Epithet Erased S1E1: "Quiet in the Museum" vis a vis RWBY S1E1: "Ruby Rose"

This review was commissioned by @Alitur. Fuck you, Alitur. Seriously, what the hell are you even expecting the end result of this to be? And why would you commission this right after I just had to...

Fff. Well, okay.


JelloApocalypse is a Texas based youtube channel best known for short comedy sketches with very rudimentary animation. Their parody sketches are often pretty funny, but there's also kind of a tiresome centrist comedian vibe to them when the subject matter gets political. Still, they have a good sense of comedic timing and delivery, and their (likely deliberately) primitive animation has its charm. Eventually, sort of out of nowhere, they started making an original animated series with a different tone than their usual output and plenty of RPG influence, and released it on Youtube and other free streaming services.

Sound familiar?

So, pilot episode of Epithet Erased from JelloApoalypse compared and contrasted with the pilot of RoosterTeeth's RWBY, which I last saw at the start of my Let's Watch a couple years and change ago. It's going to be kind of hard to do this, given that Epithet Erased's first episode, "Quiet in the Museum," is twice as long as "Ruby Rose," but I think I can take that into account when comparing them. So, let's see now.


A girl with giant hair and dorky star ornaments in it wakes up in an art museum to find the lights off and the place totally empty. Also, this is mostly cutout animation that makes "If The Emperor Had A Text To Speech Device" look like Pixar. On one hand, it's clearly not pretending to be any less shitty and amateurish than it is. On the other, it's really, really shitty and amateurish.

So, basically like my MSPaint art. Which is terrible.

The voice acting for the girl is pretty good though, so there's that.

She looks around the gallery searching for her father, but no one replies to her calls. Also, I guess this is a general museum rather than specifically an art one, since she then wanders into a room full of dinosaur skeletons. Quite a big room with quite some big fossils, I'm talking adult sauropods and the like. Guess this is a pretty major museum she got herself stuck after closing in.

Wonder if she'll run into Big Bird and/or some Egyptian gods. Sure hope so, that movie was my jam when I was like six.

She mentions a "field trip" as she's musing to herself over how she could have been left behind. So, it was a school trip + parent chaperones, or something. Either quite a lot of people who were supposed to be watching this girl dropped the ball then, unless there's something supernatural going on. Which, to be fair, there probably is.

Then, as she moves around the museum, it goes to this top-down grid view with an unanimated token representing her. Like someone moving their character sprite around in roll20 or the like. While her voice acting continues unchanged.

I...do not know what artistic vision this might be working toward. The shift was discombobulating for me. But, well, I'll reserve judgement until I know where the pilot is actually going.

She doesn't have her phone with her, unfortunately, and when she finds the receptionist's desk she finds that their land line can only receive calls from outside the internal network, with the exception of 9-1-1. Which she doesn't want to call, because that's "only for emergencies." Well, I guess we'll see how long it takes her to decide this counts as one. She tries the doors, but those are locked from the inside as well as out. That's pretty typical of museum, mall, etc doors, but she seems to think that it's a deliberate trap meant to catch thieves and that she is now a criminal.

This girl seems to have a real self esteem issue. First assuming that getting herself rescued isn't worth official attention, and then assuming she's broken the law through no fault of her own. When she finally does bring herself to act, she does so by dialing 9-1-1 (the customer service-y voice answering "hello, this is the cops" made me chuckle, I'll admit) and saying "I'd like to go to jail" while fretting about how her life is officially over.

Before she can give an address though, a random supervillain and his random henchmen come Kool-Aiding their way through the wall and cackle maniacally about their theft in progress.

Their gang is called the "Ponzi Blasters," and that name is a truly brilliant bit of misdirection because they actually practice armed robbery rather than Ponzi schemes. No wonder they've yet to be caught!

For some reason, the girl tells the police to "hold on for a second" rather than saying "OH GOD HELP A SUPERVILLAIN IS POINTING LASER GUNS AT EVERYTHING." I guess she figures she can slip away through the hole they just blasted and not have to have anything more to do with this situation.

