RWBY

• 1. Introduction

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  RWBY, pronounced "Ruby," launched on the 18th of July 2013, on the Rooster Teeth website, and it arrived with a question its creators never expected to face: is this thing actually anime? The show was built by Monty Oum, an animator who had spent years carrying the idea before he ever got to make it. Its name is not a word. It is a color code. Red, white, black, yellow. The first letters of the thematic colors assigned to the four main characters: Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long. It is a puzzle built into the title of a show that loves puzzles. The world it inhabits is called Remnant. Monsters called the Grimm roam that world. Young people train to become Huntsmen and Huntresses to fight them. And behind all of it is a conflict between two immortal figures, Salem and Ozma, whose war began with grief and a curse from gods who no longer walk on Remnant at all. How a show that began as a personal concept of one animator became a franchise spanning manga, novels, video games, and a crossover with DC Comics is the story ahead.

• 2. Monty Oum's Wager

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  Burnie Burns did not say yes right away. When Monty Oum came to him near the end of production on the tenth season of Red vs. Blue and asked if Rooster Teeth would produce his new series after that season wrapped, Burns had one condition: finish Season 10 first, then do whatever you want. Oum finished. Within two weeks of starting work on RWBY, the first trailer was done. It premiered after the credits of the Red vs. Blue season 10 finale on the 5th of November, 2012. That trailer was the "Red" trailer, built around Ruby Rose, and it showed rather than explained what Oum had in mind. Three more followed. The "White" trailer came in February 2013. The "Black" trailer debuted at a PAX East panel at the end of March, and it was the first of the four to feature voice-acted dialogue. Oum noted afterward that the earlier two trailers were shorter and had less character development, a regret he expressed openly. The "Yellow" trailer was shown at Rooster Teeth's A-Kon panel on the 1st of June, 2013. Each trailer introduced one lead character and then handed her an elaborate action sequence. Music from those trailers was sold as digital downloads. Oum worked on them primarily alongside assistant animator Shane Newville, and he designed the characters with help from artist Ein Lee, drawing on classic fairy tale archetypes as a foundation.

• 3. Building Remnant

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  Volumes 1 through 3 of RWBY were animated by Rooster Teeth's internal team in Austin using Smith Micro's Poser software, built on assets constructed in Autodesk Maya. Starting with Volume 4, the production switched to Maya entirely, and additional modeling and animation work was outsourced to CGBot, a studio based in Monterrey. Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross co-wrote the series alongside Oum from the beginning. Oum had worried about a show centered on female characters being developed by a primarily male writing team, but later said the crew managed to handle the characters well. His stated visual ambition was to present a two-dimensional, toon-shaded look while preserving all the depth and complexity of a three-dimensional production. The music was handed to Jeff Williams, who had composed the soundtracks for seasons 8 through 10 of Red vs. Blue. Williams brought in his daughter Casey Lee Williams for most of the vocals, supplemented by Lamar Hall and Sandy Casey. Williams has said he uses lyrics to foreshadow future story events, starting from the show's script and pulling out words and phrases before working in tempo, drumbeat, and rhythm. The first episode screened at Rooster Teeth's RTX convention on the 5th of July, 2013, with all three scheduled screenings selling out. It then posted to the website on July 18.

• 4. After Oum

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  Monty Oum died in 2015, during the production of the third volume. The remaining crew confirmed they would continue the series. Starting with Volume 4, Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross became the only writers. Volume 4 premiered on the 22nd of October, 2016. A fifth volume was announced in January 2017 and premiered on the 14th of October that same year. By Volume 6, the relationship between RWBY and its distribution platforms had shifted noticeably. In September 2018, Rooster Teeth announced Volume 6 would be released exclusively on their own website, a decision the company connected to the demonetization of RWBY episodes on YouTube. Volume 6 premiered on the 27th of October, 2018. On the 28th of October, 2020, Rooster Teeth removed all RWBY episodes from YouTube, retaining only the trailers, character shorts, and the pilot, in an effort to push viewers toward its own apps and website. Volume 8 premiered on the 7th of November, 2020. In January 2023, Volume 9 was announced for Crunchyroll under a one-year exclusivity deal, premiering on the 18th of February, 2023. In March 2024, Rooster Teeth announced its shutdown, and plans were made to sell the RWBY intellectual property. On the 5th of July, 2024, Viz Media was announced as the buyer. Exactly one year later, on the 5th of July, 2025, a tenth volume was announced to be in the early stages of writing and development.

