In the world of Remnant, a place where science and fairy tales coexist, human civilization is plagued
by deadly monsters known as the Grimm. For a time, victory by the Grimm seemed all but certain, if not
for the heroism of those sworn to protect humanity -- Huntsmen and Huntresses. These warriors are
trained and assembled into teams at schools like Beacon Academy, where Ruby meets Weiss and Blake --
forming Team RWBY along with Ruby’s sister, Yang. While team RWBY studies to become the greatest
Huntresses the world of Remnant has ever known, they are faced with a horrifying threat..
(Source: Crunchyroll)
Note: The first three episodes received an advance release on Crunchyroll on June 24, 2022. The
regular TV broadcast started on July 3, 2022.
Ah, Studio Shaft, how I loved you. From the Monogatari series, to 3-gatsu no Lion, to Madoka Magica, I have enjoyed many of the amazing shows from Shaft that really pushed the boundaries of animation and storytelling. Let’s be real though, they haven’t been on their A-game for a while, and although RWBY’s visuals are a clear improvement to the original from Rooster Teeth, I can’t say that any other aspects were all that impressive and immersive. This show is a bit of an enigma to me, because it feels drawn out and rushed at the same time. The first couple of volumes were rushed in the beginning, then we’re in the same setting for basically two-thirds of the entire series, and the pacing of the fights and the conclusion to the entire thing felt so quick. My grading criteria: Story: /25 Art: /10 Music: /10 Characters: /20 Enjoyment /15 Thematic Execution /20 STORY: 10/25 The story is quite simple to understand. The world is being ravaged by the Grimm, which are nightmare-esque creatures that seek to put humans and the demi-human Faunus under their spell. Academies were established to train young people to hunt down the Grimm, to protect the world. 15 year old Ruby Rose always aspired to be one of these hunters, and had dreams to go to the prestigious Beacon Academy, but being too young, she couldn’t, until she fought off robbers and caught the attention of the academy headmaster. This first part was probably the more enjoyable part of the series, and then after Ruby entered the school, Weiss, a member of team RWBY, fell victim to the Grimm, the main characters entered her dream, and found an entirely new world inside there. The power systems, the action, and the little backstories that we learned about were interesting, but since most of the show took place in this dream, it felt quite bland over time. The biggest issue in the narrative lies in the pacing. The pacing at the start was excruciatingly fast, to adapt the first few volumes of the original RWBY series, and then, the pacing was a mix of being rushed and drawn out, as the dream sequence lasted for quite some time, and any resolution and conclusion felt half-baked and too simplistic. ART: 8.5/10 Although not perfect, the animation was probably one of the stronger points of this show, especially at the start of the series. There were definitely some signs of degradation in the quality as the show progressed, with blends of 2D and 3DCG which felt awkward, but overall, I enjoyed watching the visuals. MUSIC: 8.3/10 The OST hits hard in the important moments, and it’s solid, but the music seemed a bit underused. The OST direction could have been handled a bit better for better immersion, but it wasn’t bad. The opening from Void_Chords was okay, but compared to something like the OP from Princess Principal, it felt a bit lacking. The ending from well sung by Saori Hayami, though I wasn’t the biggest fan of it. For a series that was heavily praised for its OST, I can’t help but just be a little disappointed. It’s still decent though. CHARACTERS: 8.5/20 There’s nothing inherently wrong with the characters themselves, but I just found them very boring to watch. The traits each character has are very simplistic and don’t have enough depth. I think that some things could have been flushed out a bit better, such as Weiss’s backstory, or the relationship between the humans and the Faunus. Overall, quite forgettable characters, and I would imagine the original series wrote the characters a bit better than this series did. ENJOYMENT: 7.5/15 I enjoyed some of the action sequences, but I found myself checked out at times, as I didn’t enjoy some of the pacing. THEMATIC EXECUTION: 9.5/20 The pacing once again hurts the execution of the themes of the show. Like I said, some elements could have been flushed out more, and while sakuga can save the show a little, it can’t save it all. OVERALL: 52.3/100 I have never watched the original RWBY by Monty Oum, but for one, I can say that he’d probably be proud of the visuals. The ideal combination would obviously be using these levels of visuals with the original storyboarding from Rooster Teeth. I can’t speak on which version of RWBY is better, but what I can say is, this anime was quite the up and down ride, and quite the average one, so RWBY fans, maybe just stick to the original.
__RWBY: Ice Queendom__ is a fascinatingly in-depth misfire, and a hastily put-together mess of a concept, which is a shame, because I feel like in the right hands, it could have been the kick-in-the-pants its source series desperately needed. It faltered not because the team behind it didn’t care, but for desperately lacking a level of consideration and hindsight to tell the story it wanted to tell in the best way possible while being exciting for existing fans or a good jumping in point for newcomers. As someone who has seen all eight current seasons of the original RWBY series, my general opinion is that despite some goofy character charm, distinctive character designs with appropriately distinct powers, rocking musical inserts, a 3D animation aesthetic that grows more professional as the years go on, and a share of incredibly kinetic action scenes (primarily in the first two seasons when its creator Monty Oum was still alive, RIP), it’s easy to look behind the curtain and see the inexperience of its writers stacking the fragile house of cards that is the series’ worldbuilding and character writing. The majority of the show’s seasons tend to focus on an excess of character factions, dead end subplots, badly conveyed worldbuilding and an incredibly questionable racism allegory with pacing that doesn’t tend to give its better ideas (such as the lead character’s grief about her lost mother) enough time to properly coalesce. It’s to the point where the RWBY Chibi spinoff series entirely about zany gags uses its cast better than the show it’s based off of. But it does have a lot of ideas, and a lot of fans that attach to some of those ideas, despite the series gaining a similar reputation to Sword Art Online among dissenters and outsiders for how amateurish writing underlies much of its production and conceptual strengths. My hope with RWBY Ice Queendom was that this series, with the benefit of hindsight and eight seasons worth of character material to pull from, could tell a tighter, incredibly cohesive story about its four title characters, with talented 2D animators mirroring Monty Oum’s gift for dynamic, kinetic and characterful action scenes to scatter throughout. This series could epitomize the genuine appeal of RWBY’s action and character concepts separated from all of the excess junk the main show had been piling up. Remind longtime fans why they should keep caring about the series while hooking new fans. Sadly, I don’t think it accomplished either goal. __R__egarding Recap First of all, if you are a newcomer to RWBY scared off by the MMD level of animation quality, Ice Queendom starts with a three episode recap of the first season of the web series in the show’s new 2D style. It’s a conceptually basic story at the start, starring four girls (Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladona and Yang Xiao Long) who are accepted into an academy to train their fighting abilities to become peacekeepers of a world overrun by ravenous monsters known as Grimm. The recap is to get everyone up to speed on where the characters were at that point in time. I can understand this was done specifically in relation to Weiss Schnee, the series’ Snow White analog, to bring her negative character traits to the forefront. She’s haughty, selfish, domineering, has a need to appease her demanding father, feels constantly judged by her siblings, and is flagarently racist against the Faunus, a species of animal human hybrids meant to represent the oppressed races of the world (yes, really). They needed to make all of this clear in order to have substantial psychological ammo to dissect for the series’s main arc, and I think they succeeded, but there are obvious concessions made in having to cover so much content unrelated to Weiss that was happening at the same time. To Ice Queendom’s credit, a lot of the more egregious/extra parts from the original first season are cut, such as Yang arbitrarily leaving with shadow people extras to excuse Ruby meeting other characters on her own or having to go to three separate scenes to show Blake’s and Weiss’s introductions randomly stumbling onto Ruby in an empty fountain plaza, the main four bickering in a dorm at night, to then hearing an announcement from the school’s headmaster Ozpin the next day. Scenes such as these are all consolidated in a way that makes a lot of sense, and character dialogue is generally a bit more natural throughout the recapped material. The widely hated story arc for the character of Jaune is cut almost entirely aside from introducing a new original Nightmare Grimm that comes into play later. That said, this is a case of less bad, but also less good, since this comes at the expense of the humor. There’s some jokier parts in later sections of Ice Queendom that bring in some charm, but for the first three episodes, much of what gave V1 RWBY its spirit in spite of the questionable plotting and wonky non-battle animation, is fairly excised. Despite 2D being inherently more limiting than 3D in terms of camera space, this section has a handful of strong animated moments (mostly from Hiroto Nagata) that match what Monty Oum was capable of nearly a decade ago on a program that could barely get character walk cycles right. All of this though mostly only applies to the first two episodes. Episode 3 has to cover far too much of the original series in only a short 22 minute runtime while also planting seeds for the anime’s original story. This makes the already messy plotting the original series had of needing to spontaneously introduce two entirely new characters for the season’s final action climax even more rushed. To make up for Weiss’s lack of presence in Volume 1’s climax, they removed the entire fight. I know it sounds really really really really really really really really dumb, but trust me that this is the most likely scenario. It then leads to the episode’s closer feeling like it happened too early. There is one other issue this manner of recap brings, which is that if you’re not already a fan of RWBY or invested in the journey that its characters have gone on for nearly a decade at this point, I have to think it would be harder to care once the original material starts and Ice Queendom has a lot of intense, high-strung emotional scenes between characters who, to you, have hardly had the time to know each other. This can be seen right away in Episode 3 when the implied incredibly close bond between Jaune, Nora, Pyrrha and Ren is told, not shown, as an attempt to parallel Ruby and Weiss’s shown struggle to get along, but there being almost no time to show Team JNPR’s kinship prior to that moment. And this continues when the Ice Queendom plot takes center stage and you see Ruby and Weiss having these grand emotional moments regarding their relationship while Blake and Yang have their own sort of rapport hardly seen prior but given a fair amount of time in later seasons of the original show. And yes, I do think this is an issue to take with Ice Queendom because the series is presented like an alternate timeline, not a sequel like Metal Gear Solid 4 or Kingdom Hearts III which are in series with one timeline and naturally suggest by name you need a lot of knowledge going into it. As someone who’s followed the original series, I do appreciate more of what’s going on there, but to newcomers I can see them being out of the loop. To Ice Queendom’s credit, these scenes are presented very earnestly, with Saori Hayami and the other Japanese VAs genuinely putting their best foot forward to carry whatever drama is there. FAR better than their English VAs being pulled to voice the cast with little training or direction at the start. It’s just that the foundation to care about these characters is built on long term engagement to material outside of this anime. That being said, it also doesn’t help that a lot of these payoffs are mulled by the series’s production issues. __W__oefully Underpar Animation Now, despite what I say about the original series gaining somewhat of a punching bag reputation overtime, one element that was hard to deny from the start was the appeal of Monty Oum’s action scenes. He had the ability to show these power-imbued characters as acrobats, using the 3D camera to create long uninterrupted sequences of action scenes that feel like performances, taking similar influence to what made action scenes in The Matrix trilogy so fun to watch, assisted by the metal butt rock score. After Monty’s unfortunate passing, the latter seasons of RWBY made the fights more cohesive with the story, but with a couple exceptions, they gradually lost that rhythm. Music could still hit, but many action scenes felt stiffer, more weightless, more inconsistently boarded and with more unwelcome dialogue to separate the action segments. So I hoped that this new creative team could mirror a similar spark that Oum’s action had for the original series, but unfortunately, much like with the anime adaptation of Devil May Cry, a series known for its action scenes gets an anime that barely has any worth praising. Aside from an even stronger finish, the rest of the giant bird fight represented in Episode 2 feels far stiffer and less conveying of character than the original web series. I had hoped that the anime-exclusive action scenes would go hard considering Episode 3 cutting the first season’s entire original climax, but sadly no. COVID definitely played a huge part in preventing SHAFT from getting a vast swath of talent in person, but even still, what’s present is unfortunately lacking. Much of the anime episodes are exposition, not action scenes, and a lot of the action is limited to Ruby, Yang and Blake running away from an overpowered Weiss to little if any memorable scuffles given all of the cuts made that prevent the action from flowing well. Episodes 6 and 10 in particular are absolutely egregious examples of needing to shortcut for action scenes, doing very little to hide the replacement of the 2D characters into CGI models for certain shots, which is the same criticism I levied at SHAFT’s Assault Lily Bouquet two years ago. These models look ugly and awkward with their differing frame rates compared to the 2D characters. Inserting these between 2D shots only makes the action even less cohesive. I understand that some of the rendering issues can be fixed in a Blu-Ray release, but the scenes themselves are still stuck with the same borked action pace. This rushed schedule even affects the static dialogue scenes, with one conversation between Blake and Yang in Episode 10 cutting off Yang’s legs during a pan. It’s not all bad. I do think some of the characters, such as Ruby, Weiss, Yang and Penny still look cute in the new art style despite other characters like Ozpin not transferring over particularly well. I like the added highlights to certain characters’ hair that were unshaded in the original series, and some of the backdrops of Weiss’s dream realm like the violet-tinged sky with her emblem pattern scattered about, the consolidated town and the mysterious interiors of Weiss’s family manor do also let the visuals shine. Lastly, Episode 11 does have the few actual free-flowing and kinetic action cuts that are original to the series synced with exciting music and in those brief moments, it gave me a sense of what the series could have been, had its structure and production woes not undermined its efforts and made the majority of scene payoffs (aside from the final one) feel hollow. __B__affling Pacing, Editing and Story Structure In addition to the clunky battle animation, the editing of the series is often annoyingly standout when it really has no reason to be. Many episodes feature a frequent amount of hard cuts to character stills circling around a small scene, which gives the production the feeling that a lot of the shots were rushed out the door and had to be cobbled together at the last minute to fit the weekly TV episode deadline. One scene in particular of Blake sneaking her way inside a bedroom to meet up with Ruby and Yang was so badly cut together I struggled to tell what was happening. In an attempt to add some signature SHAFT flair into the mix, they use this Hulk (2003) multiple panel style where they can pan on multiple shots happening at the same time, and sadly, I can’t say its usage ever added substantially relative to its frequency, aside from the ending of Episode 5. Perhaps this is also the time to say that nearly every episode of the “Ice Queendom arc” feels the need to tag itself with a cliffhanger that often doesn’t match the exciting payoffs. Most of the anime makes up the “Ice Queendom arc”, where Ruby, Blake and Yang travel inside of Weiss’s nightmare realm to recover her soul from a nightmare eating away at her, fighting a version of Weiss that seems to embody her worst traits in the process. Initially it seems promising that the arc slows the pace way down from the insanely rushed Episode 3, but the further in you get the more you question if it needed to be THAT slow. So much time is spent expositing about how the dream realm works, directly explaining all of the correlations Weiss is making in her head in case viewers don’t pick up on them and repeating a lot of the same motions. There’s a back and forth between characters trying to enter the town, confronting the alternate Weiss, and getting arbitrarily pushed back after badly edited action scenes with middling at best material in between. One of the exits is initially promising, with the series using side characters to genuinely set the leads on the right track to better understand their friend and become a stronger team for it. And then Jaune gets prominence. . . . The moment I knew this series was ABSOLUTELY heading on the wrong track with this story was when the show decided to include Jaune Arc into a prominent role alongside the four girls. The writers try to justify this by saying he exists as a cloak to the Nightmare energy, but this purpose goes away after a single