My most memorable impression of Ironwood is the softness in his delivery of "No one will fault you if you leave." in Volume 3. He will never put the weight of war on children.
yeah, he wasn't like "you are soldiers! now fight for your kingdom!" he knew they were all children. that they weren't ready yet. he understood and empathized with them being afraid and wanting to run. why? cause they were still children. he even says it to ozpin. "you can't expect your children to win this war." he doesn't call them soldiers, or hunstmen yet, he calls them children.
@@halfknight2310even when he sold out Ozpin to the council, he didn’t do with the cold indifference one would expect from a military style character, he looks down sadly and *then* steels himself.
I don't think he's ever throw out his motivations. His goal has been to win this war from the first moment he stepped into Ospin's office he showed he will always prioritize his way over others including Ospin himself, which he said he has followed for years, and just continues to do whatever he deems as enough to win an unwinnable war.
@@lordofspaceducks4555 mate... this is my second comment to you... pls don't defend the character for what he is now... It's an insult to your intelligence and I wanted to say this in the other comment but I decided not to because it was aggressive. I'll say it now though. "Please, watch the video."
@@professorescanor7310 threatening to nuke it when there was no threat to warrant it in the first place is dumb as fuck. Besides, what does ironwood plan to do with the relic? People say he knows how to use it and people say he doesn't. Either or, it makes the whole plot dumb...
I hate the part of the Fandom that believes that James was always a militaristic dictator. Like they instantly forget that he gave yang an arm, created robots to lessen human losses.
And also gave the choice to many of the students at Amity to simply run because they were still teens. I also like how a lot of people agreed that Ozpin was being super manipulative even if for a good reason, but then those same people turned around and used Ironwood questioning Ozpin as proof that he was always this "my way or the highway" person.
He wasn't always a dictator, but his potential to get where he is now has always been there, and has been a slow burn. Some people just refuse to see that.
The problem there though is that Ironwood having good traits didn't mean he wasn't capable of falling from grace, just like Emerald's negative tendencies like her apathy to people better off than her automatically made her devoid of empathy or feeling. I can get not liking or being disappointed with Ironwood for falling down the wrong path... but I really cannot get where or how EruptionFang and a lot of others are trying to claim it's impossible for him to have ended up like this. Ironwood had his reputation and even a bit of his spirit destroyed by V3’s events - the whole world saw him as an enemy at best or untrustworthy at worst, with no way to defend himself after the CCTS was down, and above it all was the soul-crushing fact that much of it was only possible because of his own Atlas bots; the very hardware he brought in to protect people ended up hurting a lot of them, and that was probably the first crack towards breaking him in realizing he'd played straight into Salem's hands (as well as being the origin of the fear for ever letting it happen a second time that would take him over in V7). The fact Cinder infiltrated Beacon so easily was likely the start of the fear of infiltrators that would bloom fully in V7, even before he learned about Lionheart’s outright betrayal of them all to Salem. A year of butting heads with Atlesian and Mantle residents alike not trusting him, the friction caused by Robyn Hill supporting active dissent against him through the Happy Huntresses stealing Atlas supplies and the unrest Jacques Schnee caused with his ambitions only worsened things further. Then came V7 where Jacques - a born-and-bread Atlesian - conspired with criminals Tyrian and Watts to further his ambitions at the cost of compromising Atlas, followed up by learning Ruby and Oz both used lies of omission to manipulate his actions, then capped off by Penny and Pietro defecting with Ruby after Penny took the Winter Maiden powers needed to save Atlas. Last but not least came the coup-de-grace in having Winter (arguably the last remaining person he trusted in any capacity) going behind his back and eventually outright betraying him, marking the point he gave up on anything beyond brute-force and raw power forcing cooperation. All that piling up makes it honesty very easy for me to believe he could crack even without taking his Semblance's apparent powers into account, much less adding it's effects onto the pile. James Ironwood was, as cited by Glynda Goodwitch in V2, a person who's abiding fault was demanding everybody trust him but never trusting anybody else - he had a fiery sense of conviction, but it was poorly-counterbalanced by his unwillingness to risk putting faith in anything beyond his own judgement. The way things played out are honestly enough to argue for him breaking even without accounting for his Semblance, much less taking its nulling of hesitancy/reinforcement of willpower into account. For him, it was always a case of "taking the next step/doing what needed to be done” with Ironwood and by the time of V8 he'd taken several steps too many down the slippery slope. He shared Ruby's initial mindset of how leaders could not be failures - the difference was that he never reconciled the flaws in that view the way Ruby eventually did; he never realized leaders aren't people who aren't allowed to fail but rather the ones who can get back up from failure, acknowledge it and allow others to help them do so. Ironwood never accepting that led to him doing anything and everything to prevent Atlas ever falling or failing - until it became a sunk-cost fallacy where the price he was ready to pay ultimately became too much. Everybody who was around Ironwood saw his worst tendencies getting even worse after the nightmare that the Vytal Disaster was not only for Atlas but for him personally. Being flawed and misguided can become a downslide to becoming paranoid and irrational if you never trust anybody but yourself - “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” isn’t a metaphor for nothing, after all. Hell, that’s not even accounting for the fact Salem was arguably actively manipulating events to make Ironwood as unstable as possible by turning as much of Atlas and Mantle against him as possible through Tyrian and Watts’ subterfuge (which was probably very easy since the Vytal Disaster likely already made him unpopular - hell, that was probably what gave rise to groups like the Happy Huntresses in the first place) - this wasn’t just some spur-of-the-moment jump onto the crazy train; this was the conclusion to something that was honesty a long time coming with multiple factors involved in it's making, same as how Ruby's innocence chipping away to the point of no longer trusting authority figures like Ironwood enough to tell him about Salem was arguably a long time in the making with how she got disillusioned by veteran huntsman constantly letting her down (Lionheart for betrayal, Oz for lying, Qrow for drunkenness - hell, maybe even her own mom for dying on her, if her character song is to be believed).
The biggest thing for me is that they didn't treat like a tragic downfall either. They could've easily still gone with this route if they made what was happening to him tragic. Make the audience feel bad. Want him to turn around. But at every turn, they try to get the audience to hate him.
Meanwhile, the show tries to get us to feel sorry for Cinder. The one who really IS working for the bad guys for her own bullshit selfish reasons. Sure.
@@ES21007 This is the story of a girl Who cried a river and drowned the whole world And although she had a rough childhood We absolutely hate her, for her crimes.
Yup. Also, it certainly doesn't help to have the heroes act hypocritical and unable to take criticism or question their own actions. The story was just turned black and white, with the heroes being presented as infallible and everyone who disagrees with them turning outright evil.
While displacing thousands of people to a barely survivable shit hole which has its own unique set of Grimm (huge as worm things that are basically the worms from “Dune” or “Beetlejuice”).
@Thomas Raines its also a terrible idea going to the desert. Why, why place two cities worth of people who have been living in the arctic their whole lives into the complete opposite environment? Why not send them anywhere else, Vale was hinted at being stable back in V4, why not Patch aka Tai's homeland, or even Mistral. Helluva lot safer than a place that Sun describes as "the worst possible place to live in" Oh yeah, CRWBT needed new place to have the main characters rest until the finale
So now Adam, Raven & ironwood all suffer from the same issue. It’s almost as if the writers see fans falling in love with their supporting cast and say, “ you’re not supposed to like them, you’re supposed to like our main characters” and then proceed to assassinate them in the most egregious way possible.
Well said. That's exactly what I was thinking they did with Ironwood. The writers were trying to set Ironwood up with a narrative coming out of V7. 'Ironwood Bad'. But then they caught wind of all the social media commentary that many in the fandom were sympathetic to Ironwood's situation. That he was basically written into a box. (RT is nothing if not attentive to social media commentary about the show. And tend to respond in kind.) This was quite contrary to the narrative the writers wanted in place going into V8. I'm sure they also realized that any sympathy for Ironwood meant that Team RWBY might not appear as squeaky clean and righteous as they were propped up to be coming out of V7. Certainly couldn't have that. So what do they do? They ramp up the Evil that is Ironwood, times 10 to hammer home the point. "IRONWOOD BAD!!" Complete with starting V8 off with him randomly shooting an unarmed civilian. Is there a stronger word than 'forced'?
@@DocMicrowave [probably the reason why they took a 2-month break. They needed time to change the original draft (since they started writing vol 9 allegedly months after vol 7 ended) because they didn'T expect ironwood to be so loved.] Is what i'd like to say but Ironwood's fall to villany started at the end of vol 7. If this was all planned then fuck it's shitty writing anyway.
We'll Raven is a female in this show and looking at how fast they forgave Emerald. Wouldn't doubt it if Raven was forgiven after like an episode because she helped Yang in some way.
@@AlexisDevilman The comparison is because Emerald was a girl. That's why I pointed out 'female' in that same sentence. You haven't noticed how it's usually only the guy's who are punished or killed when not on RWBY's side of things. Yet the enemy girl's either switched sides and were forgiven or got away and still have the possibility to make it free. Adam Roman Merc Ironwood - Dead, arrested or stuck with Tyrian lol Illia Neo Winter Emerald - Free or forgiven If all Emerald had to do was help ONCE to be forgiven.. then Raven should be fine.
@@toshido_yamada At this point it's now a damned if you do, damned if you don't If you never address Ironwood's semblance then wtf why is he suddenly cartoonishly evil If you do address the semblance this late then, wtf why are you just trying to handwave all the shit he did They've written themselves in a corner there
In the Volume 7 commentary, Miles (I think it was him) said that "if only Ironwood was able to be more vulnerable, then the stuff between him and team RWBY would have ended differently." Like, WHAT? How was he anything but vulnerable? He told them way more than he needed to tell them, trusted them with the Relic, hugged Qrow in a moment of relief, and made them Huntsmen. How far up his ass was Miles reaching to pull that out?
I think he's referring to the fears he had been keeping to himself about the Fall of Beacon. That's what was driving that decision, a decision mind you, that likely wouldn't have escalated if Cinder had died in Mistral. Her placing the glass chess piece on his desk twisted the knife. Another thing we should probably remember, Atlas is his home, and the thought that what happened to Beacon was about to happen to Atlas, I feel made his decision to cut Mantle loose and save Atlas very believable. I actually liked his plan, but I can see why he thought there wasn't enough time to save Mantle. Honestly, had Ozpin been back when Salem decided to say hello in his office, probably would've helped too.
@@DarkLinkVortex Yeah, I think you're right. I've been thinking about it more and more cracks keep appearing. It's a shame really because a terrible descent from Ironwood would've been incredible if done right. Hell! I've just realised killing him off is the greatest sin of all because now we don't have a practice run for RWBY to bring someone back from the darkness before she inevitably tries to woo Salem.
@@corneliusmaze-eye2459 that’s the biggest thing, in my opinion. The story they’re trying to tell with Ironwood *could* be really good! A general fighting to save the world finally realizing that the threat he’s facing is unkillable and that realization driving him insane, until he begins killing the people he was originally trying to protect? That’s a really interesting concept with a lot of potential. Unfortunately, that general is James goddamn Ironwood, the man who has shown time and time again that he’s willing to do whatever it takes not to defeat Salem, but to protect people from her.
I genuinely hate what semblances have become. In the beginning with the 4 trailers its hoenstly pretty obvious that semblances were created so that each character could have a unique way to make their fighting more flashy. But now it feels like the writers are using the concept of a semblance as a get out of jail free card to make a character OP or justify someone's actions.
@@pauljordan0203 except we never saw that in the show. They told us in a podcast or whatever outside of the show what his semblance was. Which is likely their "justification" for his heel turn.
@@pauljordan0203 what? His plan in Volume 7 was completely rational and would've saved far more lives and protected the world from absolute destruction. Mantle was a lost cause, and protecting would've lost more lives than it'd have saved, and team RWBY, in trying to protect Mantle, destroyed the biggest allied military might on the planet.
@@pauljordan0203 He's never thinking like a robot he's thinking like a man backed into a corner and nobody he trusts is willing to tell him his last ditch effort to save as many lives as possible isn't as good as he thinks it is and when they do try and tell them that it's after he's already lost all trust in them
@@pauljordan0203 But he did know who to trust he openly trusted them all with his plans and everything he trusted Winter and the Ace Ops gave Team RWBY as much as he could even made them official huntsmen He never showed he didn't trust them if anything he showed he was overly trusting to Qrow as he was someone he knew would stop him even physically if needed if he believed he fell down a dark path and as such overreacted when he believed Qrow went behind his back because he betrayed that deep trust he had in his friend
There's a scene in Vol. 6 I just can't get over: Qrow tells the girls "don't lie, don't be like Ozpin, we're better than that" only for them all to lie to Ironwood in Vol. 7- for no reason.
@@ArmageddonEvil poor ironwood shouldn't have to get treated like this. Now that's one more character getting butchered. Thankfully pyrrha and sun are now gone, they're better characters than most of the cast and it should stay that way.
Personally, I don't think they should have ever made Ironwood a villain or even an antagonist. He should have been a strong militarily leader with whom team RWBY might not always agree with, but was ultimately a strong ally they could depend on, exactly like how he was presented in seasons 3. Like you can have allies you disagree with without turning them into villains. Plus, I think Ironwood represented a realistic and logical side of RWBY that is no longer present. The show really feels like a bunch of random teens who are trying to save the world while the rest of the world does not care. But Ironwood, as the head of the Atlas Military, really makes the world feel alive, his presence makes it feel like the story could turn into an all out war against Salem which makes the world seems so much bigger. But RWBY doesn't seem to want to take this more interesting and logical story path, they would rather keep the world irrelevant with only the main characters having any agency and this is damaging. How can be be invested in a world that doesn't feel alive? Why should we care if the world is saved when the world is poorly explored and uninteresting? How will Team RWBY ultimately win when they are just some teenagers fighting against an army? Ironwood was the solution because he represented good world building and an active world, but the writers didn't treat him with any respect. Both he and people of Atlas are no longer characters, they are plot points, all contrived in the service of Team RWBY the only people with any agency.
You bring up good points but ironwood was still a realistic measure even in his turn. The situation became drastic and knowing that he had the military might to solve the problem had to make tough decisions that nobody could make correctly. When these decisions are made a lot of times ppl will not fully understand why the decision was made cause they have never been in such a situation. So personally I don’t like the turn but I think it made some sense and the reactions that team RWBY and the others had were realistic. It feels like they are trying to mix real world decisions into their fantasy world and while that’s not gonna always sit well with many fans it’s a way to spread a point of view the creators may have and that is their choice
I would've loved for the team (as in, all of RWBYORNJ) to sort of "split" after Ironwood presented his plan, with half of them on Ironwood's side, and the other half against him. It would've worked perfectly, especially considering Ren was already showing signs of being for Ironwood, and it wouldn't be much of a stretch to think that maybe Weiss and Blake would be on the same side, albeit somewhat reluctantly, unlike Ren who would be 100% for abandoning Mantle (Edit: not Blake, that won't work, but Jaune instead, maybe) Have the RWBY vs. Ace Ops fight just be a sort of "civil war" within the team, with them fighting each other while Ironwood readies the staff to fly Atlas into the atmosphere. Ultimately it ends with the team reconciling with each other, and later reconciling with Ironwood, after he's had some time to cool his head after sitting safe in the Atmosphere for a little bit. All before the space-bridge bit and they all fall, just like what actually happened. It's something i intend to explore in a fanfic of mine, but the specifics aren't quite nailed down just yet, since the story is gonna end up changing *a lot*
If I recall they had spent months or at the very least weeks so if they were to inform him right of the bat it would of been much easier for them to come up with a plan.
And what I said on Discord. "HIS SEMBLANCE IS SHIT!" Also, now that they gave him his POS semblance. He can NEVER change, his semblance makes that a literal impossibility. He's been a good person, (for a military leader) and they made him a dickhead in Vol 7. He has an obligation to his kingdom first and foremost, it wouldn't be practical to save Mantle and leave Atlas less defended. Saving one kingdom or losing two, because Salem would definitely attack both. RT took a relatable character, a LIKABLE character, and made him a genocidal maniac. Ironwood was my favorite character since his debut, and they ruined him.
@@cyrus6461 This was mentioned in a different video, but if they *really* needed a dictator Jaques is like, right there. Not that they needed one since Salem, the Big Bad of the entire series, is literally right outside of Atlas.
The moment I heard this phrase in the video I immediately scrolled down to find comments on it. This is the first comment in the list of comments for me XD
And to think that Ozma could've been banging hawtness through multiple lifetimes but decided not to because "ruling over plebs is bad". SMH I mean honestly what would've really changed? Before he met Salem again in his first reincarnation she was just minding her own business in a cabin in the woods. Even if they become the "new gods" of the world is that really such a bad thing? If he didn't like something Salem was doing he could, I don't know, try talking to his wife?! How exactly did he think a powerful immortal grimm waifu was going to react when her family abandons her? Point is this is the first time in fiction that an apocalyptic disaster could've been avoided had a guy just thought with his dick just a liiiitle bit longer.
James "The Chad" Ironwood, They rushed this season so hard. People love Ironwood too much so they rushed him becoming a bad guy. Don't even get started with his dum as hell semblance. Ironwood was, is a good man that Rooster Teeth needed to become the bad guy so they did him dirty.
I agree that they rushed this season so hard especially with the fallout of Gen:lock plus with #kickvic vs #standwithvic plus also the #funileaks which made them (Funimation) and Rooster teeth look like a bunch of God damn hypocrites which led towards volume seven being the shit show that it was .
Ever consider that they made you like Ironwood so it would be more upsetting to the fans when they realized that his character doesn't make choices because "it's the right thing to do" but because "it's the logical thing to do" and those two criteria have been matching up the whole season, and then at the end of the season there's a situation where they don't match up?
@@Tehwugginator There the right thing and there is a good thing. The good thing is what Ruby is trying to do that is save everyone. problem with that is it is unrealistic you can't save everyone people will die and you need to accept that. The right thing to do is sacrifice the few to save the many. I am pretty sure Ironwood would save everyone if he could but being a military person he know save most of the people is the right thing to do. BTW I am mad that rushed him becoming the bad guy. He could have been an amazing bad guy if they gave it more time.
@@tatchimittv The problem with this line of thinking here is that it isn't even unrealistic in this situation to save the people of Mantle. Ironwood has known in universe for at the *bare minimum* of a few days that Salem's attack was eminent, if not earlier; there's no reason as to why he couldn't have evacuated the city of Mantle and had its citizens also in the underground subway/bunker system that the city of Atlas has. If you try to argue space or food supplies would be an issue that's a stupid hard sell, because the writers never delve into any of those kinds of rational lines of thought ever in this show (nor do they show anything like how large the underground subway/bunker system is in it's entirety or if Atlas has food stockpiles to begin with), and to give them the benefit of the doubt on *anything* when it comes to writing is, in my opinion, disingenuous at best, given their track record. On top of that, it doesn't make sense to deploy his military as he did. If his whole goal is to defend the city of Atlas and the staff of creation, why mount your first line of defense AT THE EDGE OF THE DAMN CITY? We don't see any forward defensive positioning by the air force. We don't see any perimeter batteries/cannons set up on the edge of the floating landmass (hell, in the ONE shot of the overall battlefield we get in episode 7, the city's OWN WALLS don't even have perimeter defense cannons/batteries/guns OF ANY DISCERNIBLE KIND ON OR ATOP THEM). Even the damn barrier has its barrier projecting structures OUTSIDE THE DAMN BARRIER (just like the one in vol 6 FFS...), rendering the barrier useless almost immediately! Atlas (city, not kingdom) is quite possibly the WORST place to mount a first line in the sand for his stated and/or implied objectives. Especially if he was willing to sacrifice the city of Mantle; why not set up ANY form of frontline there?! That way, you have space to fall back and regroup if things go wrong. Atlas city should be the LAST line of defense, not the first. Even trying to argue *but giant space whale, so actually defensive lines in Mantle are pointless* here doesn't really work: Ironwood doesn't KNOW (in universe) that's how Salem is assaulting the kingdom from the get go; he only finds out when it's literally in view on the horizon (from memory, admittedly; did not re-watch to verify this), and even if he did know before that point, again, AIR FORCE FORWARD DEPLOYMENT is still possible. He's just blatantly incompetent with his command over the military (as he was even in vol 2/3, so, yay for consistency there, of all places...) and essentially feeds an entire city of people to the Grimm for no actual, in universe, logical reason; it only comes of as *potentially* logical to viewers because we can try to rationalize the underlying messages and ideologies at play in the writing. Ironwood's actions here have no in universe logical defense to them; his defense plans have been stupid/insane before he went 'insane' and lost what even Ironwood's most staunch defenders could reasonably claim to be his 'rational' mind. I would go further and argue that his only *major* on-screen logical act has been to try and bring global communications back online in vol 7, and even that had SEVERAL MAJOR FLAWS in rational behind the methodology of going about doing so.
He could've been a fine antagonist but making him a mustache twirling villian ruined his character. I miss the old Ironwood, he was awesome and an in depth character. James Ironwood (before season 8) is my favorite character.
Wish I could say I understood but... honestly? I can't even come close to seeing this as making him a mustache-twirler when this is the man who thought it a good idea to go about filling Vale's streets with patrol bots against Oz's request (i.e., defying/forcibly overruling the guy who's in charge of that city). He had a lot of conviction but, frankly speaking, he was never all that great when it came to the actual planning department - by and large because he never trusted anybody enough to rely on them for it ^_^; Ironwood had his reputation and even a bit of his spirit destroyed by V3’s events - the whole world saw him as an enemy at best or untrustworthy at worst, with no way to defend himself after the CCTS was down, and above it all was the soul-crushing fact that much of it was only possible because of his own Atlas bots; the very hardware he brought in to protect people ended up hurting a lot of them, and that was probably the first crack towards breaking him in realizing he'd played straight into Salem's hands (as well as being the origin of the fear for ever letting it happen a second time that would take him over in V7). The fact Cinder infiltrated Beacon so easily was likely the start of the fear of infiltrators that would bloom fully in V7, even before he learned about Lionheart’s outright betrayal of them all to Salem. A year of butting heads with Atlesian and Mantle residents alike not trusting him, the friction caused by Robyn Hill supporting active dissent against him through the Happy Huntresses stealing Atlas supplies and the unrest Jacques Schnee caused with his ambitions only worsened things further. Then came V7 where Jacques - a born-and-bread Atlesian - conspired with criminals Tyrian and Watts to further his ambitions at the cost of compromising Atlas, followed up by learning Ruby and Oz both used lies of omission to manipulate his actions, then capped off by Penny and Pietro defecting with Ruby after Penny took the Winter Maiden powers needed to save Atlas. Last but not least came the coup-de-grace in having Winter (arguably the last remaining person he trusted in any capacity) going behind his back, marking the point he gave up on anything beyond brute-force and raw power forcing cooperation. Everybody who was around Ironwood saw his worst tendencies getting even worse after the nightmare that the Vytal Disaster was not only for Atlas but for him personally. Being flawed and misguided can become a downslide to becoming paranoid and irrational if you never trust anybody but yourself - “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” isn’t a metaphor for nothing, after all. Hell, that’s not even accounting for the fact Salem was arguably actively manipulating events to make Ironwood as unstable as possible by turning as much of Atlas and Mantle against him as possible through Tyrian and Watts’ subterfuge (which was probably very easy since the Vytal Disaster likely already made him unpopular - hell, that was probably what gave rise to groups like the Happy Huntresses in the first place) - this wasn’t just some spur-of-the-moment jump onto the crazy train; this was the conclusion to something that was honesty a long time coming with multiple factors involved in it's making, same as how Ruby's innocence chipping away to the point of no longer trusting authority figures like Ironwood enough to tell him about Salem was arguably a long time in the making with how she got disillusioned by veteran huntsman constantly letting her down (Lionheart for betrayal, Oz for lying, Qrow for drunkenness - hell, maybe even her own mom for dying on her, if her character song is to be believed).