Cue intro. It's got much more actual animation in it than the actual show, which is something that always annoys me, but in this case it's particularly egregious because the actual show has so damned little. The song is good, though. Real retro jazz detective movie stuff, with matching Carry Grant style visuals.

Most of it concerns some rogueish looking characters stealing treasures from what look like archaeological sites, and star-hair-girl racing to put them back. Along with some more outlandish things, like these big magical puffs of smoke and a minotaur and stuff. There's also a repeated focus on this little jeweled necklace that probably lets you conquer the sun or something. Title card, and then we roll back to the previous day. Constellation Hair is at the museum with her father, Constellation Beard.

They're not supposed to be Japanese I don't think, so it would more properly be Hair and Beard Constellation.

Beard is embarrassing his daughter by enthusiastically dancing around and singing in the middle of the art gallery. Or, well...I guess he comes as close to "dancing" as this glorified storyboard of a show can actually portray. Also, apparently Hair is the only kid on this school field trip who had a parent come along, and the teacher is getting really fed up with Beard's antics. Also also, there's only about 5-6 sprites for each character, so the same poses and expressions keep being swapped in and out in a manner that...really, it would be less distracting if they just had ONE sprite each.

While the teacher leads them on, she talks them through a bit of worldbuilding that seems like it's supposed to be common knowledge even for much younger kids already, and which doesn't really fit the art gallery they're walking through. Some people in this world have magical abilities called epithets, and are known as the "inscribed." Those who lack epithets are called "mundies," presumably from "mundane." Epithets are so called because each inscribed individual has a power word written into their souls that they need to repeat aloud in order to use their abilities.

She then asks who in her class is inscribed, and a couple kids raise their hands. Hair doesn't, but Beard loudly and bombastically points her out. Which prods the irritated teacher to walk over and give her some personal attention.

Well, going by the title Hair is going to get white-out dumped on her soul at some point.

Apparently, about one in five individuals are born with epithets. I guess the events of MHA are still a few generations off.

The teacher asks Hair what her epithet does, and she says she can't say, because its dumb. When the teacher keeps pressing, she clarifies that it's literally dumb, as in, unspeakable. Although...since the teacher asked what hers DOES rather than just what its command word is, "dumb" must mean "can't be used at all, even in theory." Which I guess means she's a mundy in practice? IDK. The teacher gives up and asks for other kids to talk about their epithets, but this time none of them raise their hands, and the teacher acts surprised that there's really not a single inscribed in this whole group.

Erm...a couple of those kids DID raise their hands pretty enthusiastically just a second ago, though? What made them change their minds between then and now?

Weird.

Just then, a museum worker carrying some boxes runs over to gush about his own. The teacher groans, and seems to know this guy by name. Combined with this, the fact that she didn't already know who in the class was inscribed and who wasn't indicates that this isn't actually a teacher but a museum guide who's been (grudgingly) charged with this group. I guess I was just thrown off because I've been on quite a few field trips through quite a few different schools (my family moved a couple of times), and never once did we not have a teacher walking along with us in addition to the local guide. Maybe Beard is actually the teacher as well as Hair's father? That would make a lot of sense. Anyway, museum box mover guy ignores the guide's insistence that no, really, this isn't necessary, and (to the gratitude of the children, it must needs be said in the man's defense) starts bragging about his "barrier" epithet. Which...oh ffs.

Can I just, like, not interact with pop culture for a few years until this whole epidemic of putting video game stats in places where they don't belong goes into remission? I swear, it's gotten to the point where I can't see this and not immediately take a letter grade away.

And don't try to tell me that this is "satire." Epithet Erased as a whole may be that, but "doing exactly the same thing as the stuff we're making fun of without exaggerating, subverting, or examining it whatsoever" does not count as part of a satire.

He conjures a shield thingy, and everyone except the guide and Hair cheers excitedly in a manner that does not make any sense whatsoever for a world in which 20% of the population can do stuff like this.

As the group moves on, Beard tells his daughter that she'll need to keep her nonexistent energy up for the night shift at a ship he runs. Which he apparently also made her do last night, and the night before. She was planning to catch up on homework tonight, but in his words he's "punched his parent card" by being a chaperone today. Which he made her fill out the paperwork for. Also, he's bored now, and demands her phone so he can play games on it.