scene and all he actually does is open a door, drag along a sword he can barely carry and defeat a miniboss he has no connection to. He’s not exactly a loved character among fans of the original, with many thinking he’s either a bland tepid tagalong that steals screentime from other main characters, or a borderline author insert for one of the show’s writers, and Ice Queendom making him more prominent than he should be doesn’t help his case. It’s unfortunate because there was an obviously better method of handling an extra party member tagalong. One of the few animation highlights outside of Episode 11 is a moment when a dream version of Pyrrha, a character the original series gives some parallels to Weiss, sings Mirror Mirror, Weiss’s original theme song. Her character is gorgeously animated in the scene, and Megumi Toyoguchi does a wonderful job covering the song in English. I was hoping that this meant that Pyrrha would have more of a role in the series, perhaps directly getting through to Weiss with her own feelings of being lonely despite being seen like a celebrity. But, no, despite Jaune having a widely hated mini-arc in the original show’s first season, and having plenty of time after that to interact with the main characters, Jaune gets to be a character here who does nothing and contributes nothing besides opening one door, while Pyrrha after her song is presented as a mute piece of cardboard Jaune carries around from scene to scene in a subplot that accomplishes nothing. Another character could have opened the door, and Pyrrha’s character would have benefited substantially more from interacting with the four lead girls away from Jaune to parallel Weiss’s dilemma, like they seemed to imply by giving her Weiss’s theme song. It’s choices like this obviously padded subplot that has me asking: __Y__ou needed 12 episodes for this?! It’s unfortunate, honestly. When I first started watching Ice Queendom upon the premiere of the first three episodes, one of my earliest thoughts was that they could’ve used an additional episode of Volume 1 recap so that the events of Episode 3 could be less hastily sped through and maybe they could have actually shown a rendition of the dock battle at the Volume’s end, a major highlight of the original series’s first season. Then later, when the show actually gets to the Ice Queendom part of the story, you see just how little every episode contributes to the overall story, how many parts of the story could have been cut entirety (particularly everything involving Jaune) and how several of the repeated plot events (RBY reaching Nightmare Weiss and then getting pushed back three times over, Ruby needing to enter the dream three times, the gang entering the city over and over again by train) could have accomplished their same intended goal without needing to waste almost three hours through as simple as a choice as only having two dives into the dream world instead of three. For the sake of Ice Queendom’s production, which, with exception to most of Episode 11, falls apart at the seams the longer you go on, the Ice Queendom portion should have been, at most, a 2 hour movie, and not a 3 hour slog where over a third of that time is either repeated content, irrelevant content or exclamation that could’ve been better left unsaid. Perhaps giving the series fewer total episodes could have better consolidated the handful of talented animators SHAFT did manage to get so the show could consistently look better when it counted, instead of wasting talent on a song sequence that failed to connect to anything and making the majority of fights jittery messes where they don’t even try to hide their CGI model replacement. But I can only think about what could have been for so long when analyzing the product that SHAFT and Rooster Teeth put out to commemorate their long running series for me to say it just isn’t good enough. Despite all my complaining, as someone who’s been hard on the sunk cost fallacy of RWBY’s existence, there were moments of Ice Queendom I did greatly appreciate, such as giving us more insight into Weiss’s psychological hangups at a time when she was suffering from them the most. I liked getting to see how a small Weiss looks up to her grandfather, and how Ruby feels about Weiss being pushed to an emotional breaking point. I like Sun and Penny’s use here and despite them missing the latter’s iconic catchphrase, her seiyuu does a lot to convey her character. The new OST was generally solid enough and while Jeff and Casey Lee Williams’s music from the original series is sorely missed, the vocal inserts present here capture the show’s style appropriately. It’s a conceptually solid idea, and it says something that there’s a heartwarming conclusion at the end of this messy, hastily put together brand extension that makes me genuinely feel something for these characters despite the poorly paced narratives they find themselves stuck in time and time again. I just wish Ice Queendom could’ve been something different, instead of a hacked out production that serves as a standard bearer for why a series constructed out of many scattered concepts to feel “anime” enough struggles to look beyond that lens and hit the same incredible highs of what it chooses to imitate.
---- ~~~RWBY: Hyousetsu Teikoku ~~~ ~~~img450(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1002466780507279362/1002843114614050916/unknown.png?width=451&height=637) ~~~ ---- I think it's important to start by pointing out how much I'm a fan of the RWBY series and I was very hopeful about its anime adaptation, for being from a studio, which until then, I considered extremely competent. I cannot express how disappointed I am. The series has several production problems, as it decided to make the anime on an extremely poor schedule, and that from the beginning shows that they barely had time to correct scenes and send purely unfinished scenes, even though there are a lot of competent people in it. All this would be easily resolved if the production decided to postpone the anime to give us quality work, however, they chose not to do that. I believe everyone is aware that the first three episodes came out early and at the same time. They finished the first three eps simply so they could preview, and because of that many unfinished scenes in the Pre version were fixed on the TV. ~~~img550(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/836746476846972971/1002830523820945428/unknown.png?width=1132&height=637) img550(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/836746476846972971/1002830546860257290/unknown.png?width=1132&height=637)~~~ I started talking about the production initially because it was extremely necessary for me to establish from the beginning that the Japanese adaptation of RWBY had problems, but later on I will approach the production again. ------- ~~~ __The RWBY Adaptation__ ~~~ The first 3 episodes of RWBY together are about an hour long and that's basically the same amount of time the original had for an entire volume. ~~~img550(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1002466780507279362/1002838778303500298/unknown.png?width=1132&height=637)~~~ Volume 1 of the original has 16 episodes that are around 1 hour in total. The first 3 episodes of the anime are approximately the same in length and 'adapt', in a type of copy and paste, totally rushed, without any depth and that still cut a Jaune plot to work on aspects of the character and inserted another original plot where nor did it have time to be properly aborted. ~~~img550(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1002466780507279362/1002839230931808287/unknown.png)~~~ The first volume of RWBY, like the entire series, is low production, they didn't have the budget to do everything they wanted, especially the first volume. So during the 16 episodes that complete 1 hour, there were episodes of 3, 4 and 5 minutes. One of the most enjoyable aspects of RWBY's production for me is its use of time. Even due to its low production with this little time that the series has to work, it doesn't waste time, it doesn't roll around, everything on screen is important, the series knows how to enjoy its time, it really works something and explores it in the way whatever is possible. ~~~img550(http://31.media.tumblr.com/c77a717a4c7c3d41d9cc690a76bb9087/tumblr_mq688z7kkh1rvzdzso2_r1_500.gif)~~~ 16 episodes that complete 1 hour were much more productive and deeper in terms of narrative than 3 episodes that make up the same timing and address the same subjects and characters. (I won't even talk about charisma and other factors) The RWBY adaptation made a simple and stupid mistake in logic. RWBY: Hyousetsu Teikoku shouldn't be an adaptation entirely faithful to its original, an animated copy and paste, it doesn't work. The anime had time to reimagine, work on, improve and deepen everything the original couldn't due to low production. There's no way you can take 1 hour of the original, a webseries/murikanime, play in the anime and think it will be acceptable. They are different media, different ways of approaching the narrative as well. RWBY's narrative doesn't just rely on what we see on screen, RWBY has a narrative structure together with its songs. RWBY's songs address a lot of the introspective characters, they work the plot; characters, explore and deepen their relationships, their emotions, add substance and layers. RWBY compensates for its low production with this exemplary and admirable work! ~~~img4550(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1002466780507279362/1002840969705693254/unknown.png)~~~ And yes, even though they forgot the RWBY songs, we still had "Mirror Mirror" in one of the episodes, but that was more fanservice than a narrative use, to add substance to Weiss. By the way, I'm not saying that they put "Mirror Mirror" there for fanservice and not for the narrative is something necessarily bad, because although I thought it was misused, I can't deny that it increased Weiss' character a little more. , after all it's "Mirror Mirror", it's a song that works and explores the Character. But I will emphasize that the music is not the merit of the anime but of the original, as well as its use within the work is something basic, which they only did with "Mirror Mirror". After all, we didn't have "Red Like Roses II" among other songs. The anime should be an ORIGINAL adaptation, a reinvention of something that already exists! And with that they see the following point: "The anime has already done that, the anime has created an original plot." ------------ ~~~__Original Plot__~~~ ~~~img450(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1002466780507279362/1002841797451587614/unknown.png?width=450&height=637)~~~ I was really happy with the announcement of the original plot, but unfortunately it was too late to introduce it. I don't want to get too much into this topic, but earlier I said that due to the lack of something original, depth and character work made everything empty and this original plot reflects exactly that. As much as they try to bring us something that should be the basics, the problem is at the beginning, the anime has not worked at all since it started, it failed to make us create emotional bonds with the characters and work on their own relationships, but instead of trying to fix their mistake, they decided to work with Weiss' relationship with Ruby, her problems and her prejudice with the Fauns, things that are empty, because the story/production decided to do it that way. ~~~img550(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1002466780507279362/1002842239623503992/unknown.png)~~~ The original plot should have been established from the beginning and not later. At the very least, he should try to hide and fix the flaws of the first three episodes, but all he does is highlight them. To be honest, the idea of this dream Grimm, Nightmare, is VERY interesting, it's something I would love to see in the original, I think it would have a lot to add and it would be a great way to introduce aspects of the characters, just like with Weiss, no we can't escape that Weiss' dream reflects the same; We have the psychological pressure from the family, the extremely abusive father, the alcoholic and distant Mae, her lack of freedom, we even have her affection for her friends and how much they mean to her. To see that in the original, with all that Rooster teeth narrative, with Casey bringing the introspective to life, would be an amazing thing to watch. But that's only because the Rooster Teeth narrative of the original allows things to be that way, there was character work already, so things would be possible. Volume 7-8, when Weiss returns to Atlas with the RWBY team, would be an ideal time for this, because that's when she finally and truly breaks free from the family shackles created by her father. The point in RWBY: Hyousetsu Teikoku is that it lacks substance, lacks script work, everything I've already mentioned in terms of adaptation, demonstrates why this original arc was bad and as I don't want to say it was empty, I'll just say that was shallow and superfluous. >Seeing Blake's drama about Fauns and humans, apart from Adam and his influence on her summed up like that by the anime hurt me SO MUCH, the desire was to simply close the tab and never touch the anime again out of disrespect img(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/787028202086334464/1021054674838769714/unknown.png?width=1022&height=571) I doubt there will be another season, and I honestly don't even want to, but if there was, maybe, who knows, this arc gains relevance and is something that really changes the course of the work, it could maybe straighten out the characters' relationships and in the next season, they learn how to work them. ---- ~~~__Production__~~~ img(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1002466780507279362/1020048041098616843/unknown.png?width=806&height=571) RWBY: Hyousetsu Teikoku is certainly one of the most broken projects in production. Their schedule and planning is abysmal to the degree that they can't quite get it right. The point of the anime adaptation of RWBY was to bring the work that was originally done in CGI, to 2D. But what about a third-party anime episode with a bad schedule coming from an extremely limited studio? Animate everything with bad CGI. webm(https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1556402354341167105/pu/vid/1280x720/c6OH4qjZhhk_N3QW.mp4?tag=12) Perspective and continuity errors; Scenes with almost no politeness/consistency; Broken and clumsy movement, in addition to a dysfunctional composition. >WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS BRO, LOOK AT THIS ALL DEFECTIVE, CROOKED TRACK. Img(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/787028202086334464/1021055892860448878/unknown.png) All management proved disastrous. They don't have any time and their staff is desperately looking for ANY artist who will accept to work on the production. There are so many accumulated problems that I'm not even surprised by errors like this: webm(https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1564009719710289920/pu/vid/1280x720/g5p8dzAh8TfvOSJh.mp4?tag=12) img(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1002466780507279362/1020047250614923284/unknown.png?width=693&height=571) It's almost unbelievable that in the midst of a catastrophic production schedule, we have animators like Hiroto Nagata and Kazuki Kawata who bring us satisfying scenes to watch. Although sometimes the result is not so polished, we can say that both worked a miracle in producing something as good in a production as bad as RWBY. webm(https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1568991167546642438/pu/vid/854x478/CmE4vv3cTle7dnS1.mp4?tag=12) webm(https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1568999473602301953/pu/vid/854x478/V-xu5a5-bB_-LG7D.mp4?tag=12) Anyone looking at these scenes should not expect such an unhappy production, whether in terms of animation or script. I am immensely saddened by the news that the original voice actresses will go to the trouble of dubbing this. I, out of respect for the work that is RWBY, wouldn't do it. They who gave life to these characters, created them from their beginnings, are now dubbing something that, in my view, disrespects this work. They deserve so much more. img(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1002466780507279362/1020049302971744266/unknown.png?width=524&height=571) ---- ~~~__Conclusion__~~~ ~~~img550(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1002466780507279362/1002842268056698880/unknown.png)~~~ As I said initially, I'm a big fan of RWBY, it's one of my favorite works without a doubt. >I even have a text on Medium, in Portuguese, my native language, where I explore the narrative of RWBY, all that it is, leaving out spoilers and a little bit of the approach to character arcs, something I intend to do separately in the future. There I talk about structure, mythology, symbolism, characterization, music, substance and about the essence of a story and a good story, and why RWBY fits into that. For those interested, the link will be there for anyone who wants to use a Google Translate to be able to read. And having to look at an anime so problematic, flawed and with the sole purpose of being profitable, when its creator just wanted to tell us all a story, is saddening. At that time, while I currently wait for the release of Volume 9 of the original, this anime despite the problems and headaches it gave me, was to some extent a fun fanservice. However, I should point out that if the anime has disappointed you too or given you a false impression of RWBY, or perhaps made you interested in the work, I highly recommend consuming the original, it can be difficult to get used to the CGI initially, but currently I think it's beautiful, and the work is one of the best things I've ever consumed and easily the most 'Soul' work I've ever seen, Monty gave his soul to the project and it's a series that deserves even more prominence than it already has. This is my reaction to this adaptation: img550(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1002466780507279362/1002844208232677456/67e0944ec528e6eac0e76e764a4ec895.gif) ---- ~~~__"Keep Moving Forward"__~~~ ---- ~~~__Medium Text__~~~ https://medium.com/@Feripe/rwby-continue-seguindo-em-frente-8ebed570ad8a
