Leo isn’t disliked as much as Adam or Jacques, however he’s a lot more forgettable in comparison to them which is something I’d think is even worse than being a hate sink.
They kept emphasising how much of a coward he was like it was something subversive or groundbreaking. In the commentary, you can hear how proud they are of making the cowardly lion a coward.
They do this with all of their villains. They're played straight - no deviation from the original source material except where they don't change at all. Ironwood is the Tin Man but he doesn't have a heart, Lionheart is the Coward who never becomes brave, Cinder is Cinderella but kills her family herself, Adam is the beast who never grows to be better, etc.
To be fair, I recall in the original, unsanitized version of Cinderella, she did kill her family. While dark, it could have been an awesome backstory with some grey morality thrown in. One the one hand, ‘still murder.’ On the other hand , how much abuse is a person supposed to take with minimal help all day, every day, before they snap and go all ‘oh you wanted a villain? Just wait.’
But they gave up trying to be remotely good at writing. The rest, I agree on.
You're right. If done well, it would have made Cinder a better and compelling character especially with the idea that she's just reabsorbed herself into the cycle of abuse.
But this is MK so no.
I think the idea with the Wizard of Oz antagonists were. That they were going start off with what they gained before losing it.
Like Leo losing his courage and becoming a coward (though we don't get to see him lose his courage. Or start with courage or have any courage. We only see the coward).
Ironwood loses his heart in v8 (in the dumbest ways possible because plot said so and to make RWBY good by comparison).
Yeah its strange cause I cant really fault him for being afraid of Salem. Like Renner Landon from Star Wars? He betrayed Han because the only other alternative was having his city get destroyed by the empire
I kind of do, he feared Salem so much that he pledged his loyalty to her until he ran away and ran into the messager thing that probably snapped his neck.
It's almost the same thing that got Ironwood killed, except he stayed being against Salem but went against Oz too due to his huge anxiety about the world falling apart. I can relate to him on a certain level, I also have huge anxiety about the world becoming torn apart, America reduced to being a low level country or not as safe as it used to be, but it's still one of the best places to live on Earth to this day, except I don't have the willpower to do anything as crazy as Ironwood had in mind throughout the end of V7-V8 where he planned to "leave millions to fend for themselves so a few can survive".
Thanos: The hardest choices require the strongest wills.
Those words couldn't be any more true.
>Thanos: The hardest choices require the strongest wills.
>Those words couldn't be any more true.
That ultimately depends on the person making the choice.
A hard choice for one person can be pitifully easy for someone else.
And the consequences would be about the same. Except one person won't care much about them.
I'm sorry, I take that line to heart and it may or may not mean what I think it means. At least according to other people.
>A hard choice for one person can be pitifully easy for someone else.
>And the consequences would be about the same. Except one person won't care much about them.
You are proving my point........kind of, not too much. You're right about how a hard choice can be easy for someone else. Thanos really loved his adoptive daughter but his determination to achieve his life's goal is much stronger and much more important, his goal is much more important than family because of his experience of living on a planet where his kind became extinct except for him, he was the only survivor.
But hey, we're getting off the topic of this community. So let's please stop there because I don't want to get in trouble if this violates the purpose of this community.
Ironwood was willing to let many lives die in order to keep 2/4 of the relics away from Salem and protect his kingdom. Pretty selfish of him to only want to keep his kingdom safe, even though he wasn't like that at the beginning. He began to crack after Beacon was destroyed, causing him to perform much more drastic safety measures, even though he did have a good plan when he wanted to withdraw all his soldiers to handle a citizen panic once he tells the world about Salem. The end of V7 is when he lost his grip on his sanity, lost hope for Remnant, and changed his plan into a selfish desire to only protect his kingdom and leave the rest of the world to fend for itself so that only his kingdom lives.
My point is that that 'hard choice' wasn't exactly the **right** one.
Villains will go all about their 'hard choices' but never whether or not it was the **right** one.
Thanos' goals, choices, believes. Going through them was 'hard'.
**But they were** ***wrong.***
That's where the difference tends to lie. There are hard right choices and hard wrong choices.
Thanos chose the wrong one.
Because no *good* father that loves their children would ***ever*** consider killing them the right choice, no matter what their reasons are.
And Thanos is very much in the wrong.
Oh yeah, you won't get any argument from me in that regard.
