Review for RWBY: Volume 3

Introduction

From seven months to five, the gaps between RWBY releases are coming down, but I have to admit that five months is still more than enough time for me to forget the characters and the story. Fortunately they are distinctive enough to require only a short time with the show to get reacquainted and caught up. I certainly didn’t expect to enjoy RWBY when I first encountered it, but it has turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. It was sold on the premise that it was a US anime show, western content in a Japanese style, but that isn’t quite the case. It follows the same long form serialised storytelling, but the characters are distinctly Western, and so are the tropes and the sense of humour, while the 3D animation has a distinct, home-brewed feel of its own. It’s also turned out to be a whole lot of fun, with some serious kick-ass action. I’m hoping for more from volume 3.


Inspired by classic fairy tales, RWBY takes place in a magical world called Remnant, where humanity has long fought a desperate battle against the Creatures of Grimm, but the tide turned when the mysterious element called Dust was discovered. Dust can be used to power magical abilities and weapons, and using this power, Hunters and Huntresses can fight back. Ruby Rose wants to be a huntress, and has managed to skip two years and get accepted into the Beacon Academy. But while she has kick ass abilities, and has made an evil looking scythe/machine gun to deal death to the monsters, she’s shy and uncertain of herself. This isn’t good where the class structure of Beacon means first forming four-person teams before even starting training. Fortunately, the first person on the team is Ruby’s older and exuberant sister Yang Xiao Long, but the first time she meets Weiss Schnee, it’s disdain at first sight, and it only gets worse. Antagonism is fine, but it looks like Blake Belladonna would rather not talk to Ruby at all. They’ll have to work on their communication skills though, as the four girls now comprise team RWBY (pronounced ruby), and guess who’s the leader.


As volume 3 begins, the Vytal tournament has started, with hunter teams from across the world competing for national prestige. You’d think that arena combat in front of thousands of spectators, on randomly selected terrain would be a daunting prospect, but given the real dangers that team RWBY have faced so far, it’s almost like a walk in the park... almost. But the danger is most certainly not passed, and while the students compete, their teachers are preparing for the worst. And so they should be, as infiltrators Emerald and Mercury, and their cohorts are up to no good.


RWBY Volume 3 is presented on this Blu-ray disc in feature length form running to 176:55, or you can watch all twelve episodes individually (the end sequences feature character design art from that particular episode, which is worth taking in), which with the credit sequences takes the runtime to 197:18.

Picture

RWBY gets a 1.78:1 widescreen transfer and since the first volume, it seems they’ve switched to 1080p progressive, which makes for a far smoother viewing experience. RWBY still doesn’t look fantastic, but its visual aesthetic is growing on me. It’s a 3D CG toon-shaded animation, but we’re not talking Appleseed or Vexille here. This is definitely a low budget affair, and it resembles 3D animation that’s some 10 or 15 years old, on a par with movies like A.Li.Ce. The anime style gags have been toned down though, and there’s a greater consistency and quality of animation. It seems that the animators are improving as they go along, and the characters are fitting into their environment more believably, even though the quieter, more dramatic moments can still look a little unimpressive.


But then there’s an action scene, and RWBY can be utterly breathtaking. The choreography, the cinematic direction, the visual style is all so dramatically accomplished, that for those brief action sequences, you totally forget the budget drawbacks. The character designs are also very well thought out, making each character instantly recognisable while remaining appealing.

Sound

The sound is even more disappointing on this third volume. Volume 1 had a mediocre DD 5.1 English track at 448kbps, DVD quality at best. This third volume drops the bitrate down even more around 384kbps. You do hear the surrounds put to work, but you’d expect something with a little more oomph, especially as this volume really kicks the action up a gear. The balance between music and dialogue is much better here than on the first disc, and you can maintain a constant volume level. The dialogue is clear enough, and thankfully we get subtitles now.

Extras

The disc autoplays with a trailer for Rooster Teeth, and presents its content with an animated menu.

