There are so many shows and movies in this world that are technically flawless. With huge budgets, big name people, and have the reach to affect many people. RWBY is none of those things. It's the little show that no one believed would amount to anything that keeps going and refuses to die. I love this show for what it represents. You can make art that means something to you, and you can do it despite everyone telling you to quit. The haters can't make us abandon this show. New people keep finding it despite RT's shutdown and the huge hiatus.
This show makes me think about what I want to do with my life. How I want to live it creatively. I can make whatever I damn well want. No one can stop me from making the things I desire to make. And I can just keep making them, even if people hate them, even if I don't have the resources to make something great. I can just do the things I want because they make me happy.
The creators of RWBY are some of the gutsiest people I can think of. It inspires me every day. Especially living in this slop infested world we currently exist in. People are over here making AI slop art while Monty was animating cool fight scenes to music because it made him happy. If you aren't living your life like he did, then are you really living?
I wish I had more sophisticated words to describe why this show has affected me so much since I first watched it five years ago. I'm horrible at convincing people to watch/read stuff. People irl tend to think I'm being a little overdramatic when I tell them how much RWBY has affected me personally.
I watched RWBY during the pandemic, when the world was at its worst. Plus, I had just had to move back in with religious family members who I sometimes cannot stand to be around. I saw myself in Weiss and her struggles with her family. I wished to be someone who could stand up for what I believed in like Blake. I hoped that someday I'd have Yang's strength to face her fears. And I so badly wanted to hang on to the hope that practically radiates off Ruby.
I absolutely cannot understand the haters. I don't get what their problem is. Of all the works of fiction that I felt connected to and was inspired by in my life, this is the one that has made me into the person I am now. I know that I'll be looking back at this show 20 years from now when it's finished and be so glad that I randomly sat down to watch the trailers one day after seeing someone with a RWBY shirt and wondering what the heck it was. And then I'll rewatch it for the millionth time, and keep begging more friends of mine to get into it.
I know sometimes people say they'd give anything to rewatch/reread their favorite piece of media for the first time again. I wouldn't. Why? Because even for a minute, I don't want to exist in a world where I don't know about RWBY. It's like what the girls said to themselves in v9, that they wouldn't go back and change a thing about their lives, even the bad, because they are who they are today because of where they were and the circumstances that forced them to grow as people.
If someone is reading this who hasn't ever seen RWBY, what's stopping you? I will love this show forever, and I'll never stop trying to get people to experience it. I love it too much to let it fall into obscurity.