What a great guy.

Also, this is where a weird...thing...starts calling attention to itself. A few times before this, Hair narrated her own actions in the third person while she was doing things like picking up the landline or looking for help. I dismissed it as a weird "the protagonist is unnecessarily narrating all of this in retrospect" thing, but now her father is ALSO doing it. If this was to compensate for the show's visual limitations that would be one thing, but these are all things that the normal dialogue and rudimentary animation already conveys perfectly well. So, why? It feels like it's an artsy thing, but I'm not sure what sort of vision it's trying to realize.

Meanwhile, the guide and the box mover guy are giving up on the Constellations and just trying to keep the rest of the group engaged. Boxman asks them if they want to hear about a magic cursed artifact being kept in the museum. Guide tells him no, that story isn't even supposed to be public yet, but he ignores her and starts telling the kids about the "arson amulet," an ancient, recently rediscovered necklace that can supposedly take people's epithets away. Oh, so that's what that thing in the intro was. I thought "epithet erased" was going to refer to Hair's being "dumb," but I guess not.

Then he breaks his box (which proves to be full of historical artifacts) against the floor for no reason and lets the kids start playing with them.

I'll take this opportunity to note that while Hair's voice acting is pretty good, and the tourguide and Beard's are decent (if one-note), Indus the box barrier guy's is just terrible. Sounds like some random guy trying to imitate an over-the-top shonen character and not succeeding at all.

The kids screaming, the guide shrieking, Indus monologuing, and Beard being stupid all add together to produce a din that Hair cannot tolerate. So, she finally uses her epithet, which apparently is speakable after all.

"Blyndeff." I'm guessing "Indus" is supposed to suggest "indestructible" then.

Okay, so when the guide asked Molly what her epithet did, Molly was just being pointlessly obtuse by answering with her command word and not actually saying what it did like she asked. Her power is as easy to use as any other, and allows her to suppress sound (and also "simplify things," whatever that means) within arms' length of herself. Easy power to explain. She was just being a twit.

So, she shuts out all the noise, and then walks away to find a quieter part of the museum where she can lower her silence field.

On the way out, she bumps into one kid who isn't participating in the big artifact fight dogpile. This kid had a prominent appearance in the OP, so I guess they'll be important later.

As Molly walks across the museum away from the everything, she third person narrates how she's getting tired. She's been sleep deprived for this last week due to her father overworking her, and now that she's in a tranquil corner of the museum with no people and has lowered her Dumb shield again the tiredness hits her all at once. She collapses in front of a cuneiform tablet and falls asleep right there on the museum floor. No one comes in and notices the little girl asleep in the middle of the gallery floor.

Commercial break. Some character splash art informs us that Indus is strong and stupid (which we already knew) and that Molly is twelve years old and the stars in her hair have a marshmallow texture (which we didn't already know, and also the second part of that raises a whole lot of really weird questions). Then, we come to the field trip ending and everyone exiting the museum. Still no sign of a teacher or bus driver to pick them up. Weird. The kids are still carrying the valuable and very sharp ancient artifacts that they took from the box Indus broke.

Molly's dad is still playing with her cell phone. He feels like he's forgotten something, but isn't sure what, and dismisses it as a random thought. He probably won't realize she's gone until he has no one to break child labor laws on this evening. Great guy.

After the kids and asshole leave, the guide lady makes an intercom call to inform anyone still in the museum that it's closing call. She and her coworkers close it up. Apparently no one bothers to do a sweep of the galleries to look for people or lost objects or the like. Or, you know, to sweep the floors and make sure nothing is stolen. So nobody notices the 12 year old girl collapsed in the middle of the damned archaeology gallery. Fastforward to 8:30PM, and back where we started with Molly facing off against the robbers.

The leader finishes his supervillain monologue for the benefit of...no one, as far as I can tell, as he and his minions don't seem to be focused on Molly...and then third person narrates himself kicking a potted plant as an act of petty destruction. The pot is a lot tougher than he counted on, though.

He orders a minion to blow it up with his laser gun, and then cackles victoriously about it.