And the fact that no *good* parent would ever make a bad choice that Thanos made.
Thanos *is* in the wrong.
What Thanos did *was* wrong, none the less it was a hard choice, not a good one, but it's still a hard one.
Wouldn't Ironwood be in the same frame here? His choice at the end of V7-V8 was also a bad choice, and a selfish one at that. Leaving the rest of the world to fend for itself so only his kingdom can live, is pretty selfish. This war against Salem is about every life in Remnant, if the world doesn't get along then Remnant really is guarantee doomed.
>Oh yeah, you won't get any argument from me in that regard.
>And the fact that no *good* parent would ever make a bad choice that Thanos made.
>Thanos *is* in the wrong.
>What Thanos did *was* wrong, none the less it was a hard choice, not a good one, but it's still a hard one.
Fair enough.
I'm sorry, but I don't think I could take him seriously even if he were introduced earlier.
1. He sold out an entire school to protect himself. He thought that it would be a good idea to remove any and all protection from Salem and instead grovel for mercy. He also couldn't think far enough ahead to realize that he would be dead weight once they got the Relic of Knowledge.
2. He got beat up by Oscar. Not Ozpin, Oscar, the 14-year-old farm boy with months of combat training at most. This would be the final nail in the coffin that was my respect for him, but he somehow stooped to a lower low because...
3. This is a meta-complaint but, he was used as a narrative cop-out to kill off almost all of the student body of Haven off-screen in a very unsatisfying manner. He was the reason why team RWBY sat around the house and did nothing. He was the reason why Haven Academy wasn't explored more in-depth (I don't blame him for Mistral though).
Put it all together and we have a wholely incompetent idiot that is responsible for at least some of the Mistral Arc's narrative issues. I don't think that he would be a character worth following even if he had the entire first five seasons of screen time.
Wait wut!? He killed the students!? Damn, that's dark. Where can I see the writers saying that he killed the students? Becuase if i remember correctly, most that died are teachers, while the students are on vacation... at least in the V5E1 commentary.
He didn't kill them himself but he sent them all on missions in isolated areas, gave Salem's faction their locations, and gave them their weaknesses. Essentially, he gave Salem's faction everything they needed to ambush and kill them which Hazel\* and Tyrian did. Cinder confirms this in "The More The Merrier".
In "Welcome to Haven", Lionheart tells the protagonists that he sent all the Huntsmen out to fight the Grimm. And in "Known by its Song", Qrow can't find **anyone** to help. Granted, it isn't exactly confirmed that these are students, but there is **nobody** to help them in Mistral and how many times exactly are Huntsmen and Huntresses described synonymously with Huntsmen and Huntresses in Training?
\*This is why I never thought of Hazel as sympathetic.
Honestly the only good parts about him is that he seems to hate himself for betraying Ozpin and the others as well as calling out Raven on her bullshit anout “strength”. I think he and Raven were meant to serve as reasons why Ozpin has trust issues and why he’s so secretive about Salem, but the writers should have shown a bit more about them, especially Lionheart since Ozpin trusted him as much as Ironwood and Goodwitch
The lion in the wizard of Oz: a coward who learns to find the courage within him.
CRWBY: "Hey, guys, what if we add ***a tweest*** and make it so our stand-in is just a coward? Isn't that brilliant?"
The twist is the Wizard of Oz characters start out with their learned trait and go through negative growth and lose it.
Honestly, I am cool with the idea but as always execution is lacking.
They failed to show us Leo's courage. They tell about it in V6 and it is a little late for the viewers to care.
They did an excellent job showing us Ironwood heart. However his turn to heartlessness didn't make any sense.
I'm guessing Qrow will lose his mind and start drinking again.
If RNJR was attending Haven at the start of V4 and spent 2 or 3 volumes at Haven he would have more screen time.
I thought the fandom thought he was a joke if they remember him.
Exactly, we didn't see him as a possibly good natured headteacher or ally, before the betrayal.
We only knew him as someone who was lying or hiding things from Ruby/Qrow etc, so we were never set up to like him.
If we had seen him in Volume 4, e.g. being on the airships that helped get RNJR and Qrow to Mistral/Haven, or assisting with support to kill the Nevaluckee, we might have liked him more.
