Spotlight #04 - Rooster Teeth's "RWBY"

I'm just going to come right out: I never found Anime that appealing. It may be that the jittery animation feels cheap. It may be how annoying all of the over-the-top voice actors are (especially for kid characters... yech). It may be that every anime fan I've meet seems to have a lack of hygiene. It just never caught on to me, and I haven't seen the one anime that will convert me. So what do I find in watching RWBY?
For those of you who don't know, RWBY (pronounced "ruby") is a web animation series takes place in a world under constant threat from dark, soul-less creatures known as Grimm. It's more or less in a civil war right now between humans and anthropomorphic beings over a magical substance called Dust. In this world, a collection of teenagers at an academy for monster hunting are formed into team RWBY- an acronym for their first names and, conveniently, their color schemes- and must put aside their differences to save the world, or something like that.
Yes, it does sound very typical for an anime series, and it presents itself as such. It was created by indie comedian and animation group Rooster Teeth, who made the rather popular "Red Vs. Blue" series, so the animation is understandably and forgive-ably cheap. While the voice actors generally do a good job, there is quite a fair share of cheesiness. It basically seems MADE to appeal to fans of Anime. It has all the pieces, but it does something different with them, and even adds a few of its own.
For one thing, it seems to have a certain subtlety to it, compared to its source, anyways. While most characters in Anime seem to have two settings (manically depressed and boring, and annoyingly cheerful), the characters in "RWBY" spend most of their time in the middle of those two. When they do change their personality, they show development, and it shows something not only about them, but the world around them. I was about to point an exception out in the character of Yang, but S2E6 changed all of that as well. I won't spoil it. You'll have to trust me on that.
Quiet scenes are quiet scenes, but, this being made by people who made shorts based off of the "Halo" franchise, there's also quite a bit of action. In other shows, the action all feels very obscured, mostly pastel paintings of people flying, bright flaring backdrops, whatnot. Here, we can see everything, and the pacing is much more fitting. There's also the fact that they use very unique weapons (Scythe-rifle hybrid, dust-infused rapier, shotgun- gauntlets, and more) that really do play very much into the fights. See the above video for how to fight with a weapon completely unlike what anyone has ever used before. They all play into their respective users personality as well, and it's exciting to see the creative measures taken there.
While there are a handful of episodes in the first season where not much happens, the folks up at Rooster Teeth have shown us a little more of what they can do when they really want to. A lot has been done here with entirely commercial software, in terms of both action and character development. The series is in its second year now and releases every Thursday, and I'm only looking forward to what else they can surprise me with.

All rights belong to Rooster Teeth, no infringement intended. Full series can be seen on their official website