- Joined
- Jul 25, 2016
- Highlight
- #1
NOTE: This is a containment thread for sperging about the show itself and, if you so desire, the behind the scenes homosexual deviancy regarding Rooster Teeth that is unrelated to either Vic Mignogna or the Weeb Wars for which we have an entire sub-forum over there.
What started initially as the 2007 smash hit by the Kaiser Chiefs, would a few years later become the question if a bunch of American nerds and animators could do their own (3D) (pseudo-)anime. Enter RWBY.
RWBY, RWBY, RWBY, RWBY (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
Do you, do you, do you, do you (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
Know what you're doing, doing, to me (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
RWBY, RWBY, RWBY, RWBY (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
Taking into account everything that happened until the moment of me writing this, from a point of impartiality, it can be said beyond any reasonable doubt that the answer is a resounding no. So, what exactly went wrong? What makes this show so (in)famous? And how is it that the company that produced the highly acclaimed Red vs. Blue fucked it up with RWBY? Let’s take a look, one step at a time. Make sure you’re well supplied, because it’s going to be quite a trip.
Enter Monty Oum. One day Monty had a thought: "Wait a minute. I am a weeaboo, an animator, and a flailing spastic. I have assburgers, and I lack the traditional numbers of chromosomes. Why don’t I make my own anime?" So, he did. Joined by Burnie Burns and Matt Hullum, co-founders of Rooster Teeth, Monty found the perfect partners to bring his autism into an actual series.
Drawing inspiration from his love of anime, video games, and Western fairy tales, Monty envisioned a world of vibrant characters, shounen anime fight choreographies, and an amateurish yet somewhat charming attempt at storytelling. The premise can be described as a mixture of the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm meets Devil May Cry with a sprinkle of Diablo. A bunch of badasses known as Huntsmen and Huntresses fight demonic entities called the Grimm. Sounds pretty kickass, doesn’t it?
Ruby Rose
Not to be confused with the actress from the godawful Batwoman series. The protagonist and mascot of RWBY. A determined and optimistic youngShounen-Protagonist-Huntress-in-training wielding a scythe named Crescent Rose. She is Little Red Riding Hood meets the Grimm Reaper.
Voiced by Linsay Jones. Her JP voice actress is Saori Hayami, who is known among weebs as Musubi from Sekirei, Shinoa Hiragi from Owari no Seraph, Shinobu Kochou from Demon Slayer, Fubuki from One Punch Man, Yor Forger from Spy x Family, Yamato from One Piece and many more.
Weiss Schnee
The strong and independent heiress to the Schnee Dust Company and according to OP, whose opinions are objective facts, the best girl. She is the bratty rival noblewoman archetype as a foil to Ruby’s shounen protag. Weiss is, in case you haven’t noticed, based on Snow White.
Voiced by Karla Eberle. In the Japanese dub she shares Yōko Hikasa as the voice actress with Rias Gremory from Highschool DxD, Mio Akiyama from K-On!, Yoh Asakura from the 2021 version of Shaman King etc.
Blake Belladonna
The sexy ninja catgirl assassin. She is the sole reason the Faunus exist, so Monty can please his catgirl fetish. A former White Fang terrorist associated with her mentor (later retconned into ex-boyfriend), Adam Taurus, Blake is the moodier and angsty member of the group. Her mortal enemy is the writing staff. Based on Belle from Beauty and the Beast and allegedly the professional cosplay whore VampyBitMe.
Voiced by Arryn Zech. Her JP voice actress is Yū Shimamura, who also voices Annie Leonhart from Attack on Titan, Mature from King of Fighters and also serves as the JP voice of Princess Zelda from Breath of the Wild.
Yang Xiaolong
Based on Goldilocks if she bingewatched all Bruce Lee movies. Yang is Ruby's older half-sister, known for her fiery personality and the brawler of the group.
Voiced by Barbara Dunkleman. She fittingly shares her Japanese voice actress Ami Koshimizu with Ryuko Matoi from Kill La Kill, who also voices Mai Shiranui from King of Fighters, Kallen Kōzuki from Code Geass, Holo from Spice and Wolf, Sailor Jupiter from Sailor Moon Crystal, Yukiko Amagi from Persona 4 and the Japanese version of Beidou from Genshin Impact.
Now you not only know the four main girls, but you also got your virginity back by learning all the Japanese voice actor trivia. You're welcome.
The girls' respective trailers, Red, White, Black and Yellow, gave us glimpses into the world of RWBY, offering audiences a taste of the adventure of what is to come. The audience was hyped. But would the series itself live up to the hype?
I won’t bore you to death with a synopsis, let alone an analysis of the episodes. There will be links to dedicated terminal autists at the end of this post. What you should know is that Volume 1 introduced us to the characters and the setting. Volume 2 raised the stakes by going deeper into the plot and fleshing out some of the characters. Volume 3 is, as of today, still considered the zenith of the franchise. It ended with the Battle of Beacon Academy in which some major characters died. The scientific community calls this phenomenon "shit getting real."
As discussed above, the writing made it clear that RWBY is the creation of a bunch of misguided weebs who see anime as a genre instead as a medium and henceforth tried to make it as "anime" as possible; resulting in them falling into the same pitfalls almost every western weeb creators do that fail to properly understand it.
The “webcomicitis” disease in itself isn’t a death sentence, and even though the writing was initially sloppy and on the wrong side of the chromosome count, it wasn’t completely irredeemable and even showed promise and potential that could have been developed by more competent writers that weren't pursuing a misguided attempt to create their own misconception of an anime.
In fact, the audience was at first very forgiving towards the sloppy animation, the bad voice acting, and the writing, as RWBY was, for all its faults, seen as a passion project. Casey Lee William’s cheap garage band music also added to the show’s charm. Think of early RWBY more or less like your child’s drawing you fondly put on your fridge. Drawn by a severely autistic manchild, but still.
