Many of you may be thinking something very particular right now. Specifically, something along the lines of “Wait, RWBY’s not an anime, it’s made in Texas!” And you’re right. By the technical definition used in the West of “Anime” being Japanese Animation, RWBY is not an Anime. However, even if you don’t take into account the massive amounts of merch and even the dedicated cosplay gathering for RWBY that would have been found at Anime Expo (in 2019), it’s undeniable that it’s appealing to a crowd that has a huge overlap with anime fans… and anyway, this is my blog, and I’m making up the rules for what I can or can’t write about. I’ll try to not bend the idea too often, but I think one moment to talk about the first few seasons of RWBY can be forgiven.
With that out of the way, let’s dive
in.
RWBY, at least at this point, is the
story of Ruby Rose, a girl who wants to be a “Huntress”, someone
who protects civilization from the monsters known as Grimm that are
constantly trying to push it over. After foiling an attempted
robbery, she catches the attention of Ozpin, the headmaster of Beacon
Academy, the premier school for Huntsmen and Huntresses, who allows
her to skip a couple grades to attend. Ruby is joined at beacon by
her older half-sister, Yang Xiao Long, and quickly encounters new
friends (after a fashion) Jaune Arc, Weiss Schnee, and Blake
Belladonna. We also start to follow a few more friendlies: Pyrrha
Nikos, a star prodigy who takes a shine to the weak and clueless
Jaune, and childhood friends Lie Ren and Nora Valkyrie. During an
introductory test, these eight end up sorted into two teams of four:
Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang into the titular Team RWBY (“Ruby”),
and Jaune, Nora, Pyrrha, and Ren into the supporting Team JNPR
(“Juniper”), while also displaying their stuff fighting back
against two massive Grimm that were probably not part of any test
protocol. Ozpin selects Ruby and Jaune to act as team leaders,
recognizing their tactical acumen.
The first season is mostly a series of
small movements with these characters. After they’re sorted, Weiss,
a prideful heiress, clashes with the young and somewhat naive Ruby
over the latter’s appointment to Leader status. Jaune is revealed to
be so far behind everyone else because he forged his transcripts, a
fact that a bully uses to blackmail him for some time, until he
stands up to his tormentor rather than do anything to hurt Pyrrha.
And, finally, Blake is revealed to be a Faunus (Animal person:
Catgirl, in her case), and to have some major chips on her shoulder
regarding Weiss’s family business as Weiss has some unresolved racism
directed at Blake. The attempt to get the two to make up introduces
us to Penny Polendina, an eccentric girl who Ruby befriends who is
actually an advanced Robot (not that Ruby finds out for a bit) and
brings us into conflict with the gangster Ruby met in the opening,
Roman Torchwick, who is working with a group of Faunus terrorists
called the White Fang for some big job. They’re momentarily foiled,
but Torchwick, the White Fang, and their boss Cinder Fall are all
still out there.
There are a few things you’ll notice in Season 1. One of them is that, in a technical sense, the animation is terrible. Now, the animators do a lot with it. The battle at the end of the team formation test against the giant Grimm is still very impressive, thanks to its choreography and movement, but there is absolutely a cheapness to the sets, backgrounds, and even character models that makes it clear they were working with a shoestring budget and a dream, rather than this being someone’s fully realized vision of what the world ought to look like. This improves markedly in the second season, a little bit in the third, and vaults ahead to the fourth season when they switched to a different rendering software, resulting in the more recent offerings being on level with something like Knights of Sidonia, or possibly even pushing past depending on what strengths and weaknesses you see in CGI animation.
Another thing you’ll probably notice,
from the plot summary if nothing else, is that there’s really not a
lot of meat to it. Technically there are 16 episodes in the season,
but some of them aren’t even five minutes, resulting in the whole
thing having a running time equivalent to about five normal (24-ish
minute) anime episodes. The amount of plot in that time matches with
the running. Split into arcs you have Ruby’s welcome to Beacon, the
Sorting test, Ruby/Weiss friction, Jaune being bullied, and then the
final Faunus/White Fang/Torchwick arc, each of which would have
probably been done in a single episode of a traditional show.
