RWBY: Ice Queendom is an anime ‘adaptation’ of an ongoing CGI animated series made by Roosterteeth. A theme that was echoed throughout this anime is the power of will, with an accompanying quote summed as "victory is in smaller things, things long forgotten". It is ironic how the creators of this show ignored this advice when applied to direction and screenwriting and instead went for ineffective yet overly ambitious options in terms of plot and animation, that they did not pull off. It is relatively rare to see a non-Netflix American script be adapted to an anime. The anime mostly follows Team RWBY and their exploits as freelance adventurers, known as hunters and huntresses figthing a series of monsters in the world of Remnant. Aside from changes in dialogue, screenwriting, and the addition of new characters and plot elements of the 1st season of the original, the series focuses on a brand new arc that takes place between seasons 1 and 2 of the original series.
The source material is an animated TV show made by Rooster Teeth, an American studio that was relatively well known for their work around the Halo franchise, namely the Machinima (technically) series Red vs Blue, and other projects like The Slow Mo Guys. RWBY was conceived by Monty Oum, who did a lot of animation work with the studio, with certain stylistic choices and references taken from Grimm's Fairy Tales. The early seasons of the series were severely limited by the lack of Lucasarts-level resources and technological expertise on such a scale and so the animation left a lot to be desired. Instead, the series made up for it with its novel mixture of American and anime-specific filming practices as well as a decent soundtrack, all of this at a time when the Isekai genre was starting up and the anime industry was oversaturated with uninspired seasonal offerings. However, the series' problems caught up to it by Season 3, namely with the death of Monty Oum in 2015. To make things worse, by this point, the series was still raw and neither the plot or the lore were seemingly set in stone, which leads into the critical issue with the way that RT make their series; they do not know when to stop and make an ending of a series. For most part, they believe that if they set up good characters in a series, then that series can go on indefinitely and so they never really bother to finish off a story in order to allow more seasons, as is the case with Red vs Blue, which will soon be airing for 2 decades now. I still have warm memories of watching RvB, but even I can see by season 13 that the show was unable to really evolve with the times and very few shows of such length can, while repetition became more and more common. Jokes that were the catchphrases of characters are unlikely going to be funny to the audience, both old and new, 5 years later. The same problem exists with RWBY, only exacerbated by the fact that arcs as such do not end either as they did in RvB.
In the case of RWBY this meant that by Season 8, the plot essentially repeated the end of Season 3 in many ways. The same characters took on effectively the same roles in a very similar tragic ending. At the same time, this means that after Season 3, the direction is never consistent nor clear. Sure this is meant to be a fantasy, but is it meant to be more comic or serious?
Moreover, a lot of very similar character development happens again and again, which makes said characters rather dull. This is the problem with not having a set script before filming and why very few people risk doing that lest they write an incoherent and repetitive series. Monty Oum appears to have had a set direction style in mind, as well as in terms of themes and plot, but each season is hardly consistent with the one preceeding it. The screenwriters of Ice Queendom took that as an advantage, in a way, to create a completely new arc, but that only works if one considers Ice Queendom a stand alone series, and not part of the bigger franchise. If only RT overcame these issues, then perhaps RWBY would be considered a proper anime series on its own. Unfortunately, Volume 9 has taken a drastic creative turn. Its plot for most part has a fairly weak link to the plot of previous volumes. It seems to be almost more of a filler than anything, which is incredibly frustrating. It could indicate that either the staff are stalling while they try and revitalize the series, or it is already too late. Either way, it seems that RWBY as a project is in serious trouble, possibly after the failure of this anime.
In early March 2022, Roosterteeth uploaded a poster that was supposed to represent some upcoming project, which I thought to be either a game or some kind of novelization. It is fair to say that most people were caught off guard when it was revealed that this project is an anime adaptation (despite the original also qualifying as an anime) that was going to be animated by Shaft, the writing handled by the screenwriter of Psycho-Pass and Fate/Zero, and huke, who is known for Steins;Gate character designs, will be doing those for RWBY. These alone are rather serious staffing choices, but maybe it is a necessity given the transition. Not often do such well known people come together in the anime industry, much less so to adapt a modern American anime. The final surprise was that it was set to air in 2022, the year of its announcement, meaning that this was not some proposed collaboration for a future date, but an extant one that was in the works for a while.