However, the above-mentioned Volume 3 is where the troubles would start. You see, not only did major characters die within the show but also behind the scenes. The casualty was none other than Monty himself.
While the exceptional incompetence of the writers shares a great deal of responsibility for this show turning into such an unmitigated disaster, another great - and arguably bigger - factor is the sheer inability of the CRWBY and Rooster Teeth in general to keep its shit together. The user GoneRampant1 made an effortpost (Archive) on the r/TwoBestFriendsPlay subreddit giving a detailed production history of RWBY from the very beginning to Volume 7. To better understand some of the people involved, here is a short summary.
As you can see, with people like that, it’s not a surprise at all that Rooster Teeth ultimately went tits up. The real accomplishment is that the company lasted as long as it did with those retards and fuckups in charge. The fact that, according to Barbara herself, the company mismanaged itself into spending 35,000 unironic US dollars per minute to produce an episode of what looks like a Chinese knockoff cartoon sounds all the more believable. We’re talking about the kind of managerial incompetence that even outdoes CD Projekt Red.
To give you a comparison: According to Masamune Sakaki, an anime CG creator, your average 12-episode anime costs 2 million Burgerdollars or roughly 8,300 Burgerdollars per minute. If nothing else, the CRWBY managed to replicate the obscene costs and unprofitability of Japanese anime.
In conclusion, even if Monty had lived, they would have buttfucked both RWBY and Rooster Teeth into oblivion. As a user on the Dead Horse Interchange so beautifully put it:
And boy did it show!
For more on Rooster Teeth itself, I highly recommend this thread.
One of the problems that ensued from Monty’s death was that Miles and Kerry had at first no idea where to take the writing and how to properly live up to Monty’s Vision™. A very important buzzword you should memorise, BTW. As already discussed in the CRWBY section, Miles and Kerry had absolutely no idea how to properly write whenever they weren’t being tard wrangled by actual writers. But with Monty gone, the writing essentially became two retarded children playing Pin The Tail On The Donkey in a minefield. With nothing to go by but some notes, akin to a paleo artist having nothing to work with but bones, Miles and Kerry, bless their untalented hearts, tried to make the best of it.
A very noticeable change in the show was the art style, as the CRWBY switched from Poser to Maya. While it improved the quality and flexibility of the series’ art style, the switch proved to be a double-edged sword that introduced new challenges and complications, which strained the resources and capabilities of the team.
And then one day, Grey Haddock had a thought: "Wait a minute. I am a weeaboo, an animator, and a flailing spastic. I have assburgers, and I lack the traditional numbers of chromosomes. Why don’t I make my own anime?" So, he did. Enter Gen:Lock. By the Emperor! What an absolute unholy Scheißdreck that show is, almost openly bearing the accursed eight-pointed star of Chaos. While Gen:Lock itself is certainly worth its own thread, its relevancy in RWBY’s context is related in a behind-the-scenes way.
As already mentioned, by leaving the CRWBY in order to work on his pet project, Grey caused his former crew to completely shit the bed, as he was one of its main pillars. And as if that wasn’t enough, he (allegedly) syphoned off precious resources from RWBY, diverting them to Gen:Lock. Miles, meanwhile, bless his feeble attempts, was doing his hardest to deal with the fallout and spin the proverbial plates. He tried so hard and got so far, but in the end, it didn’t really matter. The absolute fucking state caused by Grey’s Homer sexual faggotry would even reflect in the production quality of RWBY itself with the much ridiculed and memed on Volume 5, which is considered the absolute low point by most fans.
Eventually, Miles and Kerry somehow managed to band-aid the ship together with duct tape and the grace of Allah. However, RWBY was beginning to lose its steam, with Miles’ and Kerry’s incompetence as writers doing it absolutely no favours. Things got so bad that pandering to the fans’s favourite ships remained one of RWBY’s few saving graces.
With Volume 7, the CRWBY introduced Eddy Rivas and Kiersi Burkhart as two additional writers to help out Miles and Kerry. Did it improve the writing? Oh, fuck to the no! Volume 7 gave us hilarities such as the Ace-Ops, a special force unit that truly puts the "special" in special needs. Not to mention the character of Robyn Hillary Clinton as Weiss’ father, Jacques, was rewritten from being based on Jack Frost to being a stand-in for Donald Trump. Needless to say, the butthurt over the 2016 US spedsidential elections was still palpable. I also want to use this opportunity to say that whoever was responsible for the new character designs, especially Jaune’s infamous banana hair, should be publicly beaten with an ox pizzle.
Volume 8 was sort of the CRWBY’s way of apologising for all the years of ineptitude by making it pretty intense. Some are even tempted to compare it to Volume 3, but in OP’s humble (read: objectively correct) opinion, it all came a little too late. Not to mention the little goodwill Volume 8 fostered was immediately pissed away, with the entirety of Volume 9 being filler
With Rooster Teeth’s dire financial straits becoming more obvious, speculations were had about whether Volume 10 would even be released, and if so, would it wrap up the story? Now that the company is gone, almost any discussion around Volume 10 is moot.
The FNDM
The FNDM (pronounced "fandom") is the juiciest part of the franchise and the richest in Julay. With all the aforementioned developments in both the show itself and Rooster Teeth, I have noticed a demographic shift within the FNDM that more or less manifests almost like a mediaeval caste system.
The absolute dregs of society are the ones that make the FNDM so infamous for its autism and toxicity: Shippers. You see, shipping is a very serious business in the FNDM to the point where tard fights among the shippers make the Battle of Salamis look like a soothing fishing trip in comparison. As previously said, shipteasing and shipping have always existed and have gained endorsement from both the staff and the voice actors alike, particularly as the writing began to deteriorate. Due to RWBY's appalling management, the shipping became the show’s main selling point, and it’s arguably the main thing that kept it alive.. For some additional misery porn, or in case you’re a masochistic sick fuck, here is a list of RWBY ships and their names.
