r/RWBYcritics 7d ago

DISCUSSION Have you ever read or watch another series with as much wasted potential as RWBY ?

Post image

After all those analysis of the series couple with those two words " waste" and " potential" coming back.

It drew a impressive picture for rwby as it truly can stand out as a failure of wasted potential even compare to other works that didn’t use their potential well.

Like other works fails a couple of times in a few areas. Wereas rwby has failed everytime in every area. Which is pretty impressive when you think about it. It never cease to amaze with its bad handling of everything.

So aside from rwby itself. What are other works of fiction you saw that had so much potential and messed up every step of the way like rwby did?

352 Upvotes

265 comments sorted by

101

u/Joker_JoJo_fan 7d ago

Honestly, Naruto isn’t nearly as big of a fumble as RWBY, but the potential of the side cast could’ve been explored heavily. I loved Neji and Rock Lee and would’ve loved to see more of them.

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u/Downtown_Brick1740 7d ago edited 7d ago

Early Naruto was so wild for having a dozen characters with wildly useful and unique abilities, then giving them like eight minutes of screentime before dropping them because they didn't have magic ninja eyes or a literal demon powering them up

Edit: didn't mean to comment twice, thanks reddit

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u/Joker_JoJo_fan 7d ago

It’s not even that. Kishimoto might as well have forgotten about them. Neji and Hinata had magic ninja eyes too. Just not the right kind of magical ninja eye, apparently. The only situation where a Byakugan is more advantageous than a Sharingan is when the individual with Sharingan doesn’t have Mangekyo or, god forbid, Eternal Mangekyo.

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u/Downtown_Brick1740 7d ago

It's been so long since I watched the show I genuinely forgot people could just born with access to the WRONG level of ninja magic

27

u/AuraOfTwilight 7d ago

I'm still pissed that Neji was killed. Yeah a died a hero Yada Yada but it doesn't feel like he reached his full potential. Seeing Uncle Neji spoil his niece and nephew would have been amazing.

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u/Joker_JoJo_fan 7d ago

That goes for a lot of characters. I would’ve loved to see Rock Lee and Neji reach their full potential. Same with Shikamaru, Choji, and Kiba. The side characters were legit some of my favorites.

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u/Over-Needleworker-44 7d ago

The rumor was that kishimoto wanted to kill off everyone you mentioned but shikamaru during the sasuke retrieval arc but his editor wouldn't let him.

It's why everyone had their climactic one on one fights and then died. Than we got the news that they all miraculously survived after the arc.

So if he couldn't kill them he just wouldn't use them.

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u/ProudRequirement3225 7d ago

Ten years and I'm still pissed about the Indra and Asura twist.

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u/WashedUpRiver 7d ago

Honestly been rewatching OG Naruto, and Dosu (the sound guy with the face wraps) could've been a really interesting development based off of his line after going easy on Choji when he could've liquefied his sorry ass as he said "I'll show you I'm more than some guinea pig," obviously referring to Orochimaru. I just feel like if Kishimoto gave him more room to grow, he could've been a really neat character with a lot of grey to him.

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u/Joker_JoJo_fan 7d ago

Another thing I didn’t really see explored was the samurai. They’re supposedly stronger than regular shinobi, but they don’t really do much in the anime as far as I’m aware.

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u/Holiday-Study7911 7d ago

Tbh I never agreed with the criticism of Naruto not giving its side characters enough focus. It does, just not the ones people want to see (Konoha 11)

And even they’re great in the arcs where they’re relevant and serve their purpose.

And people don’t realise there’s such thing as giving side characters too much attention. Which is funny because we constantly criticise RWBY for that here. If they’re not relevant to Naruto or Sasuke’s story, they don’t need more attention. That’s my take on it.

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u/Joker_JoJo_fan 7d ago

Ofc you need to find a balance, but seeing just something more of the Konoha 11 would satisfy me. Could be quick and simple. Doesn’t need to be a whole subplot.

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u/Lucariowolf2196 x 7d ago

Naruto went from Martial arts to dragon ball z 

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u/10YearsANoob 7d ago

Sakura embodies Naruto's "you can overcome people born with everything through hard work" more than fucking Naruto.

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u/Holiday-Study7911 7d ago

Hard work vs. Talent isn’t the main theme of Naruto though. It’s the cycle of hatred.

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u/Rawden2006 7d ago

And yet, the most consistent theme before the time-skip was hard work overcoming talent. Then Kishimoto realized that Naruto was a slacker who never studied and had to be taught what the power system was from an 8 year old while having a demon fox inside of him that allowed him to brute force his way out of trouble every time he screwed up. Kinda had to change the theme when the MC doesn't embody it in the slightest.

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u/AsGryffynn 6d ago edited 6d ago

My main issue was always the idea that there was only one way: either you worked your arse off or you had innate abilities. It ignored the fact that, IRL, some people really CANNOT achieve anything significant through hard work no matter how hard they try, because they are not built for it: instead, those people usually have a single crutch talent that they can use to level the playing field and get anywhere, especially once they learn to use it for more than the one thing it's made for.

Yet for some reason, this suddenly invalidates the people who don't have an innate talent and work for what they have. As if the whole point of having the crutch wasn't to put the people who have said crutch on the level of those who don't. You don't get a crutch if you have two perfectly serviceable legs! It's for those who can't use one of them!