@@mrmetroid1078 I agree with just about everything you said. I think Ironwood is pretty trusting all things considered. In S7 he just strait up spills his whole plan to team RWBY which ends up being his downfall and his whome plans was to tell the world about Salem. But I digress. I am 100% on board with Ironwood butting heads with the protagonist, I fact as you stated it's been long since over do. The problem is you shouldn't have to destroy the character just to make them the antagonist. At the end of S7 he shot oscar and was gonna leave mantel(a dick thing to do) but it was justified by his own morals so to the audience it made logical sense(not to mention most people were annoyed with team RWBY so it was easier to sympathise with Ironwood). But other than that I agreed with everything else and I enjoyed reading your comment👍
@@chatyxd6078 Well, honestly speaking, I think that's more a case of handing out orders and expectation to see them followed - for me, trust would have been more along the lines of telling them about the "airlift Atlas" plan from the start rather than only after already panicking, or making an honest appeal to Fira to have her pick someone in his command as the Winter Maiden as opposed to plating off her emotions, or making some kinda attempt at negotiation with Robyn instead of hiding everything about the Amity project (because learning he wanted to restore global communications could have been used as a rallying tool if he'd actually had the ability to trust people would *want* to help him). Again, the sad fact of the matter is "destroy" honestly doesn't describe what happened here - not to me, at least. Ironwood's character had a fall from grace, and it's arguably *The Fall of Beacon* that was the start of his downward spiral; the way Salem/Cinder played him like a fiddle was arguably where the fear of being manipulated ever again first took root to make his initial problems with trust grow worse. It likely continued to worsen after a year of trying and assumedly failing to mend his ruined public image to Mantle in the wake of the Vytal Festival disaster. In V8 it became ever-worse as the actions of Jacques (a fellow Atlesian and councilor, however briefly) likely made him unwilling to tolerate any further risk of (perceived) defiance or betrayal from councilors like Sleete; Winter's going behind his back made him doubt even her capacity and sense of duty, leading him to take matters into his own hands with a bomb-threat to get Penny back under control; now, with Winter outright committing "treason" against him and Atlas (i.e., everything he's ever worked, fought and sacrificed for) about to crash and burn, he's completely shattered to the point his only goal now seems to be "avenging" the fall of Atlas more than anything else. Moreover, to me, it makes it a very tragic story not only because you can see where he went wrong and how it could have been fixed had he taken Glynda's advice to heart and not demanded trust without giving it... but also because he could be argued as where Ruby could have ultimately ended up with a few wrong turns. All the way back in V1's Jaunedice, Ruby once said "You're a leader now, Jaune; you can't afford to be a failure" - that very mentality is arguably what doomed Ironwood so badly; he didn't feel like he could afford to fail Atlas, so he never took the risk of trusting in others. In Episode 11, Yang finally gives Ruby a much-needed correction about how taking risks for the right reasons doesn't always mean they're gonna work out, no matter how convicted you are that they're the best course to take - that failure's just a thing you can never 100% avoid, with what matters being whether you can accept it, pick yourself back up and trust others to help you do so by letting yourself be vulnerable with them. Ironwood never learned these things, so he ended up pushing people away until he ended up alone - Ruby by contrast finally accepted that she couldn't force things to go her way, allowing her to reconcile with the idea of failing to save Atlas and Mantle in exchange for resolving to at least save it's people.
@@mrmetroid1078 Finally, someone else who sees that this was heavily foreshadowed. It's about as on the nose as it gets, both for his literal tin man with no heart character inspiration, and for his past behaviours/military background (read, military indoctrination).
You answered your own question. It's because he made the main characters look bad. To me, it feels like roosterteeth saw that the audience was siding more with Ironwood and decided to make him laughably evil to make team rwby look good. Cause according to bad writing rule #10, "If you lack the talent to make your main characters interesting or likable, make everyone else look worse by comparison".
What doesn't help is that the series has had a track record of having a lot of their villains, antagonists and otherwise characters who receive the least sympathy often times being those who have "fallen" in some manner to their circumstances or, more specifically, their trauma: Qrow falling into despair and alcoholism gets browbeat, threatened and yelled at, Ozpin's legitimate trust issues are disregarded because he should trust RWBY anyway, gets tortured and treated like garbage, Adam getting contorted into a cringe ex-boyfriend and then a bonified hate sink because he was... groomed to be a mad dog by Sienna. And his trauma. Now we come to Ironwood which is by far the worst case of this: someone who even the protagonists shoved off a cliff into literal insanity because his PTSD was triggered by the villains *on purpose* to divide the good guys. And it worked. And Team RWBY never has remorse for falling for it. Team RWBY, of course, being people who've had endless support from family and friends after already being extraordinarily privileged in opportunities and benefits from their *birth.* The only thing worse than the villains being there not by choice but by their trauma and then getting treated like garbage is the fact that the people constantly paraded around as better than them are a bunch of hyper-privileged teenagers.
I really hate that they made Blake essentially a faunus princess because it makes all of her comments about the Faunus being discriminated against feel so hollow, especially next to people who have experienced actual trauma like Ilia and Adam.
The difference though is that Adam was never shown in any kind of sympathetic light - even when taking about how Blake left him alone when he fights her in V6, it comes across more as him treating her as more important than the SDC's scarring him was; something that infers he never actually cared about the WF cause as opposed to just lashing out at the whole world for his problems. For Ironwood, Ruby's lying to him was just the final straw on the camel's back - even back in V4, characters were commenting on how Ironwood hadn't been the same since the Fall of Beacon (i.e., when Cinder/Salem played him like a fiddle to use his own Atlas bots to ruin the Vytal Festival, destroy the CCTS and frame Atlas for it all); to treat it like *they alone* shoved him off that cliff feels like an exaggeration, much less saying that "Team RWBY never has remorse for falling for it" since that's honestly disproven with the fact Ruby's group never once actually considered the easy out of just going straight after Ironwood and killing him. By contrast, Ruby's group *did* eventually admit they didn't really understand the risk that trust represents until they'd had going it "their way" blow up in their faces - even when they were all open with each-other and kept one-another in the loop, they didn't end up with any better a united front and ultimately split on what to do for saving the kingdom; doing things different from Ozpin still didn't prevent them doubting or disagreeing with each-others judgement as evidenced by their disagreements on how to save Mantle. To quote Optimus Prime in Transformers:Prime; "Wisdom cannot be granted; it must be earned. Sometimes, at a cost" - for RWBY, that wisdom was the risk of trust and what it represented for Ozpin, and it only came at the cost of having things in Atlas spiral out of their control when being honest with each-other failed to surmount complete trust in each-other when it was needed most. Last but not least, I wouldn't really call them "extraordinarily privileged in opportunities and benefits from their brith" - at best you could make the case for Weiss and Blake, but neither one really had the mindset to enjoy such things or even want them (Weiss for her dysfunctional family life and being willing to throw all those things away to live her own life, Blake for her getting swept up in Sienna Khan's rhetoric about human abuse to faunus and abandoning her family's cushy life for what she thought was "the good fight"). Ruby and Yang came from pretty down-to-earth lives, and their respective mother-issues aren't something I'd really see qualifying them for the "extraordinarily privileged" bracket - hell, Ren and Nora are even further off; being left orphans after Kuroyuri, those two arguably *could* have ended up like Emerald and Mercury had they been taken in by someone bad, just like Emerald might have ended up much better at a much earlier point had the person to rescue her not been Cinder Fall. Literally the only character who seemingly had a good family life was Jaune with his big loving family and the assumed privileges of having heroes for ancestors, so I don't really see how this angle works IMHO.
@@mrmetroid1078 I think the main problem with videos like these is that EruptionFang will ignore facts presented in the show or by the showrunners in favor of his head canons. He accused Blake and Yang of murdering Adam even though in the episode, Yang and Blake were willing to let Adam go if he left them alone, but Adam lashed out one last time and had to be stopped in self defense. Ironwood has been presented as overly-cautious to the point of paranoia since his first introduction when he transported his army all the way to Vale despite Ozpin, Glynda, and Qrow being against it. By season 4, Ironwood was already beginning to act free of the council because of his paranoia, and implemented an embargo and border shutdown which crippled Mantle economically, which in turn caused Jacques to lash out, but as Ironwood said he holds two council seats which is 40% compared to other three holding 20% each, which gives him a majority unless all three other members vote against him. In the very first episode of V7, Pietro says that Ironwood has been acting paranoid since the fall of Beacon, and it's what is fueling his action which include curfews and lockdowns in Mantle, and at this point trusting authority figures hasn't really worked for them because Ozpin withheld important info and Lionheart betrayed them so why would they consider trusting Ironwood completely? Once they did put their trust him, he let his paranoia (which has been a known trait of his) run rampant the minute things backfired. Add in his semblance which has been confirmed as canon, and it made for a a villainous turn. One that could have been done better, but was not completely out of the blue like EF seems to think.
@@RyLHatch1989 Yeah, that more than anything is what I take the most issue with in EFs videos - I can understand making critiques for where things could have been better illustrated, or where we could have had better contextualization... but all too often nowadays it feels like EF is just confusing "I don't like it" with "it's bad writing". And even then I might not care so much if he was framing himself as an off-the-cuff reactor, but he frames himself as a reviewer - disregarding facts or divorcing context from subtext like that is pretty much anathema to giving a professional review or objective critique, and It's something I really don't like seeing from someone who's shtick was analyzing the character songs ^_^;
Well, in novel director of Shade wasn't evil - but boastful and kinda stupid... made a desision to reshuffle all teams up to 4 year with new initiation, mixing dif years and fucking up years of trust in teams and teaching shedules, reaaally sabotaging power of huntsmen in dire moments. Suggestion of that was made by mind-controlled traitor teacher, but he still was stupid enough to go with it. Also, there is no wall or anything natural protecting city, only hunter patrols... Vacuo should really be dead long time ago.
@@OmniscientWarrior Lionheart wasn’t evil, he was just forced, as we seen Salem literally threatening his life if he didn’t cooperate, and he died by Salem’s hands instead of killing children.
I fear that will happen too but that's simply idiotic. The leaders of the free world care about saving people, it makes no sense for all or even most of them to be untrustworthy and secondary antagonists to Salem.
Nobody likes ironwood as a villain because he was the one guy we could all stand behind. He always protected the people no matter what and respected them as individuals. He was militaristic in nature, but kind and understanding. The new ironwood is a shell of what he was just a few episodes ago and that’s why his turn is so infuriating
They should've had it where he and team RWBY don't agree on some things but at least find common ground RT: but that would mean giving character development and effort
That kinda makes the turn all the better though. It SHOULD be frustrating. What you're describing here? That's what people in-universe probably would have felt. Ironwood fell victim to his own semblance, and evidence for that being nigh inevitable has been out there from the start. He doesn't turn EVIL. He just becomes an antagonist, holding fast to the decision to save those he KNOWS he can still save.
@@TiltedPotatohead No one ever accused Roosterteeth of being good at using their show to tell all the needed info. God those loredump 'extra' episodes are awful. But even ignoring the semblance part; He was always going to fall prey to his own determination, yes. From the very first scene he has been introduced as being more than willing to step all over his allies if he feels it neccessary. Metaphorically, by bringing in a notable part of his army on a simple diplomatic visit to an ally, literally with his introduction of the Atlesian Knights where he has those robots literally kick over and stand on their predecessors.
@@CynicalNaivety I think that would have been executed far better if, instead of bombing Mantle when the SDC ships came, he would have let them be because that’s just one less thing to worry about, and maybe even tried to convince the main cast to help evacuate Atlas and the Staff, not because that’s the GOOD solution, but because that’s the OPTIMAL solution. Mettle shouldn‘t make him more cruel, it should make him a MACHINE. His goal is to protect Remnant and by extension the people, was less people die, those numbers are better, so this is the better plan.
The entire team RWBY officially lost their characters the moment they pointed their weapons at Qrow, a man who had done nothing but protected and guided them up to that point, for trying to get them to calm down before going too far on Oscar/Ozpin. Like, even YANG turned on him, and Ruby was just gonna pretend that her whole team just threatened her beloved uncle? A man who literally helped raise her to become the huntress/person she came to be? I call bullshit.
@@mutecanvas3509 I mean…it’s kinda justified. They both gave him multiples chances to stop fighting and just leave them alone. Most likely, Adam wouldn’t have stopped fighting them until both of them were dead. It’s clear by Blake’s reaction to killing Adam that she never wanted to kill him, she just wanted him to stop stalking her and let her move on. So I wouldn’t say they killed him in cold blood, it’s just that killing him was the only way they could get him to stop, and if they didn’t, he would kill them.
@@thomasraines1396- those reasons were that she was ashamed of what the White fang was turning into and the fact she didn’t want to betray her friends but she couldn’t stay in the group any longer.
I love how fans would go "Ha, see! Ironwood overreacted! Ruby was right to lie and betray him!". Well I don't see anyone acting reasonably after being betrayed and lied to by the people they trusted and only being told the truth at the very last minute
Ironically, the way team RWBY reacted to learning the truth about Salem tells me that Ozpin was right to keep it a secret… but for some reason Ozpin is the only one who needs to apologize.
A little off topic, but what bugs me about the situation is that ROBYN deadass used her semblance on the man. Then everyone immediately forgot about it in the show.
And because of this, Ironwood was the Tin Man, a man who looks like someone stubborn and cold but in reality is a person who is willing to put his head if that means to save everybody, not Ahab, a man who is willing to sacrifice everyone only to accomplish a selfish goal.
what annoyed me most is how angry team RWBY got at ospin for hiding the truth from them (they literally chewed him out where he nearly dissappeared entirely) then immidietly hid the truth from the next guy they meet who has put his full trust in them huge hypocracy from your main cast
Exactly! The show treats Ozpin withholding secrets as justification for him being morally grey but the main characters are suddenly in the right when they do the exact same thing to Ironwood and it's not their fault when Ironwood doesn't trust them anymore. It is hypocritical. Personally, I don't think Ozpin did anything wrong by withholding info and every good leader needs to keep somethings secret but he was presented as a straight up bad dude for doing so. It really spoke to Team RWBY's (or the writers') naivety and it becomes even worse when they do the exact same thing to Ironwood with zero self awareness! Either Team RWBY realizes that they were wrong for getting mad at Ozpin or they admit that sometimes it's ok to have secrets. But there is zero self reflection on their part and the story never paints them as making the wrong choice, it always presents them as being correct even when they contradict themselves! The way I see it, RWBY was wrong to get mad at Ozpin and they were wrong to withhold info from Ironwood. It's all about if that info is necessary for people to do their job. Was it necessary for Team RWBY to know anything about Salem and her backstory? Honestly, no because they already know she's evil and it doesn't change the fact they need to fight her. But Ironwood _needed_ to what RWBY knew so he could make effective leadership decisions and bad things happened when he didn't have the full picture. Either way to slice it, Team RWBY was in the wrong.
@@victor2641 Their justification for being cautious was bizarre though. They fly into Mantle and go all ":000 omg this isn't right!" ignoring that why Mantle is the slums is an issue that predates Ironwood (cough cough SDC exploitation cough cough).
A reversal of the tinman gaining a heart is actually pretty good, but the sad fact is, the trash tier writing - which is susceptible to fandom influence, mainly shipping - has shown time and time again that any deeper meanings we infer are coincidence or accidental.
They're tried to paint team RWBY as the heroes by not abandoning Mantle, which would be good in a situation that isn't war. They choose the one scenario where his choive was perfectly understandable. And instead of offering a different method, for example having team RWBY work together with Robyn and her cronies to evacuate Mantle while Ironwood tried to hold off the Grimm, they just made them call him a tyrant and basically almost dooming humanity by driving the person running the strongest army insane.
Roblyen seems to trust team rwby, so why not call a conference with ironwood to strategize? Put aside their differences for what is basically the greater good. Ironwood is the shield and team rwby can do the extraction, it all fucking works but it's tossed out for nothing.😭
@@Mystravian let's see sacrificing a city in exchange for not giving a weapon that can help the enemy destroy the world? Pretty sure every smart military leader would do that.
@@sornyeilevente973 except thats not what he's doing. He's leaving a defensible position not knowing whether his retreat would even be effective. Opening the vault also should have been treated as a last resort, because they dont seem to have a way to close it but salem doesnt seem to be able to open them without a maiden, so if the relic was the primary worry, then the BEST thing to do would have been to allow amity to rise and send penny with it so the Vault would stay impregnable as long as possible.
@@Mystravian Mantle and atlas aren’t defensible, they were overrun within hours. opening the vault and taking the relic away was a good decision because even if they needed the winter maiden to open the vault, if the enemy controls the city they control who gets to the vault. A good military general would sacrifice a city for the sake of the rest of the world especially when the enemy has no end of troops, just destroy atlas and get away, he could have had rwby and the ace ops get people out but no, rwby had to make him the bad guy for no reason, his decisions were logical and made sense (pre insanity) and the “heros” of the story just made everything worse with every decision they made.
@@thomasraines1396 It's a reference to an EFAP (an acronym for Every Frame A Pause) meme, it is a quote by Jacob Kane in CW's Batwoman. Said Jacob are treated similarly to James Ironwood. He's trying his best to keep a crime-infested city safe and he even had to compromise and help Batwoman (who keeps letting criminals and pseudo-terrorist get away by the way.) but the show treats him as wrong half of the time. His current wife faked one of his daughter's death, he refuses to let one of his daughter who is not yet an official doctor but wants to keep a secret hospital open therefore protecting her from making herself a criminal for malpractice and almost everyone blame him for giving up on his daughter's disappearance who was faked. Poor guy can't catch a break. Watch "Best of EFAP watching Batwoman". It's a fun ride but also frustrating to watch as the writers are simply incompetent.
@@quickman2663 Can't just make the main characters more likable nnoooooo~ they gotta make everyone else worse then give all of their redeeming qualities to the nearest available female.
Audience: He's just a guy trying his best in a lose-lose situation, making hard decisions that no-one else wants to. RoosterTeeth: Bad man is bad. Main antagonist is bad. Team RWBY is good. RWBY beat bad man. More money now.
Me the fan: Ironwood broke after the last 2 years of pain, paranoia, distrust, and his need to do something anything in the face of unspeakable horror. This is how you write a tragic character trying to do good and falling to their inner demons. RoosterTeeth: Thank you for taking to time to understand our story and charaters.
@@lookinforgoodshowsz But the progression was nonsensical. He goes from trying to unify all of Atlas to shooting a kid over the course of three to four episodes. He could've simply knocked out and detained both Oscar and the Council members. If nobody goes against him when he freaking shoots an unarmed civilain in public, then they're not going to object to him locking them up so they can't interfere or get in the way of the plan. There's literally a scene where Ironwood chuckles ominously like a cartoon villain when he realizes RWBY and Co are trying to save Mantle. It makes no sense. It gets even worse when he escalates even further by threatening to blow up Mantle *after* Oscar destroys a good chunk of the Grimm and Salem is taken out of the picture. At that point, working with Team RWBY would be far more practical than blowing up an entire city, especially since evacuations have begun. Remember, Ironwood was initally relieved when he thought Ozpin had came back in the form of Oscar. He's not in love with his own authority or power, it's something he's taking up because he believes he has to. So you'd think that when faced with an alternate solution that doesn't involve killing thousands of people, he'd at least consider it.
@@lookinforgoodshowsz But he didn't. His breaking point was when he found out Yang's stupid ass decided to go behind his back and tell a thief about all of his secrets. RWBY tries to claim a moral high ground but all they accomplished was destroying a city, literally leaving unarmed civilians in a desert with two hunters and a maiden to protect them from hordes of grim. Ironwood never broke he was always right. Miles and Kerry were desperate for an antagonist and ruined Ironwood. They did the same to Adam. Now Emerald who has helped in mass genocide is a good guy now, but Ironwood is dead...yeah no real fan would believe this shit.
To reach that level of character assassination implies that Rwby had any character that strongly written to begin with. Sorry mate the show's writing has always been down the dumps. People are just not ignoring those flaws anymore
@@blitz4779 Sure. But to say that its anything as bad as the drop in GoT season 8 implies that rwby had been close to the writing quality that high as early GoT. While GoT went down the cliff, Rwby feels like a 1-2 story drop at most.
@@goodlion335 why do they do this? They *had* good characters but it’s like they purposely *choose* to write the stories and the characters in damn near the shittiest way possible. Why?
@@marlom7882 I can only speculate. But in my opinion there are two possible explanations. First - they just cannot write something, that not white or black in morale specter. Because of lack of skill or imagination or what ever. And second - they are too scared to write something, that leaves possibility of questioning main heroes, their actions or decisions.
@@goodlion335 then have the MCs make smarter or better choices. I mean it doesn’t have to be like game of thrones or hunter x hunter but have them *think* their situations through more carefully; instead of having them make a completely illogical and rash decision and paint it as the right choice like oh I don’t know stealing a military airship
Ironwood is an example of the writers assuming that an antagonist had to be a villain, and then suddenly adding villainous traits so the audience would agree.
Wait wait wait... Me and a friend has only played catch-up up till the latest episodes because he hasn't seen it and I left off at V4. And I only know about his semblance through Facebook comments and a wiki search to double confirm. His fucking semblance, is done on their RT Podcasts? You have you be shiting me. Is any information about the show NOT done outside of the show?
@@TedTheHobbyist Unfortunately most info is done outside of the show... Or at least until it gets retconned or doesn't show up lol. Fun fact according to WoR Mystral has the biggest underground scene out of all of the continents. It also is well renowned for its culture... Yeah we don't get any of that shit. So basically you're lucky you managed to see those facebook comments or else you would've never seen Ironwood's semblance
@@TortoiseNotTurtle Good Christ, had we gotten a lot of world building and lore building in V2 and possibly in V3, that would have been great as well as expand on the world in V4 but no. We get WoR which is forgotten. While watching V4, I actually forgotten about WoR series and my friend was adamant on not watching it for the sake of knowing the lore because WHY
@@TedTheHobbyist the real reason for this semblance is that it is easy to animate. RT has a history of making every semblance look less visually impressive and almost every single one introduced post Season 3 was not even something they would have to animate.
People in the FNDM: "WOW! CRWBY/RT are such great writers!" Miles & Kerry: "We couldn't write the Faunus Racism Subplot because of the color of our skin" Those aren't great writers, it's people lacking imagination and creativity
@@brandonb4742 Those are the ones that will go out of their way to defend something because it showed one trait. For example; Illia and May. Illia was an interesting character that I was genuinely invested with but when her sexuality was revealed, that was the one thing people only ever talked about her was and that this one trait automatically made her a "great" character. Same thing with May, it was revealed on Twitter first that she was a Trans character an entire volume before we got the actual reveal, which took away the "shock and awe" of a reveal. But you had people saying that May was this "great and amazing character" despite her having yet to do anything "great and Amazing". It was just because of one trait
For me, I'm just sick of "authority man BAD!" conspiracy trope. People in power are always used as a villain and things like lockdown and robot armies are always painted in an evil light so the good guy looks better, even when the action makes rational sense. If you're not choosing the way of friendship and light and blind love and hope, (and basically the main character's way,) you're the bad guy. The end.
It is tiring. Especially since lately, writers don't even make "Authority Man" bad. Just really strict and focused on the job. Which in turn means they don't try to make the (and I use this phrase loosely) "Rebels" heroic. Like, what's so Fucking Heroic about Team RWBY? Nothing. They led a Kingdom to it's destruction and sipped tea in a literal mansion, observing the chaos THEY caused, like the armchair revolutionaries they are.
@@bashamd96 Now this, i disagree with. Ozpin never did anything explicitly wrong; he's one of the most tragic characters in RWBY. So no, Oscar didn't "have it coming for being Ozpin"; neither of them did.
@@dominiquesnijders2655 I think you forgot the part where he lead everyone around him to believe he had a plan actively influencing there lives to follow him as he bullshit his way around something Qrow directly shows negatively hurt him extremely to believe him and ruined his relationship with the own flesh and blood sister Oz has ruined people's lives and is basically the reason for everything bad in Qrow's life and Ironwood was following him genuinely believing Oz could save everything he holds close to him his country, his men, humanity all for it to be a lie and Oz never had a plan In fact worst then not having a plan he knew he had no chance and was just stalling hoping by some miracle something will come along while telling everyone he knew exactly what he was gonna do to beat Salem Yeah he had it coming frankly the fact Qrow didn't kill him when he learned this more shows how much self control Qrow has cause frankly anyone who's believed in Oz's bullshit has ample cause to wanna shoot whoever's body he's inside now
The problem is the writers are too reactive to audience feedback. Ironwood's sudden dehumanization felt more like a reaction to fans favoring Ironwood over Team RWBY in Vol 7. For proof of this go listen to his song "Hero" from his fight with Watts by Jeff Williams and read the Lyrics. They describe the Ironwood fans love but not what he becomes a few episodes later.
RT always does it and the honestly need to stop listing to the fans because, and I'm sorry to say this, most fans are stupid and don't know how to tell a good story. I mean come on, this is a fandom that's can't even agree if Black is Bi or straight and they are dumb enough to prioritize arguing about ships over, you know, the actual plot. actuallywhat'sthey're talking about. And unfortunately, these are the type of vocal people the writers are getting feedback from.
Whats hilarious is they could have kept him heroic and still kept tension (however badly written) between him and RWBY by having him yell something like "IF YOU THINK YOU CAN SAVE MANTLE THEN DO IT! In the mean time, I will save Atlas! Now go!" And he'd have had the "mental snap" they were going for.
Ironwood is like that 4 block meme with the grey npc dude saying "I've been nice to you and everything" then Ruby says something bad about him. Then he gets angry in the last panel.