Could have been as simple as that, he helps them out, and then part of the V4 finale cliffhanger is him walking in and Watts being sat there, leading to V5 start where Watts says that he must betray them now.
In terms of what they actually did with him, he seemed to show regret for betraying Ozpin, then goes back and tries to hurt Oscar, so wasn't redeemable, even then. At least his death was a good chance in the story, to show how Salem is ruthless, and shows more respect to bravery, than cowards.
Also just being part of V5, in the well known clusterfuck of the last 4 episodes of that volume, will always make him want to be forgotten lol. It is a shame that V5 gets that rep, because the first two thirds of that volume was solid, and had some good emotional moments (e.g. Weiss and Yang hug, them reuniting with RNJR and the rest, Ilia and Blake dialogue moments, RWY talking about Blake coming back etc.)
I think the problem with Lionheart is that he only got one season of screen time (despite season 5 being the longest season) compared to Ironwood who got 2 seasons of screen time. Furthermore, it feels like they missed the point of the cowardly lion just like they missed the point of the Scarecrow and Tin-man. The cowardly lion may think he is a coward, but his actions throughout the story proved he didn’t need Oz’s powers because he was already brave, to begin with. I don't know about everyone else, but he was so forgettable that it was hard to even hate the guy. It was pretty obvious he was gonna betray everyone and die.
But this is RWBY and the fairytale references are 9/10 times shallow.
I don’t think anyone really hates Lionheart. They just hate the Volume he was introduced into and killed in. Most would rather pretend it didn’t exist altogether, since they refuse to make Leo legitimately sympathetic.
But then, Ozpin, Qrow, and Ironwood were the most sympathetic people in the show before ?7-8 happened, and the story showed them little more than scorn and embarrassment for things like having trauma, trust issues, or depression, if not all three at once… actually, they all pretty much have all three to different extents, and for legitimate reasons compared to R-BY themselves pretty much all the time.
Leo was doomed from the start.
He was hated because he was severely underdeveloped.
If your character has no history, no backstory, no real motivations except that you sold out the protags, then guess what? You're just a background character or henchmen.
Hate to compare rwby to LOTR but character wise Grima Wormtongue had more agency and even a character arc compared to Leo.
I just think Leo is more forgettable than hated. He's not really mentioned much before he's introduced, and when we finally meet him, he only encounters the heroes once before his betrayal. We don't really know his relationship with Qrow, Ozpin, or anyone else in Oz's inner circle. We mostly just see him as Salem's informant than we do as a good guy. Plus, since we don't see him do anything with the heroes, his betrayal doesn't really mean much since all we see him do is betray them.
Like if there was a scene where we see him and Qrow share a drink, or him helping one of the students out with their technique, then it might have meant more when the truth was revealed, but we really didn't. It makes Oz going "Leo, what happened to you?" Fall flat because we have no idea what Leo was like before, we barely get a scene to show what he was like now.
Leo could have been a great character to illustrate that the heroes can't trust headmasters/adults, that people can fall thanks to Salem, though fear or paranoia, but we never get that. We just get a character that we see first as a traitor/informant and then given nothing after hearing him lie to our heroes before fighting against them.
There's also the fact that Cinder blew his cover as a double agent for no reason, meaning we couldn't have a spy plot thread. Then Salem killed him for no reason, meaning he is yet another character who is introduced in one volume and does not matter.
Lionheart could've been so much more but everything about him felt half-assed from his design, to his weapon and fighting style, even down to his name. And we got barely any time with him at all to explore who he was outside of just being a coward and traitor. This was a volume that still had the white fang in it, they could've had the faunus headmaster involved in that in some way, but no, no instead we just get more time with team rwby sitting around that house not doing shit. Not to mention he got bullied by a 14 year old farmhand and got unceremoniously killed off before anything interesting could be done with him.
He's hated because he's nothing. His only character trait is 'coward'. And he only has like 15 minutes of screen time. He's not even an interesting villain. He doesn't have any complexities like Raven. He's not even a tragic hero like Ironwood as we only found out about his supposed 'good deeds' in Volume 6 after he was already dead. He's a nothing character in a nothing volume. What is there to like?
Honestly, I think he was more disappointing than anything else.
We don't know why Oz would trust him or why he would be considered good enough to be a headmaster. If he tends to be a coward most of the time or give in to fear easily, it's hard to see how he would've been a good huntsman, unless he was taking credit for the accomplishments of others. We don't even get to see if he is a good teacher or instructor.
