In the constant pursuit of pop-culture and more than a passing interest in illustration, I’ve struggled to find characters which my pass my 11 year old daughters “meh” test. You can imagine how utterly deflating it was, when she didn’t see the power of Buffy as a strong female lead in efforts to influence her media diet. RWBY however has hit a huge home run. Mr9 is talking about painting his room with Yang art, and Miss11 has been busy watching the web-series in the lair known as “keep out my bedroom”.
It’s set in an academy, where seemingly already awesome fighters with an array of plausible weapons and auras are put together a students. I really like the art, animation and audio (wear headphones) — and the storyline grows as the add characters. In addition, the production crew put up “notes” on how RWBY is written and created, and of course, the creator Monty Oum harnesses the considerable fan-creativity by allowing artists to submit new characters, clothing and re-create existing ones that make it into the final films.
Buffy, for all her power never really managed this in her hey-day. I can’t help but think that the success of web-series in increasingly connected to the cultural production of fans. And yes, we’ve binged on the series and bought the merch already.
RWBY isn’t alone in this powerful-girl animation of course, we’ve seen it before — but right now, I think it is one of the best all-round web-series on offer, go watch.
Playable 