They really massacred Ironwoods character in my opinion, he was so well written in 7, that 8 just feels like a volume 5 all over again, where a prior episode or volume complete sets up a character or relationship and then the next one just throws it all out
The writers want to get from point A to B storywise and don't give a damn how they do it or whether it even makes any sense. It's bad writing plan and simple.
Oh no, i've been waiting for all of Volume 8 to come out before watching it, and I loved how Ironwood was written in Volume 7 (he made his way up to my favorite characters list) and now I'm nervous for what I'll see in Vol. 8
@@Sydberry Honestly like, I've fully understood ironwood through this entire volume even if I dislike what he's doing. He's faced with an immortal, unstoppable villain, who can't be killed and will stop at nothing until she's victorious, and only *now* is she coming out of hiding and properly fighting. Hell I'd probably react the same as ironwood, the only way to stop her from destroying everything is to hide one of the pieces she needs until she grows bored and either leaves, or falls into an eternal coma.
@@Sydberry not to ruin your expectations but it was good of you to be worried. I thought he was incredibly well written compared to nearly everyone else in V7 and was hoping they’d go down the tragic anti-villain rout but of course RT had to screw it up
@@johnpaulcross424 I thought that tragic anti-hero was their intention! I thought we were *supposed* to question who was "right" in this 'RWBY vs Ironwood' scenario. And that there would be questions about morality and RWBY questioning themselves. I was hoping Ironwood would continue to be the anti-hero and deeply written character that I thought he was in Volume 7, but from what I'm getting from context clues in comments of these videos, that's not the case in Vol. 8, which makes me less excited to watch Vol. 8. If RWBY is always supposed to be morally right, then the only conflict is "can they do it" not "should they do it" which I think is a question that should be wrestled with in these types of shows, RWBY should not be a clear cut and dry bad vs good show. Grimm are bad, yes, but it's not just Grimm they're fighting against anymore
You know, I have seen several videos dissecting why Ironwood's descent into villainy wasn't believable, but not one person has laid the blame at the feet of the real person who eviscerated everyone's trust: Yang Xiao Long. Besides maybe Weiss she had the most reason to defend Ironwood's trustworthiness. He gave her a free replacement arm which nobody ever even mentioned. But not only does she stay silent, she even talks Blake into directly betraying his interests. Then, if that wasn't enough, in the first episode of volume 8 she has the audacity to blame Ruby for how things have gone. No, Yang. Your decision, one you made whout consulting your sister slash leader, directly led to Ironwood losing trust in your team, imprisoning Qrow, and dividing everyone. Then you gaslit the whole hero group into believing Ruby was the one who led you into the situation. "We've been following your lead Ruby and it hasn't worked out." That was a direct quote from V8E1, but it's YOU made the decision without anyone's input beside your precious gf. then Yang admitted it to Itonwood in front of everyone. Did Ruby and Weiss even know what you did Yang? Or were they as shocked and betrayed as Ironwood was? The hypocrisy of Yang Xiao Long runs deep and somehow she got away with all of it Scott free.
You forgot to mention the part where she tries to butter up her sister by saying "they did a lot more" whatever they were planning when in reality all they did was rescue Oscar and Ruby's worldwide message that didn't do shit. These characters in the writers blow up their own "accomplishments" way out proportion
@@konstellashon1364 It feels like the writers just take inspirational quotes from other anime and then put them into the script to make Rwby more interesting when in reality they've barely done jack
@@quin7988 I'd love it if the rest of rwby became a allegory for trust, like we watch a certain character for long enough we tend to see them as important dare I say, the most important. Imagine if volume 8 onwards team rwby becomes more and more villainous in their actions and people still see them as the heroes due to our experiences, it would be a great message towards story telling in general......................................................................DAHHHH who am I kidding obviously they won't do that.
If the AceOps were more fleshed out than we could see why they stick with Ironwood. Perhaps they were orphans or from poor families that He saw potential in and took under his wing. But instead they were made into obstacles.
Instead of the Ace Ops, we should have gotten Penny’s team. That would have reduced the number of major characters in V7-8, and featured a character that the audience was familiar with (Ciel) instead of 5 characters that are only cared about due to fanart (Harriet & Elm) and headcannon shipping (Clover) Edit: It also would have resolved the powerscaling issue, having Team RWBY fighting people with equal experience instead of veterans
I saw a post analyzing Ironwood through the fandom's idea that he was "always" meant to be bad. Basically, every single good thing he ever did was out of plot convenience because he was the only character they could use. Like Yangst getting a new arm. She loses her arm and Ironwood is the only character they have who could give her a new one, so they just have him give her one. So if you go by that logic, Itonwood's entire character was a complete accident.
I really hate how Yang got a new arm so fast. It came out of nowhere and she did nothing to deserve it. It just made it feel like nothing happened to her at the FoB, since her PTSD arc went nowhere too.
@@Little-Birds-and-Camellias She like shaked once in a trailer so ignore that cause who watches trailers for volumes once they're out it's kinda implied training with her dad cured PTSD
@@bashamd96 yeah, they totally abandoned that arc; if they kept it going, her magically getting an arm would have been more palatable. But she magically goes back to normal after training with only a few shakes now and then, and it completely vanishes as soon as she starts fighting the one who gave it to her. Wtf, RT??
In my opinion, Ironwood is the latest victim of what I like to call: Different Writers, Different Outcomes. Allow me to explain, a writer or a pair of writers depict a character in a sort of way and it's deemed the way the character is represented. Then other writers are hired, they change the way the character is depicted to fit their own viewpoint. We see this in MLP:FIM where Twilight goes from a intelligent girl becoming a woman to an obsessive dweeb that can't read bad handwriting. Or the Princesses going from wise all knowing guardians to complete jerks that retire and lay ALL their responsiblites on their pupil! This can also be seen with the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, primarily TLJ and ROS. And we all know how those turned out. I don't pin the blame on Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross, for they always written their characters consistently (Except for that one time they forgot Blake had night vision, but that's water under the bridge, Right?) I pin the blame on the new writers Eddy Rivas and Kiersi Burkhart. I don't think they're bad writers (or bad people), But I think they just have a different vision than Miles and Kerry. For those of you who complained "RT should hire more writers for RWBY", Well this is the outcome! This is the result. This what happens when different writers are involved. Adding new writers is a gamble all on it's own, it's either going to end up as a masterpiece or a complete disaster. If you asked me what they should've made Jacque Schnee the bad guy, I mean how much more fitting that could've been? They could've have him make selfish choices that put the Kingdom of Mantle as well as Atlas in complete danger. They could've have him put Blake in prison, because of her past with the White Fang. He could force Weiss to return home with him, They by breaking up Team RWBY. He can order Ironwood to do the most heinous crimes imaginable, making the distrust angle more believable. They could've made him deny the existence of Salem, if the subject came through, he will denounce it as a hoax. And when Salem does arrive, he still behaves irresponsibly. BOOM! I Fixed Vol.7 and 8! The allegory they were doing beforehand now has weight. In conclusion, writing for someone else's work is tough. Sometimes the writers' vision shines more than the creator's original vision.
You're exactly right. I instantly thought of what they did to Luke Skywalker when you said "Different writers, different outcome." That's why I think having a singular vision is so important. You need one guy at the top to basically know who their characters are and clearly convey this information to the rest of the team. You can't afford to have multiple people in the writers room have multiple inteprations of the same character. Star Wars needed a George Lucas, GOT needed a George RR Martin and RWBY needed a Money Oum and we have seen time and time again how the story goes off the rails when you don't that that primary visionary to lead the story and keep it within that singular, focused vision.
Pretty sure he did have a point considering that same woman said she was going to keep stealing from the Atlas government until she knew the whole truth about Ironwood's plan.
@@E3Persona ...😑 She was literally stealing from those military trucks and she was trying to ambush the truck that Ruby, Penny and Clover so she could steal those tech supplies. And when Blake and Yang were sitting in that truck, there were tech supplies in there with them. She IS a criminal and what she was doing was ignored by the writers because any official worth their salt would either ban her from running or have a warrant for her arrest. Like others have said, the writers ignore it in favor of having her be seen as the right person doing things to help Mantle when in reality she’s really untrustworthy due to her semblance and horrible personality and she’s racist.
Basically 3 reasons. One Ironwood's motivation given the circumstances isn't the most unreasonable or villainous, especially given he becomes an unsung hero in volume 7. 2. If Ironwood's semblance is to be taken seriously then he is a victim not a villain despite the fact team rwby constantly throw shade and distrust at him comparatively to Emerald and Cinder by the overall show standards. 3. Ironwood went from a man who would detain and kill threats to innocents that were completely pointless because we never see is mindset enough in volume 8 so his plan is not only stupid and nonsensical but it feels so forced and out of nowhere. It also dosen't help that team rwby since volume 6 had been on a high horse of morality that have made them getaway with crimes scott free and the best character in rwby got admmized in a couple of episodes.
'' No one will fault you if you leave '' This was the line that expressed his moral ambiguity. A side of the fandom took it as if Ironwood was treating the students as incapable of fighting/not good soldiers, another side thought he was being sincere and sympathetic and actually wanted the students' safety first. The line delivery was perfect for the ambiguity: it had a strict tone as well as a soft tone. His expression when saying this line could've been interpreted both ways. His ambiguity is completely shafted when he just outright *shot a kid* in v7, and just started off killing random people (not a group of people, I just don't want to spoil for those that haven't watched v8 yet), commanding to kill people and/or tries to kill some characters by himself. The morals around him are strange as well: people from Mantle started antagonizing him for the quarantine, team RWBY antagonizes him by making as if he's not trustworthy, the happy huntresses make it as if he's a tyrant and always try to bring him down, the politicians don't care about him that much... he's legit the only true character with empathy and selflessness in his situation, and always tries to fix the problem rather than antagonize someone. Now, he's the one antagonizing everyone with now everyone making the ''right moves'' (more like there are wayyy too many deus ex machinas but that's another story). Though subtle, his character was consistent, and he was a good character in which is alignment was clear to be good. The characters RT seem to hate to write a lot are the ones they set up with nuance: either they turn completely good (Ilia and another character in v8) or they turn completely bad (Adam and now Ironwood).
If they save this character, I will start believing in God, because at this point it seems like we need a miracle to do so. Ironwood will always be remembered as one of my semblance. Ironwood is not the Ironwood in Volume 8, that’s just a body that is enslaved by a semblance that started to control his decisions because the show apparently needed him to for god knows why. In giving Ironwood the semblance he has and then starting to vilify him, they make him even more sympathetic as his semblance is now just the equivalent of a mental disorder with how negatively it affects him after his turn. He becomes the most tragic character in the show rather than the hated villain the show wanted him to be.
Wish I could say I understood but... honestly? I can't even come close to seeing this as making him a "chad" when this is the man who thought it a good idea to go about filling Vale's streets with patrol bots against Oz's request (i.e., defying/forcibly overruling the guy who's in charge of that city). ^_^; Ironwood had his reputation and even a bit of his spirit destroyed by V3’s events - the whole world saw him as an enemy at best or untrustworthy at worst, with no way to defend himself after the CCTS was down, and above it all was the soul-crushing fact that much of it was only possible because of his own Atlas bots; the very hardware he brought in to protect people ended up hurting a lot of them, and that was probably the first crack towards breaking him in realizing he'd played straight into Salem's hands (as well as being the origin of the fear for ever letting it happen a second time that would take him over in V7). The fact Cinder infiltrated Beacon so easily was likely the start of the fear of infiltrators that would bloom fully in V7, even before he learned about Lionheart’s outright betrayal of them all to Salem. A year of butting heads with Atlesian and Mantle residents alike not trusting him, the friction caused by Robyn Hill supporting active dissent against him through the Happy Huntresses stealing Atlas supplies and the unrest Jacques Schnee caused with his ambitions only worsened things further. Then came V7 where Jacques - a born-and-bread Atlesian - conspired with criminals Tyrian and Watts to further his ambitions at the cost of compromising Atlas, followed up by learning Ruby and Oz both used lies of omission to manipulate his actions, then capped off by Penny and Pietro defecting with Ruby after Penny took the Winter Maiden powers needed to save Atlas. Last but not least came the coup-de-grace in having Winter (arguably the last remaining person he trusted in any capacity) going behind his back and eventually outright betraying him, marking the point he gave up on anything beyond brute-force and raw power forcing cooperation. All that piling up makes it honesty very easy for me to believe he could crack even without taking his Semblance's apparent powers into account, much less adding it's effects onto the pile. Everybody who was around Ironwood saw his worst tendencies getting even worse after the nightmare that the Vytal Disaster was not only for Atlas but for him personally. Being flawed and misguided can become a downslide to becoming paranoid and irrational if you never trust anybody but yourself - “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” isn’t a metaphor for nothing, after all. Hell, that’s not even accounting for the fact Salem was arguably actively manipulating events to make Ironwood as unstable as possible by turning as much of Atlas and Mantle against him as possible through Tyrian and Watts’ subterfuge (which was probably very easy since the Vytal Disaster likely already made him unpopular - hell, that was probably what gave rise to groups like the Happy Huntresses in the first place) - this wasn’t just some spur-of-the-moment jump onto the crazy train; this was the conclusion to something that was honesty a long time coming with multiple factors involved in it's making, same as how Ruby's innocence chipping away to the point of no longer trusting authority figures like Ironwood enough to tell him about Salem was arguably a long time in the making with how she got disillusioned by veteran huntsman constantly letting her down (Lionheart for betrayal, Oz for lying, Qrow for drunkenness - hell, maybe even her own mom for dying on her, if her character song is to be believed).
Its kinda annoying. The team was clearly at fault they literally betrayed Iron wood then when he finally breaks they paint him as the bad guy as if he's always been that way Also how tf is Clovers death ironwood fault. Qrow should be blaming himself instead
@@Little-Birds-and-Camellias Qrow: "If only Clover had worked with me, then we could have beaten Tyrian and saved the City! But alas, the Writers turned both of us into Idiots, just so this Fight could happen."
Yeah that WHOLE fight with Tyrian vs Clover vs Qrow never should've happened the way it did, and was disgustingly forced. Why in the fuck was Qrow LITERALLY tag teaming with Tyrian at some points against Clover, when he knew whose side he should've been fighting with from the start? At no point during that fight did Tyrian and Clover tag team against Qrow. It was so ridiculously stupid and unbelievable that it never should've happened. A LOT of things like that never should've happened and it's 100% on the writers for fucking up a story.
Volume 8 should have been a rude awakening for the team that their actions have consequences and that even though they have come far from where they started, they still have a lot of learning/ maturing to do.
Did we see the same anime ? ironwood do not trust any body. So when there where friction with the political women they say the true about the plan. If i remember correctely ironwood plan was a lie the old men make it work with penny. ironwood don't care to work with other so when he learn that thay have talk is lost truce in them. So when Ruby tell him about salem, he's again angry because she din't come sooner. the unkiller also broke him. the death of Clovers it is one fault he choose to fight Qrow has ironwood order instand fighting the scorpion guy. Qrow has nothing to blam himself. ironwood don't trust any body and every think must be what he think is right, he also has some paranoia. he's a control freak.
Yup, gotta follow team RWBY like a cult follower or your in the wrong (remember that one time Qrow was hesitant to steal and airship and Ruby talked him down, I will never get over that)
But they don’t force you to like the team or be against Ironwood. Also it’s not like it didn’t come out of the blue *I’mstrange*(RUclips channel) pieced together what lead to this point.
@@SHP4Life They do, he shot a counsel man that simply question what he was doing, team RWBY doesn’t feel guilty for betraying Ironwood and being no better than Ozma/Ozpin Edit: Nor does the show treat him as someone who should be sympathized with him being a mustache twirling villain
@@flowersandcheesecake1710- no they felt bad the first episode of the vol was how they messed up not telling the truth to him but that still doesn’t mean that should have listened to letting people die. The council man well that’s what happens when a man with power gets pushed over the edge.
For me prior to his sudden turn nothing about his personality gave any indication he was that morally questionable. Also I'm leaving these thoughts before watching cause I'm playing catch up with the show. 1. He brought his army to Vale to ensure safety of the citizens and all participating students because of an upswing in crime that no one was really doing anything about. 2. Gave Ruby words of encouragement way back when 3. Pushed Weiss to continue on her way towards becoming a huntress 4. Showed compassion to Yang when everyone else was against her after she blasted Mercurys leg 5. Provided Yang with a highly advanced prosthetic arm 6. Sacrificed his remaining arm to stop Watts 7. ACTUALLY SHARED VITAL INFORMATION AND HIS ENTIRE PLAN. Continuing off of point 7 let's remember how Yang, despite everything Ironwood did for her, doesn't speak up when Ruby lies to Ironwood (even though she said no more lies) and goes ahead and divulges information to Robyn who amounts to a domestic terrorist for how much military supplies she and her group have stolen. Edit: alright, im caught up to episode 13. My god why in the name of jesus did they make him go psycho. At the very least he showed some remorse as he started fighting Winter
" He brought his army to Vale to ensure safety of the citizens and all participating students because of an upswing in crime that no one was really doing anything about. " Actually he did it becuase Qrow sent everyone an ominous text about Salem being up to shit at the end of Volume 1.
@@Hartzilla2007 that's right I forgot about the text. In that case it's even more reasonable he would bring his army. From what I saw in episode 7 when Salem brings her A game even Ironwoods forces are struggling and we've never seen so much as a regular infantry unit for the other kingdoms.
@@Demiurge0000 yeah, I have have a similar list I paste when people say James was "always" bad - *V2* - consoles Ruby with complements after her failed attempt to catch Cinder; offers his full force to quell terrorist activity without hesitation. *V3* - shows sympathy while disqualifying Yang from the Vytal Tournament, indicating that while he and everyone else still trusts their own eyes, he believes that she didn't attack Mercury out of malice; gives an inspirational speech to the students to fight against the Fall of Beacon; tries to talk down Qrow rather than fight when he mistakes Qrow for trying to kill him. *V4* - gives Yang (FREE OF CHARGE) a state-of-the-art prosthetic; declines to arrest Weiss, who technically did commit attempted assault. *V5* - expresses suspicions of an ally that turn out to be true. *V7* - pardons RWBY-JNR of the Grand Theft that they actually did commit; trusts them with his top secret plan; trusts them to keep the Relic of Knowledge; gives lodging and weapon upgrades; licenses them for their dream job (even when it can be argued they never finished formal education). Did I miss anything?
@@konstellashon1364 its astonishing to me how much of the fanbase is just buying into it when there's literally years worth of him being a good person, I don't think you missed a thing but if I can think of another reason why Ironwood is great I'll let you know.
Team RWBY not trusting Ironwood seemed like the writers were thinking too far ahead with their turn to the dark side that they completely forgot they *already* made him a very lovable and trusting Roy Mustang-type character. Incompetence leads to them not checking their shit and just assuming they already did the hard work on one of the hardest story telling themes for a novice: characters switching sides. Do I even have to mention Emerald? They didn't even bother writing the scene where she decided to ditch her sempai to save a kid she doesn't even care about. Her ditching Salem is not enough for her to go 180° and join RWBY but the writers gave you redeemed Emerald so praise them...I guess.
That has been a consistent problem with CRWBY. They did it in Volume 5 as well. They think so far ahead into the script and forget that we've never seen what's going to make characters turn. Why did RWBY mistrust Ironwood? We've never seen anything labeling him untrustworthy in Volume 7. That he was always a villain because he'd be willing to nuke Mantle? Ironwood only became a villain because he became an antagonist to the protagonists. He disagreed with their methodology. Which is upsetting because they use that in show as evidence of being a villain. When Oscar called Ironwood as bad as Salem I fumed. Ironwood isn't like Salem, she is a cold-blooded villain, while he was just an antagonist. But CRWBY made him one , because he opposed the protagonists, which last time I checked doesn't make you a villain. Yet the writers used that as evidence of his decent into insanity, because they work on the assumption only a villain would oppose the heroes. So thats what they did with Ironwood.
@@Rob.N. Seems that CRWBY doesn't seem to grasp the concept of morally gray characters and how they can still be very interesting. Everything has to be black and white, sides have to be obvious. Raven suffered because of this. Ozpin is the closest character to this but only because the characters treated him like that, which they fell back on anyway because they "learned their lesson." When Emerald said the phrase "switch sides" I laughed. You don't *ever* write that. It'd be like Ruby calling herself the main character or the Staff of Creation being (rightfully) called a Deus Ex Machina. This shit ain't Deadpool, lol. Believe it or not, I still believe that (end of) Vol 7 Ironwood was still redeemable. The worst he truly did was shoot a kid who, to be fair, is housing the embodiment of his mistrust and who is a very powerful man. It was the beginning of Volume 8 that made me go, "WTF are you doing!?" Shooting that politician was a statement of how idiotically evil he was now, while disregarding his characterization to that point. NO ONE in the writing staff bothered to rewatch Volume 3 to check their shit. (To reference the MCU) He went from Thunderbolt Ross to Alexander Pierce in an instant.
@@kaiserwilhelmii674 Wait, are you saying the FanArt's bad, or that I should look at the FanArt? Because every depiction of Salem I've seen (other than pre-transformation) is bland to me.
Coming back to this video and mulling over Ironwood giving Yang her arm... I think that after the Fall of Beacon, it's highly likely that Ironwood realized that Yang was most likely set up in the same way that he was with the Atlesian Knights. Made to look bad while being innocent, and I think Ironwood, who knows what it's like to lose parts of himself would empathize with her and offer his own way of helping her move forward. I think it just naturally flows into his empathy and thus just makes Yang look so much more worse.
He was able to empathize her when she “broke” Mercury’s leg (being able to understand what it’s like to see things that aren’t there). So I could definitely see it.
I know this topic and tactic used by Salem and her underlings was mostly a volume 3 thing, but a huge part of Salems planning involves not just throwing endless fodder at the world, but dividing everyone so that they can go at each others throats, or at minimum, not protect the throats of others. She KNOWS that if the world were to unite that they would be a huge threat, so she sows seeds of distrust and doubt so that things like team RWBY not telling ironwood the truth would happen. The song Divide sums it up pretty well. But the biggest letdown is that it's not at all implied that Salem is causing this or even trying to in the slightest. Even the smallest of hints from the show about Salem instilling doubt into any of the main characters would credit her so much for what's happening right now and would feel so much better for an explanation instead of Ironwoods semblance going full retard.
Um... not to be that guy or anything, but wasn't a major underlying aspect of V7 the fact Salem *was* using subversion to make Ironwood increasingly paranoid by having Tyrian and Watts turn the civilian population of the kingdom against him? Doesn't that by and large kinda infer that she's honestly responsible for a pretty big chunk of what drove Ironwood over the edge - especially when half the reason groups like the Happy Huntresses even distrust him is probably 'cause of what the Vytal Festival all the way back in V3 did to his public image?
@@mrmetroid1078 not to mention having another headmaster they trusted end up on her sad making team rwby inherently distrust anybody they came for help afterwards including ironwood
The main cast not trusting Ironwood is an example of hack writers forgetting the difference between Writer Knowledge, something the writers know is going to happen, and Character Knowledge, what each respective character should or should not know at the time. The writers wanted Ironwood to be the bad guy in that scenario, and so they wanted the main cast to be wary of him so as to not come across as foolish or naive. The problem is the characters had zero reason to not trust Ironwood, and they did nothing to give hints as to why Ironwood shouldn't be trusted to begin with. So they just come across as foolish, naive, and just all-round assholes for distrusting their closest and strongest ally, turning him into an enemy. ... This would be the case, if Ironwood's heel-turn was actually planned. But the complete 180 he takes from Volume 7 where he is his usual self with zero indications of hostile intentions until it is revealed the main characters lied to him and went behind his back, to Volume 8 where he is a completely different character and hardly ever comes across as actually being Ironwood is so stark. There is no way it was the original plan. What happened in Volume 8 was a gut reaction and overcorrection response to the fans agreeing with Ironwood in every way, and not the main cast. They needed to make Ironwood so evil that you couldn't support him over the main girls, but even then they failed.
I honestly think the writers accidentally wrote him to be one of the best characters on the show, not realizing the audience could see his plight and understood him. Plus RWBY betraying him gave the whole "This is really their fault" the team caught. I predicted RT would drag his character down to FIX this and be damned they lived down to my expectations.
What made him turn? Simple. He was not on the main characters side, so because the writers are incompetent they saw him as the bad guy because he dared to do something the main characters don't 100% agree with. As we all know RWBY like all bad writing aren't allowed to have characters that disagree with the main characters because if they do then they are irredeemably evil regardless of how small that this disagreement is. Good guys are the good guys & they are inherently correct on all situations regardless on what it is. Bad guys are the bad guys & are inherently incorrect on all situations regardless on what is. That is the philosophy the writers have.
That’s the sad truth tho, they are making us dislike team rwby, I mean they look bad. I like how the team is fighting in disagreements but...it’s funny how nobody understood what they did to Ironwood. Like they see themselves innocent with bad choices.