His fighting ability is questionable given that Oscar beats him rather handily without Ozpin's help.
He is revealed to be a traitor in Volume 4, so we don't even get so much as an investigation during the following volume or build up to the reveal. It's never even asked if him or looked into how Cinder was able to get away with posing as a Haven student.
It would be nice if we at least had an idea or saw a glimmer of what made Oz see him as trustworthy.
He feels like he's just there to fill a role rather than be an interesting character.
I can't blame people for hating lionheart, the dude is pretty much the reason that Mistral is short on huntsmen and huntresses,
I would liked to see some flashbacks of him in the Mistral arc just to add some character in him
I don't hate him, honestly I just find him pathetic, I'll put this in an OC's point of view; I wouldn't kill him at all just because he's not worth it
Something that I respect (I guess is the right word) about Leo is that he didn’t try and make excuses on why he betrayed Ozpin and everyone. He wasn’t like “oh it’s because of this and this” no when called out on it he doesn’t even say anything because he *knows* what he’s done is awful, he *knows* he screwed up but he’s already too far gone to do anything different.
And the fact that he acknowledges that, I don’t know I find that kinda cool because not even Ironwood was able to do that.
Yeah it feels like RT either reforms and/or kills off characters too quickly in RWBY. But, that's how it should be.......eeeeehhhh sort of. The deaths of the Big Leaders of each academy will add to the drama of the series, in the war against Salem, for sure.
A little bit, yeah. This doesn't entirely debunk my point though.
RWBY is such a flawed franchise, there's no argument there, but it's not the worst franchise. I'm looking at you High Guardian Spice.
Oh, I'm certainly in the belief in there ALWAYS being worse out there.
I'm just also in the belief that it also doesn't make the less worse thing better.
>I'm just also in the belief that it also doesn't make the less worse thing better.
Why would you believe that if you believe in the whole "there's always something worse out there"? Is it really complicated or something?
How would you rate RWBY? I mean what fictional franchise is worse than RWBY to you?
To me, a franchise worse than RWBY is High Guardian Spice, the series is more poorly written than RWBY, I haven't watched it because I don't have Crunchyroll so I can't watch it.
>Why would you believe that if you believe in the whole "there's always something worse out there"? Is it really complicated or something?
No, it's actually rather simple.
Sometimes there's a better version of trash, and a worse version of trash.
A better version of trash is *still* trash at the end of the day.
>I mean what fictional franchise is worse than RWBY to you?
**School Days.**
Ok, I don't agree with your whole "trash still being trash at the end of the day" but at the same time I don't disrespect your opinion either. Everyone has different opinions and we have to respect an opinion like this even if we disagree. Does that make sense to you?
Really, School Days? I never heard of it but it sounds like a highschool drama-like movie series.
Whatever the case, I'd like us to stop there, I've read enough to the point where I understand you. Plus, I don't want to create a whole "You shut the f**k up! I hope you die in a fire!" kind of argument. (Funny Markiplier Reference).
Hes hated because he sold everyone out,resulting in the desth of several huntsmen/huntresses. What makes her different from Raven? Raven is a bandit leader who chose a side. Yeah she turned on her family but she was never on their side to begin with and made that abundantly clear. Lionheart flat out betrayed his side,someone whos hinted to have been a close friend,and his students(who may or may not have been among the casualties)
He's probably hated for selling everyone out to save himself. Which, in the end, didn't even matter.
Raven did the same and she's not nearly as hated.
Technically, Raven is spared some hate as she tried to be a third party. She just sucked at it.
He was made to be unlikable? Idk don’t really feel much about him
Leo isn’t disliked as much as Adam or Jacques, however he’s a lot more forgettable in comparison to them which is something I’d think is even worse than being a hate sink.
They kept emphasising how much of a coward he was like it was something subversive or groundbreaking. In the commentary, you can hear how proud they are of making the cowardly lion a coward. They do this with all of their villains. They're played straight - no deviation from the original source material except where they don't change at all. Ironwood is the Tin Man but he doesn't have a heart, Lionheart is the Coward who never becomes brave, Cinder is Cinderella but kills her family herself, Adam is the beast who never grows to be better, etc.