~~~img(https://starcrossedanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/RWBY-Banner.png)~~~ The year is 2013. You've just finished Highschool and you're attending your favorite local convention, RTX, in line for the world premier of their new show. For the past 6 months you've binged their trailers. You're hyped. You recently got into this "anime" thing, and you trust Monty Oum implicitly. How can you not? His passion is infectious. The doors open, you take your seat, the lights go down and the screen plays... *RWBY*. Fast forward almost a decade later. *RWBY* is on it's 9th season and Monty Oum has tragically passed away. For one reason or another you're just not in love with the series anymore, watching each season in a vain hope for the magic of years gone by. And then you see it. Studio Shaft, Directed by Toshimasa Suzuki, planned by Gen Urobuchi with designs by *Steins;Gate's* Huke... *RWBY: Ice Queendom*. Hope. It doesn't last long. **Be warned, this review contains minor unmarked spoilers for *RWBY: Ice Queendom* as well as Rooster Teeth's original *RWBY***. ~~~img(https://starcrossedanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/RWBY-OG.png)~~~ #~~~__How We Got Here__~~~ First up, what exactly is *RWBY*? Made by Rooster Teeth, an American company, and directed by Monty Oum, an American director, *RWBY* stands in this really weird place between anime and cartoon. Neither just a simple passion project nor a fully-fledged production, *RWBY* exists at the interstice of the two. It has a budget, yes, and has since grown into a large IP. But it's world map was also created by squirting ketchup onto a napkin at the local IHOP. And both of these sides show in the series. Animated in Poser, and modeled in Maya, *RWBY* had the visual fidelity of a PS2-era cutscene, complete with blacked-out models for background characters. Yet in spite of this, the team's passion showed through in just how far they took it with those limitations. From a completely original score by Jeff Williams to Monty's signature fight choreography, *RWBY* had heart. Now after that I'm sure you're wondering, where does *Queendom* fit into all of this? If *RWBY* is this big IP now, with 8 seasons and a 9th on the way, do you have to watch all of that to understand this? The short answer is no. *Queendom* is a canon-adjacent story, meaning it slots into the existing canon and tells a side story that doesn't conflict with the main narrative. *Queendom* even goes so far as to redo, in a concentrated form at least, the first half of *RWBY* Volume 1 just so you understand who and what everyone is. So if you have never seen *RWBY* before, *Queendom* will, theoretically, be fine. The long answer though? Well that's where we run into problems. Because *Queendom* was clearly made for existing fans rather than to bring new ones into the fandom. And it's obvious from the start. ~~~webm(https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/cdc29f42e92aea9e5af81f55b5a714aa.mp4)~~~ # __~~~Visuals~~~__ With that said, it's time to start the review proper. And what better place to begin than the visual design and animation? *Queendom* actually has a decent amount going for it here. Huke's character designs are, in a word, gorgeous. It was true for *Black Rock Shooter* and *Steins;Gate* and it remains true for *Queendom*. I absolutely adore the eyes and, outside of Blake's cat outfit, the new *RWBY* designs look good. On top of that, the premise, which we will get to, lends itself to some rather creative backgrounds and settings. Simply put, when it's not moving I think *Queendom* can often look pretty decent. Sometimes the filters get in the way, and there are a fair bit of compositing issues, sure. But most still screenshots should like *fine*. But what about when it's not moving? What about when its doing that "animation" thing? How's it look then? Well that's the problem: It doesn't. Look animated, I mean. Oh *Queendom* tries, it tries so very hard. And whenever Hiroto Nagata, Kazuki Kawata and a few others are given room to shine, I dare say it succeeds. At it's best, *Queendom* is what *RWBY* fans have always imagined *RWBY* to look like. Just look at the clip above from the first episode! *RWBY* runs entirely on the "Rule of Cool" and Nagata embraced that. The only problem is that these sorts of clips only make up a miniscule portion of the show. Of course it's unreasonable to expect an entire season to be animated like this. No one is asking the impossible. However I bring it up because of just how *bad* the rest of the show is. More often than not, *Queendom* looks like it was thrown together hours before it aired. Don't believe me? Let's talk details. Some of the issues are pretty normal as I understand it. It's not uncommon for storyboards or pre-vis to be simplified or cut outright if there isn't time to fully animate them. Happens all the time I would wager, and isn't unique to *Queendom*. But that's more a symptom of the anime industry's issue at large regarding production schedules and timing than it is "acceptable practice". And *Queendom* especially suffers from this problem. From janky CGI to panning still shots to downright single-digit frame rates, *Queendom* is filled with moments where the production clearly got away from them. And while these do get worse as the show goes on, they are present from the very beginning! A few can be forgiven, making a show is hard, but there comes a point where you have to wonder how just tight their schedule was. And it only snowballs from there. From uninspired still shots and uninteresting or downright confusing angles to me questioning whether or not a compositing team even exists on the production. Characters sliding across the screen, feeling like they don't even belong in the world as they walk "above" the backgrounds rather than on them. It's a shame because *RWBY* as an IP has an established visual identity, and *Queendom* knows it. The meaningful looks, the wild action, cool for the sake of cool. *Queendom* knows what *RWBY* is supposed to look and feel like. The production just wasn't able to support that. Really what I'm saying is this: If you were to look up the word "Inconsistency" in the dictionary, you would find *Queendom's* picture. It looks absolutely great when it has the time to do so. Sadly it very rarely does. Luckily for us all however, *Queendom's* visuals are the worst part about it. So we can only go up from here. And what better place to start than the narrative! ~~~img(https://starcrossedanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/RWBY-Ice-Queendom-11.7.jpg)~~~ #~~~__Narrative/Setting__~~~ To start this bit off, I need to just come out and say it: *Queendom's* plot really doesn't have much going on. By it's very nature as canon-adjacent, *Queendom* is a B-plot in a much larger story. As such, nothing is allowed to truly *happen* in *Queendom*. Think of it like a filler arc in a way. Every character who shows up in the arc has to leave it as close as they can to how they entered it. You couldn't have some major event like say... Luffy losing an arm in a filler arc could you? Not without magically fixing it at the end with some Deus Ex Machina. It would mess to much with the established manga story line! While *RWBY* isn't a manga, it is a long running existing IP and *Queendom* takes place between volumes 1 and 2 of the original story. It's the same problem. Luckily, *Queendom* recognizes this and decides to take a different approach. Like so many good filler arcs before it, *Queendom* is basically one big bottle episode/series. It takes the cast and throws them into a wholly new location where they can smash and explore it to their hearts content, all without affecting the main series. And it does this through an admittedly silly contrivance: Dreams. That's right, *Queendom* goes full *Inception*. I'd say that's a spoiler, but it's literally in the PV and promotional work for the series, so don't get your panties in a twist. Anyways, the point is that this dream setting is something *Queendom* leans into a lot. Thing's don't have to make logical sense in a dream, either locationally or narratively. Instead it relies primarily on the emotions of the characters to drive scenes and the larger story forward. This has its pros and cons. On the pros side, this sort of emotional story telling leans into *RWBY's* core "Rule of Cool" philosophy. You're going to get a lot of things that just don't make sense, but are cool and cool things happen in dreams. I'm talking people driving up walls, doors to nowhere, that sort of thing. For the con's however, you have one big, glaring issue: *Queendom's* entire narrative arc is built around you already caring for, and being interested in, these characters. The best way to think of *Queendom* is as a single giant character piece about Weiss, with Ruby, Blake and Yang along for the ride. To some, that probably sounds great! But if you don't already know who they are? If those names mean nothing to you? Then *Queendom* has probably already lost you. Because it has no other way to hook you in than the characters and their relationships. Simply put, *Queendom* is a story made for existing *RWBY* fans, not to draw new fans in. There's no exploration of the setting or overarching goals of the characters. *Queendom* doesn't really try to establish who Ozpin and Teams RWBY and JNPR are or what Beacon is, what Grimm or Aura are, or why everything is like this. It just speed runs through the first volume to establish Weiss, her relationship with each member of Team RWBY, and her general internal issues. This is good enough for a fun dream-sequence through her head sure, if you've decided to engage with her. But for anyone looking for an introduction to *RWBY* at large, they are going to be sorely disappointed. However for those that *are* already fans of *RWBY*, there's a lot here to love. And most of it can be found in the characters. ~~~img(https://starcrossedanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/RWBY-Ice-Queendom-8.4.jpg)~~~ #~~~__Characters__~~~ The big thing to know about *Queendom's* characters before I dive into spoiler territory is that they are the meat of the show. I don't just mean that they are fun, or the action or whatever. I mean they personal journeys, their arcs and relationships, are more important than *Queendom's* actual plot. Like I said above, *Queendom* is mostly a character piece about Weiss Schnee. It dives in and examines every facet of her character. From her deteriorating relationship with her family and her abusive household to her desire for personal freedom and how it conflicts with wanting to take over and remake the family business. *Queendom* spends its entire runtime exploring these issues. And it does so largely through the other 3 members of team RWBY, allowing *Queendom* to simultaneously explore both at once. With Blake for instance, it explores their mutual experiences with racism. And don't worry, all of what I'm about to say is obvious from like... episode 2 onwards. On Blake's side its all about overcoming and moving forward despite her violent past, secure in the knowledge that she can be a better person. That her past does not define her. Meanwhile for Weiss it's about learning to see the individual, and not attributing the actions of a violent few to all. And by having the Nightmare show them their mutual worst extremes, *Queendom* allows them to safely experience and explore each. Similar threads exists for Ruby and her desire to be accepted and acknowledged as a leader vs Weiss envying her freedom, as well as Yang's overprotectiveness and older-sister relationship within the team. For those that care about the characters, it's all really good stuff! There's only one problem. JNPR. Unlike team RWBY, team JNPR might as well not exist. In fact, let's extend that to the rest of the show as well. Oh they show up and get a few lines, Pyrrha gets a nice dress and Weiss projects onto her a bit. Jaune even gets to take part in the big rescue, though mostly as a support. But that's it really. Pyrrha speaks maybe one line every 2 episodes at most, Ren and Nora even less. Ozpin, Glynda and the school at large are mostly just window dressing. This probably doesn't surprise you judging by the title, but *Queendom* is really just the team RWBY show. At its core this is fine. They are the titular characters, and it does really really well by them. It's just that the size of the cast is a bit to large for how irrelevant most of them actually are. All in all, I would say that while the characters are *Queendom's* strongest part, it heavily relies on you having prior knowledge, and interest, in them. New fans to the IP can't be expected to know everything that's needed to fully appreciate some of these scenes and interactions. And *Queendom* doesn't spend the proper time required to educate them. I suspect you'll still get some enjoyment, again the characterization is nice. But much like the narrative, this was made for an existing fanbase, and no one else. ~~~img(https://starcrossedanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/RWBY-Ice-Queendom-5.6.jpg)~~~ #~~~__OST/Sound Design__~~~ Finally we come to the last real section of this review, and one I'm very excited by. Much like it's established "Rule of Cool" visual identity, *RWBY* also has an existing *auditory* identity. But where the visuals were born of what I would call passion, rather than technical expertise, and could thus be iterated on and changed while still retaining that *RWBY* feel, the music is much more refined and iconic. Created primarily by Jeff Williams, with guest vocals from various artists, his daughter Casey among them, *RWBY's* musical style is centered around it's characters. Each one has their own instruments and genre of music associated with them, done so that you can instantly recognize who the primary focus of the scene is about. On top of that, a vast majority of the music has lyrics, telling the story just as much as the visuals. To me, that's what truly defines *RWBY's* musical identity. You could follow a characters journey in *RWBY* as much through their music as you could the show itself. Take Weiss's tracks for instance, all starting in a subdued, almost classical form before evolving and changing into more freeform and modern instruments. Here you have "The Path to Isolation" followed by "Mirror Mirror" parts 1 and 2, "It's My Turn" and "This Life is Mine", the same leitmotif present throughout. Or maybe you prefer Yang's more self-empowerment, guitar and drum heavy music with "I Burn", "Armed and Ready" and "Ignite". Heck, even the parents get music with stuff like "All Our Days" and "Home". The point is, *RWBY's* music is probably the most iconic thing about it. And this is what *Queendom* had to live up to. So... did it? The answer is... Sort-of? I want to be really clear about Void_Chords, Nobuko Toda and Kazuma Jinnouchi's struggle here, they had a hard job. They had to match, but not copy, *RWBY's* original sound. To reflect the philosophy behind how Jeff writes music while still doing their own thing. And they tried, they really did! They pulled out the bagpipes in some places, the classical instruments in others, and went all out with some of the pop tracks. (Fair warning, some of the following tracks are not officially released and I could only find clips from the show, so spoilers if you watch them). Take a listen to "Relight Emotions" for instance, the jazzy "Any Moment" or the ominous and unnerving "The Reflection". Anyways, the point is: They tried *really hard*. And their only downfall is that Jeff is just to iconic to the series, making it an impossible task. So yeah, *Queendom* tried to overcome the wall that is the original music, and it fell short. But they gave it the old college try. They *tried* to match the music to the characters, they *tried* to do a primarily vocal OST, and they even *tried* to bring back some of the OG music by having the VA's sing parts of "Mirror Mirror". It was an admirable attempt at something I never expected them to succeed at, and it is one I must respect. Now with that done... I can't help but think I'm forgetting something... Oh right! The sound design. It's fine. That's it. The sound design is ultimately pretty bland. For all that it takes place in a dreamscape, there really wasn't anything that stood out to me here. This is both good and bad, since it neither heightened nor hindered the series. But it was ultimately forgettable. ~~~img(https://starcrossedanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/RWBY-123.23.jpg)~~~ #~~~__Conclusion__~~~ So the question becomes, how was *RWBY: Ice Queendom*? And the problem is that I have two different answers. For people who know, and already like, *RWBY*? This is a good time. Nothing incredible, the production is an absolute mess and the only thing you are really getting out of it is a well executed character piece about Weiss. Say... ~60/100. But for everyone else? For the people who *don't* already know *RWBY*, who *aren't* already invested in these characters and their story? You don't even have that. All you get is a mess of a production where the only valuable parts of the show can be found on Sakugabooru. For you... Probably around a 30/100. So for the sake of argument, lets split the difference right down the middle. Not like the score really matters all things considered, not if you've actually read what I wrote. At the very least we got some absolutely balling end cards out of it though. [Imgur Link since Anilist doesn't do gallery inbeds.](https://imgur.com/a/uYY6GIe)
