RWBY is an action focused animated series produced by American biased studio Roosterteeth.
It was conceived by the late great Monty Oum who one day thought to himself,
“Hey, I want to make an anime”
and then the mad lad actually did it.
Now, I love RWBY.
I’m going to leave those words on the screen for a moment
because I genuinely want people to understand that.
While I can’t say I’ve actively kept up with the series all the time,
I’ve been following RWBY since all the way back to when the Red trailer
was released in 2012. Even before that, I had been following the work of Monty
since his time on GameTrailers unraveling the conspiracy of if
Master Chief was in fact a woman and in a relationship with Samas.
But – and I know that everyone knows the “but” was coming –
I am not IN love with RWBY.
This is an important distinction and it’s one I have to make
because I feel like a bit of what I am going to be saying
in this video is going to come off as a negative.
I have major problems with RWBY, from the world,
to the characters, to the fact that sometimes I truly have to wonder
where the series is going and if it plans to even end in a satisfying way,
BUT I have to say that none of that has stopped me from enjoying it.
At no point have I not found enjoyment in the series.
OK Yes!
Even with the part in volume one, with Jaune
and him being an idiot and yeah even there.
So while I have noticed issues, and will definitely mention some of them,
RWBY for me is still entertaining and stands for me as the
second best thing Rooster Teeth has released.
So we good?
Good.
Welcome to Glass Reflection.
Let’s jam.
RWBY is the story of a group of young teenagers with superpowers
who go to a school to become good at fighting an evil demonic menace known as Grim.
Grim are manifestations of evil and something
that has been causing people problems for a long time.
So much of a problem that their importance and relevance slowly diminishes as the series goes on.
Many grim look like scary wolves in a totally not-trying-to-be-subtle reminder
that almost everything from RWBY is a modern take on fairy tales and legends…
like Little Red Riding Hood. Ruby, our protagonist, not to be confused with "Team RWBY"
or the show's title, is a girl with a red hood
who built her own death scythe as a not-so-subtle reminder that Soul Eater
is an anime that exists and is totally not an influence to this series whatsoever.
Ruby joins up with her new huntress teammates Stuck-up, Moody, and Punch-a-Lot
to stop various evil plots from a variety of evildoers, like Bowler Hat,
Ice Cream, Blockhead, and Maleficent the Mistress of all Evil.
Oh, and there are other characters here because……
wait how many characters are there again…?
While at its core this is a story about fighting
for what is right,
though with a constant shifting of the definition of right and wrong,
I assure you that the story is probably not
what will get you or keep you interested in RWBY.
You know what will though?
The fact that the show is cool as hell.
Despite the overall narrative being not that much different than a common page on TV Tropes,
RWBY is best positively described as a series that proves why some tropes are popular
and why they work at making entertaining stories.
Seriously though, the actual TV Tropes page on RWBY is so big
that they had to give it multiple separate pages…
Tropes in and of themselves are not bad.
They are merely tools to help you build a narrative.
The problem most people have with an overuse of them is when
tropes are used as a lazy way to write your story.
Why build an intricate backstory when you can just toss
a character’s family and or friends into a fridge,
or give them evil parents, or…you get the idea.
RWBY is not a series that I think uses its tropes badly,
but rather that it uses a lot of them very, very quickly.
RWBY is not for want of ideas, themes, or possible avenues for unique and awesome storytelling,
but that is kind of its problem.
RWBY has a big issue with scale.
The world of Remnant is one that feels like it covers thousands of square miles but is
only an inch deep.
So much about the world is brushed over with the barest hint of an explanation
under the assumption that, we really don’t need much else.
“What’s aura?”
Oh, just a shield that explains why characters can take so many hits without dying.
“What’s a semblance?”
Basically similar to quirks from My Hero Academia:
unique abilities that give people special powers.
“So like magic, right?”
No, magic is something completely separate that humans don’t innately have anymore,
unless they use this mineral call dust mined from the earth.
“But what about Weiss?”
OK.....yeah...
Weiss also has the power to summon past enemies to fight for her somehow?
IDK, it’s a hereditary gift that’s apparently not magic, and also not her semblance,
it’s just something she can do and they never really explain why.