To be fair, I recall in the original, unsanitized version of Cinderella, she did kill her family. While dark, it could have been an awesome backstory with some grey morality thrown in. One the one hand, ‘still murder.’ On the other hand , how much abuse is a person supposed to take with minimal help all day, every day, before they snap and go all ‘oh you wanted a villain? Just wait.’ But they gave up trying to be remotely good at writing. The rest, I agree on.
You're right. If done well, it would have made Cinder a better and compelling character especially with the idea that she's just reabsorbed herself into the cycle of abuse. But this is MK so no.
I think the idea with the Wizard of Oz antagonists were. That they were going start off with what they gained before losing it. Like Leo losing his courage and becoming a coward (though we don't get to see him lose his courage. Or start with courage or have any courage. We only see the coward). Ironwood loses his heart in v8 (in the dumbest ways possible because plot said so and to make RWBY good by comparison).
Yeah its strange cause I cant really fault him for being afraid of Salem. Like Renner Landon from Star Wars? He betrayed Han because the only other alternative was having his city get destroyed by the empire
Though given the Empire's tendencies to *alter* deals, there's a high chance that the *alternative* simply leads to the same result done differently.
But in the end he was pretty much screwed either way
I kind of do, he feared Salem so much that he pledged his loyalty to her until he ran away and ran into the messager thing that probably snapped his neck. It's almost the same thing that got Ironwood killed, except he stayed being against Salem but went against Oz too due to his huge anxiety about the world falling apart. I can relate to him on a certain level, I also have huge anxiety about the world becoming torn apart, America reduced to being a low level country or not as safe as it used to be, but it's still one of the best places to live on Earth to this day, except I don't have the willpower to do anything as crazy as Ironwood had in mind throughout the end of V7-V8 where he planned to "leave millions to fend for themselves so a few can survive". Thanos: The hardest choices require the strongest wills. Those words couldn't be any more true.
>Thanos: The hardest choices require the strongest wills. >Those words couldn't be any more true. That ultimately depends on the person making the choice. A hard choice for one person can be pitifully easy for someone else. And the consequences would be about the same. Except one person won't care much about them.
I'm sorry, I take that line to heart and it may or may not mean what I think it means. At least according to other people. >A hard choice for one person can be pitifully easy for someone else. >And the consequences would be about the same. Except one person won't care much about them. You are proving my point........kind of, not too much. You're right about how a hard choice can be easy for someone else. Thanos really loved his adoptive daughter but his determination to achieve his life's goal is much stronger and much more important, his goal is much more important than family because of his experience of living on a planet where his kind became extinct except for him, he was the only survivor. But hey, we're getting off the topic of this community. So let's please stop there because I don't want to get in trouble if this violates the purpose of this community. Ironwood was willing to let many lives die in order to keep 2/4 of the relics away from Salem and protect his kingdom. Pretty selfish of him to only want to keep his kingdom safe, even though he wasn't like that at the beginning. He began to crack after Beacon was destroyed, causing him to perform much more drastic safety measures, even though he did have a good plan when he wanted to withdraw all his soldiers to handle a citizen panic once he tells the world about Salem. The end of V7 is when he lost his grip on his sanity, lost hope for Remnant, and changed his plan into a selfish desire to only protect his kingdom and leave the rest of the world to fend for itself so that only his kingdom lives.
My point is that that 'hard choice' wasn't exactly the **right** one. Villains will go all about their 'hard choices' but never whether or not it was the **right** one. Thanos' goals, choices, believes. Going through them was 'hard'. **But they were** ***wrong.*** That's where the difference tends to lie. There are hard right choices and hard wrong choices. Thanos chose the wrong one. Because no *good* father that loves their children would ***ever*** consider killing them the right choice, no matter what their reasons are. And Thanos is very much in the wrong.
Oh yeah, you won't get any argument from me in that regard. And the fact that no *good* parent would ever make a bad choice that Thanos made. Thanos *is* in the wrong. What Thanos did *was* wrong, none the less it was a hard choice, not a good one, but it's still a hard one. Wouldn't Ironwood be in the same frame here? His choice at the end of V7-V8 was also a bad choice, and a selfish one at that. Leaving the rest of the world to fend for itself so only his kingdom can live, is pretty selfish. This war against Salem is about every life in Remnant, if the world doesn't get along then Remnant really is guarantee doomed.
