something often only showcased with someone like Fluttershy (but her's is so damn obvious and in-your-face about Fluttershy's esteem issues) and would've fit Pinkie more than the pride thing. The ending was good though, in that she realizes her pride-that-came-out-of-nowhere was not fun at all and goes against everything she stands for, so she decides to leave Ponyville because she feels unneeded. 

 

The episode could have also been about attention because Pinkie is a major attention whore, but pride seemed like the least fitting theme. Despite the issues this episode was one of, if not the best, key-discovering episodes, so whatever. (That speaks more for how much I disliked the key episodes more than anything though) 

 

Anyway seeing as I am marathoning Totally Spies I guess it makes sense to actually talk about it instead of just using examples to explain other show's problems. Clover may have been my favourite when I first watched the show, but while watching through it again now Alex is my favourite. Hell, I subconsciously watched most of the Alex episodes first and when I started going through the episodes in order I was sort of bored because I watched all the "good episodes" already and then suddenly realized a majority of the good episodes were Alex episodes, ha. The whole boy-crazy thing doesn't bother me as much as it could have so long as the boy in question is a quirky character who enhances the comedic value of the episode as opposed to like, this David guy who showed up for several episodes in season two (or three? I forget) and was pretty much bland and picture-perfect and the girls were all fighting over him. That was annoying. 

 

Another semi-annoying thing is Alex's voice, her new voice in particular. It isn't too bad and is fitting, to be honest, but she ends up with the highest voice and in the later seasons with everyone getting more screechy, her high voice is obviously the worst. I sort of miss Alex's first voice which was more unique and sort of charming, but her new voice is actually dub Sailor Mars which is somewhat amusing. Also Mandy's voice actress (who also happens to be Sam's) is Princess Morbucks from Powerpuff Girls. They have the EXACT same voice but I never realized this until it was pointed out. Mandy sounds EXACTLY the same as Princess Morbucks what the fuck. It feels so weird that I never realized this on my own. 

 

But I think the biggest reason I watch the show is the female friendship. Ah how I love female friendships. It's why I got into RWBY, aside from the obvious Weiss. I was sort of expecting some goddamn girl friendships, but instead of being friends and hanging together at the dance like most girls would including when I hung out with MY friends at MY high school dances, they were all separate people who felt like they hung around with each other only for business and not friendship. It is such a shame that Sam and Cat, a very strong awesome female friendship, was a show ended on a real-life broken friendship. EVERYTHING REVOLVES AROUND GIRLS AND THEIR FRIENDSHIP! GIRLS AND FRIENDSHIP HOORAY

 

It's probably why I watch so many damn cartoons and shows for kids. There isn't much girl friendship in adult shows, where there's more romance and dark themes like...murder and drugs and sexual issues and blah. Ah well.

 

In fact, here is an example. I have numerous NUMEROUS pictures plastered all over my wall of various fandoms. In almost all the fandoms there is at least one picture of two characters or more hugging or being friendly with one another. Koishi jumping into her sister Satori's arms. Yuuna wrapping her arms around Ako. Pinkie and Fluttershy hugging and thanking one another like a greeting card. Miko and Byakuren, a duo I love for their love-hate (mostly hate) relationship, are leaning on one another, one asleep. Murasa and Nue holding both hands together in a colourful watercolour picture. Sayo clinging onto Kazumi's shoulders in shyness. Mokou embracing Keine with the most heartwarming smiles ever. Hell even the boys, there's Rei and Max feeding one another (this is much more yaoi than friendship lol) and a kid Korea giving a kid HK a peck on the cheek. Guess what the RWBY pictures are? Just pretty pictures of the four girls posing. THAT'S IT.

 

Yes there are numerous numerous NUMEROUS fanarts of friendship between the RWBY girls, but the ones I chose to plaster on my walls wasn't of that because it hadn't been showcased very often in show and and most high quality fanart tends to be of stuff off the show. There are a few fanarts of friendship among then I may put on the wall instead, just so my room would have some sort of complete theming (aside from the GTA V Achievement Hunter poster that implies they want to kill each other of course) but I don't feel like plastering RWBY on my walls anymore because of how disappointed I am in the show. (Even if I still want a goddamn Weiss plushie. That expression is perfect! D: ) 

 

Also I sort of want Ibuki on my wall but she'd probably either be alone or with her entire class. I'm still unsure/mad/annoyed/glad that <SPOILER REDACTED> so Ibuki can't really be with anyone. Oh well, she will forever (at least until something else comes around) adorn my phone's lock and home screens. (Mokou and Keine still claim my desktop/laptop wallpapers however) Ibuki is the best, least disappointing character I have ever liked, but sadly the flaws lie in other places such as <SPOILER REDACTED> and <SPOILER REDACTED>. Goddamnit Ibuki.

 

Maybe after I'm done with this marathon I'll check if any Totally Spies fandom still exists, especially since the sixth season aired last year. Then again I'll probably run into weird porn and strange fetishes instead. This show seems to attract these types of people. IT'S POKEMON X&Y HEX MANIAC SYNDROME ALL OVER AGAIN! WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOU, HEX MANIAC!?!? 

 

This has been Spotto, please don't look up Hex Maniac fanart.