About a year ago, I began to follow an internet company based in Austin, Texas called Rooster Teeth. This group is most well known for their Halo based web series Red vs Blue. You can check out the first episode here:
They also do a weekly podcast, a video game version of Mythbusters and other great internet content. More recently, Rooster Teeth created a new web series called RWBY. While it is not technically an anime, I still think that it is a great piece of work and wanted to share it with you!
RWBY takes place in the world of Remnant, where an element called Dust is used to power incredible weapons. These weapons are used by Huntsmen or Huntresses to fight against the evil monsters, or Creatures of Grimm, as well as shadowy human organizations who want to steal Dust. Our hero is a young girl named Ruby, who dreams of being a Huntress, and enters Beacon Academy along with 3 other girls, Weiss, Blake and Yang. These girls form Team RWBY and begin their epic adventure together.
The director of this series is Monty Oum, who also works on Red vs Blue and is known for producing awesome animated fighting videos. One of my favorites is this one Haloid, where Samus from the Metroid games fights against Halo's Master Chief. It's super legit, so take a break and watch it:
I'd seen the first episode of RWBY when it was first released, thanks to a friend of mine who is also a Rooster Teeth fan. I wasn't too interesting until I started discovering a lot more of RT's content a couple months later. Then I found the entire series online and thought Why not? I ended up being very surprised and became a fan after watching every episode in a day. While it is not a masterpiece, RWBY has a lot of great action, voice work and music, which together makes it a totally awesome web series!
What originally turned me off to RWBY was the animation. At first viewing, I thought it was a little bit stiff, and the quality wasn't too impressive. While Rooster Teeth did put a lot of work into this series, they don't have an unlimited amount of resources like other major animation companies. That's ok though, because every slow animation sequence in RWBY is made up for during the fighting sequences. If you watched the Haloid video I just posted, you can see that Monty is very good a making a great looking fight. I wasn't really into this series until the first major fight scene in episode 8, and then I was hooked. It's the combination of well choreographed movements, awesome video physics and the fact that each character's weapon acts as a hand-to-hand and a ballistic weapon that make battles AMAZING! Honestly, RWBY fights look a lot better than some anime fights I've seen, so don't give up on the series til you've seen one.
The cool thing about the voice acting in RWBY is that it is done by the people working at Rooster Teeth, so if watch their videos, you can recognize who is doing each voices. While these aren't professional voice actors, the sound mixing is in RWBY is very well done. The do reuse some sounds effects, but not too often. Also, since Rooster Teeth puts out an array of content, the series has little in-jokes and Easter eggs that you can pick up on if you watch the podcast or Achievement Hunter videos.
While there is some character development that helps to drive RWBY's plot, I don't feel like it is the main focus of the series. That being said, you do get to meet an interesting cast of characters who you will love. Whether it is the ready for adventure Ruby, the the quiet and cool Blake, the upbeat and energetic Pyrrha or wannabe cool guy Juane, there is no lack of fun in RWBY's cast.
Another major draw for this series is the music. I don't always care about a show's music, but RWBY's soundtrack really helps draw you into the the story. The soundtrack was composed by Jeff Williams, who has done the music for Red vs Blue and the vocals were mostly done by his daughter Casey. The combination of Jeff music with Casey's singing makes RWBY's soundtrack a home run! Each song and score fits perfectly with the scene, especially a fight, and really gets you into the action! Personally, my favorite tracks are RWBY's theme song "This Will Be The Day" and "Red Like Roses II" which was features in episode 8. If you want a taste of this epicness: just listen to the theme song:
So, if you want to check out this laugh-filled, action packed series, you can find it all on Youtube, and with most episodes only being about 8-15 minutes long, you can get through it in a day! And if you don't want to wait for more RWBY, well your in luck, because Season 2 just started last week! So, come join the story! And because I'm nice, here's the first episode just waiting to be watched!
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