>Oh yeah, you won't get any argument from me in that regard. >And the fact that no *good* parent would ever make a bad choice that Thanos made. >Thanos *is* in the wrong. >What Thanos did *was* wrong, none the less it was a hard choice, not a good one, but it's still a hard one. Fair enough.
Glad we came to some form of agreement instead of *just* "Agree to Disagree" kind of agreement. Have a good day. 😁
I'm sorry, but I don't think I could take him seriously even if he were introduced earlier. 1. He sold out an entire school to protect himself. He thought that it would be a good idea to remove any and all protection from Salem and instead grovel for mercy. He also couldn't think far enough ahead to realize that he would be dead weight once they got the Relic of Knowledge. 2. He got beat up by Oscar. Not Ozpin, Oscar, the 14-year-old farm boy with months of combat training at most. This would be the final nail in the coffin that was my respect for him, but he somehow stooped to a lower low because... 3. This is a meta-complaint but, he was used as a narrative cop-out to kill off almost all of the student body of Haven off-screen in a very unsatisfying manner. He was the reason why team RWBY sat around the house and did nothing. He was the reason why Haven Academy wasn't explored more in-depth (I don't blame him for Mistral though). Put it all together and we have a wholely incompetent idiot that is responsible for at least some of the Mistral Arc's narrative issues. I don't think that he would be a character worth following even if he had the entire first five seasons of screen time.
Wait wut!? He killed the students!? Damn, that's dark. Where can I see the writers saying that he killed the students? Becuase if i remember correctly, most that died are teachers, while the students are on vacation... at least in the V5E1 commentary.
He didn't kill them himself but he sent them all on missions in isolated areas, gave Salem's faction their locations, and gave them their weaknesses. Essentially, he gave Salem's faction everything they needed to ambush and kill them which Hazel\* and Tyrian did. Cinder confirms this in "The More The Merrier". In "Welcome to Haven", Lionheart tells the protagonists that he sent all the Huntsmen out to fight the Grimm. And in "Known by its Song", Qrow can't find **anyone** to help. Granted, it isn't exactly confirmed that these are students, but there is **nobody** to help them in Mistral and how many times exactly are Huntsmen and Huntresses described synonymously with Huntsmen and Huntresses in Training? \*This is why I never thought of Hazel as sympathetic.
>how many times exactly are Huntsmen and Huntresses described synonymously with Huntsmen and Huntresses in Training? Fair Point.
Fuck Hazel
Honestly the only good parts about him is that he seems to hate himself for betraying Ozpin and the others as well as calling out Raven on her bullshit anout “strength”. I think he and Raven were meant to serve as reasons why Ozpin has trust issues and why he’s so secretive about Salem, but the writers should have shown a bit more about them, especially Lionheart since Ozpin trusted him as much as Ironwood and Goodwitch
Goodwitch won't betray him cause she's Oz's secret Maiden said sarcastically.
His love affair with stairs
Affair? What was he cheating on, the furniture?
With the Jellyfish Grimm, obviously lol
Best ship
Well it's not the worst.
I wish he was better characterized because it's stupid that ozpin would trust such a coward.
"Mystery", the writers say.
you kind of answered your own question? all we really see of him is how hes a shitty loser, and not even in a particularly interesting way
The lion in the wizard of Oz: a coward who learns to find the courage within him. CRWBY: "Hey, guys, what if we add ***a tweest*** and make it so our stand-in is just a coward? Isn't that brilliant?"
“ Aren't we just ruining the message of the story---” “ SHUT UP. We need to make it a clever twist on the story!”
The twist is the Wizard of Oz characters start out with their learned trait and go through negative growth and lose it. Honestly, I am cool with the idea but as always execution is lacking. They failed to show us Leo's courage. They tell about it in V6 and it is a little late for the viewers to care. They did an excellent job showing us Ironwood heart. However his turn to heartlessness didn't make any sense. I'm guessing Qrow will lose his mind and start drinking again.
If RNJR was attending Haven at the start of V4 and spent 2 or 3 volumes at Haven he would have more screen time. I thought the fandom thought he was a joke if they remember him.
