RWBY Volume 1

I watched RWBY last night not knowing anything about it. It’s on YouTube as 16 short episodes but on Amazon Prime those episodes are compiled into one feature length movie.

[Update: this series massively picks up in later seasons...see my reviews of Season 2 and 3 to come.]

The moment it started playing I really did not like the computer generated style of animation. The characters move around like 2D puppets and everything looks like it was rendered on a tiny budget (which it probably was). I was just about to switch it off but then the fight action started and it was good enough to keep me hooked until the end. I’m still 50/50 over the animation style. Sometime it captures some really neat moments and other times it looks cheap.

RWBY is about a team of high school kids who are training to become warriors that fight demons and monsters. They all seem to possess huge weapons and varying levels of martial art skills - and possibly some sorcery ability too. It reminds me a lot of Harry Potter but instead of a bunch of geeky looking junior wizards, RWBY features mainly a cast of huge-eyed, hyper feminine looking teenage girls with a few boys thrown in as side characters. There are intense fight action scenes, teenage emotional drama, evil baddies and a slew of very cool weapons.

RWBY was originally posted onto YouTube as a series of short episodes but on Amazon all the episodes are combined into one feature length film. Sometimes you notice the odd jumps between scenes but mostly it works well. I found that despite the stiff animation the characters did grow on me and I’ll probably go on to see the rest of the volumes (there are five seasons). By the way RWBY isn’t Japanese anime, it’s made by an American team, but it is clearly heavily influenced by anime and manga, especially during random moments when a character morphs into a chibi version of themselves when expressing an extreme emotion.

I’m fairly certain my daughter, who is 12, would love this show as it seems aimed specifically at her demographic. It shows just enough promise for me to investigate the next season.



6.5/10

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