I didn’t have the time to explore the extras, but I did check that they existed, so I’ll just list them here.

Commentaries

Director’s Commentary
Cast Commentary
Crew Commentary


Featurettes

3,2,1, Begin! (13:52)
No Heroes in the End (13:48)
Let’s Make a Show: The Legacy of RWBY (9:05)

CRWBY Photos (1:02 slideshow)
RWBY Volume 3 Trailer (1:46)


World of Remnant (Animated Glossary)

The Vytal Festival Tournament (2:22)
Huntsmen (2:21)
CCT System (2:52)
The Four Maidens (6:47)

Further trailers for RWBY: Grimm Eclipse, Lazer Team, RTAA, RvB Season 13, Immersion, and Crunch Time.

Conclusion

RWBY goes all Harry Potter for its third volume, and it’s great stuff. Frankly any story that has children and young adults in a learning environment, coupled with fantasy peril has the potential to be compared to Harry Potter; look at shows like Naruto and Soul Eater for example. So RWBY’s set up of young people training to be Hunters and Huntresses, learning to use magical abilities, and dealing with a dread foe called the Grimm, could be considered Harry Potter-esque, and the comparisons are even more apt given the boarding school/Academy that they attend. But the actual analogy that I’m drawing is the direction that the story takes. The first two volumes were about establishing the setting and the characters, introducing the world, and giving us some idea of how it works, as well as laying some groundwork for the story yet to unfold. They’ve set up the status quo of education coupled with small-ish adventures, just as the first three Harry Potter books did, but volume 4 is where it gets serious, Harry Potter 4-6 serious.


If the Goblet of Fire has its TriWizard tournament, RWBY Volume 3 has its Vytal tournament, where the hunters and huntresses compete to see who the best is, facing each other in teams and as individuals in a grand arena. RWBY has already established its credentials when it comes to action animation, and in volume 3 it really has a chance to shine, given the creativity and artistry that has gone into conveying the complex fight sequences. It’s a great mix of comedy, character and action in the early episodes in this collection, deftly interleaved with moments of drama and narrative.


Harry Potter’s TriWizard tournament ended badly, but the Vytal tournament doesn’t even get that far. With the Beacon Academy infiltrated by Cinder and her minions, Emerald and Mercury, they put their nefarious plans into action as the tournament is still underway, undermining our heroes in shocking ways, shaking their confidences and turning popular opinion against them. That’s just the prelude for Cinder’s plans to bear fruit, with a large scale Grimm invasion, coupled with a White Fang assault, and the subversion of the military’s new android army. And as this volume reveals, it’s all in the service of gaining the secret that is kept underneath Beacon Academy, a secret that its headmaster Ospin has been hoping to use with one of his most promising students as a weapon to keep the world safe.


This is where it all goes Harry Potter books 4-6, as the world that has been introduced to us in the first two volumes is turned upside down. Whereas Ruby and her team might have managed to deal with the challenges that they faced in the first two volumes, they’re woefully unprepared here, and they have to face not only defeat, but personal loss too. I wouldn’t have thought so a volume ago, as I thought that much like the anime that RWBY is inspired by, it would seek to sustain the ongoing storyline as long as possible. But certain popular characters don’t make it to the end of this volume, others are irrevocably altered, and damaged by the trials they face, and nothing is the same any more. Certainly at the end of this volume, it looks like team RWBY itself is a thing of the past. It’s a hell of a game-changing volume, a stunning cliff-hanger on which to leave the show, and it makes you eager for more. From what little I sampled of the extras, I learned that the creators see volumes 1-3 as the opening act of RWBY, and the story will really begin to develop henceforth. Alas it might be some time before we see volume 4, as we actually sped through the releases to catch up to volume 3 (volume 1 actually premiered in 2013), and volume 4’s episodes are yet to have their web premiere. But this has been a tantalising start to a fantastic series. I guess Animatsu will have volume 4 ready for retail around Spring 2017?