The rules of this world are almost kept in a state of constant flux
and most of it can be changed at any time for the sake of the plot with one major exception.
There’s one rule that RWBY was pretty much based around.
“If it can be a gun, it is a gun.”
Gauntlets?
It’s a shotgun.
Hammer?
It’s a grenade launcher.
Thermos?
It’s a flamethrower.
What about a spear?
It’s also a rifle.
And a Scythe?
“It’s also a gun.”
“Because it’s cool” is a running theme in trying to explain anything that exists
in this series,
and while that does make for some prime entertainment,
it’s hard to keep track of everything after a while.
What’s almost worse about the amount of information we don’t get
is how readily the narrative keeps adding to it in droves.
The show first introduces to us the idea of four super powerful women on the planet,
referred to as “the maidens”, who received their powers in order to protect the planet
or something.
But before we can even get our heads wrapped around that, the following season then says,
“OH HEY! There are these things called Relics now, which are also important!”
…I guess.
How important, you ask?
So important that, as of the end of season 6,
which is four seasons of knowing the maidens exist and three seasons since the introduction
of relics,
we’ve only seen two and one of them respectively.
You’d think that the reason we are blazing through all of these
seemingly deep facets of the world is because, while the world itself is huge,
they don’t have time to really explain in lieu of blitzing the main narrative…
but I don’t really buy that.
The driving force of the show hasn’t honestly changed all that much over time.
While the initial three volumes acted like an introduction to all the characters
in a school-oriented format that genre savvy anime fans would be accustomed to,
volumes 4-6 and even the intro of volume 7 have just been more like
one long road trip that doesn’t really have an ending in sight.
So I feel like they have no real pressure to explain or further build upon
the parts of the world of Remnant that we’ve already seen
when the road trip will just continue to some new area.
It’s like flying to a new country for a sightseeing vacation and only viewing the
highlights.
Sure, you could go to the UK and spend a day each to see
Big Ben, Stonehenge, and Hogwarts. But could you honestly say
in those three days that you saw what the UK was about? I’d say no.
And the same holds true of Remnant.
How could they fix that? Well…I’m not sure.
Extra runtime or more episodes *might* help,
and that’s been a definite improvement since the first volume.
But even in Volume 6 we had an episode that was only 13 and a half minutes long,
which includes the opening and ending.
A standard 20-25 minute runtime is not something RWBY has yet and probably never will get,
which is disappointing because I would have thought after
Gen:Lock Rooster Teeth would have figured that out, apparently not…
Really, I feel like RWBY just needs a bit more focus on what it wants to do.
There are plenty of things our characters COULD do,
but sometimes too much choice is a bad thing.
Even more than that, I feel that it’s also a simple matter of
…we can’t see the ending yet.
Despite most of the narrative being predictable (considering its trope heavy nature),
the same cannot be said for predicting how the show might end, or even when it might
end.
The lead writers over at Rooster Teeth have stated that there are still
plenty of seasons left to go, but I wonder if that’s really what’s best.
Let’s just hope the series hasn’t jumped the shark quite yet.
Now, the animation of the series is…
…eeeehhhhhhhhhhhh
So the animation, to be very generous,
is great for us the audience for one major reason.
It shows the growth and improvement that a studio gets with its skills and techniques.
Plenty of the work done in Volume 1 of RWBY is rough.
Like, really rough.
Motions are awkward, walk cycles are skewed,
lip sync is barely in existence,
and any character not important or relevant is a black shadow because
there isn’t the time or budget to do anything beyond that!
Starting in volume two, the budget increases slightly,
which is enough to A) get rid of the shadow people and
B) give us one of the franchise’s best scenes that no one can argue with me about.
Then in volume 4, everyone gets new models,
the whole series switches animation software,
and all the little things become far more impressive as time goes on.
This is not something we normally get the chance to see.
Normally the animation is either good enough that we don’t question it, or bad enough that it’s
all that we get before the whole project is canned before it can improve.
It’s rare that we get the chance to see improvement in a dedicated team
of animators over time for any particular project.
Also, if nothing else, it’s both motivating and impressive to be able to witness said
change in RWBY over time.