Seasons two and three each have twelve episodes, but while they still
don’t hit “normal” run times except for the final episode of
Season 3, they are a lot closer, with no counted episode being under
10 minutes. That’s part of why I’m addressing all three seasons of
the first arc together: there really is somewhere between 12 and 24
episodes worth of material here, which is a comfortable amount to
cover.
But, overall, how fares our
introduction to RWBY? I’d say at this point that the show is fun,
somewhat indulgent, and doesn’t let its limitations hold it back.
The characters aren’t the deepest, but they each have a clear theme,
and most of them are pleasant to watch and written well enough that
you don’t dislike the type they’re playing to. The music is
downright amazing (all the RWBY OSTs are good), and while the voice
actors do come off as a little bit amateurish, they’re all clearly
trying. Mostly. It isn’t great, but it’s worthwhile for the
amusement.
In my opinion, Season 2 is a big step
up, and might even be the peak of what the show has accomplished.
Like Season 1, the frame is having these kids at a super school while
shady stuff is going on. But this time, there’s a lot more going on.
We have direction, with Team RWBY trying to poke their noses into
the White Fang/Roman Torchwick/Cinder Fall situation, while the bad
guys have some potent new henchmen with at least slightly memorable
(if, at this point, exaggeratedly evil) personas, Emerald and
Mercury. Meanwhile, as everyone comes together around Beacon, more
politics steps onto the scene in the form of James Ironwood, an old
friend of Ozpin but also something of an authoritarian with his
“peace-keeping” robot army. Relationship drama even moves
forward with Jaune pining over Weiss (who dismisses him) while Pyrrha
quietly carries a torch for him, ending with a sweet and touching
sequence between Pyrrha and Jaune at the big ball. Cinder, the
leader apparent of the villains, also makes her move, sending a
sinister message, and ultimately the heroic teams end up turning up a
much bigger climax than last time.
The action in the first season was
good. The action in the second season may not be better, but at
least it tries hard, giving us all the cliches up to a battle on top
of a speeding train. For the final movement, Torchwick and his
cronies blow a hole in the city’s defenses, and it’s up to all the
students to stop the Grimm that begin to flood in so the ground can
be repaired. Torchwick is arrested, but it’s clear that there are
more bad guys doing more bad things out there since Cinder and her
disciples remain unfought.
Season 2 is a place where RWBY had a
clear theme, kept a lot of balls in the air, and repeatedly delivered
good action scenes and character scenes that were at least alright.
It sort of hits the sweet spot of being serious, yet fun that A
Certain Magical Index (and universe) pulls off. The villains are
goofy, but threatening. The plot puts things at stake, but the
atmosphere is light enough that it never feels oppressive even while
you take the danger seriously.
Season 2 also introduces the “World
of Remnant” segments, mini-episodes (not counted when I said there
were twelve) that use extremely simple animation and voiceover from a
somewhat creepy narrator first heard in the opening of season 1
episode 1 to explain elements of the setting in greater detail than
the episodes themselves allow. You don’t need the “World of”
segments, but they’re very small and I would say they absolutely
enrich the experience.
And then… Season 3 is anything but
light. The opening sets you up for what’s coming, with dark imagery
and darker lyrics, running practically as a villain song.
Season 3 doesn’t show its colors in
episode right away, spending some time doing a tournament arc while
we get our first hint of RWBY’s reach for the dark and grand: Pyrrha
is approached by Ozpin, who wants her to take up the power of “The
Fall Maiden” from its former bearer, who was attacked and put into
a coma by Cinder. As Pyrrha grapples with whether or not to accept
the destiny being thrust upon her, Cinder and her lackeys manipulate
the tournament, moving themselves up the ranks and framing Yang in a
way that sees her disqualified and disgraced. Finally they arrange
Pyrrha (who has power over magnetism) to fight Penny (a robot,
recall) and drive her insane with mental illusions so that she
overdoes her power, literally tearing Penny apart.
The brutal death, on live TV, of a
young woman (even if she was mechanical) at the hands of another
spreads fear and sorrow, fanned into a frenzy by Cinder, who delivers
a breaking speech to the world over the broadcast while
simultaneously hacking Ironwood’s robot army to begin an attack on
civilians while the White Fang assaults Beacon itself. And the
panic, if nothing else, also drags in greater and more terrible Grimm
than we’d seen up until then, all the way up to a giant dragon.