To sum up the plot, the parts from the original series were rewritten with relatively decent quality, while the new dream arc suffered immensely. The authors introduced a lot of characters and character backgrounds much earlier than they were in the original series, due to the original once again being developed season by season, it seems. This already allows for some meaningful interactions to happen, whereas in the original, the characters were limited in their development. Certain scenes and motivations were changed, with some other scenes and dialogues remaining. For instance, Weiss' character was changed to be much less emotionally stable in order to facilitate the dream arc. The test battle was made almost exactly as it was in the original, which was probably a mistake; the original was limited in resources and hence the battle looks more like an animation test by todays standards, but this anime is not limited in this way. I think stepping away from the original to make a better scene would be a good trade off. They also threw out the early conflicts with Jean and his character development from the original, which is also questionable. The new arc that was very underwhelming, standing in contrast to even the rest of the anime. It was rather messy, repetitive, slow paced. It was a mistake to focus on this dream world multiple times over with many battles taking place in the same places as they did before. The inclusion of the likenesses of Team JNPR in this dream world was also very odd as they were essentially inconsequential, save for Pyrrha Nikos' likeness inexplicably foreshadowing and sometimes guiding characters while being completely mute, save for the one musical number. In general, the stakes faced by the characters were very vague as are the goals of "waking Weiss up".
Ruby getting herself in a dream was also a relatively inconsequential endeavour and her getting into it was arbitrary in the first place.
One interesting artistic bit in this anime that stands out, are the two or so musical numbers, where some of the characters sing "Mirror Mirror" from the original RWBY trailer for Weiss and is kind of like her theme song. These are artistic scenes, but they hardly show anything and it almost seems that they are there only to fill some screen time, as they are not really connected to any event or the feel of the scenes surrounding it. The soundtrack is alright for most part. The OP is of a similar style to the soundtrack of the original series, which is very thoughtful.
The character designs are definitely interesting and so was huke’s input. The version of Weiss in the nightmare has a very distinguished and cool looking military uniform as well as sun glasses, presumably to protect against snow glare. I doubt that this was the inspiration, but this is reminiscent of the image of Wojciech Jaruzelski or a number of military and political leaders, this further intensifying the repressive nature of the "Empire". Some of the characters’ names are in clear reference to the character themselves, such as Goodwitch. Such naming is seemingly meant to present the secondary characters as more memorable, but it was tacky then and it still is.
The animation was of varied quality to say the least. In certain close ups and in general when animating events shown in Season 1 of RWBY, the animation is at least decent, with huke's trademark multi-layered eyes like in Steins;Gate making themselves known. In the specific case of Monogatari, the animation, the direction, and the character designs worked flawlessly well together. With RWBY, one could argue that huke’s designs and the animation do not really fit together. The direction makes itself known, but is not omnipresent and probably not creative enough. The animation for most of the actual novel arc of the anime is a completely different matter, as the action sequences there were subpar as was the overall animation for some reason, with certain shots being very obviously reused. A lot of character and vehicle movements were very stiffly animated, with certain flying vehicles just resized to make it look like it is flying away. This is not good for an anime with supposedly high production values in 2022. Most of the CGI was concentrated in the dream arc. It was not of good quality, with elements like the purple fires and the city parting to allow for train tracks looking very dumb.
Despite all the hype and hope for this series, from fans and newcomers alike, it was pretty clear by the first 3 episodes that these hopes were misplaced, until they were completely dashed away in the dream arc. Given the staffing options and the dream theme, RT should have gotten Christopher Nolan to do another Inception just with RWBY characters. It is kind of unfathomable how central aspects of the anime can be so misguided, while some other scenes are clearly made with quality. In my opinion, Shaft should have aimed for a reboot of sorts and completely remake the 1st season of the series, while keeping the characters and certain events intact and rewriting ones that were unsuitable, possibly even adapting a plot that would diverge from the one in the original series. As it is, the series is a very awkward mix of a retelling of the 1st season of the original series which was rushed in favour of the new arc, which in itself was messy and either slow paced or did not have enough content for its length. Moreover, if there is a continuation that will adapt the rest of the original plot, it will eventually run up against the same problems as the original, which is probably unsustainable for an anime studio, even Shaft. Volume 9 of RWBY seems to signal that the original series has lost creative steam completely, so it is possible that the series may grind to a halt altogether, putting doubt into further projects related to RWBY. Finally, if the direction was 60% of that of Bakemonogatari, this would have still been a success even with everything else left as it is. Unless you are a fan of the original RWBY, it is probably not worth seeing this. One can hope that there will be a continuation to the series, where the next instalment will be a serious improvement over this one, just like each of the first 3 seasons of the original were noticeable improvements over the last, but this seems somewhat of a long shot as it is unlikely that all members of the staff are willing to go on. Whether this was due to Shaft making a half-hearted attempt or if this series fell due to the problems in international collaboration of the studios, the verdict is the same.