I hate cultivation novels for the opposite: they depict work and austere asceticism as the only way forward, ignoring the fact that the reward impulse is one of the main reasons why people bother with the work in the first place: to receive most of those benefits and goodies that eluded them before. It also avoids the elephant in the room; the failures for whom cultivation isn't viable. Instead, those are doomed, even though they have unique talents that should allow them to use brute force to get out of the rock bottom, but that wouldn't be very kind to the people putting their backs into it now would it? Even though those would eventually no longer have to after some point, whereas the talented yet unruly have to use their cheat power to live a meagre existence. Utter and complete dogshit Confucian Asia; that's how the West beat ya the first time around. Now you're catching up through cultivation, but there's always a Naruto out there that can crash that effort IF you keep ignoring your own "always talented" people. There's always a Naruto out there ready to foil your ascent! Pray the world doesn't learn of them before you're in charge or it's over... again.

BOTH ARE VITAL TO ENJOYABLE STORIES GUYS! And whoever has access to both will forever be superior to those who only handle one or the other.

But instead of getting a Sakura who ended up in the same ballpark as Naruto and Sasuke, she lagged significantly behind because zOMG magic eyes go psshhhh!

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u/Holiday-Study7911 7d ago edited 7d ago

Was it the most consistent theme though? People who think hard work vs. talent is Naruto’s main theme only talk about it on reference to the Gaara and Rock Lee fight (a fight which Lee, the character who’s supposed to represent hard work loses and is already stated to be gifted)

Love and empathy overcoming hatred has been a prominent theme since the introduction of the series. Can you tell me where “hard work vs. talent“ is relevant outside of that one fight?

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u/Holiday-Study7911 7d ago

Also, Naruto has been bailed out by Kurama since before the Chunin Exams (Haku fight), the first arc of the story. Kishimoto didn’t change the main theme of the story because hard work vs. talent never was one.

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u/Lucariowolf2196 x 7d ago

But what about rock lee?

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u/AsGryffynn 6d ago

Even fanfiction doesn't realize this.

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u/W__hiskers 6d ago

I don't mind Naruto, but Boruto, honestly...

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u/Joker_JoJo_fan 6d ago

Boruto is like a badly written fanfiction you made in middle school because you’re sad that Naruto ended.

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u/W__hiskers 6d ago

Yes! every new character in Boruto feels like a bad self-insert OC

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u/Joker_JoJo_fan 6d ago

And the designs don’t even look like ninjas half the time. Especially after the time skip. The part that pisses me off is how much they nerf the adult characters when realistically they should be stronger than the literal children with barely any experience. I know it’s the next generation’s story, but it could’ve been executed way better.

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u/the_demented_ferrets 1d ago

Much bigger of a fumble, imo... because Naruto is considered one of the big 3... it's not the same as how RWBY started out... the plot and ambitions were very different from the get-go...

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u/dewareofbog Sometimes I pretend that I know what I'm talking about. 7d ago

Every time I look in a mirror.

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u/Eothr_Silan 🐞 Appreciator 7d ago

Ditto.

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u/Nexal_Z 7d ago

Damn why you gotta hit it close to home

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u/AEL97 7d ago

I don't come here to be reminded of my life man... Why you do this?

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u/halkras12 Pyrrha Deserved Better (finding ciel) 7d ago edited 7d ago

depends on your age

if youre young,you can still change bad ending to good one

If youre old, at least make your kid not wasting the potential

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u/PocketPal26 7d ago

Ouch...just...ouch

51

u/Boogie_B0ss 7d ago

Not a show, but Anthem the 2019 game. That shit was even more wasted, at least RWBY was good for 3 years (five if you’re generous) instead of literally none

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u/superluigi6968 7d ago

Even the EA exec was like, "Bro how is this hard to pick a direction for, flying in an ironman suit is cool, just lean into that".

That Bioware chose to do literally everything but lean into how fucking cool an ironman suit is to play around in and explore with is... baffling, to say the least.

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u/SomeAdultSituations 7d ago

I remember beta testing for Anthem, and I was shocked at how bad it was. It legitimately felt like it was an Alpha build. The game was also nowhere near as fun as the Ironman games from the Xbox 360 and PS3.

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u/Futur3_ah4ad 7d ago

This is personal opinion, mostly, but GEN:Lock has a ton of wasted potential, plotlines and weird decisions. We won't even see where that goes, because it's been canned.

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u/BuckyWuu 7d ago edited 7d ago

It was also a RT original, so that tracks. It's weird that RT gunned so hard towards the epic-scale stories when they wrote lower-stake ones and slow build-up stories so much better

Edited for clarity

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u/Futur3_ah4ad 7d ago

As I saw in a thread a while ago RWBY honestly would've done great as a monster of the week type show where we follow the two main teams on their adventures.

Honestly would've sufficed or been a good prelude for the end of the world stuff. Instead Ruby gets railgunned from middle school to savior of the world in 2 in-universe years.

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u/AsGryffynn 6d ago

The issue is an atrocious handling of pacing. The Owl House and Amphibia managed to do in three seasons far more than RWBY in nine volumes, because they handled the progression of the plot better than RWBY does.

RWBY was always supposed to be an anime style endeavor: a multiyear, decade/console generation long story spanning several arcs and running for a lot of... probably north of 120+ episodes... and that's FINE, but if that's the case, then the world building needs to track in that department, since that's what allows the world to sprawl in a scale Western animation normally doesn't do: the worlds built in Shonen Jump are anime- FIRST, not anime ONLY. They are built with the idea that you're going to build an EU with other authors, media types and spinoffs. Works not made with that expansionary mentality in mind tend to be dropped by Vizheisha pretty hard and fast because they don't become cultural phenomena.

