I realized that Hazel is a damn hypocrite, not only is he a very flat antagonist but his motivations seem more like the tantrums of a spoiled child since he blames Ozpin for his sister's death and since we don't know much about Hazel's sister. Hazel I can't say much and I can assume that she was just a simple hunter and I understand that he is angry but it seems that he is only looking to point out a culprit instead of accepting that his sister died in the line of duty and I don't want to imagine what he would have done if His sister Elegia became a police officer and died because of some criminal Hazel, who would he blame the police officers or the criminals and if he chose to be a firefighter and died in a fire, who would he blame the fire or the fire department and I think he had a lot of time to realize He says that his sister would disapprove of his actions, something that is not touched on in the program until the end of this character. In the second point he says that Ozpin sends children to die but I wonder if Salem is not doing the same because how many children died in the attack on Vale and how many children died in Atlas without counting that he works with a murderer who would kill children without problems and we have cinder who was trained by salem since she was young and let mercury and emerald 2 young people to send them on dangerous missions almost the same thing that ozpin does and maybe worse and what bothers me is that no one in the program tells her that He is a damn hypocrite and let him die like a hero.
What frustrates me is that no one really calls him out on his bullshit.
Totally. Someone at least should have called him a dumbass
It would have been funny depending on who called him out tho
Yang : "you can't just blame others for your problems"
Everyone: "cough"
Jaune : "you can't break the law just because you have a mission to uphold!"
Ruby: "uuuuuuuh, we..... did kinda steal military equipment eheh"
Lol
Man i wished Ozpin snapped and roasted his dumbass.
"Sit down Hazel. Let us talk. Ah yes, young Gretel. I remember her well. "
"Gretchen"
"Such a wonderful swordsman. "
"She used a bow. "
"The important thing is, Hazel, you can't protect people forever. At a certain point you need to push them out of the nest, so they learn to fly. "
"Or yeet them off a cliff with no preparation or instruction?"
"Quiet Oscar"
That'd be the point, if the show ever went anywhere with it.
Hazel is after Ozpin because his sister died in training, completely ignoring his sister's (presumed) desire to help people as a Hunter.
In a better written show, he would be forced to address this contradiction, or die a fool, blind to the last.
Unfortunately, this is not a better written show, and he just turns coat and dies without any actual development or exploration of the subject.
Coeur Al'Aran's In Your Wildest Dreams manages to make it work. In this version, Gretchen was a student at Beacon and Oz tried to recruit her into his inner circle. She died on an off the books mission that was supposed to be a test, Oz tried to cover it up, and Hazel was shown emails between Oz and Qrow talking about it by an anonymous "friend" (probably Watts)
Coeur also makes sure to call him out on it in a couple other stories, like Relic of the Future did so too, I think.
The problem is that they have a great setup for an interesting villain, but can't be bothered to give more than two sentences regarding his motivation and expect the audience to use their latent psychic powers to figure everything out with no further effort on the writers' part.
A sibling so blinded by rage and grief that he will lash out at the person the perceive as responsible can work great, but not when you treat the situation flippantly or motivation like it's trivial.
They could've just had Hazel so twisted by his anger over what happened to his sister that he doesn't care and won't listen to reason. But then the whole situation they used to turn him falls apart because there is no way he would believe Ozpin or help him.
They could also explain Hazel being willing to work for Salem not because she can't be killed, but because she offers him something. Maybe have her insinuate that with the relics she can bring his sister back to life and even the people he had to kill along the way or something.
The writers barely give us anything to work with regarding Gretchen in the show and even the arguments Oscar makes about what happened to her feel more like him working off an assumption than actual knowledge. It doesn't help that what Oz claims about her death also sounds like the kind of answer that would be given to cover up something. They could've had Ozpin hiding what happened or his role in it, but the writers never seem to want Ozpin to be anything less than a paragon despite attempts to insinuate he was shady or untrustworthy.
The worst part is that one of the more important pieces of information was buried in the Amity Arena mobile game. There it states that Ozpin personally recruited Gretchen and Hazel believes Ozpin was the one who talked her into becoming a Huntress.
This combined with some other things could've painted an interesting picture.
Hazel claims Gretchen was just a child and we know Ozpin will bring in people below the normal entry age for Beacon. So that means Gretchen could've been as young or a little younger than Ruby was at the series start.
We know that Ozpin will allow certain teams to get away with bending the rules or doing their own missions like with RWBY and STRQ, with Ozpin sometimes enabling them or showing special treatment. That could lead to a situation where Ozpin allowed Gretchen's team to get involved with something where they were clearly in over their head and never reigned them in. Imagine how Qrow or Tai might've reacted if during the Breach Ruby or Yang died and they learned Ozpin had basically done nothing to stop the girls from investigating and fighting the White Fang, even helping the girls go to Mountain Glenn when they normally wouldn't be able to.
Those factors give a good and plausible setup for Hazel blaming Ozpin. Ozpin would be the one who convinced Gretchen to go to Beacon and become a huntress. Ozpin would've turned a blind eye to or even covertly aided his sister's team being involved in some unvaccinated mission or investigation that they tried to do themselves instead of handing it over to the authorities. Gretchen could've been Ruby's age to show she may not have fully understood what she was getting into.
One way or another, Ozpin has to be tied to what led to Gretchen's death for the vendetta and his last words to Oscar of "no more Gretchens" to make any sense.
The problem is that working for Salem makes no sense. She either promises Hazel something that would get him to go along with killing people unrelated to his quest for revenge or he is so twisted by his grief and rage that it just doesn't matter to him, which changes the entire persona they created for him.