The shippers themselves have earned a certain notoriety you’d only see from fujoshis due to their Islamic fundamentalist levels of fanaticism when getting defensive over their pet ship; and by defensive, I mean chimping the fuck out, as one can witness it with Blake x Yang, aka “Bumblebee” shippers. There is a lot one can say about the shippers within the FNDM, as they warrant their own thread, but let’s just say that at one point their autism and unironic toxicity got so out of hand that during Volume 7, it even got media attention.
And then, in Chapter 6 of Volume 9, it finally happened: The CRWBY applied the defibrillator on the series by making the Bumblebee ship sail. The FNDM was euphoric. Truth be told, yours truly, being a patrician yuri connoisseur, does unironically subscribe to both White Rose (Ruby x Weiss) and Bumblebee (Blake x Yang) on a conceptual level. Yet seeing how it was the result of fuckup afer fuckup on writers' part and being pushed by both Arryn and Barbara themselves, Bumblebee finally becoming canon, makes one feel less like Themistocles, but more like Pyrrhus of Epirus. Then again, I am one of those retards who care about writing…
However, not all is doom and gloom with the FNDM. The patricians, nobles, brahmins or whatever you want to call the small minority on top are the its sole redeeming element. Fans that not only have their shit together, but are actually talented artists themselves. Examples include Bach "Dishwasher1910" Do, a very talented artist who made some amazing alternate universe (look up RWBY Grimmverse, it’s metal as fuck) fanart and even became a concept artist of Gen:Lock. Kuma (NSFW) would be another such example who made the Henceforward fan webcomic and showed that shipping (Ruby x Weiss in particular) can be done right, and many more. The sheer creativity of some of the fanart, re-writes and memes is prone to make you cry bitter tears over the show's wasted potential.
The great irony of the various rewrite projects is that all of them are essentially a bunch of retards and midwits fancying themselves as geniuses and thus doing the exact same mistakes as Miles and Kerry with not even the "S" of self-awareness to be seen. I’m sure you’ve probably stumbled at one point over a couple of tips and guidelines on how to write a story, characters, etc. But I would like to use this opportunity to give you some actual advice: Forget everything you learned about storytelling, writing, etc. The one and only advice and the one and only rule that is universally applicable is that smart stories can only be written by smart people. To be a good writer, you must be born with an above-average IQ. You can see this in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien or in the early seasons of The Simpsons. People who aren’t smart are incapable of producing anything but slop.
If it’s any solace to both the CRWBY and the rewriters, it’s the same problem that plagues the Japanese anime industry they seek to imitate.
Without condoning, I understand where the rewriters come from, as RWBY has by now become a so-called "projection series." The principle is more or less similar to the self-insert, but instead of projecting yourself onto a (main) character that was deliberately left as a blank slate, the writing has become so bland, messy, shallow, and embarrassingly bad, which leaves the fans to project their own creative ideas into the writing. There is a reason why, for example, in Dragon Ball Z, there are gorillions of fan "fixes" and rewrites and why people tend to prefer the Team Four Star canon over the actual one. Say about the FNDM what you will, and you'd be correct, but it's, just like with Dragon Ball Z, a situation where the fans care way more about the writing than the writers themselves. I want to say it's a shame that Rooster Teeth didn't go the Bethesda route and let the fans fix their fuckups, but the results speak for themselves, as you saw. But as I said, RWBY's main appeal by now isn't what it is, but what it could have been.
One adaptation of interest, however, was RWBY: Ice Queendom. It started out as an anime retelling of Volume 1 on a very tight budget before it went down its own story line. It wasn’t too good, as it had some issues too, mostly related to the budget restraints. They used clips of the show for the opening for crying out loud (which was somewhat remedied in the Blu-Ray version)! But I would be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy it for what it was. For a RWBY anime, Ice Queendom was as good as it gets.
Ice Queendom at the end of the day did, for all its faults, give something the FNDM always wanted from the beginning. An actual no-shit RWBY anime.
Now that Rooster Teeth is roadkill, one is left pondering the future of its IPs, especially RWBY. Who is going to pick it up? A popular speculation from within the FNDM’s copium den is that maybe Crunchyroll could come to the rescue. Some delusional individuals even suggested Marvel or DC. Personally, I believe that Rooster Teeth would still be among us if RWBY was enough of a profitable franchise to be bought by any big boy company instead of Rooster Teeth trying to get rid of it like a single mother attempting a fourth trimester abortion. And even if someone buys the IP, will they deliver Volume 10? Do a complete reboot? Or even something else with it? At this moment, we don’t even know if someone will even give RWBY a second chance. After all, even vultures and other carrion eaters avoid meat that has gone putrid.
One historical joke that wasn't lost on me was the reason I compared RWBY to the Hindenburg. RWBY was meant to become a prestige project to show the prowess and technical abilities of Rooster Teeth, only for the Hindenburg to crash straight into the Chernobyl reactor. It will take us a while for the radioactive fallout to dissipate until the debris can be cleared and maybe salvage what could potentially be salvaged.
As things stand now, at the time of me writing this, the best hope RWBY has is to be picked up by a Japanese studio and give the fans the RWBY anime they always wanted. What might go in its favour is the Japanese all-star dub cast. However, I must also caution any potential optimists that this is also the case with Queen’s Blade, a franchise that, as I’m writing this, isn’t doing so well either. And Queen’s Blade brings more to the table by having sexy chicks duking it out while being softcore porn.
I don’t know. Only time will tell what will happen. For now, as things stand, RWBY is dead; that is, until someone has a thought: "Wait a minute. We are weeaboos, an animation studio, and a bunch of flailing spastics. We have assburgers, and we lack the traditional numbers of chromosomes. Why don’t we pick up RWBY?"
