Joseph Cirilo, Contributing Writer
In its 13th season, RVB has become rather lackluster and uninteresting. What’s more, it’s not even really the same show anymore. Not the least of its problems attributable to Miles Luna’s take over as showrunner.
My gripe with Luna is far from his ability to write. Anyone who’s seen RWBY (“Ruby”) knows he’s a writer with creative vision and compelling storytelling ability- just not for this show.
Red Vs. Blue took a major turn in its 10th season, when Burnie Burns churned out a script that was accompanied by Luna, co-creator Matt Hullum and Eddy Rivas.
Tt was still an incredible season, but mostly because Burns was still running the show at that point. When the torch was passed at it’s conclusion, Luna was left to pilot season 11 by himself both as its sole writer and director, a job that previously fell between Burns and Hullum.
Why It Matters:
After 12 years of this show, there’s a part of you as a fan that knows that change is inevitable and that you have to either roll with the punches or move on and find another franchise. Unfortunately, that’s the hold Rooster Teeth has on me; I’ll keep coming back no matter how much they disappoint me.
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Inevitably, they disappointed me again.
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Since Reconstruction, the plot has been continuously slowing down, incorporating more dramatic and complex plotlines and a heavier overall feeling, and while that’s great progression for any other arc, we’re talking about a show that made its bones in black comedy; dramatic and complex is not something we do in this genre, at least not without a decent punchline.
I’ll try to keep this review spoiler free, but suffice it to say, for a show that airs once a week for five minutes, and has its short and stocky season stretched (points for alliteration) by PSAs and other such videos breaking in between episodes, it’s already not going well.
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Seriously, Miles, you’re not actually planning to continue this broadcast, are you?
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Not that there isn’t redeemable qualities. Looking back, there’s been some memorable moments- comical ones included. There are plenty of interesting and charismatic elements that are being weaved into this plot, which hopefully this year will actually gain some momentum and go somewhere.
I’d still love to see whether Agent Maine is back (The Meta remains my favorite web series villain of all time), and of course the mercenary war has its points in being a really rich and interesting story, it’s just not RVB material- it’s…something else entirely.
RVB has gotten progressively more invested in utilizing this digital technology to better illustrate events with 3D manipulated models. We’re talking about a series who made the lowered weapons on the original Halo and bobbing heads famous. Burns and Hullum were able to tons more with very little; in Luna’s new digital landscape, the show seems somehow cheapened and soulless.
This show is Red Vs. Blue; Red Vs. Blue was always a black comedy derisively taking jabs at the boring life of common grunts in the military and making use of one of the most iconic areas of the Halo series: Blood Gulch. We’re so far out of the boxed canyon that it can hardly be called the same story on that note alone.
What we’ve been getting for a long time now is a show that has progressively delved into darker and duller territory in an effort to make it something it’s not. I almost feel comfortable likening it to RWBY, where visual 3D effects have always been in place, and asserting that Luna is slowly beginning to transform the charm and classic vibe of RVB to become more like RWBY, destroying its artistic impression in the process.
In truth, the last few seasons have been more of a spin-off than anything else, and that would be fine if the producers would call it that. The fact that we continue to see RVB’s core characters sprinkled into the plot haphazardly is embarrassing, and it only further frustrates me. If they weren’t in it at all, at least I wouldn’t have so much to complain about and could just enjoy this new story rather than have to think of it as an extension of the old one.
Although I’ll still probably stick around for whatever comes next, and halfheartedly smile at your attempts to mollify angry fans like myself with cheap jokes — whilst I reflect on how much funnier it was 10 years ago — it nags the back of the mind to consider why great stories seem almost afraid to be over.
The Daily Ramen 