Can we just stop for a moment and appreciate how fucking insane it is that RWBY is an actual anime now? It’s hard to remember a decade out from its premiere, but when RWBY first arrived on the scene, it was a very weird, very niche property. It was a an amateur passion project from the guys who made the funny Halo webseries, many of whom had little to no experience on a full-fledged original animated series like that. The writing was subpar, the actors were all pretty inexperienced, even the animation was pretty ramshackle outside the incredible fight scenes. But not only did RWBY persist, it grew. It improved on itself every season with better production values and storytelling, accomplishing things that never seemed possible in its early, rudimentary days. And as it grew in quality, it likewise grew in popularity, blossoming from a niche web property into one of the defining series of the modern animation landscape. And after ten years, it’s become so goddamn huge that it’s managed to snag an honest-to-god anime spinoff with some of the biggest names in the business working on it. Really, stop and think about that: Monty Oum’s love letter to anime has become such a huge success that it’s now being worked on by _Gen fucking Urobuchi._ Okay, yeah, Urobuchi just came up with the story concept, but still. Imagine telling anyone back in 2012 that the guy who wrote Fate/Zero, Madoka Magica, and Psycho-Pass would someday put his hands on RWBY. Wherever Monty is now, I hope he’s proud of how far his baby has come. And to Ice Queendom’s credit, it starts from a very strong premise: what if we took one of the worst, most half-baked parts of early RWBY- namely, Weiss’ two-episode dalliance with racism- and flesh it so it actually works? The Faunus racism subplot has never been the show’s strongest aspect, something that even its creators have acknowledged. So if you’re gonna do a semi-canonical spinoff, choosing to go back and do that subplot’s initiation over is about as good an idea as I can come up with. The main issue with volume 1′s finale is how rushed the introduction and resolution of Weiss’ racism is. It’s brought up with no build-up, it’s so hilariously over-the-top that it’s impossible to take seriously, and in one of the single stupidest writing decisions I’ve ever seen, she just gets over it off-screen and it’s never brought up again. It’s not the worst RWBY has ever been (*glares menacingly at Jaunedine*), but it’s definitely up there, and it sets the stage for how awkward the whole Faunus plotline is doomed to remain going forward. If you’re gonna flesh out and re-work any part of RWBY, I can’t think of a better option than this. So after a three-episode recap of volume 1, compressing events for time and sprinkling in new details that will form the basis of its plot, Ice Queendom launches into a good old-fashioned dream arc. Weiss is attacked by a Grimm that traps her in a nightmare, and the rest of her team has to travel into that nightmare to set her free. But it’s easier said than done, because this nightmare preys on its victim’s worst impulses, bringing their darkest fears about themselves to the forefront until they consume them. And that means Dream Weiss isn’t just a passive prisoner of her own dream: she’s the dictator of it. She’s every bit the cold, ruthless authoritarian that her family wants her to be, indifferent to the suffering of her kingdom and closed off from the people she truly cares about. It’s all of Weiss’ worst qualities made manifest, exaggerated and twisted and very much not solved by an off-screen decision. Which is actually helped by that reader’s digest of volume 1 I mentioned: with just a few key details tweaked, it’s made clear that even after resolving things with Blake, Weiss is nowhere near free from his demons. And if those demons aren’t gonna let her go on their own, then her friends are just gonna have to beat them out of her with the power of friendship. Because if RWBY’s gonna go full anime, it might as well go full goddamn anime. As a premise, this is everything I could want. Sure, the volume 1 recap isn’t perfect, and it’s far from a perfect way to start things off. It cuts too much out to be welcoming for newcomers, and this show is clearly not aiming to be anyone’s introduction to RWBY. But it also doesn’t really change enough to be interesting to established fans beyond seeing their favorite volume 1 moments realized in classic 2D animation (which, to be clear, is pretty fun on its own; the Nevermore fight is basically unimpeachable). Once Ice Queendom branches into its own story, though, it’s a damn good time. It’s clear how much love the creators of this show have for RWBY, and how well they understand Weiss’ character in particular. Even in the smaller details of the dream, like the different ways Weiss’ family members are portrayed, you can tell the people making this show are as much fans as anyone watching it. And if the only reason for IQ to exist at all was providing a more satisfying conflict and resolution to the Weiss Racism subplot, then I’d say mission accomplished. I won’t spoil how things play out, but while it isn’t perfect, it sticks the landing where it needs to and makes this part of RWBY stronger. That, if nothing else, is cause for celebration. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long before some pretty significant problems start to crop up. The first, and most obvious, issue is the animation. Shaft’s glory days as a studio are well behind them (cries in Sangatsu season 3 never), and after a mostly solid opening stretch of episodes, the animation really starts coming apart at the seams. So many awkward, unfinished cuts, off-model characters, sloppy in-between frames, and that’s just the obvious stuff I could pick up on with a cursory glance. It does pick up again in the final stretch, but this show was clearly a production nightmare, and I shudder to think how bad things were behind the scenes. But perhaps even more distressing is that even when Ice Queendom looks good, it also looks... well, boring. The character designs somehow have even less personality than the early stiff-faced poser models, colors are clashing all over the place, and there’s just so little imagination put into how to visually depict this dream world. This is the goddamn Monogatari studio setting a story inside an abstract, symbolic mindscape. Why the fuck does so much of it look so flat and basic? Yeah, early RWBY certainly wasn’t a looker, but just take a look at its most recent seasons! RWBY looks incredible now! I’d argue it’s one of the leading pioneers for CG animation, certainly for anime-style CG animation if nothing else. And it’s a shame that an actual veteran anime studio falls so short of what Rooster Teeth has been able to accomplish. And then there’s the writing. Or rather, the lack thereof. See, all that good stuff I talked about with Ice Queendom fleshing out the Weiss Racism subplot and giving it proper closure? That’s just the first and last few episodes of the dream. There’s a huge dead space right in the middle of this show that I can only describe as plot blocking. A problem arises, the characters solve it, another problem arises, they solve it again, and the pacing practically drags to a standstill through an endless series of obstacles that don’t move the plot forward and only seem to exist to drag out the show’s runtime. It’s glaringly obvious that writer Tow Ubukata didn’t have enough ideas for how to stretch this story across a full cours, so most of its midsection is just spinning its wheels waiting for an excuse to start the actually interesting stuff again. And it doesn’t help that this is also where the animation really starts to fall apart, so for a while you’ve got a plot that’s going nowhere and looking pretty ugly while doing it. Which may have been forgivable if just for the sake of watching our favorite characters spend more time together, but, well... Look, I feel like this is going to be a controversial take, but I have to say it anyway: Ice Queendom’s dialogue is terrible. The characters talk in the most generic anime aphorisms, there’s so little specificity to how they communicate, everyone feels like they’re Performing Anime Archetypes rather than actually embodying Ruby Rose, Yang Xiao Long, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, Jaune Arc, and so on. And whatever else you might say about OG RWBY, it has always had _excellent_ dialogue. Even back in the first volume when Monty, Miles and Kerry were still finding their footing, they knew how to make a conversation flow with purpose. This, though? This just feels like fanfiction. Which, I mean, that’s essentially what Ice Queendom is, but it’s that awkward kind of fanfiction that understands how the characters are written but doesn’t really know how to portray their voice, so the dialogue is all weirdly off and impersonal and never quite sounds the way it’s supposed to. And I definitely put this on the writing more than the actors, because I recently watched the English dub trailer and it had all the same problems. Saori Hayami, Lindsay Jones, Yoko Hisaka, Kara Eberle, and all the other voice actors, JP and EN alike, are incredibly talented people, but they just cannot make this dialogue sound right. You know, it’s funny. When Ice Queendom was first announced, the worst parts of the RWBY hatedom lauded it as Japan “taking custody of RWBY” away from evil Miles and Kerry who “ruined Monty’s vision” (by which they meant adding gay characters and not redeeming the evil male abuser). Finally, they crowed, based Nippon was going to do RWBY the way it was supposed to be done. And yet, not only is Ice Queendom a substantially weaker product than anything OG RWBY has put out in the past several years, it’s flaws are all a direct result of being an anime in the first place. The horrible production schedule leading to melty animation, the plot blocking that exists onto to perpetuate itself, the dialogue that makes the characters come off more like archetypes than characters... these are all problems that anime is very familiar with. They’re certainly problems familiar to anyone who’s kept up with Shaft’s recent output, particularly their horribly mangled Magia Record adaptation. Perhaps there’s a weird irony in that. RWBY may have started out as a love letter to anime, but it’s grown so far from those origins by now that it’s arguably better than most anime on the market. And when someone tries to turn it into anime, it only reveals just how much better off this show is for charting its own course away from the worst parts of the medium it was inspired by. And yet... yeah, this is still really fucking cool. It’s a testament to how far this cute little indie project has come over the years. RWBY is a juggernaut now, something that’s so big it’s come around to influencing its own influences. And despite its many, many faults, I still came away from Ice Queendom feeling mostly positive (it doesn’t hurt that the last couple episodes really do kick a serious amount of ass). It’s as much a love letter to RWBY as RWBY is to anime, and seeing that mutual appreciation is just too damn inspiring to ignore. I hope this isn’t the last anime spinoff RWBY gets; I hope lots of different Japanese studios and creators get to try their hands at bringing the hidden pockets of Remnant to life. Maybe they could adapt all the tie-in novel I still haven’t read? That could be a really cool way of bringing those stories to life. But I’ll save my wish list for another day. For now, RWBY Ice Queendom was a deeply flawed, but deeply captivating experiment, and I hope it’s an experiment we see repeated- and improved upon- for quite some time to come.
~~~It wasn’t long into the first episode when I realized that this was going to be disappointing. Not just as an adaptation of a series I have a soft spot for, but as an anime series done by studio Shaft. img300(https://c.tenor.com/95DYE368JNAAAAAd/rwby-penny-polendina-rwby-head-turn.gif) The longer I got into the first episode alone only hammered down the fact that early RWBY thrived on the charm of being an animated internet show made with sticks, a few rolls of twine, and some Elmer’s glue, while also being blessed with a soundtrack way to good for its own good, and the creative mind of Monty Oum with its action scenes. While this just feels so… lifeless. It’s also pretty clear that this was not anywhere near to being a priority for Shaft, as this show looks more in line with something from Lidenfilms or Silver Link. img400(https://i.imgur.com/QCM57GJ.jpg) In the first three episodes, they took 2 hours' worth of content and crammed it into an hour's worth. Obviously, this creates a lot of pacing issues. And they try to remedy this with some of the most hand-holding dialogue they could’ve thought up. There are a number of moments in the original show where shits just kinda shown to you and your left to figure that shit out for yourself cause well, you do have eyes don’t you? But this shit spells it out to you every chance it gets. And I’m not gonna act like OG RWBY had great writing, no way, but it at least felt better than whatever this is. And all throughout the first few episodes, little charming moments from the original show are cut constantly. Like one example, the fight in the Dust Store, when Ruby turns her headphones off after going outside while stopping the robbery. Yea it’s such a little moment but it helped sell the scene and added charm. A charm that Ice Queendom severely lacks, even after getting to the anime-only stuff. img400(https://64.media.tumblr.com/fea4ebb61e7beef14d86bb7ffcaec14b/b798e02a413f43cf-0c/s500x750/1f6ec62ed0ab24931bde94770b41e245108b1fe6.gif) After the first 3 episodes that largely butcher its source material, we get to the real meat of the show. And the meats been left out too long and gone bad. What basically happens without spoiling _too much_ of the show is, Weiss gets caught in an endless dream thanks to a monster, so the rest of team RWBY has to go into her dream with the help of a new character who’s so bland I can’t bother to even look her name up, and save Weiss from the monster and wake her from her dream of being a Neo-Nazi. No, I’m not kidding. In the world of RWBY, this makes no sense, which says a lot if you’ve seen the OG show, but I’ll _try_ to give it some leeway here… just a little… no this still sucks. And it goes on for forever because Ruby apparently forgets about her semblance for a while and is going at this in the hardest way imaginable to try and save Weiss and waste our time in the process. img400(https://c.tenor.com/IpPjLjGesFcAAAAC/rwby-anime-rwby.gif) Visually, aside from the action scenes, this show looks so bland and lifeless. Character movements are stiff, the art for the characters goes down in quality constantly, and for a show made by Studio Shaft, this is one pathetic ass looking show. Even in the action scenes, when the show does look good, the directing of each scene is so uninterested to follow, especially in comparison to the originals action scenes. Also quick question. Why does the CG in the show look worse than anything the original had to offer back in 2013? There are some points where it’s not too bad but that’s when it’s used at a distance and not up close. I’ve seen shows that are look worse and move worse but by the standards of the studio that made this, to say I’m less than impressed is an understatement. img400(https://64.media.tumblr.com/9664242565951bca3940ac88b5726f1f/23677b1ebd5a38df-35/s500x750/1405798ee3f72de36997af3f3f699d7674a50dbc.gif) I won’t harp on this for too long cause the music in the anime is actually pretty decent with a couple of songs I’ll probably listen to again later on but damnit man most of the time this shit just sounds like any other anime OST. My favorite part of the original RWBY is the OST, I’ve listened to it too many times for my own good so yes there is a bias here but that doesn’t change the fact that this has got some generic ass music. It doesn’t sound bad, it doesn’t stick out in a bad way, and most of it largely fits fine enough but not enough for me to wanna listen to it again. The rendition of Mirror Mirror here is pretty good though ngl. And while I know this is mainly a story about Weiss and her bs and having her song, Mirror Mirror, here should be enough… but the fact that Red Like Roses and This Will be the Day are absent from this is as disappointing as you’d think. youtube(https://youtu.be/1iSTJYIXYao) I’m not the biggest RWBY fan, I haven’t kept up with it at all since the end of Season 5, it lost my interest, didn’t care for the directions the show was headed, the charm was gone, I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t expect this to be that good, but it didn’t even live up to the low expectations I had for it. I don’t see old fans of RWBY enjoying this, I don’t see current fans enjoying it, I don’t think you’d enjoy it if it were your first experience with RWBY, it’s just nothing shy of disappointing. I’ve seen shows that do look worse, and sound worse, but that doesn’t make this any better. I was hoping this was at the least be a guilty pleasure show for me but I come out the other side feeling nothing but disappointment for a show I had little expectations for. img400(https://c.tenor.com/WtdgEsECYIoAAAAC/rwby-rwby-ice-queendom.gif) ~~~
Knowing nothing about this, I had no idea what would be in store for me. Starting with 3 hilariously faced paced episodes, I thought maybe this would move into so bad it's good territory. Penny was introduced, and they skipped her moment by only showing the end of her fight. The character conflicts were resolved so fast, like a greased hog running for it's life in a forest from starved people, that they didn't feel they made sense. Looking at the early animation, I was terrified by lifeless, copy pasted CGI robots. Some of the 2D fights also had CGI moments shamefully squeezed in between. Then I saw moments where the staff animated falling characters by what looked click and drag execution. I was laughing in amusement, until the overly repetitive dream arc began. Not only do they use copy and paste CGI robots that look lifeless, they copy and pasted whole scenes, repeatedly. As the dorky Ruby, voiced by Saori Hayama, continued to try to save her friend, the dreams repeated. It felt like a poorly made time travelling story. The pacing went from lightning fast to a slugfest. I recall an episode of Ruby just wandering around aimlessly while disgusting looking monsters on the doors and statues made me feel uncomfortable. I couldn't take much of this seriously, like Weiss's mom being an alcoholic shadow in the wall constantly laughing fanatically. The opening sequence is an embarrassment. The song sounds like something I'd hear in a commercial for clothes, and the footage used is recycled from the first 3 episodes. Though the ED had the same problem, they eventually fixed it by adding actual footage. Not the opening though. They kept it the same, to my constant disappointment with this series. The animation is so noticeably good or bad, it's just shameful. Even when it's good, it tends to have weirdly looking faces and body proportions at times. As the girls fought, I wondered where the animation went. Then, I laughed again when I realized they saved it for a food fight, of all things. There are only a handful of moments I can recall where Shaft actually tried to animate this expired horse radish of an anime. I was let down immensely by this studio after being moved by Bakemonogatari and Madoka Magica. At least the last episode has a few Shaft-like cuts, before this series squealed it's last shriek and withered away into the obscure pit of forgotten anime. As the series continued, with the characters asleep most of the time, I has horrified once again with the game the girls were playing. It was a fighting game animated so poorly I had to pause the episode to laugh. My list of complaints for this series feels like it will never end. There are more anti-climactic fights that end in a second, useless characters that do nothing the whole series, the soundtrack sounds like a defective AI generated it, and showing the characters faces reacting instead of the fights. I was annoyed to no end, time and time again, at how often these girls just stood around talking nonsense. Then there's the train scene I had to watch again, again, and again. The finale was hardly a finale. At least some of the end cards looked nice, like the one from Yoshitoshi Abe. Though I'm being harsh, I was charmed by the only character I liked: Ruby. Her dorkiness won me over, as lifeless as this series is, and I enjoyed watching her, sometimes. This is a very silly series, to the point I developed somewhat of an attachment to that aspect of it. It was only "so bad it's good" for a while, but I was very entertained, laughing at all the incompetence. I was a bit sad to see it go, but realized in the end that maybe it was Stockholm syndrome.