I think I heard somewhere that this is the narrative approach for Mary Sue characters. There is no reason to go against the Mary Sue because she is always right, and anybody who disagrees with her is the bad guy. You are not allowed to have a grey area that might make Mary Sue's actions look bad.
Wish I could say I understood but... honestly? I can't even come close to seeing this as due to "he was not on the main characters side" when this is the man who thought it a good idea to go about filling Vale's streets with patrol bots against Oz's request (i.e., defying/forcibly overruling the guy who's in charge of that city). He's always been in conflict with those who disagreed with him - the year from hell he went through post-V3 simply worsened what was already there; were it not for that, he'd probably still have been a lot more rational ^_^; Ironwood had his reputation and even a bit of his spirit destroyed by V3’s events - the whole world saw him as an enemy at best or untrustworthy at worst, with no way to defend himself after the CCTS was down, and above it all was the soul-crushing fact that much of it was only possible because of his own Atlas bots; the very hardware he brought in to protect people ended up hurting a lot of them, and that was probably the first crack towards breaking him in realizing he'd played straight into Salem's hands (as well as being the origin of the fear for ever letting it happen a second time that would take him over in V7). The fact Cinder infiltrated Beacon so easily was likely the start of the fear of infiltrators that would bloom fully in V7, even before he learned about Lionheart’s outright betrayal of them all to Salem. A year of butting heads with Atlesian and Mantle residents alike not trusting him, the friction caused by Robyn Hill supporting active dissent against him through the Happy Huntresses stealing Atlas supplies and the unrest Jacques Schnee caused with his ambitions only worsened things further. Then came V7 where Jacques - a born-and-bread Atlesian - conspired with criminals Tyrian and Watts to further his ambitions at the cost of compromising Atlas, followed up by learning Ruby and Oz both used lies of omission to manipulate his actions, then capped off by Penny and Pietro defecting with Ruby after Penny took the Winter Maiden powers needed to save Atlas. Last but not least came the coup-de-grace in having Winter (arguably the last remaining person he trusted in any capacity) going behind his back and eventually outright betraying him, marking the point he gave up on anything beyond brute-force and raw power forcing cooperation. James Ironwood was, as cited by Glynda Goodwitch in V2, a person who's abiding fault was demanding everybody trust him but never trusting anybody else - he had a fiery sense of conviction, but it was poorly-counterbalanced by his unwillingness to risk putting faith in anything beyond his own judgement. The way things played out are honestly enough to argue for him breaking even without accounting for his Semblance, much less taking its nulling of hesitancy/reinforcement of willpower into account. For him, it was always a case of "taking the next step/doing what needed to be done” with Ironwood and by the time of V8 he'd taken several steps too many down the slippery slope. He shared Ruby's initial mindset of how leaders could not be failures - the difference was that he never reconciled the flaws in that view the way Ruby eventually did; he never realized leaders aren't people who aren't allowed to fail but rather the ones who can get back up from failure, acknowledge it and allow others to help them do so. Ironwood never accepting that led to him doing anything and everything to prevent Atlas ever falling or failing - until it became a sunk-cost fallacy where the price he was ready to pay ultimately became too much. Everybody who was around Ironwood saw his worst tendencies getting even worse after the nightmare that the Vytal Disaster was not only for Atlas but for him personally. Being flawed and misguided can become a downslide to becoming paranoid and irrational if you never trust anybody but yourself - “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” isn’t a metaphor for nothing, after all. Hell, that’s not even accounting for the fact Salem was arguably actively manipulating events to make Ironwood as unstable as possible by turning as much of Atlas and Mantle against him as possible through Tyrian and Watts’ subterfuge (which was probably very easy since the Vytal Disaster likely already made him unpopular - hell, that was probably what gave rise to groups like the Happy Huntresses in the first place) - this wasn’t just some spur-of-the-moment jump onto the crazy train; this was the conclusion to something that was honesty a long time coming with multiple factors involved in it's making, same as how Ruby's innocence chipping away to the point of no longer trusting authority figures like Ironwood enough to tell him about Salem was arguably a long time in the making with how she got disillusioned by veteran huntsman constantly letting her down (Lionheart for betrayal, Oz for lying, Qrow for drunkenness - hell, maybe even her own mom for dying on her, if her character song is to be believed).
This comes from an Active Duty perspective: Up until the most recent episodes, I not only understand but empathize with James' logic and decisions. Most non-military people don't get exposed to tough decisions that hold actual lives in the balance; whereas that's not only common in military practice, but moreover a regular event. In the event of a crisis similar to the one in Atlas, we're required to make quick, informed decisions that oftentimes don't have a black-and-white correct answer that keeps everyone safe. There will be times that you have to prioritize the many over the few, or work towards the greater picture by sacrificing or removing small details. War/conflict is messy. And oftentimes, even with the wisdom of time, there's still a lack of closure; a lack of knowing whether the decision you made is the right one. Being in the military for 10 years now, one thing that's stuck with me is the learned ability to operate fluidly in the moral grey. No, I can't save everyone. No, I'm not important enough to be saved all the time. But we do the best with what limited information and intel we have, and come up with what we believe is the best decision given the circumstances. All of these are traits showcased in volume 7, which makes that season not only understandable, but relatable as well. Then we come to volume 8, and suddenly we're slapped with an abrupt about-face that disregards and discredits all the events that led to it. Makes me feel that Ironwood's character is cheated out of a legitimate character arc, not to mention the blatant disrespect to the effort already put into the character over seasons 2-7. Granted, I'm not at the helm of Rooster Teeth, and can neither dictate or criticize their choices with this series as it's their own, and I'm not privy to the ideas and plans they have for the series going forward. Only time will tell.
Thank you for your service. Nice of you to share your perspective. If a story is made to complain about the Military Industrial Complex, or politicians exploiting the troops, or how bigotry and misogyny isn't dealt with enough within the ranks, I'm game. But plot lines like this I feel are disrespectful to the very _concept_ of having a military. It's been bugging me more and more if/when writers seem to think of you all as just over-aggressive jerks who become murder-bots.
@@konstellashon1364 the show trying to have an anti military, “They’re just kids!” line of thinking really falls apart simply because the Grimm exist, they’re unthinking, unfeeling monsters who can’t be stopped or reasoned with, they don’t have (or shouldn’t) the luxury of staying out of the fights because they’re “kids”, honestly the world would be more like “The Walking Dead” where such notions are abandoned out of basic necessity of survival.
@@thomasraines1396 S Korea has that thing where every able bodied male has to take a minimum of military training. At least that's what I understand from half-listening to entertainment gossip when they cover BTS. Oh, and their national sport is archery. Every kingdom of Remnant should have something similar. Like Vale's insignia has double axes, so hatchet throwing could be their national sport. And junior high kids of all kingdoms get the basics of forming a shield wall.
@@konstellashon1364 something like that but the show is written in such a way that it’s basically Earth with cool shit tacked on even though it should be fundamentally different from our own world simply because the Grimm exist.
The writers just can't accept team RWBY painted as bad guys or failures so they just make promising, badass characters into disappointing assholes. God I miss Beacon. At least team RWBY weren't irritating back then.
Favoritism in your hero's while writing a story is one of the most amateurish things a writer can do. It really does bother me how much the show blatantly wanks Team RWBY. V8 Ironwood can kick rocks imo... but I equally despise the majority of our hErOs. Oscar, Jaune, Ren, Penny and maybe Weiss are the only one's who get a pass... everyone else can go F*** themselves.
@@flamegeyser9781 It's not rose tinted. The writing wasn't God tier but at least it was fun. RWBY was at its best when it was simply goofy and had good action scenes. Trying to take itself completely seriously took out any redeeming qualities it had.
@@brandonontama2415 Well maybe I'm the jaded one. I didn't find it to be very fun at all. Perhaps I couldn't turn off my critic goggles. Still, I don't think it's any worse now than it was then.
@@flamegeyser9781 Well, to be fair, it supposed to get good from Volume 3 but...yeah you see how it goes. Some do enjoy it despite the flaws of the earlier volumes. By the way, I respect your opinion.
I was also upset what they did to Ironwood. He was trustworthy and helpful in all he did, but Ruby messed up by lying to him, and Blake and Yang telling Robyn about his plans behind his back.
Volume 3 set up Ironwood as a well-meaning but flawed figure who had issues with trust, hence the robot army that got hacked because of his disagreements with Ozpin. Volume 4 continued the theme when Weiss overheard Ironwood having that discussion about the embargo with her father, showing that Ironwood was becoming more paranoid. But in Volume 7? He was polite and reasonable. The thing is, he was more polite and reasonable than CRWBY intended, so they had Ruby lie about Salem just for the sake of drama. Ironwood wasn't even that mad about Salem. He was rightly annoyed by Ruby's dishonesty in the end, and that's why he shot Oscar. The 'heroes' didn't fail to stop Ironwood's fall, they actively contributed to his fall and refused to take responsibility for their stupidity. So CRWBY doubled down on making Ironwood the 'bad guy' in Volume 8... with a stupid Semblance that wasn't even properly explained in the show. 9:25 Yeah, the dog metaphor sums up the situation quite well. Everyone has limits, even folks who are kind, empathetic and loyal.
@@Mr.Inktail oh don't get me started on adam he was the coolest bad guy in the show im a big star wars fan (before disney) so i always saw adam as the dath vader of the show everytime he showed he had this presence like you know hes so powerful he commanded the room he was the one you were scared if ahero fought then after what happened to yang and blake fought him and they trashed his character and discarded him like trash Ticks me off so bad
look what they did with Ren the same guy who barley speaks , now he's the bad guy because he disagree with Yang and he ruin the relationship between him and Nora , we see no prove he's bringing Nora down while Nora is the one bringing him down , so sick of the men vs women in this show
@@loiiysailor1177 especially since b4 this nora and ren have ALWAYS been on the same page nora had an identity she always has shes a fan fave but suddenly "i don't know who i am" ren completely went from the one who always kept his cool to someone who constantly flies off the handle at everyone And hes actually not wrong most of the time when the show tries to make him seem like hes in the wrong
Speaking of Adam, there is literally no problem with making him evil, you can still make him interesting, it’s just that they wrote him out as a crazy ex, nerfed him to elevate the protagonists, and just ignored any nuance to him as an oppressed Faunus
My problem was that there was no justified reason not to trust Ironwood. The group didn't trust him because of Mantle but due to what we've seen of it, it looks fine thus the characters were in the wrong from the beginning. They also made no attempt to compermise with Ironwood and only complained making Ironwood look better by comparison.
Also you would think the more pragmatic characters (Ren and Blake) would point out that in war or in tough times not everything is gonna be all sunshine and rainbows, someone is going to get screwed over.
Anyone else find it ironic when they were barely focusing on Ironwood his character was a fan favorite and considered layered and when they tried to make him "deep" he was hated and lost all his appeal?
I feel like Cinder got fucked over the most cause we've always wanted to know her reasoning for being this way then it's just "I'm a entitled brat who suffered so I deserve to be the greatest" like at least with most characters they didn't actively keep us waiting with info that creates there whole reasoning just to make it the worst idea possible
Though, I do believe the second character in that list actually did deserve it. Jacques Schee was an incredible bastard and Weiss told everyone the reasons why he is a Schee in the first place, he married into the Schee Family for the Power and Wealth, nothing more. And I definitely believed he would betray Altas for becoming a Council Member. He kind of reminds me of Bobby Kotick and that's not a good thing.
Long story short: The writers fucked it up, like many other stuff. But hey, expecting a well-writen plot and characters being build properly on RWBY is a joke nowadays.
low key the fact yang got the arm after a majority of the continent thought she was a terrible evil child for attacking a "harmless" person its jus nuts
Salem’s on her way… A) Evacuate who they can now to near guaranteed safety away from Salem and her forces. B) Risk EVERYONE dying by waiting to evacuate everyone from Mantle, while Salem is on her way. … Big Bird: One of these things is not like the other.
I've gotten into so many arguments with people over this. His change was way too drastic even if there were subtle hints of him eventually falling. They dropped the ball with James.
It was worse than Anakin in RotS. At least Anakin fucked up in heat of the moment and unhanded Windu, which despite being really stupid was at least SOME reason to go from righteous protector (with some rage outbursts & issues, but for good reasons) to child mass murder & power hungry monster in about few hours. Ironwood actions makes even less sense now than Anakins did. I hate when show builds up this gray or gray-ish character who easily becomes fans favourite, or at least well liked character, and is basicly voice of reason, faced with much worse choices than MC & his/her crew, and then they have no idea how to make said character "fall" to the "dark" side at least somehow believable, so they make them into hitler 2.5. Dany in GoT, Prince Lotor in newest Voltron(almost the only redeeming thing in later seasons), Adam & Iroonwood here, and probably much more. Ech... I still don't get how Miles who (if I remember correctly) was behind plot for chorus trilogy in RvB and made Felix & Locus, both terrible assholes into likable characters (despite one of them being just evil), could make plot as bad as later seasons in RWBY (don't know if the new ones are still written by him & Kerry).
@@nocebo5792 Heck, for all of the Prequel's flaws, they did a very good job of setting up Anakin as a well-intentioned but highly flawed character. Also, I think why Miles dropped the ball with Ironwood despite cresting Felix and Locus is because Felix and Locus aren't morally grey characters while Ironwood is. We never see Felix and Locus' descent into villainy because they were only pretending to be the good guys. Ironwood's descent into villainy is essentially jumping off a cliff in how rapidly it occurs to the point where you could be fooled into thinking that he was secretly evil all along.
in the beginning: i'm a guy trying to solve extremely complicated problems and carrying the weight of having thousands of lives in my hands. how it ended: *I AM EVIL, MUWAHAHAHA! LOOK MY EVIL SPEECH, E V I L !*
I believe that that Ironwood's Semblance has the same issue as the importance of Blake's parents, they made it up so deep into the story that it contradicts everything his character represented.
I will never get over how Ruby thought it was a good idea to straight up LIE to Ironwood as if he's some stranger who has never done anything for them. Ruby lying to him ended up having a snowball effect that made Ironwood spiral into an unnatural "bad guy." Ugh.
I can absolutely understand why she thought it was a good idea. Look at the extent he's willing to go to in order to protect Atlas from an enemy he thinks can be defeated. Just imagine what he'd be willing to do in order to protect Atlas from an immortal enemy.
Remember kids: if your project team leader tries to do something you disagree with, it is absolutely okay to start your own posse with their people and resources, to undermine their authority and destroy the project via sabotage!
Took him a whole volume to turn evil,stayed evil whole volume then literally lost in 40 seconds. Not that it didn't make any sense it but seriously? 40 seconds?
This man had been played up as the big bad boss for the volume and that he was gonna be a hassle to take down, then they threw a plastic bottle at his kneecap and he collapsed in sheer pain, allowing our heroines and then some to waltz on by.
@@yaaninja Cybernetically enhanced body skilled marksman years of experience and the rational mind to formulate plans within seconds clearly all this is nothing compared to like 4 dorks who just become official huntsmen like a week ago and Winter
RT will ruin any character they don't like themselves just to make team Rwby look better which they fail at , make Iornwood a villain is such a dumb idea !
@@djmars1983 yeah :( This is why we all wish Monty was still here with us. He had a good idea of storyline, characters & actions. Honestly I want to drop the series but I want to see how it all ends
@@littlesparrow303 not even Monty wrote anything, he gave that task to Miles and Kerry but he at least had a story outline that they had to follow because Monty only wanted to make cool characters and fight scenes while Miles and Kerry made a story around that. When they say they're just following Monty's vision I have big doubts on that, Monty wouldn't have turned his characters into... whatever this is.
@@2amCryptid true!! I know he liked Blacksun (Blake/sun) & I didn’t have an issue w/ Blake being with Yang or Sun. In volume 4 we see Sun the most w/ Blake & Blake warming up to him. Then Yang & Blake relationship felt like it was went gonna happen
@@littlesparrow303 I'm iffy on how Blake and Yang are written together, I wouldn't mind them being together if it actually showed relationship progression like it did with Blake and Sun.
Ironwood is a good man pushed to the breaking point with an extinction level event and his only friends decided to withhold information and go behind his back without even attempting to reason their position with him most of time, and when his back is against the wall and it is clear that there is no more time, he decides that he needs to save who he can, and damn those who would get in his way, even if they were friends. And he is the bad guy?
I honestly think ironwoods "fall" is just a bunch of bad/stupid writing with the absolute worst semblance in the history of the show It basically forces him to do what ever bsd idea come up now and gives him tunnel vision to the point he can't even see other options and there is no way i see ironwood naturally turning into the monstrosity of stupidity we have now
I dont mind his Semblance. My problem is that his semblance seemed to come out of nowhere, as if the writers only introduced it to explain away poor writing.
If somebody could explain, how exactly does ironwoods semblance work because wouldn't he have gone nuts in volume 3 coming to the end of it, due to him gaining PTSD and a whole kingdom was under siege and losing?
@@ThePontiffofPonWolf But many of the things he did post Volume 3 were still the right things to do. Giving Yang her arm, defending Weiss, not letting the other Kingdoms militarize dust. Those don't seem like the action of a man who's spiraling.
@@Obi-Wan_Kenobi AHH GENERAL KENOBI HELLO THERE I FOUND YOU AGAIN!! Bro I swear we have the exact same interests, and now you’re defending my favorite RWBY character (*cough* Ironwood)?? Heck yeah let’s GOOO!! 🤩
My most memorable impression of Ironwood is the softness in his delivery of "No one will fault you if you leave." in Volume 3. He will never put the weight of war on children.
He created the machines to stop more people from dying.
yeah, he wasn't like "you are soldiers! now fight for your kingdom!" he knew they were all children. that they weren't ready yet. he understood and empathized with them being afraid and wanting to run. why? cause they were still children.
he even says it to ozpin. "you can't expect your children to win this war." he doesn't call them soldiers, or hunstmen yet, he calls them children.
It's why I like his song
Sadly that ideology went out the window in volume 8.
@@halfknight2310even when he sold out Ozpin to the council, he didn’t do with the cold indifference one would expect from a military style character, he looks down sadly and *then* steels himself.
Because the audience liked Ironwood and believed in his motivations, it made the audience angry when Ironwood threw out his motivations.
I don't think he's ever throw out his motivations. His goal has been to win this war from the first moment he stepped into Ospin's office he showed he will always prioritize his way over others including Ospin himself, which he said he has followed for years, and just continues to do whatever he deems as enough to win an unwinnable war.
@@lordofspaceducks4555 except he is dumb now, his motivation was to win the war. Now? It is to be a 60's DC comics villain.
@@lordofspaceducks4555 mate... this is my second comment to you... pls don't defend the character for what he is now... It's an insult to your intelligence and I wanted to say this in the other comment but I decided not to because it was aggressive. I'll say it now though. "Please, watch the video."
His motives were to protect atlas. Nuking in hopes of protecting Atlas is the same thing
@@professorescanor7310 threatening to nuke it when there was no threat to warrant it in the first place is dumb as fuck. Besides, what does ironwood plan to do with the relic? People say he knows how to use it and people say he doesn't. Either or, it makes the whole plot dumb...
I hate the part of the Fandom that believes that James was always a militaristic dictator. Like they instantly forget that he gave yang an arm, created robots to lessen human losses.
And also gave the choice to many of the students at Amity to simply run because they were still teens.
I also like how a lot of people agreed that Ozpin was being super manipulative even if for a good reason, but then those same people turned around and used Ironwood questioning Ozpin as proof that he was always this "my way or the highway" person.
He wasn't always a dictator, but his potential to get where he is now has always been there, and has been a slow burn. Some people just refuse to see that.
The problem there though is that Ironwood having good traits didn't mean he wasn't capable of falling from grace, just like Emerald's negative tendencies like her apathy to people better off than her automatically made her devoid of empathy or feeling. I can get not liking or being disappointed with Ironwood for falling down the wrong path... but I really cannot get where or how EruptionFang and a lot of others are trying to claim it's impossible for him to have ended up like this.
Ironwood had his reputation and even a bit of his spirit destroyed by V3’s events - the whole world saw him as an enemy at best or untrustworthy at worst, with no way to defend himself after the CCTS was down, and above it all was the soul-crushing fact that much of it was only possible because of his own Atlas bots; the very hardware he brought in to protect people ended up hurting a lot of them, and that was probably the first crack towards breaking him in realizing he'd played straight into Salem's hands (as well as being the origin of the fear for ever letting it happen a second time that would take him over in V7). The fact Cinder infiltrated Beacon so easily was likely the start of the fear of infiltrators that would bloom fully in V7, even before he learned about Lionheart’s outright betrayal of them all to Salem. A year of butting heads with Atlesian and Mantle residents alike not trusting him, the friction caused by Robyn Hill supporting active dissent against him through the Happy Huntresses stealing Atlas supplies and the unrest Jacques Schnee caused with his ambitions only worsened things further. Then came V7 where Jacques - a born-and-bread Atlesian - conspired with criminals Tyrian and Watts to further his ambitions at the cost of compromising Atlas, followed up by learning Ruby and Oz both used lies of omission to manipulate his actions, then capped off by Penny and Pietro defecting with Ruby after Penny took the Winter Maiden powers needed to save Atlas. Last but not least came the coup-de-grace in having Winter (arguably the last remaining person he trusted in any capacity) going behind his back and eventually outright betraying him, marking the point he gave up on anything beyond brute-force and raw power forcing cooperation. All that piling up makes it honesty very easy for me to believe he could crack even without taking his Semblance's apparent powers into account, much less adding it's effects onto the pile.
James Ironwood was, as cited by Glynda Goodwitch in V2, a person who's abiding fault was demanding everybody trust him but never trusting anybody else - he had a fiery sense of conviction, but it was poorly-counterbalanced by his unwillingness to risk putting faith in anything beyond his own judgement. The way things played out are honestly enough to argue for him breaking even without accounting for his Semblance, much less taking its nulling of hesitancy/reinforcement of willpower into account. For him, it was always a case of "taking the next step/doing what needed to be done” with Ironwood and by the time of V8 he'd taken several steps too many down the slippery slope. He shared Ruby's initial mindset of how leaders could not be failures - the difference was that he never reconciled the flaws in that view the way Ruby eventually did; he never realized leaders aren't people who aren't allowed to fail but rather the ones who can get back up from failure, acknowledge it and allow others to help them do so. Ironwood never accepting that led to him doing anything and everything to prevent Atlas ever falling or failing - until it became a sunk-cost fallacy where the price he was ready to pay ultimately became too much.
Everybody who was around Ironwood saw his worst tendencies getting even worse after the nightmare that the Vytal Disaster was not only for Atlas but for him personally. Being flawed and misguided can become a downslide to becoming paranoid and irrational if you never trust anybody but yourself - “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” isn’t a metaphor for nothing, after all. Hell, that’s not even accounting for the fact Salem was arguably actively manipulating events to make Ironwood as unstable as possible by turning as much of Atlas and Mantle against him as possible through Tyrian and Watts’ subterfuge (which was probably very easy since the Vytal Disaster likely already made him unpopular - hell, that was probably what gave rise to groups like the Happy Huntresses in the first place) - this wasn’t just some spur-of-the-moment jump onto the crazy train; this was the conclusion to something that was honesty a long time coming with multiple factors involved in it's making, same as how Ruby's innocence chipping away to the point of no longer trusting authority figures like Ironwood enough to tell him about Salem was arguably a long time in the making with how she got disillusioned by veteran huntsman constantly letting her down (Lionheart for betrayal, Oz for lying, Qrow for drunkenness - hell, maybe even her own mom for dying on her, if her character song is to be believed).
@@mrmetroid1078 Well said, friend. This comment needs more likes so people can see it.
@@Mystravian So Iron was fucking evil from the beginning ?
The biggest thing for me is that they didn't treat like a tragic downfall either. They could've easily still gone with this route if they made what was happening to him tragic. Make the audience feel bad. Want him to turn around. But at every turn, they try to get the audience to hate him.
Meanwhile, the show tries to get us to feel sorry for Cinder. The one who really IS working for the bad guys for her own bullshit selfish reasons.
Sure.
And sadly, it's working on both ends
They just wanted Adam 2.0
@@ES21007 This is the story of a girl
Who cried a river and drowned the whole world
And although she had a rough childhood
We absolutely hate her, for her crimes.
Yup. Also, it certainly doesn't help to have the heroes act hypocritical and unable to take criticism or question their own actions. The story was just turned black and white, with the heroes being presented as infallible and everyone who disagrees with them turning outright evil.
Best part of this Atlas arc in volume 8 is that HE WAS RIGHT... Instead of saving one they LOST BOTH... Heroes of the story ladies and gents
While displacing thousands of people to a barely survivable shit hole which has its own unique set of Grimm (huge as worm things that are basically the worms from “Dune” or “Beetlejuice”).