What I do know is that I want to conclude this autistic fit of an OP by going full circle and give the Kaiser Chiefs the last word.
Let it never be said
The romance is dead
Cause there's so little else
Occupying my head
There is nothing I need
Except the function to breathe
But I'm not really fussed
Doesn't matter to meeeeeeeee~
RWBY, RWBY, RWBY, RWBY (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
Do you, do you, do you, do you (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
Know what you're doing, doing, to me (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
RWBY, RWBY, RWBY, RWBY (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
r/RWBY - The show's subreddit
r/RWBYcritics - The subreddit where the wrongthinkers are exiled to
Vexed Viewer’s channel - For those interested in episodic reviews
adel aka’s YouTube channel - For general RWBY sperging
Mercury Black's YouTube channel - For RWBY on Crack and other funny videos
Anime Outsiders podcast episode on RWBY
Rooster Teeth Kiwi Farms Thread
What started initially as the 2007 smash hit by the Kaiser Chiefs, would a few years later become the question if a bunch of American nerds and animators could do their own (3D) (pseudo-)anime. Enter RWBY.
RWBY, RWBY, RWBY, RWBY (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
Do you, do you, do you, do you (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
Know what you're doing, doing, to me (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
RWBY, RWBY, RWBY, RWBY (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
Taking into account everything that happened until the moment of me writing this, from a point of impartiality, it can be said beyond any reasonable doubt that the answer is a resounding no. So, what exactly went wrong? What makes this show so (in)famous? And how is it that the company that produced the highly acclaimed Red vs. Blue fucked it up with RWBY? Let’s take a look, one step at a time. Make sure you’re well supplied, because it’s going to be quite a trip.
Three Retards, One Vision
As anime became increasingly popular in the Lands of the Setting Sun during the 2000s, it inspired the baka gaijin to hold a series of Special Olympics in form of weeaboos wanting to create their own anime, which resulted mostly in webcomics such as the infamous Megatokyo. Sometimes, western studios managed to shit out a couple of their own brand of anime series themselves, with the only good ones being those that mostly just stuck to imitating the art style, like Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Boondocks. Weeaboos mistaking anime as a genre instead of seeing it as a diverse medium and thus trying to make their creation "as anime as possible" is going to be a recurring theme here.Enter Monty Oum. One day Monty had a thought: "Wait a minute. I am a weeaboo, an animator, and a flailing spastic. I have assburgers, and I lack the traditional numbers of chromosomes. Why don’t I make my own anime?" So, he did. Joined by Burnie Burns and Matt Hullum, co-founders of Rooster Teeth, Monty found the perfect partners to bring his autism into an actual series.
Drawing inspiration from his love of anime, video games, and Western fairy tales, Monty envisioned a world of vibrant characters, shounen anime fight choreographies, and an amateurish yet somewhat charming attempt at storytelling. The premise can be described as a mixture of the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm meets Devil May Cry with a sprinkle of Diablo. A bunch of badasses known as Huntsmen and Huntresses fight demonic entities called the Grimm. Sounds pretty kickass, doesn’t it?
Red, White, Black and Yellow
Allow me to introduce you the four charming ladies that take the centre stage.Ruby Rose
Not to be confused with the actress from the godawful Batwoman series. The protagonist and mascot of RWBY. A determined and optimistic young
Voiced by Linsay Jones. Her JP voice actress is Saori Hayami, who is known among weebs as Musubi from Sekirei, Shinoa Hiragi from Owari no Seraph, Shinobu Kochou from Demon Slayer, Fubuki from One Punch Man, Yor Forger from Spy x Family, Yamato from One Piece and many more.
Weiss Schnee
The strong and independent heiress to the Schnee Dust Company and according to OP, whose opinions are objective facts, the best girl. She is the bratty rival noblewoman archetype as a foil to Ruby’s shounen protag. Weiss is, in case you haven’t noticed, based on Snow White.
Voiced by Karla Eberle. In the Japanese dub she shares Yōko Hikasa as the voice actress with Rias Gremory from Highschool DxD, Mio Akiyama from K-On!, Yoh Asakura from the 2021 version of Shaman King etc.
Blake Belladonna
The sexy ninja catgirl assassin. She is the sole reason the Faunus exist, so Monty can please his catgirl fetish. A former White Fang terrorist associated with her mentor (later retconned into ex-boyfriend), Adam Taurus, Blake is the moodier and angsty member of the group. Her mortal enemy is the writing staff. Based on Belle from Beauty and the Beast and allegedly the professional cosplay whore VampyBitMe.
Voiced by Arryn Zech. Her JP voice actress is Yū Shimamura, who also voices Annie Leonhart from Attack on Titan, Mature from King of Fighters and also serves as the JP voice of Princess Zelda from Breath of the Wild.
Yang Xiaolong
Based on Goldilocks if she bingewatched all Bruce Lee movies. Yang is Ruby's older half-sister, known for her fiery personality and the brawler of the group.
Voiced by Barbara Dunkleman. She fittingly shares her Japanese voice actress Ami Koshimizu with Ryuko Matoi from Kill La Kill, who also voices Mai Shiranui from King of Fighters, Kallen Kōzuki from Code Geass, Holo from Spice and Wolf, Sailor Jupiter from Sailor Moon Crystal, Yukiko Amagi from Persona 4 and the Japanese version of Beidou from Genshin Impact.
Now you not only know the four main girls, but you also got your virginity back by learning all the Japanese voice actor trivia. You're welcome.
The girls' respective trailers, Red, White, Black and Yellow, gave us glimpses into the world of RWBY, offering audiences a taste of the adventure of what is to come. The audience was hyped. But would the series itself live up to the hype?