He goes back to monologuing at no one. His voice acting is around at the same level as Dad Blyndef or the tourguide's; relatively decent at what it's going for, but really one-note and without nuance. Also, now that he repeats it I'm pretty sure that it's "Bonzai Blasters" rather than "Ponzi Blasters." Which makes more sense, but is also less funny, so I'm calling this a net loss. Finally, he finishes his speech, and only now notices that there's only one little kid in the room and that it's evening and the museum is closed.

Apparently he and his thugs thought it was earlier. Somehow.

And also they had been intending to crash through the glass wall and ransack a museum full of people in broad daylight, and are disappointed that it ended up being empty and at night. Which is...not how I'd expect a museum heist to be planned, but then these guys are obviously supposed to be comedically inept harmless villains, so whatever.

Molly picks up the phone again and tries to tell the 9-1-1 dispatch that there's a much more serious crime in progress now, but the leader (narrating in third person all the while) conjures a sphere of liquid and hurls it through the air, knocking the phone out of Molly's hands so he can crush it underfoot. Molly comments that, regardless of his offensive use of this liquid, it's pretty tasty.

He tries to convince her that the stuff he conjures is something more dangerous, like lava or acid or lavacid, but since she's already been splashed with it and tasted it there's really not much point. It also comes out that he's not actually the leader of the Bonzai Blasters, but a newly appointed captain within their organization. I guess they're a major street gang or something, then, with this being just one local chapter.

Wait though...I thought you had to speak your epithet aloud to use it? He never said "soup." Did I mix something up?

Anyway, when she accidentally points out the unintimidating (albeit fairly effectively used) nature of his epithet, he challenges her to a fight. She insists that she doesn't want to, and that while she does have an epithet herself it's not one with direct combat applications. All he hears is "I have an epithet" though, and leaps to the hope that he'll get to defeat a worthy opponent and impress the grunts.

Also, we're finally seeing more more complicated and situation-specific sprites. Like Molly tasting the soup on her finger, and Giovanni holding her up by the hoodie. Which sort of just makes the other, more overused ones stand out more.

Didn't notice her hood had bear ears on it. Are we sure her epithet isn't actually "Wired?" Or "Milk?"

That's halfway through the pilot, and already at 3k words and 75% through my image limit. So, now I guess I should rewatch the first half of "Ruby Rose" and compare and contrast. Did I mention that I hate you [USER=15345]@Alitur[/USER]? Well, I do.

At least this is only going to be six minutes or so.

So, I'm gonna try to forget my earlier experiences of this episode, and also TRY (probably unsuccessfully, but still) to pretend I haven't seen any of the later RWBY episodes yet and judge this on its own merits. Here goes.

We begin with a stylized silhouette slideshow, with Jen Taylor narrating some ancient history or legends of this setting. Humanity, according to her, likes its stories about heroes and villains, but has forgotten about its true origins. In the beginning, humanity rose from the dust of the world - wise, strong, and resourceful - but were almost immediately set upon by these shadowy demon-like creatures called the grimm.

Okay, so far so good. The music is subdued, but okay. Jen Taylor clearly isn't giving this her all (Cortana would be putting much more oomph into this narration if it were in a Halo game), but she's still a professional VA and her delivery is at least decent. And I mean...compared to Epithet Erased, these visuals are pretty much fine.

Humanity was nearly hunted to extinction, she tells us, until they found these magic crystals that they named "dust" after their own mythological source of life. Dust crystals apparently let you shoot lightning out of your hands (at least, if these visuals are to be taken literally), which is a real game changer against enemies that appear to rely on tooth and claw. That's a potentially cool magic system, depending on where the show goes with it. I'm getting tired of the lazy go-to "everyone has a unique power they're born with" thing that cartoons these days have gotten stuck on, so making the magic more universally predictable and tying it to a natural resource is a great change of pace. I'm excited for this! Anyway, with the grimm pushed back, humanity was able to start making technological progress and eventually created an advanced civilization.

