RWBY is a franchise I have a strange relationship with, it’s been around since I was a wee teen. And as I matured, I began to see the series for the faults it had, to the extent that by the time volume four released I had completely lost interest. But I still have fond memories of discussing RWBY's initial run to my best friend at the time in Freshman year English, only a few short weeks before he rescinded from the public education system entirely and was home schooled, because he hated every second of high school from the moment he stepped foot off the bus.
I would never see that kid again, though I did have his number, and one of the last things we talked about before he went radio silent was, funnily enough, RWBY.
I wanted to tell this story to communicate as best as I can that I don't hate RWBY, in fact, despite all of the discourse that has followed the show in last half decade, part of me is ostensibly still interested in the show. In all honesty, part of me was excited, in that I could reconnect with this evanescent figment of my adolescence but in a format that my contemporary self could appreciate. Unfortunately, that goodwill would be slowly tarnished over the course of three months, in short, want my hype back.
RWBY: Ice Queendom, is the worst show I've finished from the last four years. That isn't to say it's the worst show I've seen (Ex-Arm easily takes the cake by miles), but in terms of me sitting down and suffering through an entire obnoxious ugly snorefest for the totality of its runtime, Ice Queendom can go home with that participation trophy. And even though I didn't want to believe it at the time, I could've seen this coming from a mile away even by the announcement, I'll explain why.
The general interest in Ice Queendom mainly belied in two brands: Studio Shaft, and Gen Urobuchi.
Gen Urobuchi is one of the few anime screenwriters’ western fans know by name—due to his work on three highly acclaimed and exceptionally popular original projects or adaptations of things he wrote, Fate/Zero, Psycho-Pass, and Madoka Magica respectively. However, much like the other anime released with Gen's name on them in the near decade since his ostensible departure from the industry, Ice Queendom isn't actually written by the man. In truth, the Ice Queendom’s Series Composer is Tow Ubukata, someone whose shows have never entirely cracked the western market, outside of Psycho-Pass 2 which everyone says is bad. It feels like the only reason he was chosen to be lead writer is just because he has written for Gen projects in the past, and he has somewhat of a relationship with Director Toshimasa Suzuki from Fanir of the Blue Sky. Outside of those two things, I can't tell why they picked him specifically.
It's a shame too, because I personally don't think Ubukata was suited for the show. The pacing, for one, was all over the place. Blazing through a season's worth of content in two and a half episodes, only to then drag out the main arc of the series for eight when it's clear to anyone watching that it wasn't necessary, appearing like a lack of poor planning. On top of that, many of the original characters and concepts found in Weiss' dream, such as the sillies, are to me extremely obnoxious, notwithstanding their names which come off as stiff and pretentious whimsy. What this amounts to, is me saying "This is so stupid" out loud for a majority of the show's runtime, which doesn't really add to a viewer’s experience. Outside of that, the story itself was pretty placid, there really isn't anything to comment on because it's all so uninteresting, the plot gets from A to B fine enough, the characters are largely fine enough. I honestly stopped caring about the plot once the chess pieces started showing up, but it's not like I couldn't follow what was happening. The show thankfully doesn't puddle at the sight of its racism commentary so I have to commend it for that. Though to be fair it's a Japanese anime and my standards for that particular theme are very low. To cut to the chase, Gen was basically used as marketing for the show, more than anything else which sucks to see, given that he's on a level far above what most screenwriters could ever dream of.
If the writing was the sole problem of Ice Queendom, I would've probably given this show a 5 and wouldn't have penned a review, but unfortunately much of my disappointment with Ice Queendom comes from the animation department.
Shaft is somewhat of a darling among anime fans for its experimental but always consistent aesthetic sensibilities, featured in highly acclaimed titles such as Madoka Magica, Sangatsu no Lion, and the 100-episode Monogatari series. Shaft is understood to be a studio always willing to push the envelope as to how anime can be presented, and how digital techniques can be used to disrupt the transient-like motion picture and turn it into something even more absurd and dreamlike without breaking immersion. And I consider myself an anime fan who accepts the medium holistically, I don't need every show to look or move at the level of visual quality or consistency of Kimetsu no Yaiba or Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. But RWBY: Ice Queendom looks like hot garbage, with super inconsistent—if not sometimes atrocious looking character art, with designs that move stiffly like action figures. Animation that starts out solid, but by episode 10 devolves into Yang running in place and having to jump cut away from character movement to save on animation time. The backgrounds look cheap and digital, despite clearly trying their best to be dynamic and interesting, at least in the dream realms. CG that ranges from solid to off-putting when it’s eventually used in the MIDDLE of action sequences (ironic, given that it's RWBY). With the most pedestrian looking storyboarding I have ever seen from Studio Shaft. Honestly, if you looked at the show, outside of episodes 1, 6, and 12, you probably wouldn't even know it's Shaft at all. Episode 10, despite being decently written (It's action so it's hard to mess up), is one of the worst episodes I've anime I've seen in years, because it includes all of the problems I mentioned above.