This Will Be The Day We’ve Waited For
It actually did. So much so, it even became Rooster Teeth’s flagship IP alongside Red vs. Blue.I won’t bore you to death with a synopsis, let alone an analysis of the episodes. There will be links to dedicated terminal autists at the end of this post. What you should know is that Volume 1 introduced us to the characters and the setting. Volume 2 raised the stakes by going deeper into the plot and fleshing out some of the characters. Volume 3 is, as of today, still considered the zenith of the franchise. It ended with the Battle of Beacon Academy in which some major characters died. The scientific community calls this phenomenon "shit getting real."
As discussed above, the writing made it clear that RWBY is the creation of a bunch of misguided weebs who see anime as a genre instead as a medium and henceforth tried to make it as "anime" as possible; resulting in them falling into the same pitfalls almost every western weeb creators do that fail to properly understand it.
The “webcomicitis” disease in itself isn’t a death sentence, and even though the writing was initially sloppy and on the wrong side of the chromosome count, it wasn’t completely irredeemable and even showed promise and potential that could have been developed by more competent writers that weren't pursuing a misguided attempt to create their own misconception of an anime.
In fact, the audience was at first very forgiving towards the sloppy animation, the bad voice acting, and the writing, as RWBY was, for all its faults, seen as a passion project. Casey Lee William’s cheap garage band music also added to the show’s charm. Think of early RWBY more or less like your child’s drawing you fondly put on your fridge. Drawn by a severely autistic manchild, but still.
However, the above-mentioned Volume 3 is where the troubles would start. You see, not only did major characters die within the show but also behind the scenes. The casualty was none other than Monty himself.
Meet The CRWBY
To better understand how the RWBY train derailed, it is crucial to take a look at the people behind the scenes called the CRWBY (pronounced “Crewby”)While the exceptional incompetence of the writers shares a great deal of responsibility for this show turning into such an unmitigated disaster, another great - and arguably bigger - factor is the sheer inability of the CRWBY and Rooster Teeth in general to keep its shit together. The user GoneRampant1 made an effortpost (Archive) on the r/TwoBestFriendsPlay subreddit giving a detailed production history of RWBY from the very beginning to Volume 7. To better understand some of the people involved, here is a short summary.
The late creator of RWBY himself. Monty was the kind of eccentric person about whom you could write an entire novel, but to keep a long story short, the best way to summarize him are the words “autistic weeb”. A good animator who knew how to choreograph exciting anime fights, he was also plagued by shortcomings such as an unhealthy lifestyle and an even unhealthier personality. His demeanour made it clear that he had some (high functioning?) 'tism going on while he would, as a grown ass man(!), try to appear as cool as possible like some pubescent teenager which naturally resulted in cringe and occasional pity usually reserved for special needs children. To the initial surprise and shock of everyone (what in hindsight might have been diabolic intervention), Monty did something no one thought he'd be capable of: He attracted a woman and even convinced her to marry him. Said woman, Sheena, was a 5/10 conslut but still way better than an autistic Asian manchild with low testosterone can usually hope for. Naturally you'd expect the marriage to end with Sheena cheating on Monty with Chad and Tyrone, but the end came in form of her insisting on owning a cat, in spite of Monty's allergy towards them. Monty not having the sack to say no would one allergic overreaction later find himself hospitalised and later dead. Ever since, he has been put on a pedestal by the entire fandom, bickering over what Monty's Vision™ truly is, whereas yours truly considers him an honest to God lolcow who'd have his own thread if he was still alive. As Monty's life ended like a Greek tragedy, RWBY's tragedy however was only about to begin.
Former animator at Rooster Teeth. As working on Volume 3 destroyed Shane’s life, marriage and pretty much everything of worth to him, he would eventually leave the company leaving behind an interesting open letter as a parting gift with some allegations being vindicated as time moved on.
Cosplay thot and Monty Oum’s widow. Her biggest claim to fame was her insisting on owning a cat which culminated in Monty’s death due to his cat allergies. For more info on her, I’d highly recommend reading her thread. In Sheena’s defence however it must be said that Monty’s death was in the end a result of him being a spineless poor excuse of a man. Sheena insisted on owning cats and not giving a fuck about Monty’s allergy. Given that Monty was a typical nerd and weeb and as such the kind of man who’s very uninteresting to women, it was only natural for him to cave in and be the bottom bitch to any woman who would give him the time of the day or even marry him for whatever godforsaken reason. Needless to say, said spinelessness ended up costing him his life.
Miles Luna is the big brained nibba responsible for RWBY’s writing. Originally, he was supposed to be the professional writer who would wrangle Monty, a self-admitted bad writer and ideas guy. Problem is that you can’t wrangle a tard with another tard. Miles himself was back in the day wrangled when he co-wrote some critically acclaimed Red vs. Blue episodes, but with no one in sight to keep is assburgers in check, RWBY has been, especially after Monty’s death, completely at his mercy like an abused girl in a pervert’s sex dungeon with equally horrifying results. What makes it even more hilarious is the fact that Miles unironically fancies himself as a writing genius to the point where he takes any form of criticism as a personal attack. One of the many examples of how Miles derails the writing is through his self-insert borderline Gary Stu character Jaune Arc who he also voices. In video game terms, Miles Luna is more or less to RWBY what Katsuhiro Harada is to Tekken.
Miles' (equally inept) co-writer and voice actor of Neptune (remember him?). While Miles is more or less the "face" of the writing staff, Kerry has been mostly the quiet behind-the-scenes background figure not known for any significant drama as I'm writing this. So far, Kerry's more significant accomplishments lie in having a mental blackout that led him to confirm the abysmal DC comics as canon (in spite of them more than often contradicting the show’s canon) and trying to mitigate the chaos that Gray Haddock created during the production of Volume 5.