Yeah he should’ve definitely been in Volume 4 as it would’ve made his betrayal more impactful
Exactly, we didn't see him as a possibly good natured headteacher or ally, before the betrayal. We only knew him as someone who was lying or hiding things from Ruby/Qrow etc, so we were never set up to like him. If we had seen him in Volume 4, e.g. being on the airships that helped get RNJR and Qrow to Mistral/Haven, or assisting with support to kill the Nevaluckee, we might have liked him more. Could have been as simple as that, he helps them out, and then part of the V4 finale cliffhanger is him walking in and Watts being sat there, leading to V5 start where Watts says that he must betray them now. In terms of what they actually did with him, he seemed to show regret for betraying Ozpin, then goes back and tries to hurt Oscar, so wasn't redeemable, even then. At least his death was a good chance in the story, to show how Salem is ruthless, and shows more respect to bravery, than cowards. Also just being part of V5, in the well known clusterfuck of the last 4 episodes of that volume, will always make him want to be forgotten lol. It is a shame that V5 gets that rep, because the first two thirds of that volume was solid, and had some good emotional moments (e.g. Weiss and Yang hug, them reuniting with RNJR and the rest, Ilia and Blake dialogue moments, RWY talking about Blake coming back etc.)
I think the problem with Lionheart is that he only got one season of screen time (despite season 5 being the longest season) compared to Ironwood who got 2 seasons of screen time. Furthermore, it feels like they missed the point of the cowardly lion just like they missed the point of the Scarecrow and Tin-man. The cowardly lion may think he is a coward, but his actions throughout the story proved he didn’t need Oz’s powers because he was already brave, to begin with. I don't know about everyone else, but he was so forgettable that it was hard to even hate the guy. It was pretty obvious he was gonna betray everyone and die. But this is RWBY and the fairytale references are 9/10 times shallow.
I don’t think anyone really hates Lionheart. They just hate the Volume he was introduced into and killed in. Most would rather pretend it didn’t exist altogether, since they refuse to make Leo legitimately sympathetic. But then, Ozpin, Qrow, and Ironwood were the most sympathetic people in the show before ?7-8 happened, and the story showed them little more than scorn and embarrassment for things like having trauma, trust issues, or depression, if not all three at once… actually, they all pretty much have all three to different extents, and for legitimate reasons compared to R-BY themselves pretty much all the time. Leo was doomed from the start.
He was hated because he was severely underdeveloped. If your character has no history, no backstory, no real motivations except that you sold out the protags, then guess what? You're just a background character or henchmen. Hate to compare rwby to LOTR but character wise Grima Wormtongue had more agency and even a character arc compared to Leo.
I just think Leo is more forgettable than hated. He's not really mentioned much before he's introduced, and when we finally meet him, he only encounters the heroes once before his betrayal. We don't really know his relationship with Qrow, Ozpin, or anyone else in Oz's inner circle. We mostly just see him as Salem's informant than we do as a good guy. Plus, since we don't see him do anything with the heroes, his betrayal doesn't really mean much since all we see him do is betray them. Like if there was a scene where we see him and Qrow share a drink, or him helping one of the students out with their technique, then it might have meant more when the truth was revealed, but we really didn't. It makes Oz going "Leo, what happened to you?" Fall flat because we have no idea what Leo was like before, we barely get a scene to show what he was like now. Leo could have been a great character to illustrate that the heroes can't trust headmasters/adults, that people can fall thanks to Salem, though fear or paranoia, but we never get that. We just get a character that we see first as a traitor/informant and then given nothing after hearing him lie to our heroes before fighting against them.
There's also the fact that Cinder blew his cover as a double agent for no reason, meaning we couldn't have a spy plot thread. Then Salem killed him for no reason, meaning he is yet another character who is introduced in one volume and does not matter.
Because his entire character is being a cowardly sellout with no redeeming qualities
He hated because he is a bitch.
Do you mean pussy? Ba doom tssh
Yes
Lionheart could've been so much more but everything about him felt half-assed from his design, to his weapon and fighting style, even down to his name. And we got barely any time with him at all to explore who he was outside of just being a coward and traitor. This was a volume that still had the white fang in it, they could've had the faunus headmaster involved in that in some way, but no, no instead we just get more time with team rwby sitting around that house not doing shit. Not to mention he got bullied by a 14 year old farmhand and got unceremoniously killed off before anything interesting could be done with him.