*spoilers for RWBY Volume 1 and Hyousetsu Teikoku, TL;DR for this behemoth at the bottom* Before dissecting what makes RWBY: Ice Queendom such a nightmare, there’s one thing that has to be discussed, and it’s that for both us fans who stuck with the original series since the early days, and the team behind the franchise’s inception, this show is a dream come true. When Monty Oum created RWBY and got his friends (Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross) to bring his ideas to script in the early 2010s, he provided several anime such as Cowboy Bebop as homework so his friends could get more acquainted with his ideas and vision. RWBY was always inspired by anime as well as anime-like games such as Blazblue, with entire scenes and fighting styles being lifted from those aforementioned titles, among others over the years. When the four main girls of the series got to be part of Blazblue Cross Tag Battle in 2019, one can only imagine how happy those friends must have been, keeping the series and Monty’s ideas afloat 4 years after his tragic and sudden passing in 2015. Likewise, even with the troubled production that was no-doubt hampered by COVID-19, RWBY becoming the very thing that inspired it should be seen as a testament to how far the dream of a man and his friends has gone. Furthermore, fans of the show have needed something to lift their spirits up in years, and no, the Cross Tag inclusion doesn’t count given its own controversies regarding the handling of the RWBY cast (among other things). RWBY has long since abandoned its school roots in favor of an adventure series, and most of the later volumes have justifiably received large amounts of flak compared to the early entries. Adding how COVID-19 impacted the production of Volume 8 and how for the first time, a volume had to be split in half and the release of the next volume would be delayed by an entire year. After the rough road fans have endured following Monty’s death and the myriad controversies that have plagued both the show and the company that produced it (Rooster Teeth), this show’s announcement must have seemed like a beacon of hope. Unfortunately, we had to learn that damn near ¼ of the show would be spent recapping the first volume of the show before launching into its own original arc. Let’s not play fools, RWBY is an awful, broken murikanime that has lost any of the life and charm that kept it afloat during its early days. None of the writers, not even Monty, have ever had a good grasp on the characters or setting they wrote, with retcon after retcon, character shift after character shift, and the myriad of ridiculous time-wasters and other baffling decisions that made Volumes 5-8 so especially galling. Even back in Volumes 1-3, most of the aforementioned issues were apparent. Hell, the fact that the OG writers decided to add an overarching subplot about human on faunus racism leading to a civil rights turned extreme terrorist group into their pseudo-magical school adventure fantasy and that it was reportedly inspired by their understanding of the Black Panthers, should set a military base worth of alarm bells inside your head. Amidst all the sloppy, amateurish high-school sitcom-esque writing where character arcs are horribly clunky at the best of times, we have racism and bigotry to sloppily contend with. It’s important to highlight much of what makes RWBY so bad even from the early outset in order to show where Ice Queendom stacks up in comparison, and how it somehow manages to be even worse. However, one must start with the obvious aspects this show improves upon. Where Volume 1 started with Ruby busting a shop robbery ala Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, Ice Queendom decides to flesh out Ruby and her family on the day of the event, providing some extra pathos and grounding to her character while also taking the time to do the same for Weiss regarding the White Trailer. To hype up the then-upcoming main series back in 2013, four trailers were produced to focus on one of the main leads each, and given that Ice Queendom focuses more on Weiss, focusing on her trailer and expanding upon it was a smart decision. Furthermore, the original series pretty much only has Blake and Weiss have any discussion on the White Fang nonsense and how it has led to Weiss and her family company’s racism towards the faunus, whereas Ice Queendom lets Ruby and especially Yang weigh in more on those topics. As such, the girls have more agency on one of the main sources of the group’s many fractures throughout their early escapades at Beacon Academy. Sure, Volume 1 should have had more of said pathos and agency to begin with, but that does mean that both in subtle and more overt ways, Ice Queendom improves on a few of the main show’s shortcomings. Alas, the show somehow manages to be so much worse than what it covers and spins off from. Let’s start with how the show’s bigger issues affect the V1 material before delving into how the new content suffers from similar problems. The show has some of the worst pacing in an anime, period. Hell, Sword Art Online, a show infamous for its first arc being time-skips and rushed ideas galore, has better pacing. Volume 1 was almost 2 hours long, though Ice Queendom opts to skip most of one infamously bad arc, so the 67 minutes that make up IQ’s first 3 episodes cover around 90 minutes worth of material. However, it’s already been established that they also cover the White Trailer. Ideally, given that the show often combined scenes together, the show would be able to cover what it’s working within a reasonable amount of time, but there were two gigantic wrenches thrown into the cogs of the machine. For some ungodly reason, episode 1 decided to cover and expand upon the Black Trailer where Blake defects from the White Fang, even though the show provides more than enough information on why she left that sinking ship of ever-worsening morality to restart her life in a more honest way at Beacon. They covered this in episode 1, when, if there was any place to put it, episode 3 would fit the bill as that is where the White Fang and racism ideas in V1 are brought to the forefront. That’s about 5 minutes of material that could have been spaced out better to set up the big forest test the group must pass in ep 2 to establish teams, so that ep 2 can have more time to breathe when adapting that mini-arc. As it stands, several explanations for why characters do the things they do such as being forced to permanently team up upon eye-contact are tossed aside. Sure, they added one scene to explain how Weiss and Ruby wound up encountering a giant nevermore, but everything else suffers as the pacing has to tighten up far too much for comfort. Episode 3 has it so much worse with its big wrench. In episode 2, they introduce an original character looking for an anime original type of grimm known as nightmare grimm, and both Weiss and Jaune find themselves affected entirely offscreen with weird, mysterious markings showing up on them out of nowhere. Cue the middle ⅓ of episode 3 being original material of Jaune being trapped in a nightmare by said grimm and the new huntress sending Jaune’s teammates to help him. Even discounting how only close friends can enter even though Jaune’s team does after only a day of them teaming up and having barely any time shown getting to know each other, this entire sequence is a rushed disaster focusing on Jaune’s insecurities regarding his disappointment, which have two tremendous issues of their own. Firstly, given that Jaune’s arc with his bully was skipped and only the parts of him getting whooped by the man and later having a talk with his teammate Pyrrha were kept, this means that the explanation of him forging transcripts to sneak into the elite Beacon Academy were skipped. A core aspect of his insecurities which explains why he is unusually weak at combat and ignorant about basic mechanics such as a person’s aura, is skipped in favor of general shittalking by suits of armor before he is quickly rescued. Secondly, the effects of this original scene being inserted here end up resulting in the stories covered in the first and last ⅓ of the episode being utterly eviscerated. Weiss has two problems the show tackles relating to her stubbornness and lack of respect, those being her refusal to accept Ruby as her team leader, and her racism towards faunus such as Blake (who she didn’t know was one until ¾ into episode 3). The first part of episode 3 has her finding herself increasingly annoyed at Ruby’s behavior before snapping at her, leading to the two getting talks from their professors on their weaknesses and lack of faith before they make up at the end of what was a single episode of RWBY Vol 1. Originally, we saw how Weiss' ideas for the group's living room arrangements got vetoed the morning before class began proper, as well as Ruby’s myriad antics within the classroom which led to Weiss getting angry at Ruby and deeming her childish and incompetent even if she was still in the wrong for being so confrontational so quickly. Here, we only see Ruby dozing off in class and backseating Weiss during her demonstration as opposed to the many times Ruby goofed off. Combined with how oddly warm Weiss was at the start of the episode, now it just feels like Weiss is almost entirely in the wrong, so the scenes with the professors talking to them work so much less and the complicated reigniting of the conflict given both girls’ issues comes off as lesser if not senseless. As such, when Weiss gives Ruby a specific cup of coffee –that she asked RWBY about in V1 instead of somehow already knowing here– after seeing Ruby having passed out during intensive night studying, there’s even less impact than before. The last ⅓ of ep 3 has the arrival of stowaway Sun and the fallout of several dust robberies trigger the White Fang conversation and heated arguments regarding Weiss’ racism, her baggage, and Blake’s baggage before she snaps and outs herself as a (former) member and dips. The bulk of the material with the girls is actually improved, but then we get the climax. In Volume 1, Roman Torchwick, the criminal boss from early in the volume, reappears with his White Fang members (for reasons that don't get explained here or make sense when they do in Volume 2) to rob a Schnee Dust cargo boat before Blake, Sun, Ruby, and their new friend Penny all arrive to fight him, in that order, after Weiss and Yang discuss Blake’s reveal and fleeing. Not only is the ensuing spectacle the best fight in Volume 1, Ruby re-encountering Roman provided some semblance of natural conclusion, and Penny forcing him and his team back after revealing her OP robot powers was a fun cherry on top that explains why he did, in fact, have to retreat. Ice Queendom skips EVERYTHING in favor of cutting to Penny having swords and rocket feet out of nowhere with Roman retreating from what we didn’t get to see, completely deflating any and all tension and spectacle leading to everyone’s reunion. Perhaps if Jaune’s nightmare plot was removed from ep 3 and turned into its own episode immediately after the V1 material ends, there would have been enough time to give these other parts of the episode the time they desperately deserved and allow for things to breathe and make sense…well, more sense than they do now, given that RWBY Volume 1 is still broken. Maybe if we had 4 episodes instead of 3, many of the problems would be alleviated, but given how troubled production was, perhaps that wouldn't have turned out well, either. Alas, one can make the argument of "ofc the recap content is bad, it's adapting RWBY, the original stuff is probably better". Yeah, it is, inherently. This arc isn’t horribly rushed. However, most other issues remain, but transitioning into why they exist in the current arc and what said arc is even meant to be about requires acknowledging one more weakness that both V1 and Ice Queendom’s 3rd episode share. Even though Blake was the most active in confronting Weiss’ racist views before running away, it’s only through Ruby and especially Yang that Weiss starts to reconsider by the time everyone reunites with Blake. Perhaps having Weiss stumble upon the battle with Roman and the supposed White Fang or something could have been the final push she needed to reevaluate both Blake and the faunus at large, but as it stands, she only gets the ball rolling and gets everyone to look for her and make up. In the main series, this is how Volume 1 ends before Volume 2 has her Kirito it up by having already developed offscreen so she can immediately be a more pleasant person. The majority of Ice Queendom is an interquel theoretically designed to fix this issue by further delving into her headspace and using V1’s content as a jumping off point to begin showcasing that offscreen development to bridge the gap between the two volumes. In fact, the finale is dedicated to focusing on early Volume 2 content, further lending credence to this idea. To get to the meat of the issues with how they handled said idea, let’s not dwell in matters like how the mechanics of the nightmare grimm world things Jaune and Weiss have in terms of how the characters are affected by the victim’s perception are inconsistent between the two. Nor should we focus too hard on how nothing about new character Shion’s semblance and overall powers make sense in the context of RWBY’s world. RWBY’s worldbuilding is notoriously broken, with contradictions and retcons all over the place, and the real issues start with the mere conceit of how things here are meant to play out. If you haven’t seen RWBY Volume 1 it can be easy to conclude that neither Weiss nor Jaune should have had anyone close enough to rescue them at the point in which they’re trapped. This is because Ice Queendom completely skips over the throwaway line explaining that there was a time skip of a few weeks between the Ruby and Weiss leadership spat story and the rest of what episode 3 covers. As such, the mere conceit only works on any level if you assume that the V1 continuity and Ice Queendom’s continuity are the same despite all the subtle and less than subtle alterations. Better make your peace with it pronto cuz while Jaune’s nightmare lasts 8 minutes, Weiss’ lasts for 8 whole episodes. Both have plenty of baggage to unpack but since they cut out what would have substantiated Jaune’s deal for the sake of brevity, we’re gonna spend an eternity with Weiss’ dream. In an instant, the show goes from being incomprehensibly fast-paced to being unbearably slow, and the fact that neither Yang nor Blake jump in immediately like Ruby did so that we can drag things out longer doesn’t leave a positive impression of the arc’s start. The dreams also muddle what is the real person trapped in the dream and what is a predatory version of them and their insecurities about both themselves and others created by the grimm. The idea does explain why Weiss seems out of character in her dream after a while, and the dream settings do allow for some neat main series callbacks while theoretically allowing for more insight into their character with their interpretations of characters invading them and how those who do are altered to Weiss’ perception of them. It does get rather baffling when Team JNPR gets thrown into the mix, especially with Weiss’ portrayal of Pyrrha. Said depiction doesn’t work on a textual level given she’s in the dummy jail