RWBY Vol 1, Chapter 1: Ruby Rose

Well, having reviewed the trailers, and been pleased by them, can the first episode live up to my expectations, or will I be let down by seeing the show in action?

Ruby Rose. This is Ruby. Hence the red.

After an epic narration by Jen Taylor setting up the backstory (involving beasts, a magic element, and foreboding), this first episode introduces who will presumably be the main character, Ruby Rose (voiced by Lindsay Jones), star of the Red trailer. She’s listening to music in a shop that sells Dust, a magical item in the RWBY world, when a group of mooks led by one Roman Torchwick (voiced by Gray G. Haddock) attempt to rob the place. Naturally, once Ruby Rose is interrupted from her music and made aware of the robbery, she decides to thwart it.

This then leads her to get the attention of a Hunter and a Huntress, Professor Ozpin (voiced by Shannon McCormick) and Glynda Goodwitch (voiced by Kathleen Zuelch). After some discussion, and much adorkable behavior on the part of Ruby, she is accepted into Beacon Academy, a school that trains Hunters and Huntresses to hunt beasts, and is only for the best of the best. After meeting up with her sister Yang Xiao Long (voiced by Barbara Dunkleman), star of the Yellow trailer, the two go off to Beacon Academy. However, Roman evaded capture, and was assisted in his escape by a mysterious woman who looks a lot like Lust from Fullmetal Alchemist, so that’s what I’ll call her until she actually gets a name.

If you must be a bad guy, you must have style.

This episode does a great job establishing some key factors. First, Ruby is very much a “do first, think later” girl, as seen when she barely waits to establish that the villains are, in fact, robbing the Dust shop before attacking, regardless of the fact that she knows nothing about the skill levels of the attackers. She is also extremely socially awkward, asking Goodwitch for an autograph immediately after establishing that she is a Huntress, and generally acting like a fangirl even when being potentially reprimanded for her actions.

The first action scene in the series is a great one. Ruby Rose demonstrates the same skill with Crescent Rose, her weapon, as she did in the trailer, but Glynda is the real standout, showing just what a Huntress is capable of with magic. The show is very much in the “show, don’t tell” category in that regard, as Glynda is more than established as a formidable magic user before even mentioning that she is a Huntress.

This episode also gives us our first glimpse of the villains, giving them the perfect balance of screentime. They don’t stick around long, leaving plenty of characterization under wraps, to be potentially explored later, but they do stick around long enough to establish the fact that they are a threat.

Glynda showing Ruby how it’s done.

Professor Ozpin and Glynda Goodwitch only have one scene together, but they make the most of it in establishing their roles. Ozpin is somewhat more laidback in his approach to dealing with Ruby, essentially chatting with her before letting her into Beacon Academy, while Goodwitch, the authority figure, points out that if she had her druthers, she’d send Ruby home “with a pat on the back…and a slap on the wrist”. With that one sentence, Glynda establishes herself as strict, but also fair, and ultimately willing to go along with Ozpin.

Continuing along the fairy tale themes, Ozpin and Goodwitch have a rather blatant Wizard of Oz motif, down to their names (The Wizard of Oz and Glinda the Good Witch, respectively). I’m beginning to sense a theme.

If I had one issue with this episode, it would be the fact that it doesn’t do much more than set up the plot to come, with the entire episode just being a means to introduce Ruby and get her into Beacon Academy. Heck, we only have half of the Trailer Cast introduced so far. True, the other two get introduced in Episode 2, but that’s a story for next time.

Two other good things about this episode.

Overall, this was a very solid intro and episode that faltered only in seeming to rush into Beacon Academy. The voice acting is solid from all the cast, the villains are established, and the big action scene shows promise for when things inevitably get real.

Final Score: 7/10 (5/10 being average)

RWBY Reviews: Trailers

As my introduction post hinted, I am going to review the whole run of RWBY. And what better way to start than the trailers? After all, trailers are supposed to make you interested in a series. Do the four RWBY trailers do just that?

 

 

For those unaware, there are four trailers: Red, White, Black, and Yellow. I will be taking a look at each trailer individually, as well as assessing my thoughts on them.

RED

Each of the trailers takes inspiration from a certain fairy tale. The most obvious one, Red, is inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, with the focal character (who I’ll refer to as Red, given that the trailers don’t name the characters) fighting off a literal army of wolves.

