This week, we’re going to do something a little different. The show I’m going to review today isn’t an anime, but it’s a very popular show that’s been lovingly adopted into the anime community, to the point that there’s serious debate going on about whether or not it should be called anime, pretense be damned. No, I’m not here to review Avatar... I’m here today to review RWBY, the anime-inspired web series that was conceived and directed by Monty Oum of the Rooster Teeth team, the same godsends who gave us the Red vs. Blue series. Unlike Avatar, this show airs on Crunchyroll, so if it gets their stamp of approval, it must be good, right?

If you haven’t read my ‘fifty signs’ list, I’m going to let you in on a little secret... I love Red Vs. Blue. I own all eleven seasons on DVd, and I’m not talking about the Ten Years box set... I bought all eleven DVDs as they were being released. I even own a copy of The Strangerhood, for Flag’s sake! Being generally heads over heels in love with the Roosterteeth universe, I jumped at the chance to watch their take on the anime medium. I preordered a copy of RWBY... Because I don’t like waiting in between episodes... And gave it a fair shot, eager to love it.

I hated it.

The reason I’m telling you this now is because this show has some serious fanboy backing behind it. If you’re the type of person who doesn’t like seeing a show you love slandered, then far be it for me to waste your time... You might as well skip the rest of the review, and go stare at some jangling keys or something. For the rest of you, who are curious about WHY I hated it, let’s continue.

If I’m to describe my feelings for this show, then I guess the best place to start is at the beginning. The show opens up with a prologue set to LOTR style British voice over exposition, and while I can normally tolerate this kind of thing, RWBY is kind of a special case. I had to listen to it four times in a row to figure out what the hell they were talking about, and it still sounded like bullshit. As a matter of fact, I’m going to go a little out of my way here, and show you the prologue in it’s entirety. I know that’s tacky of me, but there’s a point to be made here.

“Legends... Stories scattered through time. Mankind has grown quite fond of recounting the exploits of heroes and villains. Forgetting so easily that we are remnants... Byproducts... Of a forgotten past. Man, born from Dust, was strong, wise, and resourceful. But he was born into an unforgiving world. An inevitable darkness, creatures of destruction... The Creatures of Grimm... Set their sight on man, and all of his creations. These forces clashed, and it seemed these creatures were intent on returning man’s brief existence to the void. However, even the smallest spark of hope is enough to ignite change, and in time, man’s passion, resourcefulness, and ingenuity led them to the tools that would help even the odds. This power was appropriately named Dust. Nature’s wrath in hand, man lit their way through the darkness, and in the shadow’s absence came strength, civilization, and most importantly, life. But even the brightest lights eventually flicker and die. And when they are gone, darkness will return. So you may prepare your guardians... Build your monuments... To a so called free world, but take heed... There will be no victory in strength.”

Okay, time to put my ‘inconvenient questions’ gloves on.

1: If the past has been forgotten, why bring it up at all?
2: If you say that mankind likes to record the past as legend, then doesn’t that conflict with the idea that we’ve forgotten our origin?
3: Was man literally born from dust?
4: Why do the creatures of Grimm want to eradicate us?
5: Why is this inevitable?
6: Seriously, were we such a threat to them BEFORE we got our hands on the weapons that they just decided we needed to go extinct?
7: At the very least, wouldn’t we make a good food source?
8: How exactly was dust created, and from what? how did that work, exactly?
9: Why did you get so negative and ominous, all of a sudden? Is this show eventually going to be about the end of the world?
10: If the world of darkness came before man was introduced to it, then wouldn’t our eradication just bring things back to square one? This may actually be the first series I’ve ever seen that accidentally acknowledge the fact that, without people, the world would be just fine and dandy.

Yeah, not only does this pretentious pile of pity not have anything to do with the tone or direction of the story... At least in the first volume... But it sounds like every single word of it was pulled directly out of someone’s a**. It paints mankind as a flawless, glorified victim in a cruel, unforgiving world that wants to get rid of us... I don't know if this was their intention, but there's some really uncomfortable subtext about climate change there. And I picked this prologue apart so thoroughly because, when I really think about it, there is no better way to show you just how idiotic and poorly thought out this series is. Because trust me, people, the carpets match the drapes.

Getting back on track, RWBY is the story of Ruby Rose, a girl who co-ordinates with her name by wearing all red and dressing like Red Riding Hood. She gets in trouble with some generic thugs led by Mad mod’s cousin, and winds up face to face with two of the higher-ups from a very high profile warrior school. She asks to be let in, and they say yes, because entrance exams are for pussies. Seriously, when you compare this little piece of logic to the backstory of the only developed male character in the series, it’s like taking the red pill.