First sign of trouble, though, is when she reaches the end of this account, and utters the baffling line "Man lit their way through the darkness, and in its wake came strength, civilization, and most importantly, life." The wording implies that "life" is something that only existed after the pushing back of the grimm...which, um...what? "Strength" makes sense; humanity's position was vulnerable and precarious before, and now it's much more secure. "Civilization" is obviously correct; the visuals even show us how human technology was only able to advance beyond the tribal nomad level after dust's discovery and that cities only happened after the war was mostly won. But...life being the final achievement?

Epithet Erased had some really baffling plot contrivances, bad writing, and lame turns of phrase, but it never seemed like the writers didn't speak fluent English. It's a really Engrish-y line, which I wouldn't have ever expected from an American-based studio.

Taylor goes on to tell us, with what sounds like subdued glee, that this state of affairs won't last forever, and that soon everything will return to darkness and entropy no matter how well humanity fights. Um...wait a minute, Jen, hold up there. You started this whole backstory with the assertion that the mankind of today loves its ancient stories about heroes and villains, but has forgotten its true origins. But, the origin story you just told is very much a heroic tale with humans as the clear heroes and the grimm monsters as the clear villains.

Compared to Epithet Erased's bad writing, this is more...hmm. EE suffered from constantly trying to be "whacky" without anything else to ground that against, as well as some more common faux pas like "as you know" worldbuilding and characters being as stupid as they need to to let the plot happened. RWBY, so far, feels like it actually isn't paying attention to what it's saying. Or, like, it's senile and unable to follow its own train of thought very far.

Anyway, Jen Taylor finishes her speech on that sinister note, and we start the show proper with a look at the night sky over a city street. This world's moon is shattered in a manner that doesn't really fit astrophysics as I understand them, but this is obviously a magical world so whatever. Alex DeLarge and his droogs come waltzing up the street below, and civilians pull back in fear at their approach to avoid any outbreaks of ultraviolence.

This character's design is...well, it's definitely fetching, but it's also derivative enough that I'm not sure how much credit it deserves for that. The matching uniforms for the droogs make me think that this version of them are more of a formal criminal organization than just a random band of psychopathic punks. Unfortunately, the animation is a different story. These still screenshots capture how colorful and stylish the models and backgrounds are, but leave out just how twitchy, stiff, and janky-looking everything is in motion. I mean...it's obviously got more animation than Epithet Erased, but it also doesn't succeed as well (I know, I know) at what it seems to be shooting for.

Comparing the animation overall side to side? I dunno who wins thus far. RWBY's animation just looks cheap, lazy, and unskilled. Epithet Erased's looks like some sophomore film student's weird experiment that I don't even know how to properly assess.

Another unseen voice, much more poorly acted than Jen's, replies to her downer ending as the droogs enter what appears to be a Dust shop. Telling her that victory might rest in things she's forgotten. Those things apparently including "smaller, simpler souls." The camera rests on a girl dressed like Little Red Riding Hood sitting in the back of the dust shop reading a gun-nut periodical while the droogs walk in the front door. It's time for an epic battle of spiritual simplicity versus the old ultraviolent shop-crasting!

The shopkeeper raises his hands when confronted by the robbers, and begs them with really, really bad VA to just take the cash and not hurt him. Alex assures him (with an infinitely better VA) that they're not here for his money, just his dust, pre-powdered and uncut crystals alike. Which basically is the exact same thing as money to him, but then Alex probably didn't actually care that much about reassuring him.

I'm kind of baffled as to why the dust store owner isn't putting up more of a fight though. Would a guy in this line of work really not keep a dust crystal on him at all times? And, for that matter, why his shop doesn't have some actual security. These crystals let you shoot monster-killing energy blasts out of your ass, right? Shouldn't this place be locked down like the arsenal that it is?

Also, Alex comments on how hard it is to find a dust shop open this late at night. I guess he and Giovanni Potage learned at the same crime school. :/

Anyway, those questions aside, the droogs spread out and start stealing pre-ground dust from these tubes on the sides of the room while Roman makes the shopkeeper fork over the crystals. I guess ground dust is off-the-shelf superpower fuel, and full crystals are over-the-counter superpower fuel. One droog spots Little Red Riding Hood still spaced out reading her gun mag and listening to her headphones, seeming to have not noticed what's going on. Then, he approaches and tells her to raise her hands. Okay, reasonable, she's in a dust shop reading about how the liberal deep state is coming for her guns and the NRA needs her donations to stop that, she's probably someone who you'd want to make sure had her hands up in a robbery.

