A lot of things are made by copying other things and then developing into something more original only over time. Sometimes the process of originalizing happens in editing over the course of multiple drafts, but sometimes it happens over the course of multiple installments in a series and we can see it happening in real time. For example, the xenomorphs from Alien inspired the genestealers in Warhammer 40k, which were eventually folded into the Tyranids faction, a humanoid-ish biomonster faction, and then StarCraft’s Zerg were based on the Tyranids but were much more alien-looking and the 3e Tyranids hewed closer to that look in response, and then when they made an Alien versus Predator RTS they based the xenomorph faction’s gameplay off of being a swarm-y bug faction like the Zerg, while the Predators had more of a small elite strike team feel similar to Protoss and the marines were in the middle and relatively very mobile like the Terrans. So the AvP xenomorphs ripped off the Zerg ripped off the Tyranids ripped off the xenomorphs, completing the circle of plagiarism.
RWBY definitely stole from a lot of shows. They took a lot of their scenes inexplicably from the Legend of Korra, the basic “go to X different themed regions of the world” plot was taken from Avatar, hampered slightly by none of the places being super interesting, dust was basically materia from Final Fantasy VII, grimm were basically Heartless from Kingdom Hearts. You can tell what parts of the show the creator really cared about and had experience creating because it’s much harder to find any obvious precedents for the character or weapon designs.
This could’ve been fine, except…well, except that Monty Oum died due to a freak accident in what should’ve been a routine surgery. But while the show was Monty Oum’s passion project and that passion was much more felt in the seasons he worked on, it had serious plot and pacing problems back then – Monty’s talents contributed greatly to the show, but his much-vaunted “vision” contributed nothing.
And RWBY would’ve been better if they had recognized what game they were actually ripping off with their central plot and ripped it off harder. Part of the problem here is that a lot of the centerpieces of their central plot were apparently late additions, like, the starting in season 3 the whole show is almost entirely about the four maidens, and apparently season 3 is when they first thought up the four maidens. But it does seem like the cycle of reincarnation and the eternal struggle between Oz and Salem was intended from the beginning, even if a third magic system on top of the two the show already had got chucked in two years in.
What RWBY’s main plot seems most informed by is the Zelda series: Immortal figures locked in a battle across the ages, fighting for control of super-artifacts, with the good guys having the artifacts while the bad guys seek the artifacts for world domination (or world demolition, in RWBY’s case). It’s Salem, Oz, and the maidens fighting over a grab-bag of four random artifacts instead of Ganon, Zelda, and Link fighting over the the Triforce, but it’s the same idea. Hell, the four elementally themed MacGuffins of Minish Cap are even similarly themed to the four seasons that the RWBY artifacts are sort of loosely themed after.
And once you recognize that RWBY is failing to rip off Zelda, improvements to the show suggest themselves immediately by ripping it off more and harder. The way a Zelda game works is that you need to go into some number of dungeons to retrieve the magic MacGuffins. Each dungeon is located in a different part of the map and is associated with a different terrain type and usually has some connection to one of the peoples of Hyrule. The magic MacGuffin is guarded by a big boss monster of some kind, not necessarily one directly related to Ganon, sometimes a big spider just lives here, Zelda dungeons just attract boss monsters automatically anytime Ganon fails to provide one.
So instead of the four vaults being opened up by maidens who are already on the good guys’ side, they can be camped on by giant grimm, because the artifacts draw them in somehow. Since the artifacts are grimm magnets, you can’t really put their vaults in the middle of heavily guarded capitals, so instead they’re a bunch of remote fortresses in the middle of nowhere, and in the gap between Oz’s reincarnations, sometimes they get overrun. And then at the end of the Beacon arc, Oz dies, so now Team RWBY has only a vague idea of where the artifacts even are. So in the first arc, Team RWBY meets Oz in anime Hogwarts, gets the down-low on the artifacts, and has to retrieve one of them to protect it from Salem, with Oz pointing them directly towards the objective to save time that we can use to set up why we have to do this in the first place. In the other three arcs, Team RWBY knows vaguely where the vault is, but in order to find it, they will have to go and talk to the townsfolk and get involved in local sub-plots. The climax of each arc is a big fight with the grimm guarding the artifact in the vault, leaning into the series’ strengths (back when it had strengths).
The nature of Zelda MacGuffins is also probably a better guide to what the artifacts do than whatever RWBY was trying to do with them. In Zelda, while individual artifacts have a cool theme or power, mostly what they do is come together to unlock the final dungeon so you can go punch Ganon in the face. This doesn’t put an end to the cycle of reincarnation forever, but Hyrule is saved for a hundred years, and honestly I kind of appreciate the Zelda games for not acting like evil must be totally eradicated before it counts as a happy ending, it’s fine if it’s just defeated for a lifetime and when it returns heroes will need to rise against it once more. That’s certainly much better than the RWBY thing where Oz has to prevent Salem from gathering the artifacts until he finds a way to immanetize the eschaton, which is presumably going to be accomplished by Ruby Rose giving one of her dorky speeches or something? Like, she makes an impassioned plea on the internet for everyone to stop being evil and it just kind of works. Given that the internet being taken down when one of the towers is destroyed is a plot point, that’s probably the intended ending.
But instead it could just be that gathering the four artifacts will defeat Salem right now. Like, each artifact could power up one of the RWBY girls in some way, and then all four of them together can fight Salem. Sure, “get MacGuffins to beat the bad guy” is not a super deep plot, but having a politically charged plot was a terrible idea for RWBY. Every single political talking point they incorporated into the show aged like milk. The White Fang plot and trying to make Oz a morally grey character was biting off way more than they could chew, and the requirements for defeating Salem – literal world peace – were even harder to write. It’s a mercy the show got cancelled before they had to try and make that work. They would’ve been way better off just telling a straightforward good vs. evil story, one that was basically just an IP scrubbed Zelda game that leaned into cool boss fights.
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