In the Chaos, Ozpin ushers Pyrrha to
where the Maiden is being kept, in order to keep those powers out of
enemy hands. Cinder catches them, however, killing the former Fall
Maiden and claiming the power for herself as the Grimm overrun the
kingdom. Blake and Yang face down against Blake’s crazy yandere
White Fang ex-boyfriend, a clash that costs Yang an arm, while first
Ozpin and then Pyrrha challenge Cinder.
Neither one of them survives the
encounter. Technically, Ozpin’s fate is left ambiguous in this
season, but it’s fairly clear only Cinder emerged from their clash.
Pyrrha has a huge drag-out fight with Cinder, which is excellently
done, but Cinder deals the death blow just as Ruby arrives to
reinforce her friend. In the grief of witnessing Pyrrha’s demise,
Ruby unleashes some new mysterious power that blasts Cinder away and
turns the dragon to stone, before Ruby passes out.
As the season ends, Beacon Academy is
in ruins, the Kingdom it was in is swarming with Grimm, and Team RWBY
is scattered to the winds: Blake run off, Weiss taken by her
repressive father, Yang swallowed by depression and home, and Ruby
prepared for a perilous new journey that she’ll undertake alongside
the remnants of Team JNPR in order to contact one of Ozpin’s foreign
allies at one of the other four academies. At the very end, we’re
given a glimpse of something else: the narrator of the World of
Remnant segments is revealed to be none other than Cinder’s boss and
the true villain of the series, a Grimm-looking woman referred to as
Salem. Our time in Beacon is done, but the adventure continues.
Season 3 of RWBY has some good material – in a lot of ways, the plot is not just stronger than 1-2, but vastly stronger – but looking back on it, I think there’s a degree to which it started missing the magic that made RWBY fun to watch in the first place. If seasons 1 and 2 had the same sort of energy as A Certain Magical Index or any other sort of lighthearted adventure, Season 3 had more brutal, oppressive feeling, leaning more towards a Brynhildr in the Darkness or even an Attack on Titan sort of vibe, though the transformation wasn’t complete even with the deaths in this season. It does help that Ruby Rose herself is relentlessly positive and enjoyable (part of why I brought up Brynhildr, which was carried through a miserable and oppressive scenario by fun characters), but the shift from fighting criminals and monsters to facing down societal collapse with talks about ancient magic and important destiny robs RWBY of some elements even while it adds new ones. I won’t exactly say that the show is worse for this, and if it is, it didn’t have to be. But Season 3 is the first half of a marked shift between what we thought RWBY was going to be, and what it is now, changing from a super-power-battle-school scenario to a “Gods and Monsters” scenario that doesn’t bear all that much resemblance to the former.
As far as rankings and recommendations
go, RWBY is in an interesting or perhaps troubling place: It’s
technically still ongoing, which is another thing I try to avoid in
this blog. However, I do think it’s worthwhile to talk about the
Beacon arc as its own thing, isolated somewhat from what comes after.
In that, I think RWBY Seasons 1-3 is kind of a C+ affair. I say C+
because the emotional, character, and plot elements are all mostly in
the C range – not specifically good, but perfectly watchable and
certainly not bad either. The entire show is hauled upwards by
absolutely stellar choreography for the battles, but that can only
carry it so far. I’d say on the whole that, except for the raw
animation in the first season, it’s a lot of standard and a few
stand-out components. RWBY does only a few things legitimately well,
but it doesn’t do anything poorly enough to detract. If nothing
else, the show is admirable for the ‘heart’ it has; it’s clearly a
passion project during the Beacon period, a creator’s love letter to
action anime, and despite technical limitations a lot of that passion
makes it to the screen in how hard everything tries, even when it
doesn’t quite make the mark it aims for.
Still, it’s a show I’ve become hesitant to recommend; there’s no part of it that’s without fault, either the early parts of Beacon that are very enjoyable but also somewhat stumbling first steps, or the later and ongoing material that dreams far bigger but seldom feels like it has that heart that I just praised the early seasons for. It’s something that can still be enjoyed, but not something I can say with confidence that someone else would or should enjoy. But, what comes after Beacon is something I’ll talk about another day, possibly not until the show has finally reached a conclusion. If you want to get on the long and bumpy ride yourself, I won’t say you shouldn’t, but I will warn that it’s not going to keep on as it starts.