A former producer and the voice actress of the sexy MILF teacher Glynda Goodwitch. In a(n allegedly) drunken state, Zuelch went to Twitter to chimp at her colleagues and employers at Rooster Teeth by dropping some serious allegations of behind the scenes Homer sexual deviancy. What back in the day sounded like the drunken ramblings of a decrepit hag in her midlife crisis, would turn out to be the drunken ramblings of a decrepit hag in her midlife crisis that might be based on truth given the content of Newville’s letter and especially Rooster Teeth’s corporate culture. Whatever the truth is, it was more than enough for Zuelch to be fired and her character Glynda to be completely unpersoned instead of simply recasted. Miles, as a matter of fact, is to this day so butthurt about the incident that he is still determined to erase any mentions and memories of Glynda wherever he can. Glynda made a brief, but voicless cameo in Volume 8, hinting to the possibility that maybe Miles may have gotten over his butthurt and is starting to act like a proper adult. Maybe. While it is possible that we may see more of Glynda in the future, the ship for Kathleen however has already sailed, hit the iceberg and sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
Voice actress of Coco Adel who got her position by sucking and fucking herself to the top. Currently married with the former CEO Burnie Burns. For now.
Post-wall cosplay thot and voice actress of the antagonist and unintentional comic relief Cinder Fall. Notable for her atrocious voice acting that wouldn’t be out of place in a shitty 1970s Hong Kong kung fu movie dub, it has been a Scooby Doo mystery to why she was picked in the first place; though yours truly has some theories. Besides of the obvious two reasons, Jessica is most likely being kept around for her “star power” (for the lack of a better term, as comical as it sounds) as a high-profile professional cosplay thot and consult. Surprisingly, she has - at the time of me writing this - yet to be involved in any significant Rooster Teeth related drama. For more on Jessica, visit her thread over there.
Qrow’s new voice actor. For most part an insignificant person and performance wise a bargain bin version of Vic. During the course of the Weeb Wars however, he did gain some notoriety for picking an internet tardfight with some rando on Twitter where he put on an internet tough guy act that is second only to Tonkasaw. It culminated with Jason trying to get a dox on said rando intending to “send him a gift”. Judging by his gay biker appearance, we know too well what a “gift” means among his kind.
Voice actress of Ruby Rose and wife of Sun Wukong’s voice actor Michael Jones. Used to be very pleasant to look at until she whaled the fuck out. Besides of that depressing trivia, there is nothing too spectacular to say, though Lindsay is worth keeping an eye on given that she has the potential to be one epic mental breakdown away from becoming Jamie Marchi 2.0. To her credit though, she did - unlike Jamie - gain the weight after becoming a mom.
The voice actress of Yang Xiao Long and a woman who's born with the curse of being - may God forgive me for even saying this word - c*nadian. The shortest and most accurate way to describe Barb is to imagine her as the protagonist of every blonde joke ever told; so naturally Rooster Teeth made her the marketing and community manager. Barb's establishing moment was an incident at RTX 2017 when during a Q&A she answered an autistic fan's questions regarding the inconsistencies in the writing and plot holes with her now infamous "It's a cartooooooon". While Barb obviously handled the situation poorly, I at least am willing to cut her some slack given the fandom's autism as that incident was very reminiscent of the magic xylophone scene of the Simpsons' Poochie episode. For most part just a regular voice acting sped (if you’d pardon the repetition) whose height of fame was her attempted Twitter tardfight with Piers Morgan.
Former head of animation of Rooster Teeth productions and voice actor of Roman Torchwick. As mentioned in the Reddit post, Gray is the big brained nibba behind gen:LOCK who in order to create his passion project left RWBY's production team - while still being one of its main pillars - seemingly out of the blue. He (allegedly) siphoned off precious resources from RWBY for his pet project and thus combined with his sudden departure left the show in a state of chaos that Kerry, mostly unsuccessfully, tried to salvage. The result of course is the infamous and memed on clusterfuck that is Volume 5. Gray ran the animation department like a concentration camp and tormented the animators like the biblical Pharaoh from Genesis; that is until word got upstairs and he got the boot. Gen:LOCK itself in a hilariously karmic twist ended up being a flop. Gray’s career is now in the same state he left Rooster Teeth: Fucked in the ass, and not even in the Greek way.
Not to be confused with the other Vee. Currently the only, or at least most active professional voice actor of the show (RIP Vic) and known for her roles as Sailor Mars (Sailor Moon), Velvet Crowe (Tales of Berseria), Homura (Puella Magi Madoka Magica), Killua (Hunter x Hunter), Cerebella (Skullgirls), Ebisu (Dorohedoro) and many more. Judging by her Twitter and other social media presence, an insane e-thot who since Volume 7 is voicing Robyn Hillary Clinton. Not much to say for now, but given the aforementioned fact of being a crazy e-thot in her 30s, we may or may not bear witness to some meltdowns once she hits the wall.
As you can see, with people like that, it’s not a surprise at all that Rooster Teeth ultimately went tits up. The real accomplishment is that the company lasted as long as it did with those retards and fuckups in charge. The fact that, according to Barbara herself, the company mismanaged itself into spending 35,000 unironic US dollars per minute to produce an episode of what looks like a Chinese knockoff cartoon sounds all the more believable. We’re talking about the kind of managerial incompetence that even outdoes CD Projekt Red.
To give you a comparison: According to Masamune Sakaki, an anime CG creator, your average 12-episode anime costs 2 million Burgerdollars or roughly 8,300 Burgerdollars per minute. If nothing else, the CRWBY managed to replicate the obscene costs and unprofitability of Japanese anime.
In conclusion, even if Monty had lived, they would have buttfucked both RWBY and Rooster Teeth into oblivion. As a user on the Dead Horse Interchange so beautifully put it:
“That’s what happens when your Halo fanfiction becomes a fucking company.” – mad bum
And boy did it show!
For more on Rooster Teeth itself, I highly recommend this thread.