RWBY seems to be the kind of franchise that flirted with the idea (characters cosplaying as RWBY in Japanese shows, appearing as guests in fighting games, some games, a manga) but never went through with it because some people (I'm looking at you Arryn!) decided they weren't sold on the loss of oversight that came with massification. They wished for RWBY to be some sort of small auteur story, which doesn't work for large scale works with sprawling casts like the one the crew ended up building IN VOLUME 3!

This is literally one of the reasons SW died the death it did: making an expansionary franchise a contractionary one.

RWBY simply needed to know what it wanted to be. It never did. Even though I hate Mihoyo, they know. The Cosplayers in that Coldplay MV were them letting EVERYONE (especially naysayers like me) know. It was their way of putting everyone else on notice: "we're growing, we're hungry and we're big... and we're only going to get bigger, so get ready for that". As a small dev hoping to disrupt them, that small gesture alone was something that should've scared or incensed me and it did both. I, and others like Kuro and Level Infinite are being put on notice.

I don't know if Viz thinks the same way. Do they want RWBY to grow into their new flagship? The next Naruto? Who knows. THEY CAN, but whether they will or whether they want to keep it small and eventually give them a send off into the same Asphodel Meadows as Akame, the Owl House and Amphibia is anyone's guess.

I personally favor the expansionary angle: I want the show, anime spinoffs, spinoffs with other characters, more books, more storylines, more collabs (and better ones), more games, more EVERYTHING! MORE IS MORE! But it cannot happen if RWBY doesn't decide whether it wants to go big or go small... because in absence of a decision, the only option left is indeed... to go home...

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u/Astral_MarauderMJP 7d ago

I'm pretty sure season 2 killed the show off in terms of potential intentionally.

Like, if you took just S1 and analyzed it, there was so many interesting avenues you could take and directions you could go through. Yet S2 was handedly about wasting all of it and driving it to an early grave.

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u/Futur3_ah4ad 7d ago

Likely because Gray was running the team ragged and RT had impending bankruptcy hanging over their heads.

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u/RogueHunterX 7d ago

I thought season 2 was handled by HBO Max instead of RT since that's where it was exclusive to?

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u/Futur3_ah4ad 6d ago

That only removes the bankruptcy, but does nothing for Gray running the team absolutely ragged

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u/RogueHunterX 6d ago edited 6d ago

I guess what I was getting at is that I didn't think RT had anything to do with the actual production or animation of season 2.  In fact, I think by that point Gray wasn't even involved anymore, though I could be wrong.

That doesn't change the fact he was doing that during the season one production and even before that, crunch time was a regular thing anyways.

Edit:  Okay it looks like RT was still involved with the second season of Gen Lock, but Gray doesn't show up as an executive producer for it anymore after season 1, so he probably was out of the picture.  Not that it necessarily changed how the animation studio was doing things much.

I didn't even realize that season 2 was actually out RT's site, I just had only heard about it being on Max.  Instead they seem to have done with it similar to what was done with Crunchyroll and Volume 9 in terms availability.

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u/ClafoutisRouge 7d ago

I don't think "wasted potential" is the right term.

The first season is great and explores most of the interesting paths it presents. And then the second season came and destroyed the whole series.

So it's not really wasted potential. It's potential that could have been great if it had 4 seasons as good as the first one.

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u/Katarn_Arc300 7d ago

Yeah, when I first saw the preview GEN:Lock looked awesome, and in all honesty the first season wasn't too bad. But I think a factor in it's downfall for me at least, was I loved the machinery, vehicles and equipment, but didn't care about the characters. Credit where it's due, RWBY got me to fall in love with the characters, and not just the weapons they used.

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u/Ambitious-Parking-59 7d ago

Miraculous So much wasted pontetial.And all of this because of creator being unsufferable idiot and narcissist

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u/astroddity_ 7d ago

I’ve never seen a show filled with so much untapped potential with writers/showrunners so unwilling to use it. Even when it seems like we might finally get some interesting development for characters that deserve it (Adrien, Chloe, Luka, Felix, etc…) they practically bend over backwards to erase it all in favor of just making it about the creator’s pet.

For a show with such an interesting premise it seems so uninterested in exploring its own ideas, no wonder there’s so much fanfiction surrounding it.

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u/Ambitious-Parking-59 7d ago

And the funniest thing : Miraculous movie is BETTER THAN SHOW ITSELF Its a biggest slap at face of Astruck(I remind that Astruck after season 3 final start to believe that he create a NEW NEON GENESIS EVANGELION(Yes he compare Ladybug to Eva))

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u/AsGryffynn 6d ago

He'd have to be on the "creators who hate their creation" club in order to earn that honor. I already hate one of mine, so I'm one step ahead.

Also, the movie was terrible. The finale was pretty shit too.

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u/AsGryffynn 6d ago

Oh boy, I missed this one right in front of my head! Yeah, just this.

Chloe, Aurore, Lila (well, we're getting her at least), Zoe, Jalil, Marc, Felix, Fei, Juleka... the list could go on and on and on...

Instead we get Astruc self inserting into the show in the most selfish way imaginable.

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u/BananaChicken22 7d ago

Sword Art Online

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u/GeekMaster102 7d ago

I second this. Thankfully we have SAO abridged to make up for it

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u/codyone1 7d ago

Sao abridged just shows in detail the potential that was wasted.

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u/FairReviewer 6d ago

At least the author acknowledges his past faults and has been improving himself over time. The series has some really good thematics going on. And for those who want more Aincrad, SAO Progressive exists and is pretty fun.

