The first three seasons are somewhat entertaining. RWBY was fun when it was just a bunch of kids messing around at school. After S3, the show could never live up to the expectations it had set for itself, transitioning into another typical
epic road trip adventure to gather the dragon balls and save the world, and it fails miserably at it. Seasons 4-6 is just people standing around, talking about FEELINGS and plot devices. The pacing is rather atrocious; the events of seasons 4, 5, and 6 could honestly all be condensed down into one season.
I only stuck around to see Atlas, but the last season shat on Atlas and given how they've handled the worldbuilding for the entirety of show, I do not expect Atlas' culture, politics, or geography to be fleshed out beyond a couple of matte paintings and maybe an offhand statement that "THEY HIRE FAUNAS FOR MENIAL LABOR AND ARE SLAVERS!" and "KEEPING YOUR BORDERS CLOSED IS BAD!". The fight choreography is hit or miss; everyone raves about how cool Monty Oum's action sequences were, but half of the time I couldn't tell what was going on, and the existence of aura deflates tension because you know a single hit isn't going to change the outcome; everybody's safe until the writer decides that someone will take a hit that will drain their aura, so the real fight doesn't start until then.
Vexed Viewer and
Muffin Man Dan go more in depth breaking down the problems with the show, so I digress.
I think people are in love with the
idea of RWBY, what with the thousands of fan fiction and the plethora of fanart out there, rather than the actual show itself. From what I've seen, the RWBY fandom doesn't have extensive discussions on the characters, examining the themes of the story, or speculation on the story on other series like Nartuo or MHA, which had the fanart
and many discussions centered around the show/manga itself.
To clarify: the show isn't
horrible; I at least enjoy it enough to have stuck around for six seasons. The art and animation looks nice and there are few moments I genuinely like every now and then, and I do look forward to seeing new and imaginative things and how they flesh out the adventure setting (like how the huntsmen hired to protect the train had remote control over the 'Train's various mechanisms, very cool and very sensible indeed). The Apathy as a conceptually terrifying monster over just another damage sponge was also incredibly cool, and I hope they do more of that. Even if Atlas isn't as developed as I had hoped, I'll still enjoy just looking at the Atlas aesthetic.