@Thomas Raines its also a terrible idea going to the desert. Why, why place two cities worth of people who have been living in the arctic their whole lives into the complete opposite environment? Why not send them anywhere else, Vale was hinted at being stable back in V4, why not Patch aka Tai's homeland, or even Mistral. Helluva lot safer than a place that Sun describes as "the worst possible place to live in"
Oh yeah, CRWBT needed new place to have the main characters rest until the finale
So now Adam, Raven & ironwood all suffer from the same issue.
It’s almost as if the writers see fans falling in love with their supporting cast and say, “ you’re not supposed to like them, you’re supposed to like our main characters” and then proceed to assassinate them in the most egregious way possible.
Well said. That's exactly what I was thinking they did with Ironwood.
The writers were trying to set Ironwood up with a narrative coming out of V7. 'Ironwood Bad'.
But then they caught wind of all the social media commentary that many in the fandom were sympathetic to Ironwood's situation. That he was basically written into a box. (RT is nothing if not attentive to social media commentary about the show. And tend to respond in kind.)
This was quite contrary to the narrative the writers wanted in place going into V8.
I'm sure they also realized that any sympathy for Ironwood meant that Team RWBY might not appear as squeaky clean and righteous as they were propped up to be coming out of V7. Certainly couldn't have that.
So what do they do? They ramp up the Evil that is Ironwood, times 10 to hammer home the point. "IRONWOOD BAD!!"
Complete with starting V8 off with him randomly shooting an unarmed civilian.
Is there a stronger word than 'forced'?
@@DocMicrowave [probably the reason why they took a 2-month break. They needed time to change the original draft (since they started writing vol 9 allegedly months after vol 7 ended) because they didn'T expect ironwood to be so loved.]
Is what i'd like to say but Ironwood's fall to villany started at the end of vol 7. If this was all planned then fuck it's shitty writing anyway.
We'll Raven is a female in this show and looking at how fast they forgave Emerald. Wouldn't doubt it if Raven was forgiven after like an episode because she helped Yang in some way.
@@hypeman1825 but Raven isn't black.
@@AlexisDevilman The comparison is because Emerald was a girl. That's why I pointed out 'female' in that same sentence. You haven't noticed how it's usually only the guy's who are punished or killed when not on RWBY's side of things. Yet the enemy girl's either switched sides and were forgiven or got away and still have the possibility to make it free.
Adam
Roman
Merc
Ironwood - Dead, arrested or stuck with Tyrian lol
Illia
Neo
Winter
Emerald - Free or forgiven
If all Emerald had to do was help ONCE to be forgiven.. then Raven should be fine.
Nobody gonna mention "Unlike Qrow, who wings his plans on the fly",? Too good.
It definitely got a laugh out of me
What if it wasn't a joke and just an coincidental paring of words
Nope. We don't know want to trigger Tai or the puns will never cease, lol.
Thank you, I was gonna comment about it if no one else did
Is that a joke?
They tried way too hard to make a villain and his semblance is so stupid.
They really didn't want him to be liked by much of the audience, but he still was until recently.
his Semblance hasn't even been mentioned in the fricking show so I won't consider it canon
@@toshido_yamada At this point it's now a damned if you do, damned if you don't
If you never address Ironwood's semblance then wtf why is he suddenly cartoonishly evil
If you do address the semblance this late then, wtf why are you just trying to handwave all the shit he did
They've written themselves in a corner there
Imagine getting a personality trait as a superpower.
@@smugscylla4481 if they knew his semblance would play a huge role in major events, it should have been established earlier, it's so frustrating
In the Volume 7 commentary, Miles (I think it was him) said that "if only Ironwood was able to be more vulnerable, then the stuff between him and team RWBY would have ended differently." Like, WHAT? How was he anything but vulnerable? He told them way more than he needed to tell them, trusted them with the Relic, hugged Qrow in a moment of relief, and made them Huntsmen. How far up his ass was Miles reaching to pull that out?
Pretty sure miles pulled his brain out of his ass at this point
I think he's referring to the fears he had been keeping to himself about the Fall of Beacon. That's what was driving that decision, a decision mind you, that likely wouldn't have escalated if Cinder had died in Mistral. Her placing the glass chess piece on his desk twisted the knife. Another thing we should probably remember, Atlas is his home, and the thought that what happened to Beacon was about to happen to Atlas, I feel made his decision to cut Mantle loose and save Atlas very believable. I actually liked his plan, but I can see why he thought there wasn't enough time to save Mantle. Honestly, had Ozpin been back when Salem decided to say hello in his office, probably would've helped too.
@@corneliusmaze-eye2459 miles isn’t that good at writing
@@DarkLinkVortex Yeah, I think you're right. I've been thinking about it more and more cracks keep appearing. It's a shame really because a terrible descent from Ironwood would've been incredible if done right. Hell! I've just realised killing him off is the greatest sin of all because now we don't have a practice run for RWBY to bring someone back from the darkness before she inevitably tries to woo Salem.
@@corneliusmaze-eye2459 that’s the biggest thing, in my opinion. The story they’re trying to tell with Ironwood *could* be really good! A general fighting to save the world finally realizing that the threat he’s facing is unkillable and that realization driving him insane, until he begins killing the people he was originally trying to protect? That’s a really interesting concept with a lot of potential. Unfortunately, that general is James goddamn Ironwood, the man who has shown time and time again that he’s willing to do whatever it takes not to defeat Salem, but to protect people from her.
I genuinely hate what semblances have become.
In the beginning with the 4 trailers its hoenstly pretty obvious that semblances were created so that each character could have a unique way to make their fighting more flashy.
But now it feels like the writers are using the concept of a semblance as a get out of jail free card to make a character OP or justify someone's actions.
@@pauljordan0203 except we never saw that in the show. They told us in a podcast or whatever outside of the show what his semblance was. Which is likely their "justification" for his heel turn.
@@pauljordan0203 what? His plan in Volume 7 was completely rational and would've saved far more lives and protected the world from absolute destruction. Mantle was a lost cause, and protecting would've lost more lives than it'd have saved, and team RWBY, in trying to protect Mantle, destroyed the biggest allied military might on the planet.
@@pauljordan0203 No, he was thinking like a leader. Save Atlas, and Mantle dies. Or stay, and both die.
@@pauljordan0203 He's never thinking like a robot he's thinking like a man backed into a corner and nobody he trusts is willing to tell him his last ditch effort to save as many lives as possible isn't as good as he thinks it is and when they do try and tell them that it's after he's already lost all trust in them
@@pauljordan0203 But he did know who to trust he openly trusted them all with his plans and everything he trusted Winter and the Ace Ops gave Team RWBY as much as he could even made them official huntsmen
He never showed he didn't trust them if anything he showed he was overly trusting to Qrow as he was someone he knew would stop him even physically if needed if he believed he fell down a dark path and as such overreacted when he believed Qrow went behind his back because he betrayed that deep trust he had in his friend
There's a scene in Vol. 6 I just can't get over: Qrow tells the girls "don't lie, don't be like Ozpin, we're better than that" only for them all to lie to Ironwood in Vol. 7- for no reason.
Season 7 - Season 8 = RWBY's Fault 150%.
If they followed Vol. 6's advice nothing in Season 7 nor 8 would have happened...
*face palm*
@@ArmageddonEvil If I remember correctly, didn't Oscar also kept ranting about how bad it is to lie to Ironwood during the entirety of volume 7?
@@GameBreaker1055 Yep, That's why its their fault for what happened in Season 8. lol
@@ArmageddonEvil poor ironwood shouldn't have to get treated like this. Now that's one more character getting butchered. Thankfully pyrrha and sun are now gone, they're better characters than most of the cast and it should stay that way.
@@justiceuponus3766 I have a feeling they are going to butcher more characters before, the End of RWBY.
Personally, I don't think they should have ever made Ironwood a villain or even an antagonist. He should have been a strong militarily leader with whom team RWBY might not always agree with, but was ultimately a strong ally they could depend on, exactly like how he was presented in seasons 3.
Like you can have allies you disagree with without turning them into villains. Plus, I think Ironwood represented a realistic and logical side of RWBY that is no longer present. The show really feels like a bunch of random teens who are trying to save the world while the rest of the world does not care. But Ironwood, as the head of the Atlas Military, really makes the world feel alive, his presence makes it feel like the story could turn into an all out war against Salem which makes the world seems so much bigger.
But RWBY doesn't seem to want to take this more interesting and logical story path, they would rather keep the world irrelevant with only the main characters having any agency and this is damaging. How can be be invested in a world that doesn't feel alive? Why should we care if the world is saved when the world is poorly explored and uninteresting? How will Team RWBY ultimately win when they are just some teenagers fighting against an army?
Ironwood was the solution because he represented good world building and an active world, but the writers didn't treat him with any respect. Both he and people of Atlas are no longer characters, they are plot points, all contrived in the service of Team RWBY the only people with any agency.
Which is pretty ironic considering Team RWBY don’t actually contribute to the plot that often.
Only they main group and their gaggle of hang ons can matter, everyone else is either incompetent or evil.
You bring up good points but ironwood was still a realistic measure even in his turn. The situation became drastic and knowing that he had the military might to solve the problem had to make tough decisions that nobody could make correctly. When these decisions are made a lot of times ppl will not fully understand why the decision was made cause they have never been in such a situation. So personally I don’t like the turn but I think it made some sense and the reactions that team RWBY and the others had were realistic. It feels like they are trying to mix real world decisions into their fantasy world and while that’s not gonna always sit well with many fans it’s a way to spread a point of view the creators may have and that is their choice
I would've loved for the team (as in, all of RWBYORNJ) to sort of "split" after Ironwood presented his plan, with half of them on Ironwood's side, and the other half against him. It would've worked perfectly, especially considering Ren was already showing signs of being for Ironwood, and it wouldn't be much of a stretch to think that maybe Weiss and Blake would be on the same side, albeit somewhat reluctantly, unlike Ren who would be 100% for abandoning Mantle
(Edit: not Blake, that won't work, but Jaune instead, maybe)
Have the RWBY vs. Ace Ops fight just be a sort of "civil war" within the team, with them fighting each other while Ironwood readies the staff to fly Atlas into the atmosphere.
Ultimately it ends with the team reconciling with each other, and later reconciling with Ironwood, after he's had some time to cool his head after sitting safe in the Atmosphere for a little bit. All before the space-bridge bit and they all fall, just like what actually happened.
It's something i intend to explore in a fanfic of mine, but the specifics aren't quite nailed down just yet, since the story is gonna end up changing *a lot*
If I recall they had spent months or at the very least weeks so if they were to inform him right of the bat it would of been much easier for them to come up with a plan.
"That incredibly scary grimm lady, who is oddly arousing." Yeah, that about sums up Salem.
Accurate
Accurate
Extremely accurate.
Accurate
Hoo boy, is it getting hot in here?
To sum up my view on what's been done with his character:
Look at how they massacred my boy.
Ain’t that the truth.
To quote doctor Lenaord church:
Ain't that a bitch.
And what I said on Discord.
"HIS SEMBLANCE IS SHIT!"
Also, now that they gave him his POS semblance. He can NEVER change, his semblance makes that a literal impossibility.
He's been a good person, (for a military leader) and they made him a dickhead in Vol 7. He has an obligation to his kingdom first and foremost, it wouldn't be practical to save Mantle and leave Atlas less defended.
Saving one kingdom or losing two, because Salem would definitely attack both. RT took a relatable character, a LIKABLE character, and made him a genocidal maniac. Ironwood was my favorite character since his debut, and they ruined him.
@@cyrus6461
This was mentioned in a different video, but if they *really* needed a dictator Jaques is like, right there.
Not that they needed one since Salem, the Big Bad of the entire series, is literally right outside of Atlas.
Character Assassination man
“That scary grim lady that’s oddly arousing”
This man is cultured
The moment I heard this phrase in the video I immediately scrolled down to find comments on it. This is the first comment in the list of comments for me XD
@@lrw2008 s a m e
I mean hes not wrong and for some reason a lot of people want to stick their thing in crazy but not have to deal with the results afterwards
Meh. The Vamipre Lady in the New Resident Evil game is better
And to think that Ozma could've been banging hawtness through multiple lifetimes but decided not to because "ruling over plebs is bad". SMH I mean honestly what would've really changed? Before he met Salem again in his first reincarnation she was just minding her own business in a cabin in the woods. Even if they become the "new gods" of the world is that really such a bad thing? If he didn't like something Salem was doing he could, I don't know, try talking to his wife?! How exactly did he think a powerful immortal grimm waifu was going to react when her family abandons her?
Point is this is the first time in fiction that an apocalyptic disaster could've been avoided had a guy just thought with his dick just a liiiitle bit longer.
James "The Chad" Ironwood, They rushed this season so hard. People love Ironwood too much so they rushed him becoming a bad guy. Don't even get started with his dum as hell semblance. Ironwood was, is a good man that Rooster Teeth needed to become the bad guy so they did him dirty.
I agree that they rushed this season so hard especially with the fallout of Gen:lock plus with #kickvic vs #standwithvic plus also the #funileaks which made them (Funimation) and Rooster teeth look like a bunch of God damn hypocrites which led towards volume seven being the shit show that it was .
Ever consider that they made you like Ironwood so it would be more upsetting to the fans when they realized that his character doesn't make choices because "it's the right thing to do" but because "it's the logical thing to do" and those two criteria have been matching up the whole season, and then at the end of the season there's a situation where they don't match up?
@@Tehwugginator m8 stop trying to defend garbage choices of rooster teeth. go watch something actually decent. i hear Trollhunters on netflix is good.
@@Tehwugginator There the right thing and there is a good thing. The good thing is what Ruby is trying to do that is save everyone. problem with that is it is unrealistic you can't save everyone people will die and you need to accept that. The right thing to do is sacrifice the few to save the many. I am pretty sure Ironwood would save everyone if he could but being a military person he know save most of the people is the right thing to do. BTW I am mad that rushed him becoming the bad guy. He could have been an amazing bad guy if they gave it more time.
@@tatchimittv The problem with this line of thinking here is that it isn't even unrealistic in this situation to save the people of Mantle. Ironwood has known in universe for at the *bare minimum* of a few days that Salem's attack was eminent, if not earlier; there's no reason as to why he couldn't have evacuated the city of Mantle and had its citizens also in the underground subway/bunker system that the city of Atlas has. If you try to argue space or food supplies would be an issue that's a stupid hard sell, because the writers never delve into any of those kinds of rational lines of thought ever in this show (nor do they show anything like how large the underground subway/bunker system is in it's entirety or if Atlas has food stockpiles to begin with), and to give them the benefit of the doubt on *anything* when it comes to writing is, in my opinion, disingenuous at best, given their track record.
On top of that, it doesn't make sense to deploy his military as he did. If his whole goal is to defend the city of Atlas and the staff of creation, why mount your first line of defense AT THE EDGE OF THE DAMN CITY? We don't see any forward defensive positioning by the air force. We don't see any perimeter batteries/cannons set up on the edge of the floating landmass (hell, in the ONE shot of the overall battlefield we get in episode 7, the city's OWN WALLS don't even have perimeter defense cannons/batteries/guns OF ANY DISCERNIBLE KIND ON OR ATOP THEM). Even the damn barrier has its barrier projecting structures OUTSIDE THE DAMN BARRIER (just like the one in vol 6 FFS...), rendering the barrier useless almost immediately! Atlas (city, not kingdom) is quite possibly the WORST place to mount a first line in the sand for his stated and/or implied objectives. Especially if he was willing to sacrifice the city of Mantle; why not set up ANY form of frontline there?! That way, you have space to fall back and regroup if things go wrong. Atlas city should be the LAST line of defense, not the first. Even trying to argue *but giant space whale, so actually defensive lines in Mantle are pointless* here doesn't really work: Ironwood doesn't KNOW (in universe) that's how Salem is assaulting the kingdom from the get go; he only finds out when it's literally in view on the horizon (from memory, admittedly; did not re-watch to verify this), and even if he did know before that point, again, AIR FORCE FORWARD DEPLOYMENT is still possible. He's just blatantly incompetent with his command over the military (as he was even in vol 2/3, so, yay for consistency there, of all places...) and essentially feeds an entire city of people to the Grimm for no actual, in universe, logical reason; it only comes of as *potentially* logical to viewers because we can try to rationalize the underlying messages and ideologies at play in the writing.
Ironwood's actions here have no in universe logical defense to them; his defense plans have been stupid/insane before he went 'insane' and lost what even Ironwood's most staunch defenders could reasonably claim to be his 'rational' mind. I would go further and argue that his only *major* on-screen logical act has been to try and bring global communications back online in vol 7, and even that had SEVERAL MAJOR FLAWS in rational behind the methodology of going about doing so.
He could've been a fine antagonist but making him a mustache twirling villian ruined his character. I miss the old Ironwood, he was awesome and an in depth character. James Ironwood (before season 8) is my favorite character.
Seems like the show runners don’t know the difference between villain and antagonist which you need to learn when writing
Wish I could say I understood but... honestly? I can't even come close to seeing this as making him a mustache-twirler when this is the man who thought it a good idea to go about filling Vale's streets with patrol bots against Oz's request (i.e., defying/forcibly overruling the guy who's in charge of that city). He had a lot of conviction but, frankly speaking, he was never all that great when it came to the actual planning department - by and large because he never trusted anybody enough to rely on them for it ^_^;
Ironwood had his reputation and even a bit of his spirit destroyed by V3’s events - the whole world saw him as an enemy at best or untrustworthy at worst, with no way to defend himself after the CCTS was down, and above it all was the soul-crushing fact that much of it was only possible because of his own Atlas bots; the very hardware he brought in to protect people ended up hurting a lot of them, and that was probably the first crack towards breaking him in realizing he'd played straight into Salem's hands (as well as being the origin of the fear for ever letting it happen a second time that would take him over in V7). The fact Cinder infiltrated Beacon so easily was likely the start of the fear of infiltrators that would bloom fully in V7, even before he learned about Lionheart’s outright betrayal of them all to Salem. A year of butting heads with Atlesian and Mantle residents alike not trusting him, the friction caused by Robyn Hill supporting active dissent against him through the Happy Huntresses stealing Atlas supplies and the unrest Jacques Schnee caused with his ambitions only worsened things further. Then came V7 where Jacques - a born-and-bread Atlesian - conspired with criminals Tyrian and Watts to further his ambitions at the cost of compromising Atlas, followed up by learning Ruby and Oz both used lies of omission to manipulate his actions, then capped off by Penny and Pietro defecting with Ruby after Penny took the Winter Maiden powers needed to save Atlas. Last but not least came the coup-de-grace in having Winter (arguably the last remaining person he trusted in any capacity) going behind his back, marking the point he gave up on anything beyond brute-force and raw power forcing cooperation.
Everybody who was around Ironwood saw his worst tendencies getting even worse after the nightmare that the Vytal Disaster was not only for Atlas but for him personally. Being flawed and misguided can become a downslide to becoming paranoid and irrational if you never trust anybody but yourself - “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” isn’t a metaphor for nothing, after all. Hell, that’s not even accounting for the fact Salem was arguably actively manipulating events to make Ironwood as unstable as possible by turning as much of Atlas and Mantle against him as possible through Tyrian and Watts’ subterfuge (which was probably very easy since the Vytal Disaster likely already made him unpopular - hell, that was probably what gave rise to groups like the Happy Huntresses in the first place) - this wasn’t just some spur-of-the-moment jump onto the crazy train; this was the conclusion to something that was honesty a long time coming with multiple factors involved in it's making, same as how Ruby's innocence chipping away to the point of no longer trusting authority figures like Ironwood enough to tell him about Salem was arguably a long time in the making with how she got disillusioned by veteran huntsman constantly letting her down (Lionheart for betrayal, Oz for lying, Qrow for drunkenness - hell, maybe even her own mom for dying on her, if her character song is to be believed).
@@mrmetroid1078 I agree with just about everything you said. I think Ironwood is pretty trusting all things considered. In S7 he just strait up spills his whole plan to team RWBY which ends up being his downfall and his whome plans was to tell the world about Salem. But I digress.
I am 100% on board with Ironwood butting heads with the protagonist, I fact as you stated it's been long since over do. The problem is you shouldn't have to destroy the character just to make them the antagonist. At the end of S7 he shot oscar and was gonna leave mantel(a dick thing to do) but it was justified by his own morals so to the audience it made logical sense(not to mention most people were annoyed with team RWBY so it was easier to sympathise with Ironwood).
But other than that I agreed with everything else and I enjoyed reading your comment👍
@@chatyxd6078 Well, honestly speaking, I think that's more a case of handing out orders and expectation to see them followed - for me, trust would have been more along the lines of telling them about the "airlift Atlas" plan from the start rather than only after already panicking, or making an honest appeal to Fira to have her pick someone in his command as the Winter Maiden as opposed to plating off her emotions, or making some kinda attempt at negotiation with Robyn instead of hiding everything about the Amity project (because learning he wanted to restore global communications could have been used as a rallying tool if he'd actually had the ability to trust people would *want* to help him).
Again, the sad fact of the matter is "destroy" honestly doesn't describe what happened here - not to me, at least. Ironwood's character had a fall from grace, and it's arguably *The Fall of Beacon* that was the start of his downward spiral; the way Salem/Cinder played him like a fiddle was arguably where the fear of being manipulated ever again first took root to make his initial problems with trust grow worse. It likely continued to worsen after a year of trying and assumedly failing to mend his ruined public image to Mantle in the wake of the Vytal Festival disaster. In V8 it became ever-worse as the actions of Jacques (a fellow Atlesian and councilor, however briefly) likely made him unwilling to tolerate any further risk of (perceived) defiance or betrayal from councilors like Sleete; Winter's going behind his back made him doubt even her capacity and sense of duty, leading him to take matters into his own hands with a bomb-threat to get Penny back under control; now, with Winter outright committing "treason" against him and Atlas (i.e., everything he's ever worked, fought and sacrificed for) about to crash and burn, he's completely shattered to the point his only goal now seems to be "avenging" the fall of Atlas more than anything else.
Moreover, to me, it makes it a very tragic story not only because you can see where he went wrong and how it could have been fixed had he taken Glynda's advice to heart and not demanded trust without giving it... but also because he could be argued as where Ruby could have ultimately ended up with a few wrong turns. All the way back in V1's Jaunedice, Ruby once said "You're a leader now, Jaune; you can't afford to be a failure" - that very mentality is arguably what doomed Ironwood so badly; he didn't feel like he could afford to fail Atlas, so he never took the risk of trusting in others. In Episode 11, Yang finally gives Ruby a much-needed correction about how taking risks for the right reasons doesn't always mean they're gonna work out, no matter how convicted you are that they're the best course to take - that failure's just a thing you can never 100% avoid, with what matters being whether you can accept it, pick yourself back up and trust others to help you do so by letting yourself be vulnerable with them. Ironwood never learned these things, so he ended up pushing people away until he ended up alone - Ruby by contrast finally accepted that she couldn't force things to go her way, allowing her to reconcile with the idea of failing to save Atlas and Mantle in exchange for resolving to at least save it's people.
@@mrmetroid1078 Finally, someone else who sees that this was heavily foreshadowed. It's about as on the nose as it gets, both for his literal tin man with no heart character inspiration, and for his past behaviours/military background (read, military indoctrination).
You answered your own question. It's because he made the main characters look bad. To me, it feels like roosterteeth saw that the audience was siding more with Ironwood and decided to make him laughably evil to make team rwby look good. Cause according to bad writing rule #10, "If you lack the talent to make your main characters interesting or likable, make everyone else look worse by comparison".
It sounds like what the CW will do.
What doesn't help is that the series has had a track record of having a lot of their villains, antagonists and otherwise characters who receive the least sympathy often times being those who have "fallen" in some manner to their circumstances or, more specifically, their trauma: Qrow falling into despair and alcoholism gets browbeat, threatened and yelled at, Ozpin's legitimate trust issues are disregarded because he should trust RWBY anyway, gets tortured and treated like garbage, Adam getting contorted into a cringe ex-boyfriend and then a bonified hate sink because he was... groomed to be a mad dog by Sienna. And his trauma.
Now we come to Ironwood which is by far the worst case of this: someone who even the protagonists shoved off a cliff into literal insanity because his PTSD was triggered by the villains *on purpose* to divide the good guys. And it worked. And Team RWBY never has remorse for falling for it.
Team RWBY, of course, being people who've had endless support from family and friends after already being extraordinarily privileged in opportunities and benefits from their *birth.* The only thing worse than the villains being there not by choice but by their trauma and then getting treated like garbage is the fact that the people constantly paraded around as better than them are a bunch of hyper-privileged teenagers.
I really hate that they made Blake essentially a faunus princess because it makes all of her comments about the Faunus being discriminated against feel so hollow, especially next to people who have experienced actual trauma like Ilia and Adam.