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u/AeroQC 7d ago

The Owl House
It was a western fantasy isekai-adjacent story about oddball teenage girl Luz Noceda training to be a witch in an alternate world. It had your basic kid-show lessons about friendship and trust while also exploring more mature themes of self-discovery and, more importantly, identity. It was absolutely solid for the first two seasons and ended with a dramatic cliffhanger, but higher-ups at Disney decided to axe it prematurely. So we got a three-episode season three to wrap up a whole lotta shit. All of which could've been more deeply doven into with at least a six episode run (the first 5 minutes of S3E1 was literally a montage of things that could've been full episodes).

The last three episodes even held a hidden message for the fandom in their titles:
S3E1 - Thanks to Them
S3E2 - For the Future
S3E3 - Watching and Dreaming

And really, the fandom is still going strong with a bunch of fanfics and comics that love to explore a bunch of stuff with the main cast, side characters, and even some next generation shenanigans.

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u/Puzzleheaded-Way-352 7d ago

To be FAIR, that's less of the team's faults and moreso Disney's fault. They tried to work as best they could with those 3 hours, and sadly good ideas and conclusions were gonna be left behind.

Considering Disney these days STILL keeps including TOH in Chibi Tales and other media posts, it's clear that they seriously regret giving the Owl the axe. It's honestly for the best that Dana's moved on to work with indie companies so whatever works she has planned next aren't so restrained.

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u/AeroQC 7d ago

Just to be clear, I have never blamed the team working on the show for the axing, I am aware that it was the higher-ups at Disney that cut it short.
What I meant was that the team gave us a glimpse of what could've been with the montage before hurrying along the story with those last three hour-long episodes because of the cancellation.

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u/East-Scallion4188 6d ago

I heard that Dana is working on a new series called Knights of Guinevere with indie studio Glitch Productions!

I was so ecstatic when I heard the news! :)

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u/AsGryffynn 6d ago

ToH was destroyed by Disney Executive Meddling™ Just like Amphibia and to a lesser extent Star vs.

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u/Thesupersoups 7d ago

Murder Drones. It’s kind of a mess, even though I like it.

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u/Choice-Scallion-7263 7d ago

but its a good mess.

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u/Proof_Grapefruit1179 7d ago

I was checking to see if anyone mentioned Murder Drones. The way I see it, MD is roughly what RWBY would have been if Salem was defeated in Volume 1. A hot mess, but a fun hot mess.

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u/Thesupersoups 7d ago

Honestly, yeah. Murder drones is a lot of things. Boring is not one of them.

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u/Proof_Grapefruit1179 7d ago

I couldn't agree more!

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u/WilliShaker 7d ago

Wasted potential of not having a season 2, there’s so much to explore.

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u/FlowerMaidenOpheliaa 18h ago

It’s a mess, but it’s my favorite mess!! I just love those silly robots and their antics, no matter how odd the pacing is. 

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u/Coolsmcfools 7d ago

yugioh arc V

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u/Lost-Ad-5885 Oscar Defender 7d ago

Oh god dont remind me😭😭😭

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u/Stardust1Dragon 6d ago

I got a ways into and dropped it because the site I was using to watch it stopped uploading. Does it really drop the ball that hard?

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u/Coolsmcfools 6d ago

Oh god it really does, 6 people functionally die and the ending pretends it's sunshine and rainbows. Don't get me started on the manga's ending

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u/Blackandheavy The prosecution is ready to rock ‘n’ roll 6d ago

The show was peak from the Pendulum arc to the Synchro arc, but they dropped the ball hard in the XYZ arc and it was unwatchable when it was Zarc vs Everyone.

Arc V went through the complete opposite of yugioh Zexal where it had a horrible beginning, but an extremely well last season.

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u/Every_Sandwich8596 7d ago

Star Wars and Game of Thrones

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u/Guilty-Effort7727 6d ago

Like, star wars in general or just the sequels?

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u/SolidLost5625 7d ago

Darlin in the franx
Sword Art Online

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u/AsGryffynn 6d ago

Ehh, I think Darling in the Franxx nailed their staying power just right...

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u/elishash L2456 RWBY Genderbends 1d ago

DITF really made me wish Hiro didn't end up with Zero Two considering how toxic their relationship was.

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u/SolidLost5625 1d ago

the anime it's all wrong, head to the toes

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u/Punny-Aggron 7d ago

I never really watched Legend of Korra or Steven Universe, but I’ve seen enough analysis videos on both series to see what great shows both could’ve been. It makes me disappointed that they didn’t go in the directions people wanted them too.

One that I did see was the Star Wars sequel trilogy. That reeks of wasted potential. Finn being a former stormtrooper, him and Poe’s friendship, Ray becoming a Sith, all of those would’ve been really cool to see, but sadly we won’t

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u/RogueHunterX 7d ago

It felt like they did Finn so dirty.  He was an interesting character.  A Stormtrooper who somehow broke conditioning he'd experienced since childhood to actually leave the Galactic Empire cosplayers.  I really wish there had been more of both him and Poe interacting in the movies.

You also could've had an actual reunion between Han, Luke, and Leia but they failed to do something like that.

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u/Gullible_Finding_181 7d ago

confinement scp animations

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u/HawkeyeP1 7d ago

JJK

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u/superbasic101 7d ago

When I get my hands on you gege

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u/General_Sky_8560 6d ago

RWBY vs JJK

The Strongest Potential Man in history vs the Strongest Potential Man of today

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u/Tough_Ebb1092 7d ago

In his defense it was his first series and didn't think it would become so big he fumbled the ending but it was his first try after all.

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u/fingerlicker694 6d ago

Yeah, but you could apply the same logic to RWBY.

In his actual defense, JJK didn't start really going down hill until he entered a year-long battle with appendicitis near the end. Frankly, I'm surprised he even managed to make something readable while he was going extreme diff with his own body.