It's clear that Shaft has fallen on hard times in the last few years, Covid I'm sure not helping this show's production in any way. But I honestly could tell the show's look was going to be a problem just from the staff list alone. Outside of Huke on the designs and the producers, the rest of the head creative staff were people without any serious credits. But with four Chief Animation Directors and six ADs on episode 6 alone, an episode that served as an interlude to cool down the pacing, speaks to me as a deeply troubled production. Even the compositing looks bland, which, given that the director of photography is Takayuki Aizu, who worked the first six entries of the Monogatari series—including the immaculately crafted Kizumonogatari film triology, designates a level of wasted talent that is insanely common in the industry. A problem Shaft was dodging in large part due to the creative visionaries who’ve worked at the studio in the nearly 20 years since the arrival of their golden goose.
Speaking of which, the main concern I had with the staff list of Ice Queendom, outside of Tow Ubukata as the head writer, was the lack of one man, Akiyuki Shinbo.
Akiyuki Shinbo is one of the great outstanding directors in anime's metatextual cannon. Much like other contemporaries of his generation such as Kunihiko Ikuhara or Hideaki Anno, Shinbo is an animation savant who genuinely tries to push the cinematic limitations of anime as far as he can. One of the main reasons Yu Yu Hakusho holds up visually as well as it does is because he seemingly became the most influential creator on the project despite NOT being the lead director. It's unclear these days how much work Shinbo even does at shaft, given that his role as "chief director" on shows tends to be quite nebulous, nevertheless Shaft's style exists because of Shinbo. But Shinbo wasn't to be found on Ice Queendom, which surprised me at the time but honestly shouldn't have. Shaft has made five serious projects since Zoku Owarimonogatari in 2018 and Shinbo only worked on one of them. If this indicates anything, it's that Shaft has been in a massive identity crisis since their staff bottomed out due to their workplace environment being uniquely poor for the industry, and that's REALLY saying something.
By episode 7, while stewing in a regret-filled overtired haze, I asked myself a simple question, why in god's name was this made? On the surface I could understand, because of RWBY's popularity in Japan, and so the boys back in Austin could claim that "there's an anime about a show I made" to impress people at parties, a 2D RWBY anime sounded like a natural conclusion. But after seriously considering it, the question still stands, WHY was this show made? RWBY as a series has been out for so long that anyone who would have been interested, has already seen it. So outside of emboldening a preexisting fanbase, and maybe reminding a few thousand people whom, like me, don't really think about the franchise that often, the brand is not expanding its audience in any significant way. So, the production seems almost a bit frivolous, that is, until you look at one of the top companies funding the show—Good Smile Company, an anime merch distributor that specializes in figures.
Meaning, effectively, RWBY: Ice Queendom is a fancy toy commercial.
That isn't to say that anime designed to sell toys is intrinsically bad, I mean just look at every mecha since the 70's. But with Ice Queendom particularly, it coats the project in a kind of cynicism that becomes apparent when paying attention. That's why every character gets an alternative outfit, if not multiple outfits, with slightly different weapons than the normal series. A bunch of the dumb anime exclusive concepts or characters suddenly make sense, in that they are created to have models made based off of their design. Not to say the entire project is cynical, Takanori Aki stated in an interview about Ice Queendom that the idea of a RWBY anime came from a correspondence he had with Monty Oum following the release of volume 1, so in some loose way the show was made to posthumously fulfill a promise. But nevertheless, the justification for a RWBY spin-off show was to excavate for new ways to merchandize the RWBY brand. It leads to a show whose intention is messy from the beginning and it becomes apparent in the final product.
RWBY: Ice Queendom ultimately leaves me disappointed, which is what I really didn't want from this show, I genuinely desired to like it. But I knew even in March that there was a solid chance the series was going to be bad, I just purposely looked over the red flags. What surprises me about the show after finishing it, is that I didn't hate it more; given everything I've written, I honestly should give Ice Queendom a lower score. However, reflecting on my experience watching Ice Queendom, I can recognize times where I was somewhat enjoying myself, where my own irritation washed away for a few brief moments. I remember specifically in the final episode, when RWBY threw down a binder on the lunch table and emphatically announced about her plan to have a best day ever, followed by this show's luxurious rendition of one of the most iconic sequences of RWBY, I can't help but admit I had a tiny smile on my face. A small memento from a time in which I innocently liked the writing of basically everything I watched, the sentimentality of the sequence in light of everything that has happened in the years since the volume's airing definitely added to the effect.
And the show's ability to sincerely tap into the small twinges of nostalgia I have, with the earnestness of Ruby Rose herself—the least amount of manipulation intended, is something that I at the very least, can respect.
Have a nice day.
