Sommerleigh Pollonais, Senior Writer
Plot: After their adventure in Remnant cyberspace courtesy of Kilgore, the Justice League returns to Earth. However, they find the Grimm has followed them and are somehow duplicating their powers. Bringing Black Canary up to speed, the League is forced to seek out Team RWBY for help.
Back in May I took a gander at DC’s latest attempt at shaking up their animated movies which came in the form of the CGI/hand drawn mashup Justice League x RWBY: Superheroes and Huntsmen Part One. By the way, can we just go back to the days when movies had, like maybe three words in their titles? Anyways, while I didn’t hate it, I didn’t find much to love in the first part. And to be honest, of all the DC stories out there, a mash-up between these two worlds seems a tad unnecessary. Still the completionist in me required I watched the second part so let’s take a look at *sigh* Justice League x Rwby: Superheroes and Huntsmen Part Two.
Continuing directly from where Part One left off, the Justice League returns to Earth and Team RWBY return to their world only for the JL to realise the Grimm (creatures from Team RWBY’s universe) are running amok in the various cities of the world and, worse yet, they have somehow adapted to the power set of the Justice League, making them unstoppable. The League is forced to bring RWBY to Earth with the hopes of stopping the Grimm and finding out who or what is behind the attack.
I’m not sure what happened between then and now, but someone paid attention to the feedback on Part One and stepped things up in a big way. While I’m still not a fan of the animation style they sped the movement up a bit. Add to that some truly inspired action sequences and very early on I found myself genuinely surprised as to how engaging this was.
The story was also more fleshed out, as with the introductions out of the way the focus was put squarely on the heroes figuring out what was causing the damage and putting a stop to it. But even when you put the action aside, the relationships between some of the JL characters and Team RWBY, specifically the heroes who featured in Part One, was expanded on in interesting ways. A great example would be the conversations between the stoic Batman (Troy Baker) and the quiet Weiss Schnee (which is German for Snow White, explaining her ice-based powers). Both characters have suffered the loss of their families, and both have seen their cities destroyed by evil, making their continued interactions and growing friendship engaging and believable. A similar relationship develops between Ruby Rose and Superman; it’s just a shame we didn’t get more of this even with a runtime that felt a bit too long.
The only other complaint I had was with the villains. Maybe it was just me, but their motives and the execution of their plan was convoluted and at one point I just checked out and focused on the action instead. An interesting side plot was the involvement of DC villains like Killer Croc, Mirror Master and Weather Wizard that chose to assist the heroes in protecting the Earth. I think a bit more of that would’ve been more entertaining and engaging than the main villains themselves.
Overall, Justice League x RWBY…you know the rest, was a definite improvement on the first part. Better action, better character interactions and better pacing made for a better viewing experience. I’m still not a fan of the art style but as sequels go it’s a big step up. And for that I’ll say it’s worth spending some time with Team RWBY and the Justice League.
Sommer’s Score: 6.5 out of 10
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Sommerleigh of the House Pollonais. First of Her Name. Sushi Lover, Queen of Horror Movies, Comic Books and Binge-Watching Netflix. Mother of two beautiful black cats named Vader and Kylo. I think eating Popcorn at the movies should be mandatory, PS4 makes the best games ever, and I’ll be talking about movies until the zombie apocalypse comes. Double Tap Baby! Read More