The Downward Spiral
Needless to say, Monty’s death left the CRWBY in a state of chaos and disarray. However, as painful as the death of a dear friend and colleague is, Monty’s passing was only the beginning of their problems.One of the problems that ensued from Monty’s death was that Miles and Kerry had at first no idea where to take the writing and how to properly live up to Monty’s Vision™. A very important buzzword you should memorise, BTW. As already discussed in the CRWBY section, Miles and Kerry had absolutely no idea how to properly write whenever they weren’t being tard wrangled by actual writers. But with Monty gone, the writing essentially became two retarded children playing Pin The Tail On The Donkey in a minefield. With nothing to go by but some notes, akin to a paleo artist having nothing to work with but bones, Miles and Kerry, bless their untalented hearts, tried to make the best of it.
A very noticeable change in the show was the art style, as the CRWBY switched from Poser to Maya. While it improved the quality and flexibility of the series’ art style, the switch proved to be a double-edged sword that introduced new challenges and complications, which strained the resources and capabilities of the team.
And then one day, Grey Haddock had a thought: "Wait a minute. I am a weeaboo, an animator, and a flailing spastic. I have assburgers, and I lack the traditional numbers of chromosomes. Why don’t I make my own anime?" So, he did. Enter Gen:Lock. By the Emperor! What an absolute unholy Scheißdreck that show is, almost openly bearing the accursed eight-pointed star of Chaos. While Gen:Lock itself is certainly worth its own thread, its relevancy in RWBY’s context is related in a behind-the-scenes way.
As already mentioned, by leaving the CRWBY in order to work on his pet project, Grey caused his former crew to completely shit the bed, as he was one of its main pillars. And as if that wasn’t enough, he (allegedly) syphoned off precious resources from RWBY, diverting them to Gen:Lock. Miles, meanwhile, bless his feeble attempts, was doing his hardest to deal with the fallout and spin the proverbial plates. He tried so hard and got so far, but in the end, it didn’t really matter. The absolute fucking state caused by Grey’s Homer sexual faggotry would even reflect in the production quality of RWBY itself with the much ridiculed and memed on Volume 5, which is considered the absolute low point by most fans.
Eventually, Miles and Kerry somehow managed to band-aid the ship together with duct tape and the grace of Allah. However, RWBY was beginning to lose its steam, with Miles’ and Kerry’s incompetence as writers doing it absolutely no favours. Things got so bad that pandering to the fans’s favourite ships remained one of RWBY’s few saving graces.
With Volume 7, the CRWBY introduced Eddy Rivas and Kiersi Burkhart as two additional writers to help out Miles and Kerry. Did it improve the writing? Oh, fuck to the no! Volume 7 gave us hilarities such as the Ace-Ops, a special force unit that truly puts the "special" in special needs. Not to mention the character of Robyn Hill
Volume 8 was sort of the CRWBY’s way of apologising for all the years of ineptitude by making it pretty intense. Some are even tempted to compare it to Volume 3, but in OP’s humble (read: objectively correct) opinion, it all came a little too late. Not to mention the little goodwill Volume 8 fostered was immediately pissed away, with the entirety of Volume 9 being filler
With Rooster Teeth’s dire financial straits becoming more obvious, speculations were had about whether Volume 10 would even be released, and if so, would it wrap up the story? Now that the company is gone, almost any discussion around Volume 10 is moot.
The FNDM
The FNDM (pronounced "fandom") is the juiciest part of the franchise and the richest in Julay. With all the aforementioned developments in both the show itself and Rooster Teeth, I have noticed a demographic shift within the FNDM that more or less manifests almost like a mediaeval caste system.
The shippers themselves have earned a certain notoriety you’d only see from fujoshis due to their Islamic fundamentalist levels of fanaticism when getting defensive over their pet ship; and by defensive, I mean chimping the fuck out, as one can witness it with Blake x Yang, aka “Bumblebee” shippers. There is a lot one can say about the shippers within the FNDM, as they warrant their own thread, but let’s just say that at one point their autism and unironic toxicity got so out of hand that during Volume 7, it even got media attention.
And then, in Chapter 6 of Volume 9, it finally happened: The CRWBY applied the defibrillator on the series by making the Bumblebee ship sail. The FNDM was euphoric. Truth be told, yours truly, being a patrician yuri connoisseur, does unironically subscribe to both White Rose (Ruby x Weiss) and Bumblebee (Blake x Yang) on a conceptual level. Yet seeing how it was the result of fuckup afer fuckup on writers' part and being pushed by both Arryn and Barbara themselves, Bumblebee finally becoming canon, makes one feel less like Themistocles, but more like Pyrrhus of Epirus. Then again, I am one of those retards who care about writing…
However, not all is doom and gloom with the FNDM. The patricians, nobles, brahmins or whatever you want to call the small minority on top are the its sole redeeming element. Fans that not only have their shit together, but are actually talented artists themselves. Examples include Bach "Dishwasher1910" Do, a very talented artist who made some amazing alternate universe (look up RWBY Grimmverse, it’s metal as fuck) fanart and even became a concept artist of Gen:Lock. Kuma (NSFW) would be another such example who made the Henceforward fan webcomic and showed that shipping (Ruby x Weiss in particular) can be done right, and many more. The sheer creativity of some of the fanart, re-writes and memes is prone to make you cry bitter tears over the show's wasted potential.