The difference though is that Adam was never shown in any kind of sympathetic light - even when taking about how Blake left him alone when he fights her in V6, it comes across more as him treating her as more important than the SDC's scarring him was; something that infers he never actually cared about the WF cause as opposed to just lashing out at the whole world for his problems. For Ironwood, Ruby's lying to him was just the final straw on the camel's back - even back in V4, characters were commenting on how Ironwood hadn't been the same since the Fall of Beacon (i.e., when Cinder/Salem played him like a fiddle to use his own Atlas bots to ruin the Vytal Festival, destroy the CCTS and frame Atlas for it all); to treat it like *they alone* shoved him off that cliff feels like an exaggeration, much less saying that "Team RWBY never has remorse for falling for it" since that's honestly disproven with the fact Ruby's group never once actually considered the easy out of just going straight after Ironwood and killing him.
By contrast, Ruby's group *did* eventually admit they didn't really understand the risk that trust represents until they'd had going it "their way" blow up in their faces - even when they were all open with each-other and kept one-another in the loop, they didn't end up with any better a united front and ultimately split on what to do for saving the kingdom; doing things different from Ozpin still didn't prevent them doubting or disagreeing with each-others judgement as evidenced by their disagreements on how to save Mantle. To quote Optimus Prime in Transformers:Prime; "Wisdom cannot be granted; it must be earned. Sometimes, at a cost" - for RWBY, that wisdom was the risk of trust and what it represented for Ozpin, and it only came at the cost of having things in Atlas spiral out of their control when being honest with each-other failed to surmount complete trust in each-other when it was needed most.
Last but not least, I wouldn't really call them "extraordinarily privileged in opportunities and benefits from their brith" - at best you could make the case for Weiss and Blake, but neither one really had the mindset to enjoy such things or even want them (Weiss for her dysfunctional family life and being willing to throw all those things away to live her own life, Blake for her getting swept up in Sienna Khan's rhetoric about human abuse to faunus and abandoning her family's cushy life for what she thought was "the good fight"). Ruby and Yang came from pretty down-to-earth lives, and their respective mother-issues aren't something I'd really see qualifying them for the "extraordinarily privileged" bracket - hell, Ren and Nora are even further off; being left orphans after Kuroyuri, those two arguably *could* have ended up like Emerald and Mercury had they been taken in by someone bad, just like Emerald might have ended up much better at a much earlier point had the person to rescue her not been Cinder Fall. Literally the only character who seemingly had a good family life was Jaune with his big loving family and the assumed privileges of having heroes for ancestors, so I don't really see how this angle works IMHO.
Oof, this hits more close to reality than I would like
@@mrmetroid1078 I think the main problem with videos like these is that EruptionFang will ignore facts presented in the show or by the showrunners in favor of his head canons. He accused Blake and Yang of murdering Adam even though in the episode, Yang and Blake were willing to let Adam go if he left them alone, but Adam lashed out one last time and had to be stopped in self defense. Ironwood has been presented as overly-cautious to the point of paranoia since his first introduction when he transported his army all the way to Vale despite Ozpin, Glynda, and Qrow being against it.
By season 4, Ironwood was already beginning to act free of the council because of his paranoia, and implemented an embargo and border shutdown which crippled Mantle economically, which in turn caused Jacques to lash out, but as Ironwood said he holds two council seats which is 40% compared to other three holding 20% each, which gives him a majority unless all three other members vote against him. In the very first episode of V7, Pietro says that Ironwood has been acting paranoid since the fall of Beacon, and it's what is fueling his action which include curfews and lockdowns in Mantle, and at this point trusting authority figures hasn't really worked for them because Ozpin withheld important info and Lionheart betrayed them so why would they consider trusting Ironwood completely? Once they did put their trust him, he let his paranoia (which has been a known trait of his) run rampant the minute things backfired. Add in his semblance which has been confirmed as canon, and it made for a a villainous turn. One that could have been done better, but was not completely out of the blue like EF seems to think.
@@RyLHatch1989 Yeah, that more than anything is what I take the most issue with in EFs videos - I can understand making critiques for where things could have been better illustrated, or where we could have had better contextualization... but all too often nowadays it feels like EF is just confusing "I don't like it" with "it's bad writing". And even then I might not care so much if he was framing himself as an off-the-cuff reactor, but he frames himself as a reviewer - disregarding facts or divorcing context from subtext like that is pretty much anathema to giving a professional review or objective critique, and It's something I really don't like seeing from someone who's shtick was analyzing the character songs ^_^;
I'm just going to assume that every Headmaster is going to turn evil by the end.
Unless they are female
Well, in novel director of Shade wasn't evil - but boastful and kinda stupid... made a desision to reshuffle all teams up to 4 year with new initiation, mixing dif years and fucking up years of trust in teams and teaching shedules, reaaally sabotaging power of huntsmen in dire moments. Suggestion of that was made by mind-controlled traitor teacher, but he still was stupid enough to go with it.
Also, there is no wall or anything natural protecting city, only hunter patrols... Vacuo should really be dead long time ago.
Well, the Lion was not evil, just a coward and evil was the only force willing to abuse that factor to manipulate him.
@@OmniscientWarrior Lionheart wasn’t evil, he was just forced, as we seen Salem literally threatening his life if he didn’t cooperate, and he died by Salem’s hands instead of killing children.
I fear that will happen too but that's simply idiotic. The leaders of the free world care about saving people, it makes no sense for all or even most of them to be untrustworthy and secondary antagonists to Salem.
Nobody likes ironwood as a villain because he was the one guy we could all stand behind. He always protected the people no matter what and respected them as individuals. He was militaristic in nature, but kind and understanding. The new ironwood is a shell of what he was just a few episodes ago and that’s why his turn is so infuriating
They should've had it where he and team RWBY don't agree on some things but at least find common ground
RT: but that would mean giving character development and effort
That kinda makes the turn all the better though.
It SHOULD be frustrating. What you're describing here? That's what people in-universe probably would have felt. Ironwood fell victim to his own semblance, and evidence for that being nigh inevitable has been out there from the start.
He doesn't turn EVIL. He just becomes an antagonist, holding fast to the decision to save those he KNOWS he can still save.
Hey man what can people tend to change and make drastic decisions during a crisis and is filled with fear, ironwood no different.
@@TiltedPotatohead No one ever accused Roosterteeth of being good at using their show to tell all the needed info. God those loredump 'extra' episodes are awful.
But even ignoring the semblance part; He was always going to fall prey to his own determination, yes.
From the very first scene he has been introduced as being more than willing to step all over his allies if he feels it neccessary. Metaphorically, by bringing in a notable part of his army on a simple diplomatic visit to an ally, literally with his introduction of the Atlesian Knights where he has those robots literally kick over and stand on their predecessors.
@@CynicalNaivety
I think that would have been executed far better if, instead of bombing Mantle when the SDC ships came, he would have let them be because that’s just one less thing to worry about, and maybe even tried to convince the main cast to help evacuate Atlas and the Staff, not because that’s the GOOD solution, but because that’s the OPTIMAL solution.
Mettle shouldn‘t make him more cruel, it should make him a MACHINE. His goal is to protect Remnant and by extension the people, was less people die, those numbers are better, so this is the better plan.
Ironwood died in season 7 as far as I'm concerned. This other guy is a completely different person who's taken over his corpse.
To borrow a nickname made by Linkara, we shall now dub this walking corpse, "Bearded Idiot"!
@@VelCroweBar Then henceforth, every instance of "Ironwood", post volume 8, shall now be referred to as "Bearded Idiot".
Ironwood died and his brainless clone Coaldirt took his place.
The whole show died with Monty, now it's just RT trying to come up with new ways to desecrate its corpse.
The entire team RWBY officially lost their characters the moment they pointed their weapons at Qrow, a man who had done nothing but protected and guided them up to that point, for trying to get them to calm down before going too far on Oscar/Ozpin. Like, even YANG turned on him, and Ruby was just gonna pretend that her whole team just threatened her beloved uncle? A man who literally helped raise her to become the huntress/person she came to be? I call bullshit.
And remember when yang said no more lies, no more secrets, and being honest in volume 5, YEP, PURE HYPOCRISY AT ITS FINEST DUDE
Don't forget yang and blake flat out murdered adam in cold blood.
@@mutecanvas3509 I mean…it’s kinda justified. They both gave him multiples chances to stop fighting and just leave them alone. Most likely, Adam wouldn’t have stopped fighting them until both of them were dead. It’s clear by Blake’s reaction to killing Adam that she never wanted to kill him, she just wanted him to stop stalking her and let her move on. So I wouldn’t say they killed him in cold blood, it’s just that killing him was the only way they could get him to stop, and if they didn’t, he would kill them.
@@vulpiixfoxx the only reason he was able to continue stalking her is because she chose to let him run away in Volume 5.. because of reasons.
@@thomasraines1396- those reasons were that she was ashamed of what the White fang was turning into and the fact she didn’t want to betray her friends but she couldn’t stay in the group any longer.
I love how fans would go "Ha, see! Ironwood overreacted! Ruby was right to lie and betray him!".
Well I don't see anyone acting reasonably after being betrayed and lied to by the people they trusted and only being told the truth at the very last minute
Ironically, the way team RWBY reacted to learning the truth about Salem tells me that Ozpin was right to keep it a secret… but for some reason Ozpin is the only one who needs to apologize.
A little off topic, but what bugs me about the situation is that ROBYN deadass used her semblance on the man.
Then everyone immediately forgot about it in the show.
@@MsAnimefan95 that how I saw afterall what would anybody due if they were ozpin in making a hard choice.
Ironwood's real semblance is being, as you put it: "a giga-chad"
Yes!
@Kristopher Prime yup!
@Kristopher Prime An indomitable will to accomplish sound goals. Not to pick something terrible and then fail at it.
Yes
And because of this, Ironwood was the Tin Man, a man who looks like someone stubborn and cold but in reality is a person who is willing to put his head if that means to save everybody, not Ahab, a man who is willing to sacrifice everyone only to accomplish a selfish goal.
Ahab? Who the hell is Ahab?
@@Cptsuccess I think he was the king of Israel.
Joseph D. Guthrie Ahab is the captain in Moby-Dick
@@benjaminfraire2590 ohhhh sorry never read Moby-Dick.
what annoyed me most is how angry team RWBY got at ospin for hiding the truth from them (they literally chewed him out where he nearly dissappeared entirely) then immidietly hid the truth from the next guy they meet who has put his full trust in them huge hypocracy from your main cast
Exactly! The show treats Ozpin withholding secrets as justification for him being morally grey but the main characters are suddenly in the right when they do the exact same thing to Ironwood and it's not their fault when Ironwood doesn't trust them anymore. It is hypocritical.
Personally, I don't think Ozpin did anything wrong by withholding info and every good leader needs to keep somethings secret but he was presented as a straight up bad dude for doing so. It really spoke to Team RWBY's (or the writers') naivety and it becomes even worse when they do the exact same thing to Ironwood with zero self awareness!
Either Team RWBY realizes that they were wrong for getting mad at Ozpin or they admit that sometimes it's ok to have secrets. But there is zero self reflection on their part and the story never paints them as making the wrong choice, it always presents them as being correct even when they contradict themselves!
The way I see it, RWBY was wrong to get mad at Ozpin and they were wrong to withhold info from Ironwood. It's all about if that info is necessary for people to do their job. Was it necessary for Team RWBY to know anything about Salem and her backstory? Honestly, no because they already know she's evil and it doesn't change the fact they need to fight her. But Ironwood _needed_ to what RWBY knew so he could make effective leadership decisions and bad things happened when he didn't have the full picture. Either way to slice it, Team RWBY was in the wrong.
Probably because they were cautious on how he would react. That's how I saw it.
@@victor2641 Their justification for being cautious was bizarre though. They fly into Mantle and go all ":000 omg this isn't right!" ignoring that why Mantle is the slums is an issue that predates Ironwood (cough cough SDC exploitation cough cough).
@@dustrose8101 agree to disagree
@@victor2641 Thats the same reason why Ozpin didnt tell people.
A reversal of the tinman gaining a heart is actually pretty good, but the sad fact is, the trash tier writing - which is susceptible to fandom influence, mainly shipping - has shown time and time again that any deeper meanings we infer are coincidence or accidental.
They're tried to paint team RWBY as the heroes by not abandoning Mantle, which would be good in a situation that isn't war. They choose the one scenario where his choive was perfectly understandable. And instead of offering a different method, for example having team RWBY work together with Robyn and her cronies to evacuate Mantle while Ironwood tried to hold off the Grimm, they just made them call him a tyrant and basically almost dooming humanity by driving the person running the strongest army insane.
Roblyen seems to trust team rwby, so why not call a conference with ironwood to strategize? Put aside their differences for what is basically the greater good. Ironwood is the shield and team rwby can do the extraction, it all fucking works but it's tossed out for nothing.😭
Nah, Ironwoods option is exactly the opposite of what an effective military would do.
@@Mystravian let's see sacrificing a city in exchange for not giving a weapon that can help the enemy destroy the world? Pretty sure every smart military leader would do that.
@@sornyeilevente973 except thats not what he's doing. He's leaving a defensible position not knowing whether his retreat would even be effective. Opening the vault also should have been treated as a last resort, because they dont seem to have a way to close it but salem doesnt seem to be able to open them without a maiden, so if the relic was the primary worry, then the BEST thing to do would have been to allow amity to rise and send penny with it so the Vault would stay impregnable as long as possible.
@@Mystravian Mantle and atlas aren’t defensible, they were overrun within hours. opening the vault and taking the relic away was a good decision because even if they needed the winter maiden to open the vault, if the enemy controls the city they control who gets to the vault. A good military general would sacrifice a city for the sake of the rest of the world especially when the enemy has no end of troops, just destroy atlas and get away, he could have had rwby and the ace ops get people out but no, rwby had to make him the bad guy for no reason, his decisions were logical and made sense (pre insanity) and the “heros” of the story just made everything worse with every decision they made.
RWBY suffers badly from Protagonist-Centered Morality.
It feels like something you would see on a CW show.
@@thomasraines1396 Krillin: "Shots fired!"
@@thomasraines1396 WHATCHU BRING ME
@@aces6262 I don’t know how to respond to that.
@@thomasraines1396 It's a reference to an EFAP (an acronym for Every Frame A Pause) meme, it is a quote by Jacob Kane in CW's Batwoman.
Said Jacob are treated similarly to James Ironwood. He's trying his best to keep a crime-infested city safe and he even had to compromise and help Batwoman (who keeps letting criminals and pseudo-terrorist get away by the way.) but the show treats him as wrong half of the time. His current wife faked one of his daughter's death, he refuses to let one of his daughter who is not yet an official doctor but wants to keep a secret hospital open therefore protecting her from making herself a criminal for malpractice and almost everyone blame him for giving up on his daughter's disappearance who was faked. Poor guy can't catch a break.
Watch "Best of EFAP watching Batwoman". It's a fun ride but also frustrating to watch as the writers are simply incompetent.
god, this show loves taking away my favorite character's brains.
are you also someone who was an adam fan ? Cause i feel u..first him..now irondaddy...this is just sad
@@hikkikomoe Ah I see more Adam and Ironwood fans. Hello there and omg they took ANOTHER one!
@@windghost2 ah follow fans i see
@@Troll_vs. Hello there.
Yes we still exist.
And it’s okay guys we still have Fanfiction.
Poor Caleb Hyles, being featured to give a good character song for Ironwood only for the show to immediately assassinate the character afterwards.
I really like that song too
But it feels tainted now eith how the show treats ironwood
And poor Jason Rose, for voicing a character the writers hated for being liked more than the main characters.
@@quickman2663 Can't just make the main characters more likable nnoooooo~ they gotta make everyone else worse then give all of their redeeming qualities to the nearest available female.
@@anonymousapproximation8549 True, but even then, you can still get shafted if you are legit interesting, like Raven.
@@quickman2663 They're gonna redeem her, bet.
Audience: He's just a guy trying his best in a lose-lose situation, making hard decisions that no-one else wants to.
RoosterTeeth: Bad man is bad. Main antagonist is bad. Team RWBY is good. RWBY beat bad man. More money now.
Me the fan: Ironwood broke after the last 2 years of pain, paranoia, distrust, and his need to do something anything in the face of unspeakable horror. This is how you write a tragic character trying to do good and falling to their inner demons.
RoosterTeeth: Thank you for taking to time to understand our story and charaters.
@@lookinforgoodshowsz however team rwby didn't do much to help on that particular front
@@lookinforgoodshowsz But the progression was nonsensical. He goes from trying to unify all of Atlas to shooting a kid over the course of three to four episodes. He could've simply knocked out and detained both Oscar and the Council members. If nobody goes against him when he freaking shoots an unarmed civilain in public, then they're not going to object to him locking them up so they can't interfere or get in the way of the plan. There's literally a scene where Ironwood chuckles ominously like a cartoon villain when he realizes RWBY and Co are trying to save Mantle. It makes no sense. It gets even worse when he escalates even further by threatening to blow up Mantle *after* Oscar destroys a good chunk of the Grimm and Salem is taken out of the picture. At that point, working with Team RWBY would be far more practical than blowing up an entire city, especially since evacuations have begun.
Remember, Ironwood was initally relieved when he thought Ozpin had came back in the form of Oscar. He's not in love with his own authority or power, it's something he's taking up because he believes he has to. So you'd think that when faced with an alternate solution that doesn't involve killing thousands of people, he'd at least consider it.
@@lookinforgoodshowsz V8 Ironwood isn't tragic, he's an idiot. V7 Ironwood is tragic.
@@lookinforgoodshowsz But he didn't. His breaking point was when he found out Yang's stupid ass decided to go behind his back and tell a thief about all of his secrets. RWBY tries to claim a moral high ground but all they accomplished was destroying a city, literally leaving unarmed civilians in a desert with two hunters and a maiden to protect them from hordes of grim. Ironwood never broke he was always right. Miles and Kerry were desperate for an antagonist and ruined Ironwood. They did the same to Adam. Now Emerald who has helped in mass genocide is a good guy now, but Ironwood is dead...yeah no real fan would believe this shit.
We are dangerously getting close to Game of Thrones season finale levels of character assassination.
Lmao, they just straight Danaerys'd Ironwood
Nah fam, ironwood has hit that level with how badly they ruined him in volume 8
To reach that level of character assassination implies that Rwby had any character that strongly written to begin with. Sorry mate the show's writing has always been down the dumps. People are just not ignoring those flaws anymore
@@sammydray5919 it was still better then what it is now
@@blitz4779 Sure. But to say that its anything as bad as the drop in GoT season 8 implies that rwby had been close to the writing quality that high as early GoT. While GoT went down the cliff, Rwby feels like a 1-2 story drop at most.
Ironwood, the Giga-chad of Volume 7 who was killed by this replacement.
RIP
James the General, Adam the Mentor and Qrow the Uncle were killed and replaced by replicants.
@@goodlion335 true Adam was replaced by that edgy boyfriend guy who still was ok because there was still no proof he was the abusive boyfriend
@@goodlion335 why do they do this? They *had* good characters but it’s like they purposely *choose* to write the stories and the characters in damn near the shittiest way possible. Why?
@@marlom7882
I can only speculate. But in my opinion there are two possible explanations. First - they just cannot write something, that not white or black in morale specter. Because of lack of skill or imagination or what ever. And second - they are too scared to write something, that leaves possibility of questioning main heroes, their actions or decisions.
@@goodlion335 then have the MCs make smarter or better choices. I mean it doesn’t have to be like game of thrones or hunter x hunter but have them *think* their situations through more carefully; instead of having them make a completely illogical and rash decision and paint it as the right choice like oh I don’t know stealing a military airship
Ironwood is an example of the writers assuming that an antagonist had to be a villain, and then suddenly adding villainous traits so the audience would agree.
You also missed a point: We only know of his semblance because of an out-of-show podcast instead of anything in the show.
I will refuse to even acknowledge that dumb as hell Semblance as a potential reason since the writers were dumb enough not to mention it in the show.
Wait wait wait... Me and a friend has only played catch-up up till the latest episodes because he hasn't seen it and I left off at V4.
And I only know about his semblance through Facebook comments and a wiki search to double confirm.
His fucking semblance, is done on their RT Podcasts? You have you be shiting me. Is any information about the show NOT done outside of the show?
@@TedTheHobbyist Unfortunately most info is done outside of the show... Or at least until it gets retconned or doesn't show up lol.
Fun fact according to WoR Mystral has the biggest underground scene out of all of the continents. It also is well renowned for its culture... Yeah we don't get any of that shit.
So basically you're lucky you managed to see those facebook comments or else you would've never seen Ironwood's semblance
@@TortoiseNotTurtle Good Christ, had we gotten a lot of world building and lore building in V2 and possibly in V3, that would have been great as well as expand on the world in V4 but no. We get WoR which is forgotten.
While watching V4, I actually forgotten about WoR series and my friend was adamant on not watching it for the sake of knowing the lore because WHY
@@TedTheHobbyist the real reason for this semblance is that it is easy to animate.
RT has a history of making every semblance look less visually impressive and almost every single one introduced post Season 3 was not even something they would have to animate.
People in the FNDM: "WOW! CRWBY/RT are such great writers!"
Miles & Kerry: "We couldn't write the Faunus Racism Subplot because of the color of our skin"
Those aren't great writers, it's people lacking imagination and creativity
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone in the fndm that says the show writing is good
@@brandonb4742 the only good writing I saw. Was jaune growth as a character.... then hair cut happen.... Like yo hair is now wack.
@@brandonb4742 Those are the ones that will go out of their way to defend something because it showed one trait. For example; Illia and May. Illia was an interesting character that I was genuinely invested with but when her sexuality was revealed, that was the one thing people only ever talked about her was and that this one trait automatically made her a "great" character. Same thing with May, it was revealed on Twitter first that she was a Trans character an entire volume before we got the actual reveal, which took away the "shock and awe" of a reveal. But you had people saying that May was this "great and amazing character" despite her having yet to do anything "great and Amazing". It was just because of one trait
@@brandonb4742 there are people that defend this show with their lives
For real, I remember them saying that crap
For me, I'm just sick of "authority man BAD!" conspiracy trope. People in power are always used as a villain and things like lockdown and robot armies are always painted in an evil light so the good guy looks better, even when the action makes rational sense. If you're not choosing the way of friendship and light and blind love and hope, (and basically the main character's way,) you're the bad guy. The end.
It is tiring. Especially since lately, writers don't even make "Authority Man" bad. Just really strict and focused on the job. Which in turn means they don't try to make the (and I use this phrase loosely) "Rebels" heroic.
Like, what's so Fucking Heroic about Team RWBY? Nothing. They led a Kingdom to it's destruction and sipped tea in a literal mansion, observing the chaos THEY caused, like the armchair revolutionaries they are.
It’s fucking insane.
Ironwood did nothing wrong last season so the writers had to make him go crazy to again spare team RWBY of actually being in the wrong for once.
Except for shooting Oscar.
That's not even getting into the bullshit deus ex machina of "See ironwood we CAN save both atlas and mantle...Why YOU didn't think of this idk"
@@joshuastruggs1307 tbf for all the shit Oz has given him cause he believed in him Oscar had it coming for being Oz
@@bashamd96 Now this, i disagree with. Ozpin never did anything explicitly wrong; he's one of the most tragic characters in RWBY. So no, Oscar didn't "have it coming for being Ozpin"; neither of them did.
@@dominiquesnijders2655 I think you forgot the part where he lead everyone around him to believe he had a plan actively influencing there lives to follow him as he bullshit his way around something Qrow directly shows negatively hurt him extremely to believe him and ruined his relationship with the own flesh and blood sister
Oz has ruined people's lives and is basically the reason for everything bad in Qrow's life and Ironwood was following him genuinely believing Oz could save everything he holds close to him his country, his men, humanity all for it to be a lie and Oz never had a plan
In fact worst then not having a plan he knew he had no chance and was just stalling hoping by some miracle something will come along while telling everyone he knew exactly what he was gonna do to beat Salem
Yeah he had it coming frankly the fact Qrow didn't kill him when he learned this more shows how much self control Qrow has cause frankly anyone who's believed in Oz's bullshit has ample cause to wanna shoot whoever's body he's inside now
The problem is the writers are too reactive to audience feedback.
Ironwood's sudden dehumanization felt more like a reaction to fans favoring Ironwood over Team RWBY in Vol 7.
For proof of this go listen to his song "Hero" from his fight with Watts by Jeff Williams and read the Lyrics. They describe the Ironwood fans love but not what he becomes a few episodes later.
RT always does it and the honestly need to stop listing to the fans because, and I'm sorry to say this, most fans are stupid and don't know how to tell a good story.
I mean come on, this is a fandom that's can't even agree if Black is Bi or straight and they are dumb enough to prioritize arguing about ships over, you know, the actual plot. actuallywhat'sthey're talking about.