But then, when she finally gets her headphones off so she can hear him, she asks him if he's trying to rob her, and he says yes.

Um. What?

You're in the middle of a dust shop. Which you targeted because your gang is after dust, specifically (Alex said they weren't interested in cash). Are you really going to stop and pick the pocket of some teenaged shopper? Do you actually think she's going to have something more valuable on hand? I mean, I can see wanting to make sure she doesn't have any dust in her hand to start attacking with, but that's not really robbing her.

When he answers in the affirmative, she sends him flying across the shop, whizzing right past Alex and the others, and out the window. Alex boredly motions for another droog to go confront the person who just effortlessly threw the first one across the damned building. Said droog goes, and it ends almost exactly the same way; this time, Little Red Riding Hood launches herself through the window with her feet driving the droog ahead of her by the torso.

The next thing we know, Alex and Co are gathered around the window that she and her victim just sailed out of. She's now posing dramatically out on the street in front of the store with this giant mechanical gunscythe thing that telescoped out of nowhere when she needed it. The guy she launched out ahead of her...um...I guess she landed on him so hard against the pavement outside that he just disintegrated. Alex sends the other droogs out after her with guns and knives and things while he stands around with his thumb in his ass and she kills the lot of them. Her killing them does look nice. Mostly. It's a typical Monty Oum spectacle, all fluff and motion, impressive style, but not much sense of time or space. I've learned (both from later RWBY, and other stuff) that with very few exceptions, Monty Oum's "fight" scenes are just a matter of taste. If you want to see pretty colors and creative moves, you'll like all of them. If you want to see opponents struggling with each other as if they're actually trying to achieve an in-universe goal as part of a story, you'll only like a scarce few. I'm a story person, so I generally don't enjoy his work, especially when it's trying to support a surrounding narrative. The fight theme (an original song courtesy of Red's headphone) is good, though.

Anyway, after she's effortlessly taken care of the droogs with her gunscythe (which, going by the animation, doesn't actually seem to be SHARP. When she hits someone with the blade, they go flying as if struck by a blunt instrument. Weird).

...

Going to make an aside here in which I actually acknowledge my later RWBY knowledge in a non-sarcastic way.

The way the models go flying rather than being cut when struck could be explained by their auras having absorbed all the damage. Although, in that case, it raises some questions. For one, where did they all go after being knocked away? Did Ruby somehow know exaaaactly how much force she needed to use to knock each mook's aura out without her gunscythe continuing on through his body? Actually...no, that wouldn't work either, because running out of aura doesn't knock you out unless its depleted by a blow to the head or whatever that would do that anyway.

I guess I'll just assume that Ruby actually did slice all of those droogs into pieces, but the animation at this point was too cheap and hasty (even compared to later RWBY) to actually show that.

...

Alex, now the last droog standing, tells the red-robed devotchka that he'll just be leaving now (his voice acting continues to be the high point of this episode's production values) and then shoots a rocket at her out of his cane. His cane is a rocket launcher. Sure, why not. She just stands there like an idiot for the multiple seconds it takes him to aim, convert his cane into launcher mode, and fire, only jumping over the shot at the last second. It blows a whole in the pavement right where she'd been, somehow. It didn't look like he was aiming at her feet. I guess the rocket got frustrated when it didn't hit her and just turned ninety degrees downward to end this cruel existence into which it had been launched.

Then, Alex teleports across the street and halfway up a ladder on the side of a nearby building.

It looks like he's supposed to have dashed away as soon as he fired the rocket, running past her as she jumped over it. But...he got all the way up the street in that split second? And halfway up the damned ladder, which he doesn't seem to be climbing very fast at all now that he's on camera? Even for a stupid brainless Monty Oum bullet ballet piece, this makes no goddamned sense.

