Review for RWBY: Volume 1

Introduction

To talk about anime style is something of a red herring in a medium that is abundant with different styles, looks and flavours. Compare something like Karas, to something like Gankutsuou, to something like Ghost in the Shell to something like Clannad, and you’d find that the differences in animation styles would far outweigh the similarities. But there is something ineffably unique about animation that comes from Japan. My personal theory is that it’s the bravery to be still, to not actually animate a scene, and let a moment just play out, something that was born of necessity when actual cel and paint animation had to be produced to a weekly broadcast schedule, and short-cuts like stillness, and panning across still frames were the only way to accomplish it.


Anime has proliferated in recent decades, and while it may not have become mainstream itself, it’s certainly there in enough quantity and quality to influence the Western mainstream. These days, animators in the West grow up devouring the stuff, and that’s bound to have an impact in the works that they create. So now we get shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, very much influenced by anime, and some of the Batman cartoons owing much, some incarnations like Batman of the Future looking a lot like The Big O, and then there’s The Clone Wars... I’ve tended to avoid most of these animations as I always feel that there’s something lost in the translation, although I have to admit that the reverse is also true, that when anime starts doing Marvel heroes and the like, I shy away, Witchblade being a rare exception.


When I first heard of RWBY, a US animation from Rooster Teeth, the people behind Red vs. Blue, heavily influenced by anime to the point that people were calling it such, I felt that same instinctive distrust. Then I saw the trailer, Little Red Riding Hood kicking wolf butt with a massive scythe/machine gun. It looked awesome, the kind of awesome that has me putting my distrust to one side and heartily embracing the show. But it’s been a good while since I saw that trailer, almost a year. Now that the first disc is upon us from Animatsu, I finally get to see if this really is an anime not made in Japan, or just another wannabe.


Inspired by classic fairy tales, RWBY takes place in a magical world called Remnant, where humanity has long fought a desperate battle against the Creatures of Grimm, but the tide turned when the mysterious element called Dust was discovered. Dust can be used to power magical abilities and weapons, and using this power, Hunters and Huntresses can fight back. Ruby Rose wants to be a huntress, and has managed to skip two years and get accepted into the Beacon Academy. But while she has kick ass abilities, and has made an evil looking scythe/machine gun to deal death to the monsters, she’s shy and uncertain of herself. This isn’t good where the class structure of Beacon means first forming four-person teams before even starting training. Fortunately, the first person on the team is Ruby’s older and exuberant sister Yang Xiao Long, but the first time she meets Weiss Schnee, it’s disdain at first sight, and it only gets worse. Antagonism is fine, but it looks like Blake Belladonna would rather not talk to Ruby at all. They’ll have to work on their communication skills though, as the four girls now comprise team RWBY (pronounced ruby), and guess who’s the leader.

RWBY Volume 1 is presented on this Blu-ray disc in feature length form running to 112:50, or you can watch all ten episodes individually, which with the credit sequences takes the runtime to 126:25.

Picture

RWBY gets a 1.78:1 widescreen transfer at 1080i 60Hz interlaced. A progressive transfer would have been preferable, although I don’t know in which format the show was animated; this might be native. But the odd pan and scroll can be jerky at times. RWBY doesn’t look too great. It’s a 3D CG toon-shaded animation, but we’re not talking Appleseed or Vexille here. This is definitely a low budget affair, and it resembles 3D animation that’s some 10 or 15 years old, on a par with movies like A.Li.Ce. While the animators use anime style in the character designs (big eyes, small mouths), and drop in gags like SD transformations and the like, it still doesn’t feel like anime to me. It hasn’t got the same sense of stillness; the characters are always in motion. And in the quieter scenes, the drawbacks of the animation style are always apparent. These are characters that don’t look as if they can interact with their environment, each other, or themselves. Everything seems to ‘float’.

But then there’s an action scene, and RWBY can be utterly breathtaking. The choreography, the cinematic direction, the visual style is all so dramatically accomplished, that for those brief action sequences, you totally forget the budget drawbacks. The character designs are also very well thought out, making each character instantly recognisable while remaining appealing.

The images in this review were kindly supplied by the PR company and aren’t necessarily representative of the final retail release.

Sound

The sound is a little disappointing on this Blu-ray, merely a DD 5.1 English track at 448kbps, DVD quality at best. If you watch the movie mode, you won’t have to jump on your remote control to dial down the extreme loudness of the theme music, and turn the volume back up for the episodes. The dialogue is clear enough, although I lamented the lack of subtitles on this disc. I think I lost my faculty with hyperactive American teen girl-speak after Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended on TV. There are the occasional moments where the audio sounds a little rough and distorted for some dialogue, but generally it’s watchable enough, and the action sequences come across well.

Extras

Insert the disc and you get a trailer for Rooster Teeth, before it boots up an animated menu.