And unfortunately, these are the type of vocal people the writers are getting feedback from.
Whats hilarious is they could have kept him heroic and still kept tension (however badly written) between him and RWBY by having him yell something like "IF YOU THINK YOU CAN SAVE MANTLE THEN DO IT! In the mean time, I will save Atlas! Now go!" And he'd have had the "mental snap" they were going for.
Ironwood is like that 4 block meme with the grey npc dude saying "I've been nice to you and everything" then Ruby says something bad about him. Then he gets angry in the last panel.
They really massacred Ironwoods character in my opinion, he was so well written in 7, that 8 just feels like a volume 5 all over again, where a prior episode or volume complete sets up a character or relationship and then the next one just throws it all out
The writers want to get from point A to B storywise and don't give a damn how they do it or whether it even makes any sense. It's bad writing plan and simple.
Oh no, i've been waiting for all of Volume 8 to come out before watching it, and I loved how Ironwood was written in Volume 7 (he made his way up to my favorite characters list) and now I'm nervous for what I'll see in Vol. 8
@@Sydberry Honestly like, I've fully understood ironwood through this entire volume even if I dislike what he's doing. He's faced with an immortal, unstoppable villain, who can't be killed and will stop at nothing until she's victorious, and only *now* is she coming out of hiding and properly fighting. Hell I'd probably react the same as ironwood, the only way to stop her from destroying everything is to hide one of the pieces she needs until she grows bored and either leaves, or falls into an eternal coma.
@@Sydberry not to ruin your expectations but it was good of you to be worried. I thought he was incredibly well written compared to nearly everyone else in V7 and was hoping they’d go down the tragic anti-villain rout but of course RT had to screw it up
@@johnpaulcross424 I thought that tragic anti-hero was their intention! I thought we were *supposed* to question who was "right" in this 'RWBY vs Ironwood' scenario. And that there would be questions about morality and RWBY questioning themselves. I was hoping Ironwood would continue to be the anti-hero and deeply written character that I thought he was in Volume 7, but from what I'm getting from context clues in comments of these videos, that's not the case in Vol. 8, which makes me less excited to watch Vol. 8. If RWBY is always supposed to be morally right, then the only conflict is "can they do it" not "should they do it" which I think is a question that should be wrestled with in these types of shows, RWBY should not be a clear cut and dry bad vs good show. Grimm are bad, yes, but it's not just Grimm they're fighting against anymore
You know, I have seen several videos dissecting why Ironwood's descent into villainy wasn't believable, but not one person has laid the blame at the feet of the real person who eviscerated everyone's trust: Yang Xiao Long.
Besides maybe Weiss she had the most reason to defend Ironwood's trustworthiness. He gave her a free replacement arm which nobody ever even mentioned. But not only does she stay silent, she even talks Blake into directly betraying his interests. Then, if that wasn't enough, in the first episode of volume 8 she has the audacity to blame Ruby for how things have gone. No, Yang. Your decision, one you made whout consulting your sister slash leader, directly led to Ironwood losing trust in your team, imprisoning Qrow, and dividing everyone.
Then you gaslit the whole hero group into believing Ruby was the one who led you into the situation. "We've been following your lead Ruby and it hasn't worked out." That was a direct quote from V8E1, but it's YOU made the decision without anyone's input beside your precious gf. then Yang admitted it to Itonwood in front of everyone. Did Ruby and Weiss even know what you did Yang? Or were they as shocked and betrayed as Ironwood was? The hypocrisy of Yang Xiao Long runs deep and somehow she got away with all of it Scott free.
I just go with the fact that they’re all delusional.
You forgot to mention the part where she tries to butter up her sister by saying "they did a lot more" whatever they were planning when in reality all they did was rescue Oscar and Ruby's worldwide message that didn't do shit. These characters in the writers blow up their own "accomplishments" way out proportion
@@dogsoldier123 right?
"We've done things people said were impossible."
Um, wtf was she talking about there?
@@konstellashon1364 It feels like the writers just take inspirational quotes from other anime and then put them into the script to make Rwby more interesting when in reality they've barely done jack
Ruby and her team abused Ironwood's trust and backstabbed him. Some heroes they are.
Protagonists, not heroes.
@@skyrogue1977 It's not every day you get a show that focuses on actually villainous protagonists.
@@anonymousapproximation8549 You mean it’s not everyday you get a show that focuses on villainous protagonist and tries to make them heroes.
@@quin7988 I'd love it if the rest of rwby became a allegory for trust, like we watch a certain character for long enough we tend to see them as important dare I say, the most important. Imagine if volume 8 onwards team rwby becomes more and more villainous in their actions and people still see them as the heroes due to our experiences, it would be a great message towards story telling in general......................................................................DAHHHH who am I kidding obviously they won't do that.
Trust is one thing. On the other hand he expected from them to do, whatever he wanted.
And there's not much he could hide from them.
If the AceOps were more fleshed out than we could see why they stick with Ironwood. Perhaps they were orphans or from poor families that He saw potential in and took under his wing. But instead they were made into obstacles.
I think the word you are looking for is "made into jokes."
Instead of the Ace Ops, we should have gotten Penny’s team. That would have reduced the number of major characters in V7-8, and featured a character that the audience was familiar with (Ciel) instead of 5 characters that are only cared about due to fanart (Harriet & Elm) and headcannon shipping (Clover)
Edit: It also would have resolved the powerscaling issue, having Team RWBY fighting people with equal experience instead of veterans
@@jeffhughes7104 or Jobbers.
So let me get this straight. They made Ironwood a villain because they wanted to make RWBY look better!? How stupid do they think we are!?
That’s how Adam went from a militant cult leader who didn’t give a fuck about Blake to an obsessive stalker loser in regard to her.
Very.
And it just ended up with them looking worse with them drinking tea in the rich persons house far away from the front lines
Damn dude you really analyzed a lot about this fanfiction about a show that got cancelled after its 3rd season.
GDI you absolute legend, you got me.
Holy shit!
🤣
Holy shxt! xD haha
RIP monty, his vision is being desecrated by absolute trash.
I saw a post analyzing Ironwood through the fandom's idea that he was "always" meant to be bad. Basically, every single good thing he ever did was out of plot convenience because he was the only character they could use. Like Yangst getting a new arm. She loses her arm and Ironwood is the only character they have who could give her a new one, so they just have him give her one. So if you go by that logic, Itonwood's entire character was a complete accident.
I really hate how Yang got a new arm so fast. It came out of nowhere and she did nothing to deserve it. It just made it feel like nothing happened to her at the FoB, since her PTSD arc went nowhere too.
@@Little-Birds-and-Camellias She like shaked once in a trailer so ignore that cause who watches trailers for volumes once they're out it's kinda implied training with her dad cured PTSD
@@bashamd96 yeah, they totally abandoned that arc; if they kept it going, her magically getting an arm would have been more palatable. But she magically goes back to normal after training with only a few shakes now and then, and it completely vanishes as soon as she starts fighting the one who gave it to her. Wtf, RT??
To view Ironwood in that way seems very incorrect because it's going in with bad faith.
@@Obi-Wan_Kenobi In what way? Him always being evil or his entire character being a complete accident?
In my opinion, Ironwood is the latest victim of what I like to call: Different Writers, Different Outcomes. Allow me to explain, a writer or a pair of writers depict a character in a sort of way and it's deemed the way the character is represented. Then other writers are hired, they change the way the character is depicted to fit their own viewpoint.
We see this in MLP:FIM where Twilight goes from a intelligent girl becoming a woman to an obsessive dweeb that can't read bad handwriting. Or the Princesses going from wise all knowing guardians to complete jerks that retire and lay ALL their responsiblites on their pupil!
This can also be seen with the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, primarily TLJ and ROS. And we all know how those turned out.
I don't pin the blame on Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross, for they always written their characters consistently (Except for that one time they forgot Blake had night vision, but that's water under the bridge, Right?) I pin the blame on the new writers Eddy Rivas and Kiersi Burkhart. I don't think they're bad writers (or bad people), But I think they just have a different vision than Miles and Kerry.
For those of you who complained "RT should hire more writers for RWBY", Well this is the outcome! This is the result. This what happens when different writers are involved.
Adding new writers is a gamble all on it's own, it's either going to end up as a masterpiece or a complete disaster.
If you asked me what they should've made Jacque Schnee the bad guy, I mean how much more fitting that could've been? They could've have him make selfish choices that put the Kingdom of Mantle as well as Atlas in complete danger. They could've have him put Blake in prison, because of her past with the White Fang. He could force Weiss to return home with him, They by breaking up Team RWBY. He can order Ironwood to do the most heinous crimes imaginable, making the distrust angle more believable. They could've made him deny the existence of Salem, if the subject came through, he will denounce it as a hoax. And when Salem does arrive, he still behaves irresponsibly.
BOOM! I Fixed Vol.7 and 8! The allegory they were doing beforehand now has weight.
In conclusion, writing for someone else's work is tough. Sometimes the writers' vision shines more than the creator's original vision.
You're exactly right. I instantly thought of what they did to Luke Skywalker when you said "Different writers, different outcome."
That's why I think having a singular vision is so important. You need one guy at the top to basically know who their characters are and clearly convey this information to the rest of the team. You can't afford to have multiple people in the writers room have multiple inteprations of the same character.
Star Wars needed a George Lucas, GOT needed a George RR Martin and RWBY needed a Money Oum and we have seen time and time again how the story goes off the rails when you don't that that primary visionary to lead the story and keep it within that singular, focused vision.
Sounds much better than what we got
I agree with this so hard. Well said
Considering Mantle wanted a woman who is a known criminal to be on the Council, maybe Ironwood had a point.
Pretty sure he did have a point considering that same woman said she was going to keep stealing from the Atlas government until she knew the whole truth about Ironwood's plan.
I don't think she was a criminal until volume 8 because a criminal wouldn't be able to be on the Council if that was true.
@@E3Persona we saw her stealing and knocking out soldiers in volume 7. The writers just chose to ignore that.
@@E3Persona I'm sorry, then wtf were those transport trucks they tried to steal?
@@E3Persona ...😑 She was literally stealing from those military trucks and she was trying to ambush the truck that Ruby, Penny and Clover so she could steal those tech supplies. And when Blake and Yang were sitting in that truck, there were tech supplies in there with them.
She IS a criminal and what she was doing was ignored by the writers because any official worth their salt would either ban her from running or have a warrant for her arrest.
Like others have said, the writers ignore it in favor of having her be seen as the right person doing things to help Mantle when in reality she’s really untrustworthy due to her semblance and horrible personality and she’s racist.
Basically 3 reasons. One Ironwood's motivation given the circumstances isn't the most unreasonable or villainous, especially given he becomes an unsung hero in volume 7. 2. If Ironwood's semblance is to be taken seriously then he is a victim not a villain despite the fact team rwby constantly throw shade and distrust at him comparatively to Emerald and Cinder by the overall show standards. 3. Ironwood went from a man who would detain and kill threats to innocents that were completely pointless because we never see is mindset enough in volume 8 so his plan is not only stupid and nonsensical but it feels so forced and out of nowhere. It also dosen't help that team rwby since volume 6 had been on a high horse of morality that have made them getaway with crimes scott free and the best character in rwby got admmized in a couple of episodes.
'' No one will fault you if you leave ''
This was the line that expressed his moral ambiguity. A side of the fandom took it as if Ironwood was treating the students as incapable of fighting/not good soldiers, another side thought he was being sincere and sympathetic and actually wanted the students' safety first. The line delivery was perfect for the ambiguity: it had a strict tone as well as a soft tone. His expression when saying this line could've been interpreted both ways.
His ambiguity is completely shafted when he just outright *shot a kid* in v7, and just started off killing random people (not a group of people, I just don't want to spoil for those that haven't watched v8 yet), commanding to kill people and/or tries to kill some characters by himself.
The morals around him are strange as well: people from Mantle started antagonizing him for the quarantine, team RWBY antagonizes him by making as if he's not trustworthy, the happy huntresses make it as if he's a tyrant and always try to bring him down, the politicians don't care about him that much... he's legit the only true character with empathy and selflessness in his situation, and always tries to fix the problem rather than antagonize someone. Now, he's the one antagonizing everyone with now everyone making the ''right moves'' (more like there are wayyy too many deus ex machinas but that's another story).
Though subtle, his character was consistent, and he was a good character in which is alignment was clear to be good.
The characters RT seem to hate to write a lot are the ones they set up with nuance: either they turn completely good (Ilia and another character in v8) or they turn completely bad (Adam and now Ironwood).
If they save this character, I will start believing in God, because at this point it seems like we need a miracle to do so. Ironwood will always be remembered as one of my semblance. Ironwood is not the Ironwood in Volume 8, that’s just a body that is enslaved by a semblance that started to control his decisions because the show apparently needed him to for god knows why. In giving Ironwood the semblance he has and then starting to vilify him, they make him even more sympathetic as his semblance is now just the equivalent of a mental disorder with how negatively it affects him after his turn. He becomes the most tragic character in the show rather than the hated villain the show wanted him to be.
I feel that, I’d start praying every day, because at this point you’d NEED a god to fix this.
Wish I could say I understood but... honestly? I can't even come close to seeing this as making him a "chad" when this is the man who thought it a good idea to go about filling Vale's streets with patrol bots against Oz's request (i.e., defying/forcibly overruling the guy who's in charge of that city). ^_^;
Ironwood had his reputation and even a bit of his spirit destroyed by V3’s events - the whole world saw him as an enemy at best or untrustworthy at worst, with no way to defend himself after the CCTS was down, and above it all was the soul-crushing fact that much of it was only possible because of his own Atlas bots; the very hardware he brought in to protect people ended up hurting a lot of them, and that was probably the first crack towards breaking him in realizing he'd played straight into Salem's hands (as well as being the origin of the fear for ever letting it happen a second time that would take him over in V7). The fact Cinder infiltrated Beacon so easily was likely the start of the fear of infiltrators that would bloom fully in V7, even before he learned about Lionheart’s outright betrayal of them all to Salem. A year of butting heads with Atlesian and Mantle residents alike not trusting him, the friction caused by Robyn Hill supporting active dissent against him through the Happy Huntresses stealing Atlas supplies and the unrest Jacques Schnee caused with his ambitions only worsened things further. Then came V7 where Jacques - a born-and-bread Atlesian - conspired with criminals Tyrian and Watts to further his ambitions at the cost of compromising Atlas, followed up by learning Ruby and Oz both used lies of omission to manipulate his actions, then capped off by Penny and Pietro defecting with Ruby after Penny took the Winter Maiden powers needed to save Atlas. Last but not least came the coup-de-grace in having Winter (arguably the last remaining person he trusted in any capacity) going behind his back and eventually outright betraying him, marking the point he gave up on anything beyond brute-force and raw power forcing cooperation. All that piling up makes it honesty very easy for me to believe he could crack even without taking his Semblance's apparent powers into account, much less adding it's effects onto the pile.
Everybody who was around Ironwood saw his worst tendencies getting even worse after the nightmare that the Vytal Disaster was not only for Atlas but for him personally. Being flawed and misguided can become a downslide to becoming paranoid and irrational if you never trust anybody but yourself - “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” isn’t a metaphor for nothing, after all. Hell, that’s not even accounting for the fact Salem was arguably actively manipulating events to make Ironwood as unstable as possible by turning as much of Atlas and Mantle against him as possible through Tyrian and Watts’ subterfuge (which was probably very easy since the Vytal Disaster likely already made him unpopular - hell, that was probably what gave rise to groups like the Happy Huntresses in the first place) - this wasn’t just some spur-of-the-moment jump onto the crazy train; this was the conclusion to something that was honesty a long time coming with multiple factors involved in it's making, same as how Ruby's innocence chipping away to the point of no longer trusting authority figures like Ironwood enough to tell him about Salem was arguably a long time in the making with how she got disillusioned by veteran huntsman constantly letting her down (Lionheart for betrayal, Oz for lying, Qrow for drunkenness - hell, maybe even her own mom for dying on her, if her character song is to be believed).
Its kinda annoying. The team was clearly at fault they literally betrayed Iron wood then when he finally breaks they paint him as the bad guy as if he's always been that way
Also how tf is Clovers death ironwood fault. Qrow should be blaming himself instead
When Qrow stopped drinking, he became an absolute idiot and whiney child who refuses to take responsibility for his own actions.
@@Little-Birds-and-Camellias Qrow: "If only Clover had worked with me, then we could have beaten Tyrian and saved the City! But alas, the Writers turned both of us into Idiots, just so this Fight could happen."
Yeah that WHOLE fight with Tyrian vs Clover vs Qrow never should've happened the way it did, and was disgustingly forced. Why in the fuck was Qrow LITERALLY tag teaming with Tyrian at some points against Clover, when he knew whose side he should've been fighting with from the start? At no point during that fight did Tyrian and Clover tag team against Qrow. It was so ridiculously stupid and unbelievable that it never should've happened. A LOT of things like that never should've happened and it's 100% on the writers for fucking up a story.
Volume 8 should have been a rude awakening for the team that their actions have consequences and that even though they have come far from where they started, they still have a lot of learning/ maturing to do.
Did we see the same anime ? ironwood do not trust any body. So when there where friction with the political women they say the true about the plan. If i remember correctely ironwood plan was a lie the old men make it work with penny. ironwood don't care to work with other so when he learn that thay have talk is lost truce in them. So when Ruby tell him about salem, he's again angry because she din't come sooner. the unkiller also broke him. the death of Clovers it is one fault he choose to fight Qrow has ironwood order instand fighting the scorpion guy. Qrow has nothing to blam himself. ironwood don't trust any body and every think must be what he think is right, he also has some paranoia. he's a control freak.
So basically Rooster Teeth didn't like people agreeing with someone besides the main characters and turned Ironwood into a naughty boy.
Yup, gotta follow team RWBY like a cult follower or your in the wrong (remember that one time Qrow was hesitant to steal and airship and Ruby talked him down, I will never get over that)
But they don’t force you to like the team or be against Ironwood. Also it’s not like it didn’t come out of the blue *I’mstrange*(RUclips channel) pieced together what lead to this point.
@@SHP4Life They do, he shot a counsel man that simply question what he was doing, team RWBY doesn’t feel guilty for betraying Ironwood and being no better than Ozma/Ozpin
Edit: Nor does the show treat him as someone who should be sympathized with him being a mustache twirling villain
@@flowersandcheesecake1710- no they felt bad the first episode of the vol was how they messed up not telling the truth to him but that still doesn’t mean that should have listened to letting people die. The council man well that’s what happens when a man with power gets pushed over the edge.
@@SHP4Life Maybe don't push him over the edge like team RWBY?
For me prior to his sudden turn nothing about his personality gave any indication he was that morally questionable. Also I'm leaving these thoughts before watching cause I'm playing catch up with the show.
1. He brought his army to Vale to ensure safety of the citizens and all participating students because of an upswing in crime that no one was really doing anything about.
2. Gave Ruby words of encouragement way back when
3. Pushed Weiss to continue on her way towards becoming a huntress
4. Showed compassion to Yang when everyone else was against her after she blasted Mercurys leg
5. Provided Yang with a highly advanced prosthetic arm
6. Sacrificed his remaining arm to stop Watts
7. ACTUALLY SHARED VITAL INFORMATION AND HIS ENTIRE PLAN.
Continuing off of point 7 let's remember how Yang, despite everything Ironwood did for her, doesn't speak up when Ruby lies to Ironwood (even though she said no more lies) and goes ahead and divulges information to Robyn who amounts to a domestic terrorist for how much military supplies she and her group have stolen.
Edit: alright, im caught up to episode 13. My god why in the name of jesus did they make him go psycho. At the very least he showed some remorse as he started fighting Winter
" He brought his army to Vale to ensure safety of the citizens and all participating students because of an upswing in crime that no one was really doing anything about. "
Actually he did it becuase Qrow sent everyone an ominous text about Salem being up to shit at the end of Volume 1.
@@Hartzilla2007 that's right I forgot about the text. In that case it's even more reasonable he would bring his army. From what I saw in episode 7 when Salem brings her A game even Ironwoods forces are struggling and we've never seen so much as a regular infantry unit for the other kingdoms.
@@Demiurge0000 yeah, I have have a similar list I paste when people say James was "always" bad -
*V2* - consoles Ruby with complements after her failed attempt to catch Cinder; offers his full force to quell terrorist activity without hesitation.
*V3* - shows sympathy while disqualifying Yang from the Vytal Tournament, indicating that while he and everyone else still trusts their own eyes, he believes that she didn't attack Mercury out of malice; gives an inspirational speech to the students to fight against the Fall of Beacon; tries to talk down Qrow rather than fight when he mistakes Qrow for trying to kill him.
*V4* - gives Yang (FREE OF CHARGE) a state-of-the-art prosthetic; declines to arrest Weiss, who technically did commit attempted assault.
*V5* - expresses suspicions of an ally that turn out to be true.
*V7* - pardons RWBY-JNR of the Grand Theft that they actually did commit; trusts them with his top secret plan; trusts them to keep the Relic of Knowledge; gives lodging and weapon upgrades; licenses them for their dream job (even when it can be argued they never finished formal education).
Did I miss anything?
@@konstellashon1364 its astonishing to me how much of the fanbase is just buying into it when there's literally years worth of him being a good person, I don't think you missed a thing but if I can think of another reason why Ironwood is great I'll let you know.
Yang still has to tell the others about her mom...
Ironwood: I need your trust.
Team RWBY: How about I make your job as hard as possible.
13:28 glad I wasn’t the only one 😂
Team RWBY not trusting Ironwood seemed like the writers were thinking too far ahead with their turn to the dark side that they completely forgot they *already* made him a very lovable and trusting Roy Mustang-type character.
Incompetence leads to them not checking their shit and just assuming they already did the hard work on one of the hardest story telling themes for a novice: characters switching sides.
Do I even have to mention Emerald? They didn't even bother writing the scene where she decided to ditch her sempai to save a kid she doesn't even care about. Her ditching Salem is not enough for her to go 180° and join RWBY but the writers gave you redeemed Emerald so praise them...I guess.
That has been a consistent problem with CRWBY. They did it in Volume 5 as well. They think so far ahead into the script and forget that we've never seen what's going to make characters turn. Why did RWBY mistrust Ironwood? We've never seen anything labeling him untrustworthy in Volume 7. That he was always a villain because he'd be willing to nuke Mantle? Ironwood only became a villain because he became an antagonist to the protagonists. He disagreed with their methodology. Which is upsetting because they use that in show as evidence of being a villain. When Oscar called Ironwood as bad as Salem I fumed. Ironwood isn't like Salem, she is a cold-blooded villain, while he was just an antagonist. But CRWBY made him one , because he opposed the protagonists, which last time I checked doesn't make you a villain. Yet the writers used that as evidence of his decent into insanity, because they work on the assumption only a villain would oppose the heroes. So thats what they did with Ironwood.
@@Rob.N. Seems that CRWBY doesn't seem to grasp the concept of morally gray characters and how they can still be very interesting. Everything has to be black and white, sides have to be obvious. Raven suffered because of this. Ozpin is the closest character to this but only because the characters treated him like that, which they fell back on anyway because they "learned their lesson."
When Emerald said the phrase "switch sides" I laughed. You don't *ever* write that. It'd be like Ruby calling herself the main character or the Staff of Creation being (rightfully) called a Deus Ex Machina. This shit ain't Deadpool, lol.
Believe it or not, I still believe that (end of) Vol 7 Ironwood was still redeemable. The worst he truly did was shoot a kid who, to be fair, is housing the embodiment of his mistrust and who is a very powerful man. It was the beginning of Volume 8 that made me go, "WTF are you doing!?" Shooting that politician was a statement of how idiotically evil he was now, while disregarding his characterization to that point. NO ONE in the writing staff bothered to rewatch Volume 3 to check their shit. (To reference the MCU) He went from Thunderbolt Ross to Alexander Pierce in an instant.
“Oddly Arousing”, somehow it would be criminal if you didn’t describe Salem as such.
She looks bland to me, but then, I have exacting tastes in waifus
That regal look with sultry, dominating undertones.
@@TheSinquisitor Coupled with an eerie complexion that's quite attractive.
@@anonymousapproximation8549 it's the fan art.
@@kaiserwilhelmii674 Wait, are you saying the FanArt's bad, or that I should look at the FanArt? Because every depiction of Salem I've seen (other than pre-transformation) is bland to me.
CRWBY: Now that Ironwood’s character is destroyed who next. I know, Sun’s character next to destroy while have team CFVY as RWBY best friend
And that is just exactly why I can't stand crwby at this point they've done way too many character assassinations
@@djmars1983 ikr
They better leave my boy Sun alone, and they better not mess with my boy Mercury
The book “Before The Dawn” pretty much goes out of its way to dump on him.