with the rest of her team despite being idolized by Weiss, and even on a subtextual level of Pyrrha being this girl alone on her figurative pedestal and how she sings “Mirror Mirror” to convey it…why would Weiss know that? Even going the route of projection given that Weiss has sung songs for her family in the main series, it’s still such a threadbare connection that even discounting how it can only come about with knowledge of later mainline RWBY volumes, it's such a threadbare, tenuous reach that the non-sequitur event is perhaps the most puzzling moment in the show. Hell, even the later potential explanation of Weiss wanting to keep the visages of people she cares about trapped doesn’t work because she barely got to interact with anyone in Team JNPR barring like 2 minor conversations with Pyrrha and Jaune. What, did they do all of that OFFSCREEN, like in REGULAR RWBY?! Fuck off with that shit! Needless to say, even though the bullshit per minute quota is mildly lowered for the big arc compared to the V1 retread, the show’s still dumb. It does eventually try to develop Ruby’s insecurities about being a leader. The execution is…fine, minus how Ruby doesn’t even remotely feel like any version of her from the show at this point as she feels more and more like a stock heroine who cries a lot. A lot of her early V1 quirks like her asocial nature and love of weapons also had to get dropped given how late V1 practically rewrote her entirely. Everyone else also feels like facsimiles of their main series counterparts, like Blake being ridiculously cold at first before being just there, Ruby feeling a lot less homely in her childlike manner of optimism, and Weiss being weirdly too warm and sanitized compared to her V1 self. Furthermore, exploring Weiss’s family baggage in a weird, loosely canon interquel is a bit of a tricky prospect, as we aren't allowed to learn anything important that won't come up in later volumes otherwise it would have to and thus make no sense here, but it can still allow the others to get to know her more. Unfortunately, they hardly expand on any of Team JNPR, that group’s dynamics, or how they interact with members of Team RWBY considering they didn’t get to do that all too much until Volume 4, and with only Jaune being able to tag along halfway through the show, the rest don’t get to do anything. It’s especially annoying considering Weiss idolized Pyrrha and empathizes with the idea of being isolated via being put on a pedestal, yet they never get to interact past episode 2, which, again, is volume 1 content. The fact that a non-speaking dream version of Pyrrha has more involvement than the girl herself is criminal. Neither the old writers, nor script writer and series composition writer Tow Ubukata have any understanding of RWBY’s cast and it shows with how utterly stilted and devoid of any semblance of expressiveness or banter almost everyone is 99% of the time. It honestly makes the entire excursion feel like a waste of time, as there’s almost no real expansion of any character or dynamic, and it doesn’t even remotely develop Weiss, either. Weiss doesn’t actively grow or struggle with curbing her family-ingrained bigotry, she gets trapped and warped into a muddle perversion of herself who has to be rescued. Any insight that can be gleamed is utterly minimal, and once the arc is over, it’s clear that the dream story has just been one useless cul-de-sac not actually progressing anything. If it weren’t for episode 12 FINALLY progressing that shit for the first time by having Weiss properly make up with Blake after the final V1 storyline and later sit with Sun while her friends question if she’d be comfortable doing that, the entire purpose of the show would have been completely and utterly wasted! Now it’s just mostly wasted… Speaking of the arc’s conclusion, the latter half just devolves into contrivances galore. Critical explanations are overlay delayed, important items to keep the characters safe and alive crop up outta nowhere for the sake of plot armor, and apparently the Jaune nightmare grimm that was imprisoned wasn’t even taken out for over a day for literally no reason other than because the writers needed it to be given to Blake as a last-ditch cop-out effort to help Weiss and make Blake the final boss in the “Weiss Struggles To Not Be Douchebag Hitler” show. It’s nothing short of maddening. By this point, a lot of critical pieces of information the show previously used as tension against the characters and their lives just get discarded for no good reason other than “the plot said so”, as is tradition for RWBY. Honestly, even if the show was consistently well-animated, which it isn’t, it’s hard to say that Ice Queendom would be any fun. While the characters were jittery and not well-established for the most part, what made the early volumes of RWBY fun was the comedy and the few character dynamics that did naturally exist and result in banter. The show wasn’t exactly batting a thousand regarding its comedy, but there are some legitimately funny moments here and there thanks to how characters like Nora were presented, and how the show took the time to show its cast chilling, throwing pillows, getting quippy and smarmy, etc. Ice Queendom is just so unbearably dry that all of that gets thrown out the window, so the more in-your-face wildcards like Nora get toned down to oblivion and said moments of life got removed entirely, Attempts at jokes are few and far between given how stilted, stoic, and stock everyone is. Outside of a cute nod to V1’s background shadow people in episode 2, even chuckle-worthy moments are scarce enough to be counted in one hand. The only one with any life to her is Yang, at least until episode 12 when the show finally lets the girls be cheeky dickheads to each other and get into lively food fights and whatnot. Still, it’s not through sitting through over several unbearable and lifeless storylines just to get to the finish line and start seeing Ice Queendom attempt to have fun. Another contributing factor to the lack of fun in this show is its visuals, which are woefully inconsistent. Studio SHAFT isn’t exactly a stranger to terribly rushed production cycles that require serious post-airing BD patching, and sadly Ice Queendom is no exception. There are certainly some bursts of fun, lively, fluid Hiroto Nagata sakuga and even shading to add a sense of dynamism to the fights and a few other moments throughout. Occasionally, the show’s art direction provides some striking colors, and the show’s commitment to trying to sell a coolness factor pays off with some well-presented and shot sequences. Then you have the other 95% of the show which looks bad even by seasonal standards. It’s clear that directors Kenjirou Okada and Toshimasa Suzuki want to preserve the “coolness” and “aesthetic” the series tried to give off from the initial trailers and character designs, but there’s a myriad of reasons why things didn’t quite pan out. Frankly speaking, the presentation is all over the place. Just like how some scenes manage to look sick and mysterious, there are other frankly baffling creative decisions. Occasionally, the show presents this awful GATE level split-screen for no real rhyme or reason, leading to several instances of abysmal editing throughout. Throughout the V1 portion of Ice Queendom, the texturing on the character models, backgrounds, and sometimes freakishly thick black outlines often results in a very sloppy, muddy look to everything. Even most of the animation is lacking in impact compared to the simple yet well-choreographed fights Monty Oum did in the early RWBY volumes back when he and his team relied on Poser for their 3D rotoscoping. Furthermore, There’s very little crunch to most of the animation, outside of strange places like Ruby’s victory pose in episode 2, and the vast majority of attacks, landings, and general collisions all feel limp and weightless. As a result, most of the fight scenes range from mediocre to downright terrible compared to being among the few saving graces of early mainline RWBY. On that note, while the CG in early RWBY can best be described as the level you’d see from Vtuber models, the CG in Ice Queendom is perhaps less flattering, and it only increases once the anime original content kicks in. The show shuffling between overly glossy and ridiculously flat artwork for its characters doesn’t help with the show’s either, especially for the male adult characters, which leads us into the topic of huke’s take on the original character designs. huke made a name for himself designing for Black Rock Shooter and Steins;Gate, among other works. His artwork has this wispy, mysterious, ethereal quality to it, especially for the female designs of those aforementioned titles. Sadly, they do not translate well for RWBY’s approach to anime-esque character designs, as they feel far more ho-hum than enigmatic. The resulting mismatch results in a jarringly ugly look that often swaps between greasier than a fry cook’s face after work, and flatter than a pancake, and the early premiere versions of episodes 1-3 had it even worse than the proper airing versions and the rest of the show, probably due to the rushed production cycle. The art style benefits the snowy dream Weiss presents, but the redesigns for each of the main girls are all over the place. Nega Weiss and Nega Blake are interesting extremes of their views, with the former being this complicated multi-piece imperial design that can be stripped down for combat, and the latter resembling Adam, the embodiment of how far the White Fang has fallen. Ruby’s redesign is also fine, highlighting the kiddy that Weiss sees in her while still feeling appropriate for the weather and maintaining her primary color. Yang’s is more complicated than before with a new emblem and more brown to resemble her V5 design, and as usual for her, there’s no yellow barring her hair despite it supposedly being her primary color. Blake’s main redesign for this season is an absolute dumpster fire. While the inconsistent purple highlights on Blake’s hair in the show’s take on her original design was done for stylistic purposes, here, it might as well be her primary color for her new outfit rather than black. The white has been kicked largely to the curb in favor of grey, and the stitches and ear patchwork along with the colors and nature of her new outfit in general make her look like a trashy, beat-up, sexualized and oversized stuffed animal. It’s as ridiculous and displeasing to look at as her V7 design. As for the JNPR redesigns, they’re fine, as they’re more or less similar to their main designs while keeping their primary colors consistent and exaggerating what little specific elements Weiss could possibly gleam from them. Unfortunately, the visuals somehow manage to tank considerably in the 2nd half, as by the midpoint of the show, the wonky animation and modeling which seemed to be kept to a minimum in episodes 4 and 5 compared to 1-3 come back worse than ever. Grotesque CGI fights and incomplete drawings not masked by moving panning shots in time are some of the wilder instances of the show’s production issues in episodes 6 and 9, respectively. Episode 10 is where 2 good cuts get surrounded by the animation completely melting, as the stilted character movements are cranked up to 11, shots break continuity and the 180 degree rule consistently, and the embarrassing choreography can’t even be seen half the time with the animation constantly being cut away from while also constantly being reused in a show that reuses animation like a Super Robot or Mahou Shoujo anime. Sure, when episode 11 isn’t looking like total dogshit it does pick things up quite a bit, and there are some occasional stylistic switch-ups in episodes 1 and 9 that look great, but generally speaking, the show’s visuals are complicated in how bad they are. Honestly, Ice Queendom looks worse than even RWBY Volume 1 on the whole, and that was made by amateurs at a gamer internet animation studio that wouldn’t have remotely been considered pro-grade back in 2013. At least V1 looked kinda consistent, even with the obvious shortcuts and awful walk cycles. Even the Mistral Arc volumes of RWBY are animated better than this, and considering how equally catastrophic most of that section's fights are, that's saying something. Perhaps the only saving grace of RWBY’s that was kept somewhat intact here is the music. Sure, none of the tracks by Nobuko Toda or Kazuma Jinnouchi are as grandiose or beautiful as some of the more whimsical and wispy tunes of Jeff Williams’ early RWBY score, but it’s a solid OST nonetheless. It takes a while to pick up, but there are some solid orchestral tracks and guitar pieces to match the theoretical intensity of what RWBY tries to present in its big arc. Similarly, the inserts by Void_Chords are decent, even if they can’t match up with most of the alt metal songs Casey Williams performed for the main series. The OP and ED do fare a little less well though. “Beyond Selves” by Void_Chords feat. L tries to be a bombastic and triumphant jazz tune, but the mixing is so muddy and the compression goes so overboard that the track feels overly restrained and muddled. “Awake” by Saori Hayami is an ok, if still over-compressed attempt at an epic song. Honestly, the music in the show feels a little unremarkable, but that’s still the best thing the show has going for it, unfortunately. It’s still utterly insane that the sound effect editing is so bad that not only are some effects mistimed, but artifacts from unused storyboards were left in. Is it worse than early RWBY’s horribly compressed sfx? Who knows? What happened here, exactly? Was it Gen Urobucnhi’s planning, Tow Ubukata’s script and series composition, Eddy Rivas’ supervision? SHAFT’s scheduling issues? Whatever the case, RWBY: Ice Queendom is an idiotic, lifeless disaster that can’t live up to how it tries to present itself 95% of the time. It’s two distinct shows that each fail spectacularly at their own ways while barely feeling like the OTHER piece of shit it’s trying to harken back to. There are some decent scenes and ideas explored once in a blue moon. There are some bits of solid if not stunning animation here, with more to follow once the staff has to clean things up for the BDs so that the show doesn’t stay looking like Assassins Pride or some shit. However, the pulseless Ice Queendom wastes a lot of time and chances to justify or explore anything, as is RWBY tradition. Unless you really miss the early days of RWBY and don’t feel like watching the first volume again, this show isn’t worth your time. At best, just watch the last two scenes of episode 12 between V1 and 2 when you rewatch RWBY in preparation for V9. Better yet, if you were interested in this show and haven’t seen the franchise yet, steer clear of both! RWBY has long since lost any of the soul, style, humor, chemistry, or occasional inklings of compelling character writing that propelled the show to stardom in the mid-2010s. If you found yourself woefully disappointed after thinking this spinoff had promise, just know you’ll be feeling that a lot by the time you’ve caught up to RWBY proper. If you’re one of us veterans, you know the drill. No, using Monty’s name to discredit Miles, Kerry, Eddy, Kiersi, or even Tow, is not part of the drill. Hate the show, not his friends and their collaborators. The man’s dead; let him rest in peace.
