Regarding ch 4 of vol 7 of RWBY, I definitely have thoughts on the narrative but I want to talk about something else, NOT spoilery but I'll add the spoiler tag just in case.

What I want to talk about runtime and my thoughts on that for a bit.

#RWBY #RWBY7 #rwbyspoilers

This is the 4th episode in a row with a runtime of roughly 18 minutes. This is... unexpectedly consistent, a sentiment I imagine many other RWBY fans share. I also assume RWBY fans will conclude that longer episode runtime means better episodes.

That sentiment I don't share.

For me, what really matters is not the runtime in a given episode, but rather, the runtime in a given volume.

That's what Kerry & Miles tend to think about when outlining a volume and is why some ideas get shelved for until later: https://twitter.com/hypeathon1/status/1198014553742827521

Having recently re-watched vol 1-6 on blu-ray, any gripes I had with the story were almost never due to episode length. Rather, it was usually due to a scene missing something relevant for the story's structure or a scene needing to be rearranged to be more tonally appropriate.

And even those criticisms were not that frequent and varied from volume-to-volume.

Consistency on an episode-by-episode basis is nice to have, but I don't think that's necessary for RWBY. The show benefits by being online and doesn't have to worry about fixed TV runtimes.

Since RWBY is usually compared to anime in this regard, it's worth bearing in mind that despite most people watching them online, many TV anime still air on... well, TV.

Many titles are still bound to sharing time between commercial ads within a half-hour.

And believe it or not, that has lent itself to its own problems on occasion. While I don't ALWAYS agree with the consensus, a fixed episode length has proven to be a problem for a show like One Piece and its pacing.

But that's a whole other topic.

Anyway, for vol 7 of RWBY, I'm more focused on whether Miles & Kerry can get the points they want to nail down into the story's structure the way they intend to.

And while one may beg to differ, I do truly believe they've for the most part only gotten better at doing that.