Little Red asks the shopkeeper if he's okay with her going after Alex. Hey, Little Red, why not just fucking shoot him? Your gunscythe is both gun and scythe, right? Alex is a (currently; evidently he can go much faster when he's not in frame) slow-moving target climbing up a vertical ladder with his entire back, arms, legs, and head to you, right? You have no qualms about using deadly force against people who have proven they'd happily kill you themselves, right? But no, guess she's got to chase after him so she can hit him with her gunscythe up close for some reason.

I wonder. Does he have some kind of super speed ability that only works in short bursts? If she saw him use that just now, then she might figure he'll just use it again if she starts shooting. Okay, yeah, I got it! He has a super speed ability that works in short bursts, while she herself does not possess any kind of superspeed ability. Okay, yeah, now this scene makes a little more sense!

Anyway, it seemed like Little Red was just a random bystander before. Now it seems like maaaaaybe she was supposed to be guarding the shop, since she's there armed when no one else is near closing time and also was pointedly not buying anything? If so, she's a pretty bad security guard, but that would still be less stupid than a store like this having no one to guard it at all. That would be as idiotic as a museum staff not checking each room for obvious things left in the middle of the floor before closing!

So, Little Red chases after him. By the time she reaches the top of the ladder, he's already reached the far side of the roof. Man, really too bad you don't have a speedboost like his, Little Red! Maybe you should buy whatever kind of Dust or dust-powered contraption he was using to do that. That's how magic works in this setting, so that's probably what she could do for next time. As it is though, he's outpaced her, and he has a getaway...skyranger...waiting to pick him up off the far side of the roof.

I assume that this society isn't nearly as centralized and policed as the tech level would suggest. Otherwise, a criminal getting away in a private aircraft would just make himself more conspicuous rather than less. That skyranger would be tracked on radar as well as visually, and probably intercepted before it could get far. If this is being treated as an actual escape option though, then it can be assumed that this place doesn't have a strong central government with the resources or technology needed to track a getaway plane.

Alex hops up on the plane, making Little Red wish more than ever before that she had invested in some sort of speed-increasing augmentation, and throws a red dust crystal at her feet. She stands there gormlessly once again while he aims his canezooka at it and fires. The rocket detonates the dust crystal, making for a double-explosion. Is that how dust works, after all? I guess the illustrations of the people holding and using it directly weren't meant to be taken literally, my bad. Fortunately for Little Red, a sexy blonde schoolmarm has teleported up to Little Red's side and uses her magic wand to shield them both from the explosion.

Um. Okay, I guess? I'm at a loss to understand how any of these powers they're using are supposed to work.

Alex retreats into the skyranger and tells his miniskirt-wearing pilot that they've got a "huntress" attacking them. If Huntresses and Hunters are recognizable by their uniforms, then it's rather a lewd organization. Is that a riding crop in her hand? Looks like one. Hunters are magical law enforcement cosplay-BDSMers I guess. Miniskirt lets Alex take the wheel and has a big elemental shooting match against Sexy McGonagall the Huntress. McGonagall shoots a bunch of magic missile type things, and then conjures a storm that rains shards of armor-piercing ice on the skyranger. Is she using dust for this? Maybe she stuffs her riding crop full of it. Or the crop is just a focus, and she has one of her fellow Hunters stuff her full of it before she goes out on patrol, if all of them really do share the outfit and weapon themeing. Such a spicy setting. Miniskirt uses big fire blasts of her own to repel McGonagall's attacks, and some kind of telekinetic thingamajigy to bounce away Little Red's bullets as well. The two surviving criminals escape, without their dust.

Little Red turns to Sexy McGonagall and asks if she really is a Huntress. The school discipline-themed combat domme nods ascent. Little Red then excitedly asks for her autograph. I guess Little Red has never met a Hunter or Huntress before, going by the reaction. At the very least, they're not something she gets to interact with every day.

That's about halfway through. I'll wait until the second half of this side-by-side review before making most of my conclusions, but so far...well, they're both pretty bleh, and haven't gotten my investment. Epithet Erased, though, seems to be less ambitious both visually and in terms of story, as it’s mostly just going for lolrandom absurdist comedy. RWBY is aiming higher on both counts, but not really putting in much more effort, so it falls shorter in the end.