She has a sister named Yang Xiao Long, who wears yellow and looks nothing like her. She also has an entirely different last name, and despite being older, is enrolling at the exact same school at the exact same time. Because absolutely none of that needs to be explained at all. She’s apparently based on Goldilocks. They team up with Weiss Schnee, a snooty white-wearing tsundere girl who’s based on Snow White, and Blake Belladonna, a black clad bookworm who’s based on Belle. She has cat ears, but somehow hides them with a giant ribbon.

Get it? Red, Yellow, White, Black. RYWB Err, I mean RWBY. They’re all blatantly color coded, and they’re based on fairy tale princesses. The rest of the characters are based on either mythological figures or actual historical figures, or hell, just fictional characters from everything from Wizard of Oz to Clockwork ******** Orange, and none of this has any importance to anything whatsoever.

Is it too late for me to review something else?

I’m not saying that blunt, obvious themes are necessarily a bad thing. Color coding your series works either when it’s subtle, when there’s a reason for it, or both. The characters in Red vs. blue were color coded because... That’s the joke. It’s an ongoing battle between a red base and a blue base. In a show like Revolutionary girl Utena, the color coded hair that was assigned to each character had a deep, metaphorical meaning about the personality, complexity, and fate of each character. Fairy Tale references are a much more difficult thing to get right, because it’s something you have to commit to. you have to use just enough to get your point across, or throw everything but the kitchen sink into it like Princess Tutu did. Even a show like Okami-san, which failed to use them well in it’s own right, was at least whimsical enough to have some sort of purpose behind it.

But in RWBY, they just threw in reference after reference, random idea after random idea, without ever stopping to worry about whether or not any of it had an actual purpose. When you’re mixing the Disney Princess line with the likes of Thor, Achilles and Joan of Arc, it’s high time you take a look back at your character roster and figure out what the hell you’re trying to accomplish with it. But then again, based on the story structure... It goes from a fast paced action story to an afterschool special about tolerance and anti-bullying with all the grace of a drunk steer... I really don’t think Monty Oum cared what he was doing at all. And considering how heavy handed and on-the-nose some of this material can get, that’s not anywhere near a good thing.

There are many, many different measuring sticks you can use to judge a series. Some people have measuring sticks that say “Bad is the absence of good.” If this is the method you subscribe too, then look no further, because there is nothing good about this show. The characters are annoying and entirely archetypal, the voice acting is embarrassingly bad... Yang’s Gravity Falls delivery being a particularly sour note... and the writing is inane and completely incompetent. The characters never, even once, talk or act like real people. The sisters don’t act like real sisters, but instead act how nerdy grown men may FANTASIZE about them acting. Problems between characters are resolved way too easily, the setting and environment are poorly thought out, and for a show that’s devoutly against bullying, the “Creatures of Grimm” seem to suffer more abuse than the people they’re supposedly preying on.

The biggest problem with this show, when you get right down to it, is that it can’t even go a full minute without reminding you about how awful it is. This Herculean exploit is achieved through conflicting information, continuity errors, constant abuses of basic physics, and some of the worst CG animation I’ve seen in my entire life. This animation isn’t just bad by today’s standards... This animation is bad even by Sega Dreamcast standards. I don’t think an animator from Food Fight would be able to look at it without sending it back for a revision.

There are times when it seems like good material is actually trying to escape from this crap heap. There are a few jokes that aren’t lame, but they’re effectively ruined by arbitrary gestures and anime-based facial expressions. There are a few actions scenes that could be generally exciting, but even if you look past the terrible animation and execution, the pacing tanks right at the beginning of the second act. Or, you know, what I assume to be the second act. I never saw this in an episodic context... I’m talking about right after the three teams are formed.

I know there are some people who love this series. But I can’t, for the life of me, understand why. Comparing this show to actual anime is like comparing a hand turkey to the Mona Lisa. This show is worthless. I won’t say there’s no point to it existing... Monty Oum was clearly pursuing his dreams by making it, and it does seem to have some genuine love and effort put into it, but I will say that there’s no point to it being popular. It should have just been a one man passion project... A fanfic, perhaps... But that one man just happened to have the right connections to get it produced, cast, and aired on a really popular site where people would be able to see it. And thank God they did, because otherwise, I would never have had to wonder just how humans, humans with monkey tails, humans with bunny ears, and humans with cat ears could somehow evolve side by side, hating each other, while monochromatic monsters on all sides threaten to destroy and eat them.

Whatever. It took me two hours to figure out something that it apparently took Weiss twelve hour to figure out... I don’t care. I don’t care about the story, I don’t care about the characters, I don’t care about volume 2, I don’t care. RWBY is a pretentious, incompetent mess, and the only reason I have ANY plans of watching it again is because I can’t get it off my mind without picking it apart in an Inconvenient Questions post in my blog. If you want to call it an anime, then I’m going to judge it like I’d judge an anime. I give RWBY a 2/10, and I’ll see you in the future to complain about it some more.