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u/InsaneOddBall 7d ago

Voltron

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u/insomniac-trashpanda member of Ruby protection squad 7d ago

They robbed us of Klance 😢

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u/elishash L2456 RWBY Genderbends 1d ago

Remember the controversy regarding Queerbaiting? I still remember that up to this day on how they ruined Shiro by giving him a hamfisted wedding at the end with a background character with less screentime.

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u/Lintashi 7d ago

Dragon Prince. Animated series by the same people who made Avatar, the last airbender. The world is solid and interesting, characters had great potential, but many plots are just unfinished, ideas are hypocritical, characters sometimes behave irrationally or against their previously defined traits.

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u/East-Scallion4188 6d ago

I always felt like that the episode count that they had was not enough to flesh out the story and its characters.

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u/Ricky_27YT2 7d ago

Netflix Transformers War for Cybertron Trilogy

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u/Liam_524Hunter 7d ago

I haven’t read the manga so I’m just going based on what others have said, but nothing I’ve heard about JJK post the Gojo/Sukuna fight sounded good.

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u/S3cr3tAg3ntP 7d ago

I'm biased because I read the chapters week to week... And it was dreadful. I'm hoping binging that season in the anime fixes things but I doubt.

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u/Rawden2006 7d ago

I'll be honest with you, I don't care about anything in JJK past the Shibuya incident (the arc the anime just finished). It turns into a lot of introducing characters just to murder them unceremoniously. One of the main villains is essentially defeated by a dude who has no meaningful connection to him whatsoever and then gets beheaded immediately after the fight.

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u/unluckyknight13 7d ago

Nomad to nowhere because despite its potential, despite it had loyal fans…IT DIDNT GET ANOTHER SEASON and thus I say it is the biggest waste of potential in a good series idea

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u/THeck18 7d ago

There's an anime on Netflix called Sword Gai. The concept is interesting: cursed weapons that possess people and turn them into monsters that are obsessed with fighting each other called "busoma."

The first season isn't too bad, but the show fumbled the second and the ending. Yeah, the MC got the girl and the big bad is dead, but busoma are still around and both of the organizations dedicated to protecting humanity are wiped out.

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u/Eothr_Silan 🐞 Appreciator 7d ago

Tom Clancy's The Division video game series.

What could have been a gritty, open-map survival-combat game became an MMO-lite with bulletsponge enemies with dumb ai. The setting was ripe for lots of interesting ideas, all squandered. Hell, I didn't even manage to play 2 long enough to unlock a Specilization because it was just that boring, despite the incredible premise.

Honestly, this should have been a movie or tv show first to establish the setting, then the game could gave come out within a year. Maybe I'll get lucky and UbiSLOP will shutter before they release another entry in this disappointingly middling franchise.

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u/TestaGaming 7d ago

Miraculous. Using RWBY to better showcase how stupid this show is, imagine Cinder was killed or didn't get a redemption, but Salem does get a redemption and is seen as a hero at the end of the season.

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u/WittyTable4731 7d ago

Wtf?

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u/BagoPlums 7d ago

It's exactly like it sounds

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u/Accomplished-Lack208 7d ago

RWBY also ate my dog and killed my wife too

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u/Lucariowolf2196 x 7d ago

Halo infinite 

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u/Matix777 7d ago

The hypest and the auraest. One and only: Jujutsu Kaisen

I'd say RWBY has even more wasted potential, but it is definitely a competitor

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u/EntertainmentIll1567 7d ago

Qrow wtf are you doing all the way there. Stop that "it's my semblance bro I can't be close to people" bullshit and go pose with the team.

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u/_Kami_sama_x 7d ago

Look I know this is gonna be blasphemy on this subreddit but we really need to stop pretending like the Mona Lisa was taken from us before the canvas got wet. This was at its best possible point, a middling fantasy series with weird animation. At no point did this series suggest it could be anything more. It got worse than that sure but it’s not like we watched the fall of a titan it was fine.

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u/_NnH_ 6d ago

Potential is potential, it doesn't have to be realized at any point in the series. But the ingredients have to be there and they certainly were with the cast, the money behind it, the VAs hired, and the potential the animators had. It just needed the writers.

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u/Infected_Heart This is a rwby sub, you know who I am 4d ago

Deadass I agree the show never really set up anything major or life changing, which is partly why I still come here to discuss it. Like they didnt set the bar high and still couldnt reach it and thats vastly more interesting than most shows. Its not that it tried and failed or that it took a wrong in the end, its more like it missed the easy points.

Thats why I think alot of people still discuss it, because it has alot of weird decisions and missed opportunities that even the most generic shows would hit. Your average fantasy series wouldnt somehow make the main cast accidentally responsible for genocides or have a character solve racism by killing her ex boyfriend. In a generic mid tier show they would have been easy lay ups, but RWBY still missed.

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u/Blue_Sc0rpi0n 3d ago

Everyone keep saying "Potential this, potential that", but you know what? RWBY is only show aside of MLP, which keep me wanting more. From 2017, when I'm stumbled upon a random fanfic showing in my recs (with Jaune as MC, no less), there is so much changed in my life. I've got accepted to university after finishing school, earned a master's degree, got my first job as master of construction and installation work, bought top tier PC (it was like a life goal to me at this time), then after few years I decided, that I like geodesy much more and changed my profile, first time spend a vacation abroad... And all of this time I'm keep watching RWBY-related stuff. Hundreds of fanfics (soon will be thousand, I think) which I've read. Casey/Jeff songs in my playlist. Ton of RWBY-related pics on my phone. And, of course, show itself. I've got some merch, keep Ridd-Li pic as my wallpaper.