Although I'm aware of Rwby's origins as a popular anime-inspired web series, I know very little else about it and approached this anime version with a clean slate. Though Rwby: Ice Queendom feels rather uneven, it's turned out to be a pleasant surprise overall. The premise of Rwby feels incredibly generic: the world Remnant is constantly under threat by evil creatures called the Grimm and there are people with superpowers who can fight them. A prestigious school called Beacon Academy trains talented fighters into hunters that go after the Grimm. There also exists magical dirt that everyone seems to want. Be warned that the show is quite jargony early on but to its credit Ice Queendom avoids huge info dumps and instead fills in the details piece by piece as the story unfolds. Rwby: Ice Queendom can be considered in three parts: Episodes 1 - 3, 4 - 11, and the final episode. The first part introduces and brings together the four main characters as part of a new crop of students starting at the Beacon Academy. These are: Ruby and her older sister Yang, Weiss, who is the rich heiress of a mega corp that manufactures magical dirt, and Blake, who seems to be some kind of persecuted furry. In the early episodes, the characters' personalities are archetypical, and their development feel rudimentary and transparent. The bigger problem though, is that the series is dominated by a long second arc with a story line that requires foundational relationships to be established amongst the main characters. Unfortunately, Ice Queendom rushed into this arc soon after bringing the characters together, so the required foundation wasn't actually built yet and the strength of the characters' feelings for one another just feels unearned. Ironically, the arc does end up driving some pretty good character development later on, but it really should have been done upfront. If you can suspend your disbelief and pretend the character relationships were more established than what was shown prior to second arc, then that arc can actually be very enjoyable. The action scenes and the special effects are generally nice looking, the plot has plenty of twists and turns and the pacing is excellent. Almost every episode ends on a cliff hanger and it's addictive to watch. As the tension ramps up, the characterisations undergoes considerable refinement, particularly in exploring the psyche of Weiss. It was great to see the characters grow beyond their simplistic moulds and I could even start to feel the chemistry between the characters for real. Alas, I found Ice Queendom's last few episodes disappointing. I wasn't really sold by the last major plot development or the deus ex moment that resolved one of the final battles. I also found the ending to the second arc a bit too saccharine and cringey. The entire last episode is like an overly long epilogue and it made me realise something: the main characters are kinda annoying. It wasn't as bad when serious business is going on in the foreground, but once all that is stripped away, it's clear that the girls simply cannot carry the show on the merits of their character interactions alone. Presentation wise, Ice Queendom contains copious amount of CG, possibly in keeping with the original source material. For the most part, this looked fine, particularly the flashy battle sequences full of dazzling lightworks - there's even a gloriously animated food fight! The colour use of Ice Queendom is noteworthy, as the four main girls all have their own colour themes going on and these colours dominate their costumes and special effects. Another nice stylistic touch is the use of split screens which, along with the cliff hanger driven pacing, made me think Ice Queendom's dramatic flourishes took its cues from the TV series 24. Outside of the action, the layering, colour shading and animation sometimes can appear cheap, and the attempt to reproduce the effects of camera focus and blurring looked strange to me. I watched all the episode on an iPad with the exception of one on a PC, and that one episode didn't look as good, which makes me wonder whether watching this on iPad flattered the visuals. I must say I'm surprised by the apparent frosty viewer reception for Rwby: Ice Queendom. Not having seen the source material, I don't know whether this was due to the backlash of a hardcore fandom against an unsatisfactory adaptation, but as a standalone series I thought it was good on balance. The anime suffers from some serious flaws for sure, but the stylistic production, nice music and the riveting middle stretch of episodes won me over.
So as a quick introduction to this review, this was intended to be a comment of my anilist page but I got very carried away and wrote far too much to ever fit in a comment, so I've decided to put it here instead. This was not a formally written review, just me spewing my thoughts onto paper, so it will be very unstructured and probably grammatically incorrect frequently. Needless to say, I'm just spilling my thoughts so I spoil both this and the original, enjoy :) ok so I’m a massive RWBY fan, full on nutcase, watched all the volumes as they aired, then rewatched dozens of times, crazy mf. So when this got announced I was over the moon, I knew we were never gonna get the incredible tension of volume 3 or the shock of volume 6, but none the less I was buzzing to get to watch the volumes that got me into RWBY recreated by one of the biggest anime studios in Japan. unfortunately for me, that is not what I got. if not even talking about the original story (I'll get to that don’t you worry). I'm talking about the first 3 episodes and final episode, which are adapting volume 1 and a snippet of volume 2 respectively. Immediately looking at the trailer I knew I didn’t like the character design. Something about the shiny skin, overly textured lips and weirdly detailed irises made it look (and I’m sorry I cant find a better way to phrase this) like it was the intro to a hentai. of course the character designs were never going to look quite right to me, I’ve spent nearly 10 years building an association of these outfits and events with the very simple art style of volume 1 and 2. BUT EVEN SO, the character designs were created BASED off the anime/manga style, a simple transpose into 2D would have been slightly uncanny but not actually disturbing to me like these were. Now ill accept, that is quite a subjective complaint and I’m sure that’s not an issue most people will have, but even so I feel like I need to say it. Moving onto the animation. this is where I was expecting shaft to pick up big points. They had the absolute genius of combat choreography that Monty Oum created to adapt, so surely, they COULDNT go wrong. Well. Initially it was promising, the first fight between ruby and the thugs was genuinely incredible. Even through my nostalgia I could tell that this was a GOOD fight. hell, they totally improved on the original here. But that was sort of it for the show. RWBY IS AN ACTION SHOW! ESPECIALLY THE FIRST 2 VOLUMES. Thus, the laziness of the fights that should have been the most engaging parts of this show just meant I was bored through the ACTION. take for example the nevermore fight. I love the nevermore fight in the original, RWBY running up that cliff side with red like roses part 2 pounding in the background still gives me goosebumps no matter how many times I see it. And yet here? nothing. Perhaps this was simply due to the move to hand drawn animation, but the scene was just so static. In the original, the fight flows perfect, each character’s action causing the camera to move with it and latch onto another characters action, characters chaining movements together to interesting move the battle around the field, the characters attacks were dynamic, almost like you could feel every one of yang’s punches through the scene. But here? I was painfully aware of the fact that was just a series of pictures on a screen. The characters attacks at no real weight to them and till the killing blow I didn’t feel like any of the attacks had any substance at all. I also feel like they completely missed the point of this fight. SHOCKINGLY, the climax of the first act wasn’t just there to look cool (story progression through action what the fuck???) it was there to demonstrate the growing comradery not only within team RWBY but between RWBY and JNPR as well. BUT WAS THIS CONVEYED IN THE ADAPTATION YOU MAY ASK (I’ll give you a hint, it was not). The clean flow of this scene that I described earlier was what MADE this scene get its point across, at complete odds to the janky, discombobulating mess that was Weiss and ruby trying to work together at the start of this arc. By not creating this effect within the scene they take away the whole point of the scene, and so because they couldn’t convey any sort of companionship forming SUBTLY (this one is gonna come up later stay tuned) you run into a whole host of issues going into the anime original section because the characters relationships DO NOT EXIST YET. Most of the adaptation continues in a similar fashion, skipping or poorly telling volume 1 events in a way that (while not technically changing the big events) means that that we finish the adaptation with a bastardised version of the RWBY cast, who will CONTINUE to cause problems for the next 9 episodes. A prime example of this is the skipping of the Jaune bullying arc, meaning that the whole reason Jaune has any spine to stand up for himself and do ANYTHING he does in the series is removed. As far as we know, going into the dream Jaune is just a bumbling idiot who threw up on yang’s shoes. Does that sound like the type of person you'd send into a girl who at this point HES DELIVERED NOTHING BUT CHEESY PICKUP LINES TO's dream in order to rescue her (it does not). Now through this section I also noticed that the comedy wasn’t hitting me at all. Now this one I’m willing to accept is just me. The jokes are always very corny and wacky with the only part of them that’s funny being the delivery and the straight man reactions. As I don’t speak Japanese, even if these lines were delivered well, it didn’t do anything for me. However, even so I do feel like I can say that the reason the corniness works is because you feel like you're goofing around with the crew and it’s almost like your dad or uncle making a dumb joke. Because the characters were so poorly developed here there was no homely, goofy atmosphere which would have made these jokes work even in a language you speak. So, to sum up, moving into the anime original content we had a set of shallow, 1 dimensional characters whose personalities and quirks have not been established or developed, who've not formed any meaningful bonds or connections to other characters and who've not had really any backstory attributed to them (looking at you here Weiss) to base an 8 episode arc on. SO, SHAFT SAID FUCK IT, LETS WACK IN A MILLION VISUAL METAPHORS THAT NO ONE BUT FANS OF THE ORIGINAL SHOW WILL GET AND SPEND 8 EPISODES FARTING AROUND LOOKING AT THE SAME VISUAL METAPHORS, NOT DEVELOPING THE CHARACTERS AND NOT MAKING AN ATTEMPT TO TRANSITION THIS INTO SOMETHING THAT WILL LEAD TO AN INTERESTING ENDING. (I really am doing my best to stay calm I promise). so, for the next episodes they dip in an out of Weiss’ dream, observing her locked away heart and lonely self as she is controlled by her father into a certain personality and way of thinking (A SCENARIO I WOULD ADD THAT THE ORIGINAL MANAGED TO CONVEY IN A SINGLE SONG). Then, even if you ignore the scuffed things that are included in this dream (big Nicholas???) actually wait I want to touch on that for a moment. In the original Weiss is renounced as the heiress and tears down the company, her whole view of the Schnee name is Jacques Schnee and what he does. This protection "big Nicholas" who presumably is her grandfather, clearly was not part of the all-encompassing solitude that the Schnee name brought her. But that’s beside the point. Weiss’ character is extremely simple in volume 1. She is a stuck-up racist snob. That’s the point, you aren’t supposed to like her yet, she is there to make you sympathise with and understand Blake. Blake is the focus of the story. Then, through the LITERAL NEXT 8 VOLUMES, you learn more about her, why the way she is, and by the end of her story you realise how similar to Blake she is. We didn’t get that chance here. We got Weiss’ backstory dumped on us in one big shafty mess and were left to figure it out. so, what you end up with is not a subtle comparison that is revealed slowly, but a jump that makes the point being made so incredibly sharp and hard to miss that the entire meaning behind it is drained out. THEN, JUST IN CASE THAT WASENT OBVIOUS ENOUGH, THEY LITERALLY STRAIGHT UP SAY IT, HAVE THE WHOLE NEGATIVE BLAKE THING HAPPEN AND TRIVIALISE THE STORY EVEN MORE. As well as this, by rushing in much a fashion you skip over both Adam and Jacque as characters, meaning that the actual comparisons between Weiss and Blake are actually not that strong. So, they cram a story arching over 8 volumes of RWBY into 12 episodes for some reason, great. This next one isn’t actually relevant but I just wanted to point out the Casey Lee Williams out sung both of VA's who sing mirror mirror in this when she was 12 (Casey Lee Williams my beloved please do a new recording for the dub of this :pray:). I could spend hours picking apart the minutia of these episodes and explaining why they suck ass, but I feel like if anyone watched it they speak for themselves. The story is boring for the reasons I’ve already stated, the action dipped REALLY hard through these episodes, so that was boring as well, comedy wasn’t attempted, nor was the further development of any characters (Weiss excluded but we've been over that). My next point is solely from the viewpoint of a picky fan who loves the original way too much but I’ll do my best to relate it to a more general point as well. So, in episode 11 ruby defeats the nightmare Grimm... using her silver eyes -_-. The same silver eyes that were first opened by watching her friend die before her eyes as a huge Grimm circled overhead, cinder started obtaining the power to destroy the whole of remnant and basically all of mantle was in immediate peril. In contrast, here she did it... just cause? because she was going to die? You could make the argument that it was for Weiss, but in that case, we'd need these 2 girls to have a very strong bond that was never formed. In reality, they were used as a big finale because they look cool (which, in fairness, they really do). Not only does this make canonically no sense, but it also makes no sense from a storytelling purpose. Ruby’s eyes are important in the original and so they are eluded to multiple times before activation, as is her clear importance to the future of remnant. They are built up, revealed at the climax of the fall of beacon, and then expanded on further into the show. Here they are mentioned once by Ospin in first episode as he says his famous "ruby rose... you have... silver eyes" then used meaninglessly at the climax of the season for a quick surprise. This whole arc is completely predictable. Weiss = stuck in dream. RBY + JNPR, go into dream, Weiss = not stuck in dream anymore. Nothing swaying away from exactly what you expect the first time the dream is introduced happens, the story is completely linear and predictable, something that could never be said for the original. As well as this, the cast of characters we get at the end of this show just feels like hollow cut-outs speaking while dressed as RWBY characters (admittedly less so for team RWBY themselves but it does still apply). The ONLY compliment that I’m gonna give this show is that the opening is solid (although worse than any opening in the original). Now if you sat through all that, first off you need a better way to spend your time, else I hoped you enjoyed and hope that I was able to convey why I gave this anime such a terrible score. I'd also like to say that although many of my points revolved around the original, I don’t think my opinion would be too different if this was first introduction to the franchise, It’s just that that works as a good frame of reference to base my points off.