They had a good thing, but couldn't be bothered to actually develop it or give more than two seconds of thought as to why the setup they went with makes no sense.
It also felt like he was saving his own ass. Like only after Salem plan is revealed does he defect. I think it would have been better if they used the Gretchen card more. "You think im the cause for Gretchen's death and hate me for it? Fine, but what about you? What about all those Hunstmen you killed in Mistral? The families you split apart! Dont you dare say it was mercy! If you want to accuse my hands of being bloody with the innocent, dont point at me with a finger covered in the same blood!"
Oh that was good! This is kind of writing we needed for Oz.
While Hazel died mostly doing the right thing, I'm not sure it was heroic, really more anti-heroic.
Hazel's defining characteristic is Wrath. When he goes after Salem, he does not fight to stall or prevent her from casting. He just dives in and pounds the crap out of her... which is impressive, but it's still just Wrath.
In the end, he died to his sin, much the way you could argue that Watts died due to his pride.
Honestly, I find it kinda fascinating when it comes to villains like Tyrian he works so effectively. He's simply a vicious serial killer hellbent on watching the world burn. While on the other hand Hazel was supposed to be this morally grey anti-villain, but the writers kept fumbling with his character arc and story line. I've seen many RWBY stans do a whole set of mental gymnastics to defend Hazel's motivations and character arc.
For example, a RWBY stan told me his character arc of slowly realizing Salem's the true enemy and him sacrificing himself was well-written. Sorry to say, but no, he doesn't slowly come to the realization Salem's the enemy. From his introduction, and throughout his scenes, he's 100% complacent in following Salem's orders. Then when he sees Jinn he's like, "oh no, am I the baddie?" Then becomes a good guy in like 5 minutes.
Another thing I find baffling is the fact Oscar instantly gave up on James right after he shot him off the ledge of the vault, but kept trying to redeem Hazel after he kept getting his face punched into jelly.
All they needed was a throw away line saying Salem claiming she can bring her back which i feel like is totally possible to believe and we're better off
Revenge on someone who got your daughter killed
Possibility to bring her back
Both get what they want from this
Forgive me if I write wrong, it's because English is not my native language and I am mastering it.
You got the point across. Frankly Hazel makes no sense as a villain considering he is responsible for killing others making more like him.
Hazel is Wrath.
Another thing that was so easily fixable by the writers with the material they already established. They could've easily made it so Hazel sister was a test subject in transferring maiden powers but went wrong and she died during the process, immediately the blame can go onto Ozpin and Ozpin alone as it seems he was the deciding factor in those experiments and swears revenge on him. Obviously the part about him going out to fight Salem and losing may have to be slightly different maybe the same outcome of him not being able to keep her down forever although I think Salem being immortal is a stupid premise and a real pain in the ass to find a derived way to beat her but still, the answers was right fucking there.
Allright, yeah Hazel is kind of shit. Great character, but terrible motivations.
If I had any control over Rwby, Hazel would be a Nihilist. He sides with Salem cause he veiws the destruction of everything as Inevitable. He has a hatred of Ozpin/Ozma becasue something they did directly lead to the death of Gretchen. At some point Salem approached Hazel and told him the truth, and challenged him to strike her down to justify Gretchens sacrifice by Ozpins hands, but of course Salem is immortal.
No matter how hard Hazel tries, he can't kill Salem. She lets Hazelstrike her down, and gets up no matter what. It forces Hazel to see that Ozpin sacrafice Gretchen for nothing and that they are all doomed, Salem will win it is just a matter of time.
Upon this realization that Gretchen's sacrafice was for not, Hazel joins Salems banner becasue she offers him vengance against Ozpin, the man who offered his sister up as a sacrafical lamb.
Is just a straight up dumbass.
Dude wants to kill Ozpin because his sister died in a training mission were she basically works as a monster hunter. So he somehow think it’s a great idea to go and work for a chick who looks like a human Grimm, can control and make Grimm, lives in the Grimm lands with a Grimm spawning pool right out side.
In all honesty hazel shouldn’t be on Salem’s side, it would of been interesting if he was a rouge huntsman collecting evidence to black list Ozpin or something, hell even the rights to go after him in a lethal way with concrete evidence.hazel’s sister could of been killed by grimm and he teams up with salem is the dumbest thing I saw there in the show besides everything post volume 3
He's an idiot. He has a wack ass motivation with a wack ass semblance
But to play Devil's advocate...... just because I like to lol.....a grieving brother could definitely see her sister's basically military official as heavily contributing to her death. And let's face it.... the guy that catapults inexperienced children off a cliff into a forest teeming with monsters...... probably isn't the best trainer lol
Maybe she WAS ill trained, or unprepared. Maybe Oz threw her off a building into a Grimm lol. But regardless, I do agree that she was the one that made the decision... and it is not Oz's fault she died
Of course he's a hypocrite. Killing huntsmen out of some weird desire to keep huntsmen from dying. It's stupid. Buuuuuuut, maybe there's a part of him that genuinely believes if Oz stopped cranking out soldiers, Salem could effortlessly take over the planet..... and less people would have to die. In a very narrow minded way he thinks he makes sense. Not to mention Salem probably manipulated his grief and grew him into a monster.... like she did with Cinder
It's kinda like Pain. Kill a few, to prevent the rest of the world from dying
Now hold on before you start! I know some of you are going to- "well, clearly you didn't watch the show! Clearly you're insane if you're siding with the villain". You know who you are lol
I'm not...... I'm not at all. He's wrong..... 100%. All I'm doing is trying to explain why Hazel is the way he is.... stupid as he may very well be