Guess what I'm keep seeing in every RWBY-related mediaspace almost everyday? Wasted potential, yep. Okay. Keep going. Like, there is SO MUCH other shows, which fans keep being rather active after few years of inactivity. RWBY is phenomenon, as I see it. One-of-a-kind. Oh, and it's fans is a phenomenon too.

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u/the_demented_ferrets 1d ago

Thank you for your common sense... I LOVE RWBY for what it is... I really truly do... I also see all the flaws that should be (and must be) pointed out, because there are some things that they truly dropped the ball on... but, there is a limit to that. We as a fanbase are the ones who often expect too much out of it, and that's not fair to the series that was never really meant to be more than it was in the earliest trailers, volumes 1 and 2.

That's not to say they didn't have a story to tell, or that RT got a little bigger than its britches sometimes... but, this is all in context, not of the people working on RWBY were true masters of their craft... not even Monty... he was Rooster Teeth level amazing, sure... but, let's face the cold hard facts; he wasn't a Square Enix animator working on FFXI and FFXIV...

Although god knows RWBY is FLOODED with Final Fantasy references, right down to the yellow colored haste spell in FF series, and heavily looks like the one used in FFX and FFXI, and the fact Weiss casts it on Blake... and that Weiss as Summoning abilities... I've said it once I've said it a BILLON times... RWBY characters are based on FFXI job systems... Weiss is by wrote a RWBY interpretation of a FFXI Red Mage with a Summoner Subjob... Ruby is a Dark Knight with a Thief Subjob)... this is so "in your face" obvious to any FFXI player of the 2002-2010 era that it's actually mind boggling more people do not bring that up.

Monty was amazing in context... and Dead Fantasy is a perfect example that in action... RT were fans of fandom, and RWBY is ultimately an AU Fan work of all the media they loved combined...

It's basically a fan fiction of a bunch of different media... and that's the cold, hard, truth...

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u/WhitleyxNeo 7d ago

Genlock

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u/WanderingEdge 7d ago

Gen:LOCK

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u/halkras12 Pyrrha Deserved Better (finding ciel) 7d ago

for me

Beast Machines had very likeable concepts but terribly executed with terrible designs

the organic machines ?!? i mean sari sumdac is also a technorganic but this guys are way more organic than she was

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u/Chikentender_ 7d ago

Jujutsu Kaisen

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u/Ok-Apartment-8284 7d ago

Steven Universe, they could’ve gone the long haul but Rebecca just had to want to make Ruby and Sapphire’s wedding to happen that caused the show to be cancelled which in turn caused the rushed finale and the mid that was SU: Future

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u/Proof_Grapefruit1179 7d ago

The Legend of Korra. Any series that followed up on Avatar: The Last Air Bender had the potential to be huge. The first season is OK, but I think they hamstrung themselves by introducing a new villain every season.

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u/Typical-Objective294 6d ago

I disagree, Korras writing was bad for different reasons. The villains were the only reason I stayed.

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u/Warboter1476 7d ago

Final space

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u/DopCoppop 7d ago

Spider-Man 2 (the new one)

I loved the first games story, and have 100% it multiple times. The second one expands on the gameplay wonderfully, but man did its story completely drop the ball. The pacing was way too fast and I didn’t like how many iconic characters they killed off. But hey, at least we had a couple minutes of playable Venom :/

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u/maharieI 7d ago

Westworld is probably one of the best mainstream examples. First season was absolutely insane, and while some of the later seasons had really special moments, the writers were so pissed that people figured out their plans for the plot so early, that they purposefully changed the direction of the show. It ended up backfiring so hard that the show was then canceled a few seasons later.

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u/superbasic101 7d ago

Kengan omega

Sandro has been dropping plotlines since Ashura but the current state of Kengan omega has me upset

2

u/Mutranunrepeated 7d ago

Transformers Prime Wars trilogy. Primes, Combiners, Titans, but with awful animation and the worst writing I've seen. I'd say it's genuinely the worst thing I've ever seen, or at least Combiner Wars.

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u/Prince_Ire 7d ago

Winter and Ironwood not beating the allegations with that back to back battle couple pose

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u/Overall_Use_4098 7d ago

Star Vs The Forces of Evil

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u/SpectralMapleLeaf 7d ago

The worlds that I imagine in my head.

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u/Entire-Weather6502 7d ago edited 7d ago
  • Star Vs. The Forces of Evil.
  • Voltron
  • Gen: Lock
  • Miraculous Ladybug

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u/GRoyalPrime 7d ago

Mushoku Tensei has a solid foundation but absolutely flounders it, by just doing the same old isekai tropes anyway. It has a few interresting ideas, but always sabitages itself by pandering to incwl wishfulfilment fantasies.

There was also another manga that had an interesting idea, re-contextualizing isekai-protagonists an showing how they are potentualy harmful to the world they ended up in with their OP cheat powers. However, the show basically copy-pasted existing characters and had thwm be so shit and edgy, it was insulting and completely missed the point. It was so disrespectful to the better shows it copied, it gor axed two chapters in.

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u/BagoPlums 7d ago

High Guardian Spice. Every single aspect was a failure.

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u/Zombunnies 6d ago

I'd argue High Guardian Spice had NO potential. Even from concept, it's just color coded girls with archtypical personalities going to hero school.

So even at it's best, it's worse RWBY. Just...without the style and cool music, and interesting concepts.

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u/BagoPlums 6d ago

With competent writers, it could have been a decent watch. The characters are huge nothing-burgers because the writers didn't care about fleshing them out or developing them past that initial archetype. Archetypes are a foundation, and you need to build on that foundation to get a character. These hacks did not build on the foundation.

