Review for RWBY: Volume 2

Introduction

The January review discs from Animatsu and Manga turned up, and this month instead of the usual pressed check discs, we have single layer DVD-R screeners. Despite the fact that they are copies of the final retail discs, this review will be useless if you are looking to see what the AV quality is like. With the compression (in a couple of cases almost 4 hours of video on a single layer disc), these discs aren’t in any way representative of the retail copies. The review will be about the content only. If there is a bright side, I don’t have to write as damned much!

Seven months is a little long between volumes, so much so that I’ve practically forgotten what happened in the first. It’s also odd given that it seems that Animatsu’s English language releases such as the Halo movies, Red vs. Blue, and RWBY do a lot better for them than their anime releases. Alas there’s no recap at the start of this disc, but it doesn’t take too long to get back into the swing of things.

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.


The girls are starting their second semester at Beacon Academy, but the events of the previous semester still weigh heavily on Team RWBY, particularly Blake Belladonna. Roman Torchwick is still out there, plotting and scheming with White Fang, following the bidding of the mysterious Cinder, while Dust continues being stolen in Vale. Something ominous is afoot, enough so that it has the military in town. But how important can that be when the inter-school Vytal tournament is coming, and with it the school dance, and boys? But Cinder and her minions have infiltrated the school...

RWBY Volume 2 is presented on this DVD disc in feature length form running to 152:11, or you can watch all twelve episodes individually, which with the credit sequences takes the runtime to 168:09.

The Disc

You get a 1.78:1 anamorphic NTSC transfer, with Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround English. Thankfully for this second volume there are subtitles, but there are more than a few typos.

The images in this review have been kindly supplied by Animatsu.

Extras

The disc isn’t shy on extras either, with four audio commentaries as opposed to Volume 1’s two. This time the Directors, the Cast, the Animators and the Tech Team all get a look in.

There are Rooster Teeth trailers, 9 minutes of intro to various aspects of the world of Remnant, and 38 minutes of Production Diaries. I watched and listened to none of the extras on this disc, other than to make sure they existed.

Conclusion

I had a hard time getting into RWBY Volume 1 when it came out here last year, not least because of all of the anime comparisons, a claim from some quarters that it matched and even surpassed what I usually review from Japan, a genuine US home-grown anime. Of course it turned out to be nothing of the sort, and I had to take a bit of time to get past my jaded preconceptions. I also had a tough time with its CG animation style, which was schizophrenic at best, with unappealing character designs, close up character animation that lacked weight and physicality, but with action sequences that were genuinely cinematic and breathtaking. With Volume 1’s collection of 10 episodes, it also turned out to be something of a slow build to what RWBY is really all about, spending the first half of the first series introducing the characters and revealing the world in some trivial and light episodes, before the second half got into the story. Once I got used to the animation style, and ditched my preconceptions, I found that RWBY slowly got better and better through its first series.

Season 2 hits the ground running, without the benefit of a recap to ease us back into the story, and it’s all to the good, as Season 2 has a lot of story to tell, and no room for dead weight. With Season 2 it becomes clear that RWBY is coming from the Harry Potter school of storytelling, with Beacon Academy the Hogwarts of this universe, and its students apparently discovering a new adventure each semester, with Season 2 covering the second semester. Season 1’s conspiracy was ambiguously concluded with a dockside battle and the revelation that villain Roman Torchwick was working for someone else, a mysterious woman. That woman gets a name in this season, Cinder, as well as two minions that we meet in the first episode, Mercury and Emerald. They’re paying a final visit to a bookseller at the start of the first episode, while Ruby and her friends are having an epic food-fight at school, and I do mean epic!


There is a whole lot going on in this series, with the inter-school Vytal tournament still being prepared for, the complication of the military presence for the upcoming event, and the upgrade of the police robots in town. With the tournament comes the formal dance, and the usual agony of asking girls to go. Against this normal life, the tension between humans and Faunus continues to fester, something which Torchwick is using to advance his own plans, while Cinder and her minions infiltrate the Academy for their mysterious purposes. Team RWBY should be concentrating on school, but the events of the first season have had a lasting effect on them, and they continue to investigate Torchwick and the White Fang group. Naturally they uncover this season’s big threat in the process, and the school curriculum’s on the job training allows them to get into more peril than they anticipated.

The animation is still a mixed bag, but the storytelling really does engage. The script is witty and entertaining, and the voice actor performances really do work well. The story has plenty of twists and turns and some genuine surprises, and I was surprised to find that I was hooked from beginning to end this time, as opposed to the slow growth in appreciation for season 1. It’s fast-paced, funny, and action-packed. I certainly hope that we don’t have to wait as long for volume 3!