Ok, so I’ve almost never touched RWBY in my life, I have one episode to my name. So I won’t be speaking about whether or not Ice Queendom is a good or bad adaptation. However, it does not take a rocket scientist to see how it fails in many other ways. RWBY: Ice Queendom is plagued by failing animation, dialogue, pacing, and plotting which is downright dysfunctional. I’m going to address the elephant in the room first: the animation. If there’s one thing the only episode of RWBY I watched taught me, it's that you don’t need good animation to make a good product. If other parts of your show are high-quality, then it won't matter. However, RWBY is a 3D show The good thing about 3D animation is that at least from my understanding, very little can go wrong. Sure your models can look bad, but there’s no possibility of them changing between shots. Scenes being devoid of motion or boring looking usually isn’t a problem since it's easy to create simple movements to draw the audience's attention. So in 3D, even if everything looks low-quality or rushed, there’s only so much that it can take away from the experience. But now we’re in 2D, a lot more can go wrong. And the fact that I’m drawing a comparison between early 2010’s rooster teeth shows to a studio shaft production is a bad sign. Every mentionable visual blunder is here. Static shots, off-model characters, bad CGI (If I wanted that I’d watch Volume 1), and the blandest backgrounds I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing. Plus they're all reused. Multiple times. Each mistake takes away more and more from the overall experience, RWBY might work around its visual flaws, but Ice Queendom is completely hindered by them. Because this is an action show. AND THE ANIMATORS CAN’T EVEN DO BASIC SCENES Drawings this poorly done can be brushed aside in shows like Spice and Wolf. The entertainment doesn’t directly correlate to animation quality, but to writing quality. Action is different, you need sakuga or at least passable drawings to sell whatever choreography you’ve planned out. Unlike 3D, where it is much easier to sell the movements of each combatant (hence why Monty goes crazy with it). In Studio Shaft's work, each action set piece after episode 3 and before episode 12 are different types of embarrassing. Nothing was smooth or weighty, it was more like stick figures wailing at each other. Every so often impressive sakuga would come out of thin air and wow me, and those scenes are the few that still stick out in my mind. The training battle, the dust shop action sequence, and Yang's battle against Big Nicholas were great exceptions to the status quo. If only it could have carried over anywhere else. My heart goes out to the animation team cause they probably went through some form of hell to get this on screens and eke out a full-length production And I imagine the writers had a similar problem. ~~~PLOT~~~ ~~~Oh boy does It get worse~~~ Starting with some good: As someone who has never experienced RWBY before this, I enjoyed the first few episodes. They may have rushed through plot points at breakneck speed, but it was fun. The animation wasn’t even as bad as the later episodes. Episode 12 was good as well, a fun little exploration of each of the cast, concluding with a memorable (food) fight scene with good direction. And above all, the CONCEPTS shown here are solid. The bulk of the plot is inside Weiss's Persona 5-style mind palace, and if it's good enough for P5, it's good enough for an anime. While the concepts are good, the execution is poor. Ice Queendom’s biggest failure came at the beginning: its inability to set up proper character conflicts. The meat of the show is supposed to be Ruby and Weiss butting heads during their early days at Beacon academy. But by the time Weiss falls asleep for 9 episodes, they don’t have a conflict going. They don’t have anything concrete the writers can work with to create an engaging story. So what’s left is a plot with no focus. Instead of having meaningful dialogue with Weiss or each other about the conflict at hand and what it means to them, or tackling the main issues at hand, they run around as a series of meaningless roadblocks stand in their way. Each setback just means another repetition as the characters bang their heads against a wall, the series repeats itself since I don’t think the writers could think of enough situations to fill out 12 episodes of runtime. During all this, we get a good view of Weiss’s psyche, but there isn’t any payoff for this. By the show's end, I don’t think anybody changed. And while Weiss and Ruby are incomplete characters, Blake and Yang might as well not exist, they aren’t given anything to do that gives any meaning to their characters. The most they accomplish is being a Deus-Ex-Machina for the final obstacle in the dream world. If there is one high praise I can give this mess of a story though, it's that it was fun. Yeah, each plot point felt like meaningless filler, but it was engaging filler. As I said, the concept itself of Weiss's mind palace is quite good. And much like a Persona 5 dungeon it was filled to the brim with over-the-top symbolisms about Weiss' inner feelings, so much so that It continually piqued my interest. Such as when a small army of 5-year-old Weiss' escapes out of the “Sillies Prison”, grows 10 times their own size, and starts walking around destroying everything. ~~~img220(https://i.imgur.com/muzcRV1.png)~~~ For a brief moment, I felt like I was watching Attack On Titan, complete with over-the-top twists. (If only they were good twists though). So as the trash fire burned, I sat back and watched with glee as more bullshit blazed on. The worse it got, the more fun I had. I could rail on Ice Queendom for many more pages but It wouldn’t be true to the experience I had. Above all, I just wanna watch some normal RWBY now.
In early 2010, RWBY was unavoidable. [Monty Oum ](https://anilist.co/staff/147512/Monyreak-Oum)created such an interesting premise for a new original series combining exciting anime elements such as magical girls, unique power systems, and weapons that can transform. There was immense hype when those red, white, black, and yellow trailers came out. When the actual product came out, many fans such as myself although acknowledging the apparent weakness in its writing stayed and supported it because of the amazing animations, superb character design, and interesting world-building. In addition, the shipping fandom made it really fun to root for characters, especially in team RWBY. But all these fun elements of the series can only grab my attention for so long as I slowly but surely got frustrated and confused with the direction of the writing which I believe most would agree start to go downhill after the passing of its original creator Monty Oum. But enough of the OG RWBY I am here to talk about this spinoff which is really one of studio [Shaft](https://anilist.co/studio/44/Shaft)'s most disappointing productions. I chose to watch this because I wanted to relive the excitement I had when I first watched the original RWBY. Knowing that studio shaft was producing this work made me really excited because I thought the dark magical aesthetic they are known for would definitely be an interesting fit for the world of RWBY. But from the first few episodes, it is clear something is wrong. I don't know if they ran out of budget or did not care about this series enough to give their best animation artwork or whatever but it is clear this is not up to the usual standard of studio shaft. Even the not-so-well-received [Magia Record](https://anilist.co/anime/104051/Magia-Record-Puella-Magi-Madoka-Magica-Side-Story/) has superb visual and animation quality which I would argue far surpass the original strictly in a visual storytelling aspect. The animation quality of this spinoff for lack of a better word is just... not good. But... The OG RWBY was an indie low-budget project which has really mediocre production quality as well so maybe that is the intention? to relive the shitty production quality of the original? lmao Poor production quality aside what is a major improvement is definitely the character writing. I really feel the dynamic between the characters is much stronger in this series. The development of each individual character and their relationships with one another is definitely improved in this series. The OG series suffer from really weak writing which simply persists and actually gets WORSE throughout the series. Characters don't feel like characters, they just feel like pawns to progress a plot that is equally uninteresting. But this spinoff definitely builds upon the foundations of the OG characters and breathes new life into them which gave us a really wholesome and believable story of a group of strangers coming to accept and befriend one another. I really like how they do not waste time establishing the world and characters in its first 3 episodes. Unless you are a total newcomer to the series there is no excuse for you to complain that it felt rushed because I wholly believe this spinoff is meant for fans that have seen the original. It wants to get that out of the way as soon as possible to tell its own unique character-driven story which I really appreciated. So did this spinoff rejuvenate my love for the original series? Yes and No. The OG RWBY definitely has a stronger charm being an indie project and whenever it exceeds expectations in its animation, especially in its exciting fight animation choreography it was such a treat to behold compared to the spinoff which just has terrible animation and art. But in terms of its character writing, I loved how the spinoff took the pieces from the original and greatly improved it. I don't really care much about the plot but seeing new life breathed into my decade-old favorite characters makes me feel quite happy.
I wasn't sure what to expect from RWBY Ice Queendom, I will admit that I was sceptic from the very moment I found out about it, but I had hopes that it woud be an animation I could recommend to people that would get turned off by the very clunky first season of the original RWBY. A remake, something more polished. Needless to say that I was wrong. __Writing__ Lets begin with the most diappointing part about this whole thing: The writing. The series often skips over certain events or shortens them in such a way that new viewers who have not watched the main series there is essentially no chance to actually understand what is going on. One example would of this would be: ~!The introduction of Penny during Blake's running away and the subsequent fight at the Vale harbour.!~ It makes you question why the writers chose to include these events at all? Clearly they felt they either were not relevant enough or they did not have the time to do them justice, in both cases it would have been better to fully lean into the fact that their series is set in an alternative universe and forgo the main storyline, either completely or at least parially. Another annoyance I have with the writing are the characters. For those that already know them from the main series it is merely painful to see them reduced to mannequins with the personality depth of a cutting board, while for new viewers it means that they have to accept that some characters are _just there_ and that they should be happy to even know their names. __Animation__ At first I had believed that the animation would be this animes saving grace. I didn't have to be flashy, it didn't have to be amazing. Just decent would have been sufficient, but well that was before I saw what they had come up with. Setting aside the clear budget cuts on the environment/backgrounds and the fact that some characters are sometimes not animated _at all_ if they aren't relevant to the story I also noticed quite some annoyances with the main and supporting characters. The most obvious of these was when, instead of animating a character (that was positioned right in the middle of the screen no less) turning on the spot they simply went ahead and rotated them. Imagine it as if you had went into the frame in question using photoshop or whatever and then simply rotated them. No animation, no attempts to even make this look good. __Music__ Now, the music on the anime is not terrible. In fact I found that some of the background music during the anime was matching the happenings on the screen pretty well. _However_ the biggest gripe that I have with the music is that it is not RWBY music. Those who have watched the main series will most certainly remember the OSTs and will find the music in this anime lacking. Thats not to say that it is terrible, in fact had it been played on an anime that was not RWBY I would have shrugged and called it decent. I am aware that this is most likely a very personal annoyance, but it was the very first annoyance when I watched the trailer and it has not resolved itself in the slightest. __Conclusion__ I watched the whole anime, not because I thought it was great but because I wanted to see if it could turn things around, which it could not. I believe that, if looking back at it in a couple of years time, RWBY Ice Queen will be that one failed experiment that wasn't successful and that still has a wiki page, but thats basically it. If you have watched the main series I can assure you that you will not miss out on anything by not watching this, whereas if you are new to the series I would no recommend this either, as it will most likely leave you more confused and disappointed than anything else.
~~~Introduction~~~ ~~~ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~~~ ~~~Shaft had big dreams for Rwby and they clearly couldnt afford them making it turn into a visual nightmare. Despite the story having some potential, it didnt take long to see the downfall of the story unfold.~~~ ~~~Story~~~ ~~~ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~~~ ~~~Rwby is a fantasy-concept franchise about cute girls doing not so cute things. The anime adaptation tried to present to the viewers the whole world of Rwby in the first 4 episodes and then focused on the main character's troubles concerning mainly one of the female leads, Weiss, who got trapped inside her dream and the goal (and apperently the plot point) was to wake her up. And thats the first mistake Rwby anime adaptation made. Personally, the 4 first episodes had me fairly interested, seeing a not so unique concept done pretty interestingly, i was really hooked. img(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMGZkZmUwM2MtZGU2MC00ZTMwLThjNGQtZjU5NmVjNjIyMTE5XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTQ2Mzc5OTIz._V1_.jpg) When the whole trapped in a dream arc started, i thought it was gonna be 2-3 episodes. AND IT ENDED UP BEING THE WHOLE SEASON. Thats a huge fault right there. Introducing a magical academy, implying the anime is gonna be about MULTIPLE adventures of the female leads placed inside the academy, and ending up displaying the main plot point in the middle of the anime? It didnt work. Because it got really boring, and im pretty sure anyone who watches something about an academy is expecting more episodic adventures. It really bore me to see the same thing happen over and over again, it was repetitive and kinda lame seeing them just get into a dream then get kicked out etc etc with the explanation behind that being the "with the power of friendship" logic. The pacing was terrible, a consequence that occurred because of the plot problems mentioned prior. img(https://starcrossedanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/RWBY-Ice-Queendom-5.3.jpg) They handled the whole plot terribly, if they tried making that arc shorter and interlarding the anime with more small adventures it wouldve worked better. They could even do what demon slayer did, and try to make a 24ep anime introducing the general universe focusing more on the MAIN character (rwby) and then make arcs like that smaller sequels...which, they didnt have the budget for, so i cant see that working either, but its still sounds more approachable compared to what they did, since they killed the fame of rwby permenantly.~~~ ~~~Characters~~~ ~~~ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~~~ This might sound surprising, considering i sound completely disappointed from the adaptation, but the characters werent bad at all. Did they have all have an unnecessarily bubbly personality and were really stereotypic? Yes, but its a magical girls anime, so i didnt expect anything else. The main character, Rwby, is a pretty dedicated and kinda annoying girl that dreams big and is full of that superfluous will charged from the power of friendship, but it fitted the already too up in the air concept, so im not mad. Then there was her sister, Yang, that was praised all her life and for some reason is the role model of her sister, which again, made sense, since we are talking about a MAGICAL GIRL anime.img(https://cdn.roosterteeth.com/image/upload/c_scale,dpr_auto,f_auto,w_auto/v1/production/vl4w352qk7c1coa4vawgnj5z9o8o.jpg) We also have Weiss, that really self centred girl that has some really traumatic background. And lastly, Blake, which i liked the most out of the 4 since she felt like the more unique, and i really liked her character development, since she came from a really closed off society and ended up being a open person. img(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMmEzZjVkODctYWJjYS00YmZmLWJiZmItZjEzMzNmMzAyMzA4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjc3NTI5MDY@._V1_.jpg) Sure they werent anything special, but fitted just right to the anime and lived up to the standardts of the concept, but i have to say, the werent the most memorable either, for the same exact reason. The side characters on the other hand felt more interesting, maybe because they didnt try to make them so stereotypical and focused more on adjusting them to the personalities of the main characters, which ended up making them look really unique. img(https://yuriempire.files.wordpress.com/2022/06/ren-and-nora.jpg?w=584Animation) ~~~Animation~~~ ~~~ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~~~ ~~~. . . The disapointment of the grace of THE Shaft Studio. Visuals? Amazing! Designs? Phenomenal! Movement? Okay Cgi? OVERUSED! AND TERRIBLY DONE! There was cgi in scenes that there was 0 movement, and the action scenes that had cgi were all terrible (and let me tell you all the action scenes had cgi) It was so out of pocket and didnt fit the artstyle at all, the perfect way to describe it is roughly made.img(https://starcrossedanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/RWBY-Ice-Queendom-6.4.jpg) (And thats a light example) I sure didnt enjoy the visuals, and the designs of the characters where so pleasing to the eye but i cant forgive that HORRIFIC cgi i had to witness. C'mon Shaft, you can do better than that. img(https://static.anime21.blog.br/2022/07/RWBY-123-42.jpg)~~~ ~~~Music/Ost~~~ ~~~ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~~~ ~~~The ost of the opening was FUNNY. It seemed so pop cultured and made the anime seem more white washed than it already was, considering there were moments that characters RANDOMLY started to sing in English. But im willing to look past that, because at times the ost was great, especially towards the ending of the 12th episode or at important for the plot fights.~~~ ~~~To sum it up....~~~ ~~~ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~~~ ~~~After all that, would I recommend watching Rwby? Surprisingly, yes. It was horrible sure but if you want a magical girl anime, give it a try, but set your standards LOW. img(https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/RWBY-Ice-Queendom-88.jpg)~~~