RWBY Rewatch: Ruby Rose (V1E1)
Ah, the first episode of RWBY. I was around 13 when I first watched it, and looking back at it again with an adult perspective will be extremely fascinating. From here on out, I'm also going to be augmenting my RWBY Rewatches with information from the Director's Commentary, along with trivia from the RWBY Fandom Wiki if applicable. To avoid going "according to the Director's Commentary 🤓☝️" every two lines, just assume any factoid I say comes from the Director's Commentary. Capisce? Alright, here goes.
I know Hbomberguy isn't a fan of the intro, but I've always held a soft spot for it. It does so much at once! It front loads all the important details (humanity's origins, Dust, Grimm, a look at Remnant and the Four Kingdoms) so as to no detract from the action later on; It's storybook presentation fits thematically, seeing as so much of RWBY is based off of fairy tales; It hints at larger things in store, with the narrator's sudden cruel tone at the end marking her as an antagonist, and Ozpin's response suggesting a deeper relationship between the two. And taken by itself, Jen Taylor's performance is phenomenal. You may know her better as the voice of Cortana from the Halo games, and she was in L.A. at the time when she was called in to do the intro. She did a perfect take on the first try.
As great as the intro looks, the same can't be said for the rest. Frankly, this show is hideous. The animation from the Color Trailers was phenomenal, but they consisted mostly of Monty Oum directed fight scenes. Anything in RWBY that isn't a fight doesn't even look decent. Roman's walk cycle looks wonky, there's a general lack of lighting despite the scene taking place at night, and the background figures consist only of weird-looking shadow people (which RWBY Chibi would joke about years later). Everything looks like a particularly stiff early-2000's Miku Miku Dance video.
There are also numerous, nasty animation errors, like this random blank T-posing model standing in the middle of the street, Ruby's detached arm clipping through her sleeves, and (most egregiously) a visible constraint cube on Ruby's hand when she's eating from a plate of cookies.
If someone today tried to watch RWBY and dropped it on looks alone, I wouldn't hold it against them. I know a lot of RWBY fans have a huge cloud of nostalgia following them at all times, but I really need to reiterate that even if RWBY looks better down the line, the first couple of Volumes are rough to look at. From Frieren, Arcane, and basically any Pixar film, people generally expect better things from animation. Being turned off from the visuals in an auditory-visual medium is no nitpick. But speaking personally as someone who grew up watching the early Volumes of RWBY, I don't mind the look of the show one bit. In fact, I find it charming and hilarious, like a toddler mispronouncing every word in a sentence.
(In fairness, Monty Oum was working on the Yellow Trailer at the same time as this episode. While this doesn't perfectly excuse the visual quality of the show, those animation errors can probably be chalked up as honest mistakes.)
So Roman and his goons waltz into the Dust store and steal some Dust from Shopkeep. Oh, Shopkeep! In case you've forgotten, Shopkeep is a background character from the earlier Volumes whose whole joke was that he had a different job in every appearance. He's a joke character, but a damn good one.
The voice actors for these goons aren't great, but I can look past that. According to the Volume 1 Cast Commentary, they're apparently voiced by kids from the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Yes, the CAST Commentary, which is different from the Director's Commentary. Supposedly there are also Cast, Animator and even Technician Commentaries from the Volume 2 Blu-ray. There's basically no information about these other Commentaries online, and I would LOVE to know more about them someday.
Now this is where the animation starts kicking into gear. 3D CGI shines best when showing off minute mechanical transformations, making Ruby's unfolding weapon look especially badass, and the Ruby's fight itself is short but sweet. And look, I know how awful he was and how much trouble he caused for Roosterteeth, but Gray Haddock does a fantastic job here as Roman. Roman was originally going to be a much smaller character when the first five episodes were being written, but Haddock's charismatic, luscious performance cemented him as a big player. Thank goodness.
I really love the shot of the moon here. Apparently Remnant's moon is broken because Monty thought it would look cool. I agree. Enormous, weird looking moons are a cliche that I happily eat up every time.
A huge Bullhead comes up seemingly out of nowhere to save Roman, but when he tries to blow Ruby up, she's saved in the nick of time by Glynda. We see our first good look at Cinder in the cockpit, and she switches places with Roman to fight Glynda. Glynda and Cinder pull off all sorts of wacky bullshit against each other, like shooting lasers out of their hands, creating storm clouds that rain metal-piercing crystals, shaping concrete debris into spears, and summoning pillars of fire. Glynda's Semblance is merely telekinesis, so for the sake of sanity I'm going to chalk all this up as Glynda using Dust and Cinder using her half-maiden powers.
This part where Ruby asks Glynda for an autograph is interesting to me. Huntresses and Huntsmen having celebrity status is a cute idea that had some focus in the early Volumes. Pyrrha, famously, had her face on a cereal box, and there are cheering Coco fangirls in the Vytal Tournament. It's a detail that's been mostly ignored in the later Volumes, so I wanted to point it out here.
Instead of an autograph, Glynda decides to berate her, but she's not the only one in the office. Ozpin comes in with a plate of cookies and his iconic mug of coffee, noting Ruby's Silver Eyes (this is what we call foreshadowing). Dialogue is exchanged revealing a bit of worldbuilding detail, like how Signal is a beginner school before Beacon, how Ruby's uncle, Qrow, was a teacher who taught her how to use a scythe there, and that her sister, Yang, is also training to be a Huntress. As Ruby is yapping, an important thought struck me; I really, really like her voice here. It's still high pitched, but she actually sounds like a normal human being, as opposed to her Elmo-huffing-helium modern voice. Odd to think that Ruby's voice is deepest when she's at her youngest.
Ozpin, as eccentric headmasters are so wont to do, enrolls Ruby to Beacon immediately, and we smash cut to Yang embracing her little sister on the airship to Beacon.
A fun detail, Dustin Matthews animated Yang's boob bounce here. Thank you, Dustin, very cool.
A news report is shown talking about Roman Torchwick's recent crimes, but more importantly is our first look at the uncontested best girl in all of RWBY, Lisa Lavender! She's super funny because she only appears three times in the whole show and her look changes every time until she has a 3D model in Volume 4. This is her first and worst appearance. Aside from her eyes, she doesn't fit into the show's art style at all. As for what she's actually saying, it's just some stuff about the Faunus and the White Fang. Nothing to say there, clunky racism metaphor, yada yada yada.
Glynda introduces herself to the students via hologram, and we see some city shots that aren't as gorgeous as the passenger reactions may warrant. We do see the airship itself though, which looks nice. I've always found the look of RWBY's tech to be the most underrated part of the show. It doesn't look especially unique, but with all the glowing lights, improbable shapes, and mostly white colors, the look embodies the platonic ideal of "cool sci-fi shit."
And look over there. Jaune. Oh boy, I can already tell that I'm going to be talking about him a LOT in the following posts.
The episode ends with the airship coming up to a genuinely stunning view of Beacon from the backside, with its enormously precarious cliff and port at the bottom.
As with any serious anime, the first episode ends off with the OP. I just think it's fine. The music is totally banging, but the visuals mostly consist of characters posing around or moving about, and there's this goofy, hideous, shaky, desaturated, in-and-out of focus filter over everything. I do like how it references the Color Trailers (there's even a cameo of Adam that I never realized was there), and we see some first looks at characters that won't appear for some time, like Summer Rose, Mercury, and Emerald.
And at the absolute end of the episode is a Poser advertisement. I totally forgot about that!