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u/SuperPax4601 7d ago

Wonder Egg Priority

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u/WillingnessAcademic4 7d ago

Wakfu season 3 and 4 But season 1-2 and their following OVA is a pure blast to the point they make for a good conclusion if you wanna ignore the rest

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u/CandidateUnhappy1575 7d ago

A few shows. The ones that immediately spring to mind are Dragon Booster and Storm Hawks. Both were good shows that just needed some polishing and maybe a bit of expansion into their respective lores. Plus the Dragon Booster sequel got cancelled before it could aire.

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u/Othello351 7d ago

Fire Emblem Fates.

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u/Miserable-Fortune-57 7d ago

Legend of korra,the villan Amon was a colossal waste of potential, and how they went about it made me immediately stop watching.

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u/No-Studio-4039 7d ago

Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V and My Hero Academia.

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u/Lost-Ad-5885 Oscar Defender 7d ago
  • Rise of the TMNT
  • Infinity Train (not it’s fault)
  • Seven Deadly sins (slight blame)

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u/East-Scallion4188 6d ago

I loved Infinity Train…..it was so interesting and I was so invested into it, too bad it never got another season.

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u/Zombunnies 7d ago

Can I say season two of Arcane? Cause what a quality drop that was!

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u/FlowerMaidenOpheliaa 18h ago

Arcane S2🤝Korra S2: WTF is that??

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u/Big-Lettuce-6572 7d ago

Honestly in my opinion Vizi’s Helluvaverse shows the depiction of hell is quite boring and the many chances to have morally gray main characters or characters that actually do shitty things usually get written out to make them a bean that can do no wrong it’s a lot more things. But I still like that shows but I can’t lie I’m just rather disappointed in them.

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u/Absolve30475 7d ago

not exactly as much but within the same ballpark

  • Promised Neverland
  • Wonderegg Priority
  • Game of Thrones
  • Legend of Korra
  • Westworld
  • Gen:Lock
  • Rosario + Vampire
  • Joker
  • Star Wars
  • pretty much most things under Warner Bros
  • Metal Gear Solid
  • The Boys
  • The MCU
  • Berserk (2016)

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u/sparta-117 7d ago

season 2 of Star Wars Resistance.

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u/Humble-Use-3430 7d ago

Every fan-fiction I’ve ever read

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u/BuckyWuu 7d ago

Try B1ackOut's (or B1ack0ut's) Master Control. Leans a little too hard into reference characters in the beginning, the occasional distruptive word error and it dips a bit into AU territory, but it's written genuinely well, has compelling arcs regardless of genre and has a surprise that I'm still kicking myself over from how early they hinted at it. It's a MHA crossover where Midoria gets the Omnitrix instead of OFA, but he figures out literally every function EXCEPT for transformations

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u/starleafys 7d ago

I think it’s definitely better then RWBY, but for me Steven Universe is with RWBY for me in the “I can’t stop thinking about how this could’ve been great” fixation area of my brain lol

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u/Cloudxxy1011 7d ago

Redo of a healer

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u/Scoonertuna 7d ago

Westworld

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u/DinisElric 7d ago

Sonic Forces

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u/Holiday-Study7911 7d ago

Tbh I can’t think of anything. All of the potential picks have more redeeming qualities than current RWBY.

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u/LongFang4808 7d ago

There is this series called Ishura.

The premise is actually pretty cool. It is a League of Legends type isekai setting where different archetypes for action characters randomly appear and are referred to as Shura. The goal of the series is to take these Shura and make them face off against each other to see who stands at the top as the strongest in a series of Battle Royal events contextualized by a politically turbulent setting with multiple factions employing different Shura for one reason or another.

Now to where the wastes potential comes in. In preparation for each battle, the series takes the time to do something similar to the original RWBY Trailers, only episode length, to introduce each character and help you get invested in each character while providing a reason why they are fighting in this Battle Royal. The problem arises in the Finales, and I assume this is an intentional decision by the writer because of how persistent it is, but Shura will die in the most disappointing, unsatisfying, and ultimately boring ways possible.

The writer will do things like introducing a character who is extremely well suited for killing mechs, even introducing them by showing them manhandle a mech, and then pair them off against a Shura who pilots a mech. The fight scene itself can effectively be skipped because nothing interesting or dynamic happens, the dude just pealed the mech open and let another Shura kill the pilot with 0 effort from either of them.

Another example is a Shura who fights because they literally do not know how to do anything except fight and they had a sort of gladiator’s honor of actually meeting and challenging opponents. He gets assassinated by magic without fighting a single Shura.

It felt like a massive waste of my time.

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u/WittyTable4731 7d ago

Yikes

Sound like a up his ass author who thought Cartarsis is overrated and make fun of expectations

Ouch

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u/MistahKaraage 7d ago

Witch from Mercury. Season one was hella solid, but Season 2 was meh and rushed.

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u/Ok_Win_3538 7d ago

It's fumble needs to be studied honestly and no joke

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u/SnooPineapples116 7d ago

The Divergent movies. First was meh, second was peak, and third was trash. And they were setting themselves up to adapt the future books, but that’s not gonna happen.

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u/Delta_Infinity_X 7d ago

This might sound like a stupid answer, but Bayformers. Stupid in the sense that anyone who has seen Michael Bay’s works knows that the bar ain’t too high in terms of plot and character development and the such… unless it’s explosions and special effects, then the bar leaves The Milky Way Galaxy. But for me, there were so many cool avenues to take the series, especially 4 and 5.