Coming back to this video and mulling over Ironwood giving Yang her arm... I think that after the Fall of Beacon, it's highly likely that Ironwood realized that Yang was most likely set up in the same way that he was with the Atlesian Knights. Made to look bad while being innocent, and I think Ironwood, who knows what it's like to lose parts of himself would empathize with her and offer his own way of helping her move forward. I think it just naturally flows into his empathy and thus just makes Yang look so much more worse.
He was able to empathize her when she “broke” Mercury’s leg (being able to understand what it’s like to see things that aren’t there). So I could definitely see it.
I know this topic and tactic used by Salem and her underlings was mostly a volume 3 thing, but a huge part of Salems planning involves not just throwing endless fodder at the world, but dividing everyone so that they can go at each others throats, or at minimum, not protect the throats of others. She KNOWS that if the world were to unite that they would be a huge threat, so she sows seeds of distrust and doubt so that things like team RWBY not telling ironwood the truth would happen. The song Divide sums it up pretty well.
But the biggest letdown is that it's not at all implied that Salem is causing this or even trying to in the slightest. Even the smallest of hints from the show about Salem instilling doubt into any of the main characters would credit her so much for what's happening right now and would feel so much better for an explanation instead of Ironwoods semblance going full retard.
At this point Salem doesn't need to build distrust, the main characters will do it for her.
Um... not to be that guy or anything, but wasn't a major underlying aspect of V7 the fact Salem *was* using subversion to make Ironwood increasingly paranoid by having Tyrian and Watts turn the civilian population of the kingdom against him? Doesn't that by and large kinda infer that she's honestly responsible for a pretty big chunk of what drove Ironwood over the edge - especially when half the reason groups like the Happy Huntresses even distrust him is probably 'cause of what the Vytal Festival all the way back in V3 did to his public image?
@@mrmetroid1078 not to mention having another headmaster they trusted end up on her sad making team rwby inherently distrust anybody they came for help afterwards including ironwood
Salem doesn’t even need to do anything, just sit back and let these schmucks tear each other apart.
The main cast not trusting Ironwood is an example of hack writers forgetting the difference between Writer Knowledge, something the writers know is going to happen, and Character Knowledge, what each respective character should or should not know at the time.
The writers wanted Ironwood to be the bad guy in that scenario, and so they wanted the main cast to be wary of him so as to not come across as foolish or naive. The problem is the characters had zero reason to not trust Ironwood, and they did nothing to give hints as to why Ironwood shouldn't be trusted to begin with. So they just come across as foolish, naive, and just all-round assholes for distrusting their closest and strongest ally, turning him into an enemy.
... This would be the case, if Ironwood's heel-turn was actually planned. But the complete 180 he takes from Volume 7 where he is his usual self with zero indications of hostile intentions until it is revealed the main characters lied to him and went behind his back, to Volume 8 where he is a completely different character and hardly ever comes across as actually being Ironwood is so stark. There is no way it was the original plan.
What happened in Volume 8 was a gut reaction and overcorrection response to the fans agreeing with Ironwood in every way, and not the main cast. They needed to make Ironwood so evil that you couldn't support him over the main girls, but even then they failed.
He basically became a James Bond villain in Volume 8.
I honestly think the writers accidentally wrote him to be one of the best characters on the show, not realizing the audience could see his plight and understood him. Plus RWBY betraying him gave the whole "This is really their fault" the team caught. I predicted RT would drag his character down to FIX this and be damned they lived down to my expectations.
What made him turn? Simple. He was not on the main characters side, so because the writers are incompetent they saw him as the bad guy because he dared to do something the main characters don't 100% agree with.
As we all know RWBY like all bad writing aren't allowed to have characters that disagree with the main characters because if they do then they are irredeemably evil regardless of how small that this disagreement is.
Good guys are the good guys & they are inherently correct on all situations regardless on what it is. Bad guys are the bad guys & are inherently incorrect on all situations regardless on what is. That is the philosophy the writers have.
That’s the sad truth tho, they are making us dislike team rwby, I mean they look bad. I like how the team is fighting in disagreements but...it’s funny how nobody understood what they did to Ironwood. Like they see themselves innocent with bad choices.
I think I heard somewhere that this is the narrative approach for Mary Sue characters. There is no reason to go against the Mary Sue because she is always right, and anybody who disagrees with her is the bad guy. You are not allowed to have a grey area that might make Mary Sue's actions look bad.
Wish I could say I understood but... honestly? I can't even come close to seeing this as due to "he was not on the main characters side" when this is the man who thought it a good idea to go about filling Vale's streets with patrol bots against Oz's request (i.e., defying/forcibly overruling the guy who's in charge of that city). He's always been in conflict with those who disagreed with him - the year from hell he went through post-V3 simply worsened what was already there; were it not for that, he'd probably still have been a lot more rational ^_^;
Ironwood had his reputation and even a bit of his spirit destroyed by V3’s events - the whole world saw him as an enemy at best or untrustworthy at worst, with no way to defend himself after the CCTS was down, and above it all was the soul-crushing fact that much of it was only possible because of his own Atlas bots; the very hardware he brought in to protect people ended up hurting a lot of them, and that was probably the first crack towards breaking him in realizing he'd played straight into Salem's hands (as well as being the origin of the fear for ever letting it happen a second time that would take him over in V7). The fact Cinder infiltrated Beacon so easily was likely the start of the fear of infiltrators that would bloom fully in V7, even before he learned about Lionheart’s outright betrayal of them all to Salem. A year of butting heads with Atlesian and Mantle residents alike not trusting him, the friction caused by Robyn Hill supporting active dissent against him through the Happy Huntresses stealing Atlas supplies and the unrest Jacques Schnee caused with his ambitions only worsened things further. Then came V7 where Jacques - a born-and-bread Atlesian - conspired with criminals Tyrian and Watts to further his ambitions at the cost of compromising Atlas, followed up by learning Ruby and Oz both used lies of omission to manipulate his actions, then capped off by Penny and Pietro defecting with Ruby after Penny took the Winter Maiden powers needed to save Atlas. Last but not least came the coup-de-grace in having Winter (arguably the last remaining person he trusted in any capacity) going behind his back and eventually outright betraying him, marking the point he gave up on anything beyond brute-force and raw power forcing cooperation.
James Ironwood was, as cited by Glynda Goodwitch in V2, a person who's abiding fault was demanding everybody trust him but never trusting anybody else - he had a fiery sense of conviction, but it was poorly-counterbalanced by his unwillingness to risk putting faith in anything beyond his own judgement. The way things played out are honestly enough to argue for him breaking even without accounting for his Semblance, much less taking its nulling of hesitancy/reinforcement of willpower into account. For him, it was always a case of "taking the next step/doing what needed to be done” with Ironwood and by the time of V8 he'd taken several steps too many down the slippery slope. He shared Ruby's initial mindset of how leaders could not be failures - the difference was that he never reconciled the flaws in that view the way Ruby eventually did; he never realized leaders aren't people who aren't allowed to fail but rather the ones who can get back up from failure, acknowledge it and allow others to help them do so. Ironwood never accepting that led to him doing anything and everything to prevent Atlas ever falling or failing - until it became a sunk-cost fallacy where the price he was ready to pay ultimately became too much.
Everybody who was around Ironwood saw his worst tendencies getting even worse after the nightmare that the Vytal Disaster was not only for Atlas but for him personally. Being flawed and misguided can become a downslide to becoming paranoid and irrational if you never trust anybody but yourself - “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” isn’t a metaphor for nothing, after all. Hell, that’s not even accounting for the fact Salem was arguably actively manipulating events to make Ironwood as unstable as possible by turning as much of Atlas and Mantle against him as possible through Tyrian and Watts’ subterfuge (which was probably very easy since the Vytal Disaster likely already made him unpopular - hell, that was probably what gave rise to groups like the Happy Huntresses in the first place) - this wasn’t just some spur-of-the-moment jump onto the crazy train; this was the conclusion to something that was honesty a long time coming with multiple factors involved in it's making, same as how Ruby's innocence chipping away to the point of no longer trusting authority figures like Ironwood enough to tell him about Salem was arguably a long time in the making with how she got disillusioned by veteran huntsman constantly letting her down (Lionheart for betrayal, Oz for lying, Qrow for drunkenness - hell, maybe even her own mom for dying on her, if her character song is to be believed).
You see this levelheaded, likeable character? Well now, he's a generic, crazy evil guy!!!
And even after the character assassination, he's still more likeable than the main characters.
This comes from an Active Duty perspective:
Up until the most recent episodes, I not only understand but empathize with James' logic and decisions. Most non-military people don't get exposed to tough decisions that hold actual lives in the balance; whereas that's not only common in military practice, but moreover a regular event. In the event of a crisis similar to the one in Atlas, we're required to make quick, informed decisions that oftentimes don't have a black-and-white correct answer that keeps everyone safe. There will be times that you have to prioritize the many over the few, or work towards the greater picture by sacrificing or removing small details. War/conflict is messy. And oftentimes, even with the wisdom of time, there's still a lack of closure; a lack of knowing whether the decision you made is the right one.
Being in the military for 10 years now, one thing that's stuck with me is the learned ability to operate fluidly in the moral grey. No, I can't save everyone. No, I'm not important enough to be saved all the time. But we do the best with what limited information and intel we have, and come up with what we believe is the best decision given the circumstances. All of these are traits showcased in volume 7, which makes that season not only understandable, but relatable as well.
Then we come to volume 8, and suddenly we're slapped with an abrupt about-face that disregards and discredits all the events that led to it. Makes me feel that Ironwood's character is cheated out of a legitimate character arc, not to mention the blatant disrespect to the effort already put into the character over seasons 2-7.
Granted, I'm not at the helm of Rooster Teeth, and can neither dictate or criticize their choices with this series as it's their own, and I'm not privy to the ideas and plans they have for the series going forward. Only time will tell.
Thank you for your service. Nice of you to share your perspective.
If a story is made to complain about the Military Industrial Complex, or politicians exploiting the troops, or how bigotry and misogyny isn't dealt with enough within the ranks, I'm game. But plot lines like this I feel are disrespectful to the very _concept_ of having a military. It's been bugging me more and more if/when writers seem to think of you all as just over-aggressive jerks who become murder-bots.
@@konstellashon1364 the show trying to have an anti military, “They’re just kids!” line of thinking really falls apart simply because the Grimm exist, they’re unthinking, unfeeling monsters who can’t be stopped or reasoned with, they don’t have (or shouldn’t) the luxury of staying out of the fights because they’re “kids”, honestly the world would be more like “The Walking Dead” where such notions are abandoned out of basic necessity of survival.
@@thomasraines1396 S Korea has that thing where every able bodied male has to take a minimum of military training. At least that's what I understand from half-listening to entertainment gossip when they cover BTS. Oh, and their national sport is archery. Every kingdom of Remnant should have something similar. Like Vale's insignia has double axes, so hatchet throwing could be their national sport. And junior high kids of all kingdoms get the basics of forming a shield wall.
@@konstellashon1364 something like that but the show is written in such a way that it’s basically Earth with cool shit tacked on even though it should be fundamentally different from our own world simply because the Grimm exist.
The writers just can't accept team RWBY painted as bad guys or failures so they just make promising, badass characters into disappointing assholes.
God I miss Beacon. At least team RWBY weren't irritating back then.
Just rose colored glasses. The writing wasn't any better. Arguably worse, in fact.
Favoritism in your hero's while writing a story is one of the most amateurish things a writer can do. It really does bother me how much the show blatantly wanks Team RWBY. V8 Ironwood can kick rocks imo... but I equally despise the majority of our hErOs. Oscar, Jaune, Ren, Penny and maybe Weiss are the only one's who get a pass... everyone else can go F*** themselves.
@@flamegeyser9781 It's not rose tinted. The writing wasn't God tier but at least it was fun. RWBY was at its best when it was simply goofy and had good action scenes. Trying to take itself completely seriously took out any redeeming qualities it had.
@@brandonontama2415 Well maybe I'm the jaded one. I didn't find it to be very fun at all. Perhaps I couldn't turn off my critic goggles. Still, I don't think it's any worse now than it was then.
@@flamegeyser9781 Well, to be fair, it supposed to get good from Volume 3 but...yeah you see how it goes. Some do enjoy it despite the flaws of the earlier volumes. By the way, I respect your opinion.
I was also upset what they did to Ironwood. He was trustworthy and helpful in all he did, but Ruby messed up by lying to him, and Blake and Yang telling Robyn about his plans behind his back.
Not to mention that THAT'S THE EXACT SAME THING THEY GOT MAD AT OZPIN FOR!!!
@@Obi-Wan_Kenobi but see it’s ok, because it was them doing it.
@@Obi-Wan_Kenobi- they got mad because he left without explaining himself.
They needed her to help Ironwood and he only questioned everything after his fears returned.
@@SHP4Life least someone understand what fear can do to people.
Volume 3 set up Ironwood as a well-meaning but flawed figure who had issues with trust, hence the robot army that got hacked because of his disagreements with Ozpin.
Volume 4 continued the theme when Weiss overheard Ironwood having that discussion about the embargo with her father, showing that Ironwood was becoming more paranoid.
But in Volume 7? He was polite and reasonable. The thing is, he was more polite and reasonable than CRWBY intended, so they had Ruby lie about Salem just for the sake of drama. Ironwood wasn't even that mad about Salem. He was rightly annoyed by Ruby's dishonesty in the end, and that's why he shot Oscar. The 'heroes' didn't fail to stop Ironwood's fall, they actively contributed to his fall and refused to take responsibility for their stupidity.
So CRWBY doubled down on making Ironwood the 'bad guy' in Volume 8... with a stupid Semblance that wasn't even properly explained in the show.
9:25 Yeah, the dog metaphor sums up the situation quite well. Everyone has limits, even folks who are kind, empathetic and loyal.
This show really works hard to make being a fan of men characters hard.
I know right
They've made pretty much every guy in the show into a failure a drunk a idiot a tyrant the list goes on and on
@@spartan0328 don't forget turning a morally gray male character who cares about his fellow faunus into an obsessive boyfriend
@@Mr.Inktail oh don't get me started on adam he was the coolest bad guy in the show im a big star wars fan (before disney) so i always saw adam as the dath vader of the show everytime he showed he had this presence like you know hes so powerful he commanded the room he was the one you were scared if ahero fought then after what happened to yang and blake fought him and they trashed his character and discarded him like trash
Ticks me off so bad
look what they did with Ren the same guy who barley speaks , now he's the bad guy because he disagree with Yang and he ruin the relationship between him and Nora , we see no prove he's bringing Nora down while Nora is the one bringing him down , so sick of the men vs women in this show
@@loiiysailor1177 especially since b4 this nora and ren have ALWAYS been on the same page nora had an identity she always has shes a fan fave but suddenly "i don't know who i am" ren completely went from the one who always kept his cool to someone who constantly flies off the handle at everyone
And hes actually not wrong most of the time when the show tries to make him seem like hes in the wrong
You'd think the writers would've learned from Adam that making an interesting character into "generic evil guy" isn't a good idea.
Speaking of Adam, there is literally no problem with making him evil, you can still make him interesting, it’s just that they wrote him out as a crazy ex, nerfed him to elevate the protagonists, and just ignored any nuance to him as an oppressed Faunus
@@harbour2118 I think Adam remind me of zuko form atla
"That scary Grimm Lady who is oddly arousing"
(Oscar's description of Salem)
What the fuck 😂😂
My problem was that there was no justified reason not to trust Ironwood. The group didn't trust him because of Mantle but due to what we've seen of it, it looks fine thus the characters were in the wrong from the beginning. They also made no attempt to compermise with Ironwood and only complained making Ironwood look better by comparison.
Also you would think the more pragmatic characters (Ren and Blake) would point out that in war or in tough times not everything is gonna be all sunshine and rainbows, someone is going to get screwed over.
Anyone else find it ironic when they were barely focusing on Ironwood his character was a fan favorite and considered layered and when they tried to make him "deep" he was hated and lost all his appeal?
RWBY is a series where good ideas are marred by absolutely terrible execution.
Ironwood, Jacques, Adam, Raven, possibly Cinder; RT really has a habit of screwing up characters.
Same thing with Ren and Nora
I feel like Cinder got fucked over the most cause we've always wanted to know her reasoning for being this way then it's just "I'm a entitled brat who suffered so I deserve to be the greatest" like at least with most characters they didn't actively keep us waiting with info that creates there whole reasoning just to make it the worst idea possible
Though, I do believe the second character in that list actually did deserve it. Jacques Schee was an incredible bastard and Weiss told everyone the reasons why he is a Schee in the first place, he married into the Schee Family for the Power and Wealth, nothing more.
And I definitely believed he would betray Altas for becoming a Council Member. He kind of reminds me of Bobby Kotick and that's not a good thing.
@@ArmageddonEvil I despise the way he was written.
@@bluethunder250 I think that's a lot of CRWBY's problem. They write their characters horribly. lol
Long story short: The writers fucked it up, like many other stuff. But hey, expecting a well-writen plot and characters being build properly on RWBY is a joke nowadays.
low key the fact yang got the arm after a majority of the continent thought she was a terrible evil child for attacking a "harmless" person its jus nuts
But that stopped being a thing as soon as it started.
RT: See!? He's evil!
Audience: He's the only one making sense around here.
it's so euphoric to see somebody summarise all the issues into one video.
"This character is unrecognizable"
FNDM : That's called subversion and good writing
I wonder what they'll say when they watch BLEACH and get to the end of the Soul Society Arc...
*Cries in Jake Skywalker*
They did Ironwood dirty man. I had hopes for him
@@marvinhui9286 They did everyone dirty.
Salem’s on her way…
A) Evacuate who they can now to near guaranteed safety away from Salem and her forces.
B) Risk EVERYONE dying by waiting to evacuate everyone from Mantle, while Salem is on her way.
…
Big Bird: One of these things is not like the other.
I've gotten into so many arguments with people over this. His change was way too drastic even if there were subtle hints of him eventually falling. They dropped the ball with James.
It was worse than Anakin in RotS. At least Anakin fucked up in heat of the moment and unhanded Windu, which despite being really stupid was at least SOME reason to go from righteous protector (with some rage outbursts & issues, but for good reasons) to child mass murder & power hungry monster in about few hours.
Ironwood actions makes even less sense now than Anakins did.
I hate when show builds up this gray or gray-ish character who easily becomes fans favourite, or at least well liked character, and is basicly voice of reason, faced with much worse choices than MC & his/her crew, and then they have no idea how to make said character "fall" to the "dark" side at least somehow believable, so they make them into hitler 2.5.
Dany in GoT, Prince Lotor in newest Voltron(almost the only redeeming thing in later seasons), Adam & Iroonwood here, and probably much more.
Ech... I still don't get how Miles who (if I remember correctly) was behind plot for chorus trilogy in RvB and made Felix & Locus, both terrible assholes into likable characters (despite one of them being just evil), could make plot as bad as later seasons in RWBY (don't know if the new ones are still written by him & Kerry).
@@nocebo5792 Heck, for all of the Prequel's flaws, they did a very good job of setting up Anakin as a well-intentioned but highly flawed character.
Also, I think why Miles dropped the ball with Ironwood despite cresting Felix and Locus is because Felix and Locus aren't morally grey characters while Ironwood is. We never see Felix and Locus' descent into villainy because they were only pretending to be the good guys. Ironwood's descent into villainy is essentially jumping off a cliff in how rapidly it occurs to the point where you could be fooled into thinking that he was secretly evil all along.
Hey, at least its better than Game of Thrones last seasons writing lol. Daenerys literally went insane in like 5 seconds.
Not gonna lie, hearing Qrow's old voice, just for a second, gave me a slight chill.
I miss Vic.
His new VA is a snake
@@elliottgaal9774 Well, then he fit just right in the team..
in the beginning: i'm a guy trying to solve extremely complicated problems and carrying the weight of having thousands of lives in my hands.
how it ended: *I AM EVIL, MUWAHAHAHA! LOOK MY EVIL SPEECH, E V I L !*
Is that from Spongebob??
I believe that that Ironwood's Semblance has the same issue as the importance of Blake's parents, they made it up so deep into the story that it contradicts everything his character represented.
The writers have stated that they wanted to make Ironwood's progression into villainy subtle and make sense. Or something like that
They definitely didn't do that. lol
Ironwood is the living embodiment of a good person tired of doing good things
Or of an autistic person who is tired of neurotypicals painting them as the bad guy in every situation. Either way it works.
And bad written.
Or like itati from Naruto
I will never get over how Ruby thought it was a good idea to straight up LIE to Ironwood as if he's some stranger who has never done anything for them. Ruby lying to him ended up having a snowball effect that made Ironwood spiral into an unnatural "bad guy." Ugh.
I can absolutely understand why she thought it was a good idea. Look at the extent he's willing to go to in order to protect Atlas from an enemy he thinks can be defeated. Just imagine what he'd be willing to do in order to protect Atlas from an immortal enemy.
Eruption Fang as always showing how Miles and Kerry couldn't write themselves out of a car with the keys inside them.
They’re like Peter from Family Guy when he locked his keys out of the car.
Remember kids: if your project team leader tries to do something you disagree with, it is absolutely okay to start your own posse with their people and resources, to undermine their authority and destroy the project via sabotage!
Also remember to never have a plan, just sabotage their plan without you having any
Took him a whole volume to turn evil,stayed evil whole volume then literally lost in 40 seconds. Not that it didn't make any sense it but seriously? 40 seconds?
This man had been played up as the big bad boss for the volume and that he was gonna be a hassle to take down, then they threw a plastic bottle at his kneecap and he collapsed in sheer pain, allowing our heroines and then some to waltz on by.
Ironwood a huntsman same level as crow that oz trusted, who won the boss fight with watt, gets beaten in 40 sec
@@yaaninja Cybernetically enhanced body skilled marksman years of experience and the rational mind to formulate plans within seconds clearly all this is nothing compared to like 4 dorks who just become official huntsmen like a week ago and Winter
RT will ruin any character they don't like themselves just to make team Rwby look better which they fail at , make Iornwood a villain is such a dumb idea !
And that is why Rooster teeth needs to give the franchise to someone who would treat it better not a bunch of racist misandrist sociopaths
@@djmars1983 yeah :( This is why we all wish Monty was still here with us. He had a good idea of storyline, characters & actions. Honestly I want to drop the series but I want to see how it all ends
@@littlesparrow303 not even Monty wrote anything, he gave that task to Miles and Kerry but he at least had a story outline that they had to follow because Monty only wanted to make cool characters and fight scenes while Miles and Kerry made a story around that. When they say they're just following Monty's vision I have big doubts on that, Monty wouldn't have turned his characters into... whatever this is.
@@2amCryptid true!! I know he liked Blacksun (Blake/sun) & I didn’t have an issue w/ Blake being with Yang or Sun. In volume 4 we see Sun the most w/ Blake & Blake warming up to him. Then Yang & Blake relationship felt like it was went gonna happen
@@littlesparrow303 I'm iffy on how Blake and Yang are written together, I wouldn't mind them being together if it actually showed relationship progression like it did with Blake and Sun.
Ironwood is a good man pushed to the breaking point with an extinction level event and his only friends decided to withhold information and go behind his back without even attempting to reason their position with him most of time, and when his back is against the wall and it is clear that there is no more time, he decides that he needs to save who he can, and damn those who would get in his way, even if they were friends. And he is the bad guy?
I honestly think ironwoods "fall" is just a bunch of bad/stupid writing with the absolute worst semblance in the history of the show
It basically forces him to do what ever bsd idea come up now and gives him tunnel vision to the point he can't even see other options and there is no way i see ironwood naturally turning into the monstrosity of stupidity we have now
It really seems like it
I dont mind his Semblance. My problem is that his semblance seemed to come out of nowhere, as if the writers only introduced it to explain away poor writing.
@@rexerator my problem is his semblance is just a character trait on steroids
Cinder, Raven, Adam, Salem and now Ironwood...RT writers did it again indeed.
Comic fans have a term for this kinda railroaded character assassination: PIS
Plot
Induced
Stupidity
If somebody could explain, how exactly does ironwoods semblance work because wouldn't he have gone nuts in volume 3 coming to the end of it, due to him gaining PTSD and a whole kingdom was under siege and losing?
The writers don't even know. Literally Miles explained it in one Q&A and then Eddie came out and said that Miles was wrong.
@@ThePontiffofPonWolf But many of the things he did post Volume 3 were still the right things to do. Giving Yang her arm, defending Weiss, not letting the other Kingdoms militarize dust. Those don't seem like the action of a man who's spiraling.
@@Obi-Wan_Kenobi AHH GENERAL KENOBI HELLO THERE I FOUND YOU AGAIN!! Bro I swear we have the exact same interests, and now you’re defending my favorite RWBY character (*cough* Ironwood)?? Heck yeah let’s GOOO!! 🤩