RWBY (pronounced "Ruby") is an American CGI-animated anime-style web series and media franchise created by the late Monty Oum for Rooster Teeth.
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.jpg) "We've all lost something, and I've seen what loss can do to people. But if we gave up every time we lost, then we'd never be able to move forward." - Ruby Rose
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Plot
The story takes place in the world of Remnant, which is filled with mysterious and malevolent creatures known as the "Creatures of Grimm". Prior to the events of the series, mankind waged a battle of survival against the Grimm before discovering the power of a mysterious element called Dust which allowed them to fight back against the monsters. In the present day, Dust is used to augment people's abilities and powers. Those who train to battle the Grimm are known as Huntsmen or Huntresses. The series focuses on four girls, each with her own unique weapon and powers. Together, they form team RWBY (pronounced Ruby, which is also the name of the main protagonist, Ruby Rose) at Beacon Academy in the kingdom of Vale, where they are trained to become Huntresses alongside team JNPR (pronounced Juniper), team SSSN (pronounced sun), team CRDL (pronounced cardinal), team CFVY (coffee), and various other student teams.
Why It's The Day We've Waited For
- Pretty cool and nice-looking 3D animation that almost looks exactly like a CGI-style type of anime art that gets better after Volume 3.
- The art style proficiently resembles anime compared to Totally Spies!, Code Lyoko, and Winx Club.
- Awesome action sequences.
- Every girl in the RWBY team is based on a certain fairy-tale character, which is a very unique concept. Ruby is Little Red Riding Hood, Weiss Schnee is Snow White (even her name is Snow White in backwards German), Blake is based on Belle from Beauty and the Beast and Yang is based on Goldilocks.
- The weapons are creative and fun to watch in action, and most of them happen to be two or more weapons merged into one, like Ruby's scythe/sniper rifle, Nora's hammer/grenade launcher, Blake's cleaver-like sword/gun/katana, etc.
- Many of the other characters are based on characters from fairy tales/mythes/folklore/history as well, like Jaune Arc (Joan of Arc), Nora Valkyrie (Thor), Pyrhha Nikos (Achilles), Lie Ren (Hua Mulan), Salem (Rapunzel/Fairy Godmother), Cinder Fall (Cinderella), Hazel Rainart (Hansel), Jinn (Genie), Penny Polendina (Pinocchio) and Adam Taurus (Beast/Gaston).
- The character development is intricate and beautiful, most notably Weiss Schnee and how a simple case of loneliness affects her.
- Funny, relatable and hilarious characters, such as Team RWBY themselves, Nora, Penny and Jaune Arc.
- Pretty cool, detailed, and creative character designs, such as Yang, Ren, Cinder Fall, etc.
- The storylines range from decent to amazing, specifically following Volume 3, where the show adopts a darker tone, going from a mainly comedic, high school fantasy, to a story-driven, more mature show.
- Blake's background is considerably inspirational, and allowed episodes to cover serious issues, especially general discrimination in a racial group (in this case, the faunus, who are humans with certain animal features such as ears, tails, or retractable claws).
- Decent jokes, such as the comedic chemistry between Ruby and Yang.
- The voice acting is incredible and fits the characters nicely.
- The background design is great, detailed, and fits every scene extremely well.
- The illustrations on the volume covers are awesome, giving the viewer a taste of what the new Volume has in store for them.
- Incredible, inspiring soundtrack, like Red Like Roses, Mirror Mirror, From Shadows, I Burn, the new theme songs the show gains for every new volume, etc.
- Mostly in the later volumes, the emotional scenes are tear-inducing, like Penny/Pyrrha's deaths, Yang falling into depression, Ren and Nora's backstory, and Jaune's training video.
- The writing is great, especially after Volume 1, where the show adapts to a much bigger and more complex story, and a darker, more mature and serious tone.
- The RWBY Chibi spin-off series is very cute and funny and manages to be a pure comedy spin-off of an action-packed, story-driven show done well. As rather than focusing on toilet jokes or juvenile humor with lazy animation, it focuses on simple slice of life stories with funny comedy, with a nice, cute animation style.
Bad Qualities
- The animation in Volume 1 wasn't great, with lots of technical errors that looked too much like video game glitches, but thanks to the atmosphere of the episodes in general, this can be easily overlooked.
- The writing in Volume 1 could have been better. It had that standard anime feeling with barely anything special. The later volumes were much more emotionally powerful.
- Ruby and Yang were not developed that much. Ruby did get more mature, but both Ruby and Yang mostly remain a mystery.
- The action scenes in Volumes 4 and 5 were rather clunky, and didn't have the flow of the first three volumes. This can be blamed on Monty Oum's death, as he was the lead animator, and when he died, a new animation team was brought in which didn't give the animators a good direction, thus making the fights on those episodes subpar (with exceptions like Qrow vs. Tyrian in Volume 4) with problems such as a bad balance between talking and fighting (on most of these fights, the banter breaks the pace of the fight). Fortunately, by Volume 6, the fights improved greatly.
- Most villains are bland and/or poorly written and sometimes they lack of motivations for their actions.
- Infuriating story choices. For example, in Volume 7, Penny was brought back, and towards the end of Volume 8, she finally became a real girl. Several episodes later, they killed her off again, and since she was now human and not a robot, it's all but certain she will remain dead for good. To say fans felt cheated (especially those who ship Ruby x Penny, AKA Nuts n Dolts) is an understatement.
Trivia
- RWBY was made by the same makers of Red vs. Blue, another Rooster Teeth production.
- The show is popular in Japan due to its anime-esque style, to the point where the marketing sold it as "American anime".