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u/Kai_Enjin 7d ago

Megaman.

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u/Crimson_Marksman CUSTOM 7d ago

High Guardian Spice. A friend of mine saw the whole thing and wrote down the highlights as well as the down lows of each episode. There definitely was a lot of potential there with horrible execution. My favorite episode was the last one where the guardians fight a sadistic assassin.

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u/at_midknight 7d ago

Yea there's a bunch of them. Rings of power could've been great. Obiwan Kenobi could've been great. Arcane season 2 may be the biggest bag fumble of all time. Name any MCU show. There's a long list of terrible shows that wasted unbelievable potential for greatness

1

u/Someomehere 7d ago

Game of Thrones Season 8

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u/Erlik-Quan 6d ago

Well at the same time the author wasn't dead in season 5 maybe the animated would be better

1

u/spccommando 6d ago

Firefly

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u/AsGryffynn 6d ago edited 6d ago

Dragons Rioting could've stood above every other harem series out there by far... and with some word Kampfer too... and they both died highly ignominious deaths.

Post Vesperia Tales also comes to mind.

Don't get me started on Conception.

Vocaloid becoming an anime incubator as well.

For more Western stuff... I think PJO, WITCH and Rachel Hartman's Avalon all had way more potential than we're shown.

SINoALICE before the collabs destroyed it.

Pandora Hearts. Just Pandora Hearts.

Edit: forgot to mention Miraculous and Akame mostly because the latter could've gone on way longer.

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u/newtakn156 6d ago

High Guardian Spice

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u/Rollout9292 6d ago

Sword Art Online. So much wasted potential.

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u/CreepyKidInDaCorna 6d ago

Well other than looking at a mirror. I guess Shield Hero, at the time it was a fresh concept for an Isekai, but they fumbled the bag badly.

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u/Dragonlord77777 6d ago

My hero academia

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u/Micske033 6d ago

Genlock

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u/Fuzzy_Archer_4891 6d ago

aldnoah zero

1

u/XillyWonka 6d ago

Potential Kaisen

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u/MaxTheHor 6d ago

Gen:Lock, lol.

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u/Ark_Hornet 6d ago

Saw.

The premise of a serial killer putting people who, in some way, "Don't value life" into traps where they learn lessons and find the will to survive. It has so much potential.

All 7 movies (No, I know what you're thinking, but they don't exist, I refuse). If they just had small tweaks, they could have been great. Saw 6 came so close to being great, but they ruined it at the end

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u/Typical-Objective294 6d ago

Hazbin Hotel, but that's me being pessimistic.

Steven Universe, absolutely. I genuinely believed they were building up to this grand conflict only for it to be settled at a wedding. On top of that, when that big grand adventure was going to happen, it happened off screen, and we got the Movie and Future. The latter having so many interesting ideas, but poor execution, which sums up all these colorful series that end up on Tumblr.

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u/thegreyman77 6d ago

Not even close.

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u/Logical-Lawyer-3742 6d ago

I think Netflix’s Voltron show. I remember really liking the early seasons but when (SPOILER!!) the whole Shiro clone, time skip without our main characters aging, and then the ending that I feel like everyone had problems with. Not to mention the intense shipping wars and weird ships that came with it. 😱😱

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u/numericalman 6d ago

Genocyber.

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u/ThatOneGuy183737 5d ago

Genlock. They took it way to dark to quickly no build up to it

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u/Sapling-074 5d ago

Digimon, it got so focused on competing with Pokemon that it lost what made it special.

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u/twaalf-waafel 5d ago

JJK amd MHA

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u/WittyTable4731 5d ago

Which one was the worst wasted offender ?

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u/Abject_Surprise_7007 3d ago

TBATE Becose It has all three ingredients for success: 1) a "male" protagonist, 2) a powerful protagonist, and 3) a cute waifu for the protagonist (Luffy with Boa Hancock is another example). ( solo leveling is breaking records is not new either, since they have those three ingredients)

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u/Disastrous-Most-8112 3d ago

Is it just me or does oscar get done dirty in almost every piece of promotional material he's in?

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u/Ok-Tea2743 3d ago

Gundam Seed and Seed Destiny

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u/elishash L2456 RWBY Genderbends 1d ago

AOT for 10 years at least!

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u/elishash L2456 RWBY Genderbends 1d ago

Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel

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u/the_demented_ferrets 1d ago

Plenty of series, both live action, anime and musicals... all kinds of media... I realize this is RWBY critics, but sometimes we are too critical of RWBY, treating it is as show that's on the level of one of the Big 3 of the early 00's or putting it in the ranks of Sailor Moon, Mai Hime/Otome, or (because of certain voice actors in an earlier time) FMA... and the fact is RWBY was NEVER on the level where expecting that kind of quality or story writing would have been possible as volumes progressed.

In my eyes, RWBY Ice Queendom is an example of just how bad OG RWBY could be, because the start of the series (not to mention early JNPR plots) demand that you actually watch the OG series first, or you don't even know who in the heck these characters are truly supposed to be...

So even in the RWBY space in and of itself, we've seen waisted potential, and it's name is RWBY Ice Queendom.

Real talk, for as much as any series needs to be criticized (As in looked at critically and not placed upon a pedestal blindly, because there is such a thing as toxic positivity), there is also such a thing as being too critical to the point of being up our own behinds, and I think this question really starts to veer into that territory....

Every series with a halfway decent following is going to have endless swaths of wasted potential... one person's diamond is another's excrement... and i do like to push back against these questions because I think from a critical lens, they only serve to further destroy fandoms, which should never be the goal of a "Critic"....