There are further Rooster Teeth trailers on the disc, with a Play All option letting you watch all 11:21 of them. Otherwise it’s a listing of Best of Red vs. Blue, Best of RT Shorts, RT Animated Adventures, Slow Mo Guys, RVB Season 11, A Simple Walk, and Fails of the Weak: Halo Edition.


For the title itself, you get 2 audio commentaries, the directors’ commentary with Miles Luna, Monty Oum, and Kerry Shawcross, and an actors’ commentary with the voices of RWBY, Lindsay Jones, Barbara Dunkelman, Kara Eberle, and Arryn Zech. I did nothing more than sample them, and they seemed agreeable enough, if a little raucous and profane.

You get the four, action packed trailers for the show, Red (3:29), White (3:47), Black (5:12), and Yellow (5:44).

Behind the Scenes lasts 7:02 and sees the late Monty Oum and the rest of the show’s creators interviewed on screen.

There’s a 4:41 slideshow of Fan Art, narrated by the creators of the show, especially as several of the pieces were entered into a RWBY contest.

There’s 2:34 of RWBY cosplay, and finally you get a picture in picture storyboard to go with the first episode. All of the video extras are in some flavour of 1080 HD.

Conclusion

RWBY is not anime. It wants to be anime, it looks like anime. It even uses some of the same conventions as anime, although sparingly, as if it’s too afraid of wholly embracing the tropes of the medium. There’s only one use of SD characters for comic emphasis, and the flashing dashed lines outlining where a character is supposed to be is only wheeled out twice. But look at that opening sequence, the villain walking into a Dust Shop with his Droog-like henchmen to rob the place, and our heroine is in an aisle, oblivious to the world beneath a pair of headphones, before she unleashes a can of whoop-ass on the bad guys. The opening scene of the Cowboy Bebop movie, anyone? There’s an episode of training where they have to compete to race through a forest to reach a goal, which brought to mind an early episode of Yu Yu Hakusho. Then there is the whole ‘girl with a massive scythe goes to school to learn to destroy monsters’ storyline, which couldn’t be more Soul Eater if it tried. But the character animation itself is too energetic and fluid to be anime (even 3D CG works like Harlock or Appleseed don’t have this degree of character motion), while the storytelling style is very much Western (which makes those few anime tropes stand out even more as out of place).


Really, I find that the comparisons to anime are more detrimental to my appreciation of the show than the actual animation quality itself. RWBY is a rough and ready animation, which doesn’t look too great for the most part, until there’s a high octane, adrenaline fuelled action scene, when it looks fantastic. As for the show itself, this modern take on classic fairy tales, RWBY shows promise, although it certainly didn’t do so at the outset, and for much of the opening run of 10 episodes.

It actually felt like two separate shows to me at the start, with high school teen angst, competing with the aforementioned action. The opening arc is naturally about introducing the characters, getting to know them and the way that they interact with each other. The opening scene might show Ruby kicking butt, but it transpires that she is by no means skilled at this point, and really her impressive feats have served to recruit her into the Beacon Academy where she will be trained as a huntress. It’s all about teamwork at the Academy, so for the opening episodes, it’s less about action, and it’s more about teenage insecurities as the students get to know everyone, form friendships and generally annoy each other. With Ruby precociously young, she’s more insecure than most, and while she can rely on her sister Yang, she’s less sure of herself around Weiss and Blake, who together will form team RWBY. For contrast there’s another team in the process of creation, JNPR (juniper), with another four colourful characters, who take as much time as RWBY in the story. In fact one major and clichéd arc follows the leader of JNPR, Jaune Arc as he’s lied to get into Beacon, and a bully torments and blackmails him because of it. It’s pretty much standard, high school drama, with weapons and monsters, and I found it to be quite dull.


It’s as the show unfolds, slowly building its fantasy world that things start to get interesting. There’s going to be a tournament with rival schools, and this starts to play a bigger part in the story, and we learn that the humans of Remnant share the world with chimera called Faunus, humanoids with animal traits that don’t coexist well. One of the characters in the show is harbouring a secret in this regard which sows tension in team RWBY. The whole Dust story develops further when the apparent villain, Roman Torchwick returns with some Faunus terrorists, and a post credits sting reveals that there’s another scary villain pulling his strings. And there’s the robot girl Penny as well, that makes friends with Ruby.

For a short series, made up of short episodes, RWBY takes a devil of a time to develop, and it really only gets interesting towards the end of this disc. Don’t expect anime, and don’t expect miracles from the animation. You will be blown away by the action sequences, but the rest of the animation doesn’t hold up well in comparison. When it comes to this particular story, Soul Eater does it so much better, and with so much more style, but there’s no reason you can’t watch both. As it is, RWBY constantly improves through its episodes, and at least by its end it makes you want to watch more. Just like Rooster Teeth’s Red vs. Blue, all of RWBY is available to view online through their site, so you can happily try before you buy.