Fan Rewrites
History doesn’t repeat itself. Instead, it rhymes. Seeing the lost potential that RWBY had, the FNDM had a thought: "Wait a minute. We are weeaboos, SFM animators and a bunch of flailing spastics. We have assburgers and we lack the traditional numbers of chromosomes. Why don’t we make our own RWBY?" So, they did. We entered a new era of weeb-induced Special Olympics that are the various fan rewrite projects, each of them claiming to truly represent Monty’s Vision™ in ways Miles and Kerry couldn't. And boy did they deliver! Not in writing, but in the ‘Tism as this entire affair became reminiscient of the various Yandere Simulator spite projects. Some of the more infamous examples include Celtic Phoenix’s Fixing RWBY, Jerry Freeman’s RWBY, But Better and SYTOkun’s RWBY Remnants.The great irony of the various rewrite projects is that all of them are essentially a bunch of retards and midwits fancying themselves as geniuses and thus doing the exact same mistakes as Miles and Kerry with not even the "S" of self-awareness to be seen. I’m sure you’ve probably stumbled at one point over a couple of tips and guidelines on how to write a story, characters, etc. But I would like to use this opportunity to give you some actual advice: Forget everything you learned about storytelling, writing, etc. The one and only advice and the one and only rule that is universally applicable is that smart stories can only be written by smart people. To be a good writer, you must be born with an above-average IQ. You can see this in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien or in the early seasons of The Simpsons. People who aren’t smart are incapable of producing anything but slop.
If it’s any solace to both the CRWBY and the rewriters, it’s the same problem that plagues the Japanese anime industry they seek to imitate.
Without condoning, I understand where the rewriters come from, as RWBY has by now become a so-called "projection series." The principle is more or less similar to the self-insert, but instead of projecting yourself onto a (main) character that was deliberately left as a blank slate, the writing has become so bland, messy, shallow, and embarrassingly bad, which leaves the fans to project their own creative ideas into the writing. There is a reason why, for example, in Dragon Ball Z, there are gorillions of fan "fixes" and rewrites and why people tend to prefer the Team Four Star canon over the actual one. Say about the FNDM what you will, and you'd be correct, but it's, just like with Dragon Ball Z, a situation where the fans care way more about the writing than the writers themselves. I want to say it's a shame that Rooster Teeth didn't go the Bethesda route and let the fans fix their fuckups, but the results speak for themselves, as you saw. But as I said, RWBY's main appeal by now isn't what it is, but what it could have been.
Other Media Adaptations
The media presence of RWBY has always been surprisingly humble. Outside the cartoon, RWBY had a very bad comic adaptation by DC, two manga adaptations, a potentially good Chinese mobile hack-and-slash game that got cancelled, a pretty okay PC game, and some now defunct mobile games no one even pretended to give a shit about. The most noteworthy mention would be team RWBY’s and Neo’s inclusion as guest characters in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, as well as the absolutely humiliating Justice League × RWBY: Super Heroes & Huntsmen crossover.One adaptation of interest, however, was RWBY: Ice Queendom. It started out as an anime retelling of Volume 1 on a very tight budget before it went down its own story line. It wasn’t too good, as it had some issues too, mostly related to the budget restraints. They used clips of the show for the opening for crying out loud (which was somewhat remedied in the Blu-Ray version)! But I would be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy it for what it was. For a RWBY anime, Ice Queendom was as good as it gets.
Ice Queendom at the end of the day did, for all its faults, give something the FNDM always wanted from the beginning. An actual no-shit RWBY anime.
Uncertain Future
Homer: "Marge, I'm confused, is this a happy ending or a sad ending."
Marge: "It’s an ending, that’s enough."
- The Simpsons; “Rosebud” (Season 5, Episode 4)
Marge: "It’s an ending, that’s enough."
- The Simpsons; “Rosebud” (Season 5, Episode 4)
Now that Rooster Teeth is roadkill, one is left pondering the future of its IPs, especially RWBY. Who is going to pick it up? A popular speculation from within the FNDM’s copium den is that maybe Crunchyroll could come to the rescue. Some delusional individuals even suggested Marvel or DC. Personally, I believe that Rooster Teeth would still be among us if RWBY was enough of a profitable franchise to be bought by any big boy company instead of Rooster Teeth trying to get rid of it like a single mother attempting a fourth trimester abortion. And even if someone buys the IP, will they deliver Volume 10? Do a complete reboot? Or even something else with it? At this moment, we don’t even know if someone will even give RWBY a second chance. After all, even vultures and other carrion eaters avoid meat that has gone putrid.
One historical joke that wasn't lost on me was the reason I compared RWBY to the Hindenburg. RWBY was meant to become a prestige project to show the prowess and technical abilities of Rooster Teeth, only for the Hindenburg to crash straight into the Chernobyl reactor. It will take us a while for the radioactive fallout to dissipate until the debris can be cleared and maybe salvage what could potentially be salvaged.
As things stand now, at the time of me writing this, the best hope RWBY has is to be picked up by a Japanese studio and give the fans the RWBY anime they always wanted. What might go in its favour is the Japanese all-star dub cast. However, I must also caution any potential optimists that this is also the case with Queen’s Blade, a franchise that, as I’m writing this, isn’t doing so well either. And Queen’s Blade brings more to the table by having sexy chicks duking it out while being softcore porn.
I don’t know. Only time will tell what will happen. For now, as things stand, RWBY is dead; that is, until someone has a thought: "Wait a minute. We are weeaboos, an animation studio, and a bunch of flailing spastics. We have assburgers, and we lack the traditional numbers of chromosomes. Why don’t we pick up RWBY?"
What I do know is that I want to conclude this autistic fit of an OP by going full circle and give the Kaiser Chiefs the last word.
Let it never be said
The romance is dead
Cause there's so little else
Occupying my head
There is nothing I need
Except the function to breathe
But I'm not really fussed
Doesn't matter to meeeeeeeee~
RWBY, RWBY, RWBY, RWBY (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
Do you, do you, do you, do you (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
Know what you're doing, doing, to me (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
RWBY, RWBY, RWBY, RWBY (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
Links
RWBY's number 1 fan forumr/RWBY - The show's subreddit
r/RWBYcritics - The subreddit where the wrongthinkers are exiled to
Vexed Viewer’s channel - For those interested in episodic reviews
adel aka’s YouTube channel - For general RWBY sperging
Mercury Black's YouTube channel - For RWBY on Crack and other funny videos
Anime Outsiders podcast episode on RWBY
Rooster Teeth Kiwi Farms Thread
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