Though of course, the highlight of RWBY is and has always been its fights and choreography.
While the animation in early volumes during talking head scenes was almost always questionable,
the fight scenes were not.
The argument could be made that fight scenes from earlier volumes
still stand up to later iterations done with improved animation software.
Hell, I’d make the argument that the Yellow Trailer way back from 2013
had fighting that was still impressive compared to RWBY of today.
But even then, there is this feeling like something is missing.
Some people attribute the change in fighting to the loss of series creator
Monty back in 2015, but even looking at the fights he choreographed himself
it STILL always felt like there was something missing.
There were, and still are, fantastic fights,
impressively made and insane to watch,
but I don’t feel like any of the fights in RWBY had as much emotional weight
behind them as they could have.
Instead they seem like awesome-looking fights, for the sake of having an awesome-looking
fight.
Ahh, that's probably sounding really confusing, cause that's like both a positive and a negative
Ok let me give an example,
I’ve never been a big fan of Naruto,
but even I know of the fight between Rock Lee and Gaara.
It’s the almost 40-minute fight spread out between several episodes that,
despite its shounen tenancy to have spectating characters continually talking over the action,
still TO THIS DAY holds up as an impressive, and emotionally charged fight.
What is the equivalent to that fight in RWBY?
Fights happen, fights look insane, fights can be technically impressive
if you know or guess the inner workings of the characters and how they fight,
but few of the fights have as much emotion behind them.
While it can still be cool to have pretty fights for the sake of it,
it would be nice to start seeing some fights with actual weight behind them.
Actual stakes.
The show’s got plenty of characters,
just saying.
But for its lack of emotion and weight in its fight scenes,
it’s a series that still has plenty of heart.
While I can’t be 100% certain, I think this is probably why I still enjoy the hell out
of watching it.
Yang has always impressed me with her inner fire and determination,
Blake with her courage to face her fears,
Weiss by subverting expectations,
and Ruby with her boundless optimism.
JAUNE: I'm a failure...
RUBY: Nope.
JAUNE: Nope?
RUBY: Nope!
Your a leader now Jaune.
You're not allowed to be a failure.
JAUNE: But...
What if I'm a failure at being a leader?
RUBY: hrmmmmmmm...
Nope.
ARKADA: Production value does not, by itself, make an interesting or entertaining series.
You can have the best animation of the age, have amazing music and vocal casts to back
them up,
but without compelling characters that you want to see more of,
the best you can hope for is a beautiful looking flash of awesome
that fizzles out almost instantly.
RWBY is not that.
RWBY has been a slow burn that has over time been building to bigger and more fantastical
heights.
I can only hope that the fire it creates doesn’t suffocate
itself out by the time whatever ending the creators have instore for it eventually happens.
If it happens.
And so, with all of that in mind, after meticulously considering my thoughts on the categories
of
story, characters, animation, sound, and my own personal enjoyment,
which I then manifest into a gun and fire into the SUN, I happily award RWBY with a
recommendation to watch it.
And you can currently do this in multiple locations!
Most of RWBY is actually available right here on YouTube on Rooster Teeth’s channel,
but it’s also available on their own proprietary streaming service, VRV, and of course
with our good friends over at Crunchyroll. Watch it wherever you fancy.
But if you are looking for a similar show that might scratch a similar itch
the initial obvious recommendation is Soul Eater considering the similarities to the
opening seasons of RWBY.
Followup recomendation is basically any shounen anime ever, preferably one with a deeper story
and potentially an ending like Full Metal Alchemist or Hunter X Hunter.
Lastly, I want to give a very special thank you to my patrons, who not only support my
work in general,
but who also allow me to do what I do.
I love and appreciate you all.
Specifically though, as I like to do, I want to give particular shout-outs to patrons
Richard Emil Bradley, Hector Montemayor, Siri Yamiko, Ryeban Boneapart, Rune Jakobsen, and
Calhoonboy
for being especially awesome.
You guys are great!
And until next time
Wait, didn't I say that
Yeah, I said early on that RWBY was the second best, Rooster Teeth show didn't I?
You wanna know what the first is?
I'm not joking either.
and until next time – ladies, gentlemen, and others –
watch more anime…and stay frosty.