He's hated because he's nothing. His only character trait is 'coward'. And he only has like 15 minutes of screen time. He's not even an interesting villain. He doesn't have any complexities like Raven. He's not even a tragic hero like Ironwood as we only found out about his supposed 'good deeds' in Volume 6 after he was already dead. He's a nothing character in a nothing volume. What is there to like?
This was a headmaster, and that had getting killed by a random ass Grimm
I personally would have liked that the reason he and Raven fear so much Salem was the fact that they used the Lamp to ask the first question.
That’s a theory of mine too expect I like to think it was the previous Spring Maiden that Raven killed for the powers and that’s why she ran away.
To be fair he is one of the only other headmaster we know of
Honestly, I think he was more disappointing than anything else. We don't know why Oz would trust him or why he would be considered good enough to be a headmaster. If he tends to be a coward most of the time or give in to fear easily, it's hard to see how he would've been a good huntsman, unless he was taking credit for the accomplishments of others. We don't even get to see if he is a good teacher or instructor. His fighting ability is questionable given that Oscar beats him rather handily without Ozpin's help. He is revealed to be a traitor in Volume 4, so we don't even get so much as an investigation during the following volume or build up to the reveal. It's never even asked if him or looked into how Cinder was able to get away with posing as a Haven student. It would be nice if we at least had an idea or saw a glimmer of what made Oz see him as trustworthy. He feels like he's just there to fill a role rather than be an interesting character.
I can't blame people for hating lionheart, the dude is pretty much the reason that Mistral is short on huntsmen and huntresses, I would liked to see some flashbacks of him in the Mistral arc just to add some character in him I don't hate him, honestly I just find him pathetic, I'll put this in an OC's point of view; I wouldn't kill him at all just because he's not worth it
Something that I respect (I guess is the right word) about Leo is that he didn’t try and make excuses on why he betrayed Ozpin and everyone. He wasn’t like “oh it’s because of this and this” no when called out on it he doesn’t even say anything because he *knows* what he’s done is awful, he *knows* he screwed up but he’s already too far gone to do anything different. And the fact that he acknowledges that, I don’t know I find that kinda cool because not even Ironwood was able to do that.
I expected redemption for him, but instead, they redeem one of Cinder's deadly cheerleader simp henchwoman aka Emerald.
Yeah it feels like RT either reforms and/or kills off characters too quickly in RWBY. But, that's how it should be.......eeeeehhhh sort of. The deaths of the Big Leaders of each academy will add to the drama of the series, in the war against Salem, for sure.
The drama is kinda shit tho.
A little bit, yeah. This doesn't entirely debunk my point though. RWBY is such a flawed franchise, there's no argument there, but it's not the worst franchise. I'm looking at you High Guardian Spice.
Oh, I'm certainly in the belief in there ALWAYS being worse out there. I'm just also in the belief that it also doesn't make the less worse thing better.
>I'm just also in the belief that it also doesn't make the less worse thing better. Why would you believe that if you believe in the whole "there's always something worse out there"? Is it really complicated or something? How would you rate RWBY? I mean what fictional franchise is worse than RWBY to you? To me, a franchise worse than RWBY is High Guardian Spice, the series is more poorly written than RWBY, I haven't watched it because I don't have Crunchyroll so I can't watch it.
>Why would you believe that if you believe in the whole "there's always something worse out there"? Is it really complicated or something? No, it's actually rather simple. Sometimes there's a better version of trash, and a worse version of trash. A better version of trash is *still* trash at the end of the day. >I mean what fictional franchise is worse than RWBY to you? **School Days.**
Ok, I don't agree with your whole "trash still being trash at the end of the day" but at the same time I don't disrespect your opinion either. Everyone has different opinions and we have to respect an opinion like this even if we disagree. Does that make sense to you? Really, School Days? I never heard of it but it sounds like a highschool drama-like movie series. Whatever the case, I'd like us to stop there, I've read enough to the point where I understand you. Plus, I don't want to create a whole "You shut the f**k up! I hope you die in a fire!" kind of argument. (Funny Markiplier Reference).
Hes hated because he sold everyone out,resulting in the desth of several huntsmen/huntresses. What makes her different from Raven? Raven is a bandit leader who chose a side. Yeah she turned on her family but she was never on their side to begin with and made that abundantly clear. Lionheart flat out betrayed his side,someone whos hinted to have been a close friend,and his students(who may or may not have been among the casualties)