RWBY: Volume 2 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

RWBY: Volume 2 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 15, 2014

Judging by the (unskippable) little mishmash of Rooster Teeth footage that airs before the main menu of RWBY Volume 2 boots up, the staff of this upstart production company doesn’t wait for traditional things like boozy office parties to get wild and crazy. Interspersed with a few moments from some of their productions like RWBY and (of course) Red vs. Blue: RVBX: Ten Years of Red vs. Blue are equally brief snippets showing live action tidbits that seem to suggest life around Rooster Teeth is a combination of Jackass and Workaholics. Judging by not always reliable Wikipedia entries, many of the primary movers and shakers behind Rooster Teeth’s odd assortment of entertainment vehicles are so-called Generation X-ers, children of the mid-seventies who grew up in an era of rapidly increasing cynicism, and who came of age just when the internet made cynicism something of an art form, courtesy of all sorts of trolls and other denizens of the world wide web. It’s therefore a bit hard to tell at times if entries like RWBY are supposed to be as ironically dunderheaded as they sometimes are, or if there’s an unintentional amateurishness at play as well. RWBY seems to want to be a kind of cutting edge but still retro feeling animated outing that takes place in a future world where so- called hunters and huntresses fight various nefarious enemies, including beasts called Grimm (not to be confused with Grimm). RWBY features a rather arcane and convoluted mythology (actually kind of like Grimm and other supernaturally themed series), which is only expanded upon in this second volume, but it also features laughably stilted dialogue, a rather bizarre animation style that either intentionally or unintentionally is rife with rendering issues, and a reliance on the kind of admittedly funny juvenile humor that also informs a lot of Red vs. Blue. There are a lot of really interesting elements in RWBY, but this second volume only tends to confirm a feeling that the series is kind of an animatic trial run for something grander (maybe a live action film, since Rooster Teeth is getting into that kind of production soon) down the pike.

More information on the show and its premise can be found in our RWBY: Volume 1 Blu-ray review.

RWBY kind of insouciantly childish sense of humor is summed up rather well in one of the first big battle sequences of this second volume, one in which the iconic battle cry “food fight” is taken quite literally. In a showdown between team RWBY and team JNPR in the Beacon Academy’s rather expansive cafeteria (something that looks decidedly like the eating hall in Harry Potter: Complete 8-Film Collection), the various characters partake in an all out melée that sees them using all sorts of foodstuffs as various weapons. In this imaginative retake on traditional martial arts films memes, we get (to cite just one example) huge breadsticks in the place of nunchuks.

The four focal characters in RWBY are “color coded,” so to speak, with names that evoke their hues. Ruby is the ostensible leader of the pack, even though she’s significantly younger and more impetuous than some of her cohorts. Weiss is a kind of arrogant rich girl whose family is involved in mining a valuable element known as Dust (which may remind some of a similar plot device in Dune). Blake is a half-breed of sorts, a member of a species known as Faunus who have been tormented for untold years by humans, and who hides her genetic heritage from her friends (in a gambit that is about as much of a clever disguise as Clark Kent donning glasses to dissuade people from thinking he’s Superman). Yang is Ruby’s sister, and the eldest in the group, therefore a kind of virtual mother figure, but she’s also probably the most emotionally volatile of the quartet as well.

There are halting attempts to develop many of the characters in this second volume of RWBY, while also moving the many pieces of the show’s increasingly complex mythology forward as well. It’s a hit and miss proposition, frankly, due perhaps more than anything to the relatively brief running time of any given episode (typically fewer than fifteen minutes each). Because of that approach, things are often handled in a kind of shorthand fashion, letting the viewer fill in the blanks. It’s another indication that RWBY often seems to be a trial run for something else, rather than a finished product. The show is still a rather interesting concept and has a lot of cool looking animation (albeit with some problems, which are discussed below in the video section), but maybe a few less of those wild and crazy antics around the Rooster Teeth offices would benefit the further development of this series.

RWBY: Volume 2 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

As I discussed in our RWBY: Volume 1 Blu-ray review, RWBY is a creature of those blasted internets, and therefore its AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1 has some issues which the wider bandwidth of Blu-ray perhaps tends to exacerbate. Much as with the first season, the series' lush, incredibly distinctive, palette is probably its chief asset. The girls' various colors, as evidenced by their bright hair hues, pop very nicely in high definition. There's also more attention paid to backgrounds in this volume, with some of the Vale establishing shots having a bit more detail to them. However, this presentation is still plagued with what are either rendering issues or byproducts of the interlaced format, with rampant stair stepping, aliasing and banding on display. It's perhaps not quite as rampant as in the first volume, but even simple scenes like a zoom over a spaceship can quickly devolve into rolling, unstable lines around objects. Aside from these anomalies, RWBY continues to look very good if not perfect.

RWBY: Volume 2 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with the first volume of the show (and other Rooster Teeth Blu-ray releases), RWBY Volume 2 offers only a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 audio option. Immersion is great here, especially in the often noisy battle scenes, but audiophiles will no doubt be wondering what a lossless track could have provided for these selfsame sequences. Dialogue is very cleanly presented and the track has no problems of any kind to report. Despite the lossy format, dynamic range is surprisingly wide throughout the episodes contained on this volume.

RWBY: Volume 2 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Fan Art (1080i; 10:27)


• Ch 1 Storyboards (1080i; 13:39) offers a really, really tiny PiP view of the storyboards while the episode plays.


• RTX Panel (1080i; 38:12) features cast and crew in a typically raucous discussion.


• Season 2 Trailer (1080i; 2:26)


• Production Diaries (1080p; 52:25) features some fun production and behind the scenes footage for four episodes.


• World of Remnant (1080p; 9:11) includes Dust, Kingdoms, Grimm and Aura.


• Director Commentary


• Cast Commentary


• Crew Commentary


• Animator Commentary


• Trailers (1080i; 12:02) are for other Rooster Teeth releases.

Note: This disc is authored somewhat unusually, in that each commentary must be accessed individually through the Set Up menu, and then turned either on or off (turning off all of the commentaries reverts the disc to the original soundtrack). There is no way to toggle between the audio options using your remote.

RWBY: Volume 2 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I specifically mentioned cutting RWBY a bit of slack in my review of the first volume of RWBY, and truth be told, there's probably more slack cutting necessary in this second volume, though perhaps for different reasons. The show's creators perhaps have outsized ambitions which the short form format and sometimes laughable writing can't quite support. Continuing issues with the animation, however minor they may be, also tend to undercut the series. There's still a lot to like here, especially for those who are fans of Rooster Teeth's odd perspective and off the wall sense of humor, but it may be time to revisit RWBY and either up the ante significantly (longer episodes? a feature film?) or simply start coloring in another book.