• 5. The World Beyond the Show

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  RWBY: World of Remnant launched on the 21st of August, 2014, as a companion series of animated shorts providing background on the show's setting. The first season was narrated by Jen Taylor, who voices Salem on RWBY. The second was narrated by Shannon McCormick, who voices Ozpin. The spinoff series RWBY Chibi ran for three seasons and 64 episodes between 2016 and 2018, operating outside the main canon. Ten additional RWBY Chibi segments were later produced for Rooster Teeth's animated anthology series Neon Konbini, which ran from May to July 2021. The Japanese anime adaptation RWBY: Ice Queendom premiered on Tokyo MX on the 3rd of July, 2022, produced by Shaft and directed by Toshimasa Suzuki, with Gen Urobuchi credited for animation concept and Tow Ubukata for script. The DC Comics crossover film Justice League x RWBY: Super Heroes & Huntsmen Part One debuted at WonderCon on the 25th of March, 2023. On the books side, E. C. Myers wrote four novels for Scholastic: After the Fall in 2019, Before the Dawn in 2020, Fairy Tales of Remnant in 2020, and Roman Holiday in 2021. The manga adaptation written by Shirow Miwa ran in Shueisha's Ultra Jump from 2015 through 2017. In December 2022, Jeff Williams announced his retirement from music composition, with Casey Lee Williams taking over as lead composer for Volume 9, joined by Martin Gonzales, her fellow Ok Goodnight bandmate.

• 6. Critical Reception

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  Amanda Rush, writing for Crunchyroll at the time of the premiere, praised RWBY as "quick-witted, exciting, lovely to look at" and predicted anime fans would enjoy it. The Yakima Herald-Republic called it "thrilling" and "captivating." The Austin Chronicle described the premiere as making Oum the "rock star" of Rooster Teeth. By mid-2013, the series had reportedly contributed to a nine-percent increase in views on Rooster Teeth's YouTube channel. Kotaku's Richard Eisenbeis praised the fairytale elements, dialogue, and fight choreography, while criticizing the short episode length for not allowing enough time for characterization. He also noted a technical limitation: the animation worked well when the camera stayed off the characters' feet. Rachel Sandell of Collider suggested watching each season as a single feature-length film and described the pacing as having "always been a strange experience," particularly in early seasons. Ruth Johnson of ComicsBeat acknowledged the show's scope had grown difficult to track across storylines, but concluded it was "consistently...growing stronger." Anime News Network's Michael Basile, reviewing across eight volumes, praised the writing of General Ironwood and praised the seventh volume specifically, while criticizing the tone of Volume 8 as "nasty and mean-spirited." The question of whether RWBY counted as anime generated a debate that never fully resolved. Lindsay Jones, the voice of Ruby Rose, recalled that Japanese colleagues shown the series began arguing among themselves about whether it qualified. Mainstream publications including Variety and Entertainment Weekly ultimately referred to the series as an American anime.

• 7. Games and Appearances

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  RWBY: Grimm Eclipse, a hack-and-slash game developed and published by Rooster Teeth Games, launched for Windows via Steam on the 5th of July, 2016, and arrived on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on the 17th of January, 2017. A definitive edition including all downloadable content came to Nintendo Switch on the 13th of May, 2021. RWBY: Arrowfell, a sidescrolling action-adventure game developed by WayForward and Arc System Works, released across multiple platforms including Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Windows on the 15th of November, 2022. Characters from the show appeared in limited-time crossovers with several other games, including Crusader's Quest in both May 2017 and August 2022, SMITE in both November 2019 and October 2022, and Paladins in June 2022. At Evo 2017, it was announced that Ruby Rose would appear in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, and Weiss Schnee was confirmed in a second character trailer. Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long were later added as free downloadable content, and Neopolitan joined in the 2.0 update released on the 21st of November, 2019. In the 2019 film Doctor Sleep, the character Abra Stone has RWBY posters in her room and wears the hairstyle of the character Emerald Sustrai in a dream sequence. Those references were brought in at the suggestion of Kyliegh Curran, who portrayed Abra and is herself a fan of the show. Ruby Rose then appeared in the 2025 season of Rooster Teeth's battleboarding series Death Battle, facing Maka Albarn from Soul Eater, with Lindsay Jones reprising the role.