What I really like about the trailer is the art style. It’s somewhat of a cross between anime-esque and cel-shaded, which gives it a unique feel. This trailer is easily the goriest of the four, with wolves getting decapitated, bisected, and in general shot up by Red’s weapon, a combination scythe-sniper rifle. However, the blood is depicted as red flower petals, which gives the battle an almost beautiful aesthetic.

Red herself takes after Little Red Riding Hood in character design, but has taken about 15 levels in kick-ass as well. As mentioned, her weapon is a scythe that happens to have a sniper rifle attached. The cool aspect of this weapon choice is that Red uses the recoil and momentum of the sniper shots to give her blows extra strength, making it more believable that a woman as small as she is can defeat an army of big bad wolves, literally slicing through all of them.

This trailer doesn’t have a lot of meat to it, and mainly seems to exist simply to show the character kicking ass. There’s nothing wrong with that, if done well, and the trailer certainly does that with style.

WHITE

Unlike the one-woman army of Red, White’s trailer, inspired by Snow White, has two different scenes. In one, White is singing in a concert. In the other, she is fighting what appears to be a giant suit of armor.

White’s character design is much more elegant than Red’s, with the character giving off the air of being a highly sophisticated lady, and her fighting style is reflective of that air. Unlike Red, White fights with a rapier, one that is revealed to be attuned to the elements halfway through the fight.

Surprisingly, the trailer actually features White taking a significantly powerful blow from her opponent, drawing blood and injuring her enough to leave her scarred during the concert scenes (which incidentally, also provides a handy chronology). This lets me know that this will not be a series where the major characters are going to go through battles without a scratch. However, given the fact that the injury impels White to activate her rapier’s powers and take control of the battle, those injuries are not going to slow down the major characters.

This trailer had a more graceful, elegant feel to it, perfectly fitting the impression set of the main character. In addition, the song playing in the background perfectly fits the scene.

BLACK

Switching to Beauty and the Beast for inspiration, this trailer is the first to actually have dialogue, involving Black and her partner planning a train heist. That’s not to say there isn’t any action, given the resistance the pair find on the train, but there is more of a sense of story to this trailer than the previous two.

Black’s character design is elegant, like White’s, but in a different way. While White wears a white, flowing dress and fights with a rapier, Black wears a sleeveless black and white dress, with ribbons in her hair. Her weapons of choice are a cleaver and a pistol that can convert into a dagger, tied to the ribbons in her hair. There’s also moments where Black mix-and-matches her attacks, such as a move where she stabs a robot under the jaw, then repeatedly shoots with her pistol. This seems to indicate that Black is a more thoughtful and strategic combatant.

One of the disappointing elements of this trailer is that, while Red and White got their own trailers to focus on them, Black’s trailer is split between herself and her partner. As cool as he is, with a white mask, black suit with a rose motif, and katana, it feels off to have this character be forced to share the spotlight when the others didn’t.

That said, it does lead to an intriguing moment at the end of the trailer, where Black apparently turns on her partner, abandoning him with the loot on her train car. There is an implication that her motives are not self-centered or greedy, but having more to do with differing philosophies on the concept of “collateral damage”. All in all, a strong trailer let down by having to split between two characters.

YELLOW

The last of the trailers, this one follows Yellow entering a nightclub to interrogate a seemingly VIP of the club, Junior. As you might expect, this doesn’t exactly turn out smoothly. Yellow first fights a mob of mooks, a fight that’s perhaps too easy, followed by a difficult set of twins, and finally, Junior himself, a fight that is just right in difficulty, Goldilocks style.

Yellow’s character design, wearing a shirt with sleeves puffy around the shoulders and only elbow-length, baring her midriff, and with a miniskirt, perfectly complements her weapon of choice: gauntlets that hit like a ton of bricks. She’s also noticeably the bustiest of the four women, which seems to correlate with strength in anime.

This trailer does a good job of bringing everything full-circle, with this trailer being much more action-packed than the previous two, and bringing Red in at the end of the trailer. The fights are all over-the-top, but in a good anime sort of way, including Yellow apparently kicking into a more powerful form, Super Saiyan style.

Overall, these trailers definitely succeeded in making me want to check out more of the show. While some of the voicework was dodgy in the last two trailers, I was more than able to overlook that and focus on the beautiful artwork, the strong character designs, and the fairy-tale themed stories. I definitely look forward to Episode 1, “Ruby Rose”.

Welcome All

This is a place where I, thebobmaster, will do reviews. Simple enough. To start, I will be reviewing a show that is somewhat popular online, but is not one I have watched…which will be quite interesting to experience, I believe.