Hello and welcome to Project Nitsuj. Doesn’t it suck when a series you like falls from grace? For me, that’s RWBY. The brainchild of Monty Oum has had its ups and downs following the creator’s death. Bad writing, lousy character motives, and forcing ships on the fandom in an effort to show how progressive they are. This isn’t even counting the number of internal problems going on within Rooster Teeth (I’m not opening that can of worms). Despite all these problems I still support the show and always get excited whenever a new season comes out. So imagine my surprise when it was announced RWBY was getting an actual anime. Released in 2022, the RWBY anime titled Ice Queendom came as a shock to a lot of people. The anime was produced by Shaft (Madoka Magica and Mekakucity Actors) and would be its own original story. Fans were excited to finally see the series become an official anime. I mean it obviously took inspiration from anime, Monty himself was a fan of the media, and fans have debated for years if this series was an anime or not, so why not just make it one? The team behind the anime were confident this was going to be a hit. So much so, that they actually uploaded the first three episodes on Youtube for free. The only people who didn’t seem excited were the voice cast of RWBY. Outside of Weiss’s VA nobody at Rooster Teeth or the cast of RWBY did anything to promote this series. If anything they seemed more concerned with expressing their political views on Twitter. No offense but you’re a fucking VA, I don’t care about your political views, I care about the projects you’re working on. Keep politics out of my anime. With volume 9 of RWBY set to come out this week I figured now would be a good time to review this anime and see how it stacks up to the main series. This is the day we’ve been waiting for. This is RWBY: Ice Queendom.
Opening and Ending Theme
The opening is “Beyond Selves” by Void-Chords feat. L. I’ve been hearing a lot of mixed reactions to this opening. Some people like it. Others don’t like it. Personally, I think it’s fine, but it really didn’t stick with as much as the openings from the original series.
The ending is “Awake” by Saori Hayami. I liked this song. Saori’s has a great singing voice. It’s been a while since I’ve heard her sing, so I forgot how good she was. The song just feels like she’s calling out to a friend and extending their arm to them. If I was allowed to do an honorable mention on my top 11 anime endings of 2022 list, this is the song I would pick.
Episodes 1-4
All right, the anime starts off with a special that covers the first three episodes (like I said, they came out swinging for the fences). It starts off much like the original with a narrator telling us about the world of Remnant and how man used Dust to fight back against the Grimms. We cut to Ruby voiced by Saori Hayami (Yor from SpyxFamily) talking to her mother’s grave about Yang voiced by Ami Koshimizu (Ryoko from Kill la Kill) getting accepted into Beacon academy and how she’s going to work hard to catch up to her. We then cut to Weiss voiced by Yōko Hikasa (Rias from Highschool DxD) who has to fight against a Grimm in order to get Jacques’s permission to go to Beacon (remember that knight from her trailer? That was her test). We also get to see Blake voice by Yū Shimamura and her trailer fight with Adam giving us our first action scenes in the series and they’re both done exceptionally well (they both pay homage to the trailers while also adding in their own elements such as Jacque being against Weiss attending the academy because he knows he won’t be able to control her and telling us right off the bat that Blake is a faunus and a member of the White Fang. Scene here: https://youtu.be/4ROffKASDbs). Returning back to Ruby, we see her in the city of Vale taking in the sights and looking to buy a present for Yang (also, apparently Black Rock Shooter exists in this world. Did not expect to see that anime here but then again Monty was a fan). She goes into the Dust shop where of course it gets held up by everyone’s favorite villain, Roman (https://youtu.be/FyCVwkZJAzk?t=4, it’s good to see you again). Once they try to rob Ruby she springs into action beautifully (they did a good job with her semblance) where I have to admit the fight choreography here was a lot better than the original. Roman tries to escape but Ruby chases after him where he escapes via helicopter (https://youtu.be/Xs_OacEq2Sk?t=4, I’m so glad I get to use this again. Scene here: https://youtu.be/zO3_cuflnOQ). This leads to her getting interrogated by Glynda, meeting Ozpin, and getting accepted into Beacon (sadly, no cookie-eating scene. Also, is it wrong to say I’m mad we haven’t seen any shadow people? It was kind of the charm of the first season). On the flight to Beacon, Yang tries to help Ruby make some new friends so she doesn’t become too dependent on her. They meet Blake and Weiss where as you would expect they get off on the wrong foot with each other (scene here: https://youtu.be/44ITkyplqak, they’re gonna be the best of friends). They then get a message from Ozpin who tells them about the test they’re about to do. The group of students are about to be dropped off in the forest where they’ll partner up with the first person they make eye contact with. From there they’ll make their way to a temple, retrieve a relic and then return to Beacon Cliff. As everyone gets ready we see Weiss try to form a team with Pyrrha before they’re interrupted by Jaune who gets kind of an upgrade (he’s still a little awkward but he doesn’t come across as weak and a punching bag. Scene here: https://youtu.be/IJOtoSK4GtY). They get launched into the forest where Weiss and Ruby meet while Jaune and Pyrrha meet. Yang searches for Ruby where she runs into a Grimm and teams up with Blake. Team Bumblebee manages to get along quite well while Team White Rose is struggling to get along (fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!). Yang and Blake retrieve their relic and run into Nora (surprisingly wearing her season 4 outfit. Shaft knows what’s up) and Ren (wearing his season 1 outfit. Which was honestly my favorite). Ruby, Weiss, Jaune, and Pyrrha arrive as well and they brought the raven Grimm with them (pray it doesn’t start quoting Edgar Allan Poe) as well as the scorpion Grimm. They make a run for the cliff with the Grimms chasing after them and each group fights a Grimm and defeats them (I actually think they improved the fight against the scorpion. Scene here: https://youtu.be/EvgSyFK_Wwg). After the test the teams are assigned into groups of four. Jaune, Pyrrha, Nora, and Ren become a team with Jaune as the leader and Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang become a team with Ruby as their leader. The next day they start classes where Weiss doesn’t accept Ruby as her leader (scene here: https://youtu.be/pcnJFWfH6Z4. She’s been training her whole life for this and now she has to take orders from a girl who is two years younger than her. You kind of understand where her frustrations are coming from). They both receive guidance from their teachers on what they need to do. Ruby, needs to understand what being a leader is all about and put in the effort to carry out her responsibilities. Weiss needs to stop being a spoiled bitch (my words, not theirs), get over the fact that she’s not the leader, and instead be the best teammate a person can have. We then focus on Jaune who passes out and has these markings all over his body. This leads to a formal introduction into a new character named Shion, a nightmare hunter. Nightmares are a different type of Grimm who possess humans and grows by draining their aura (and since Jaune has a very strong aura he’s the perfect target). The only way to save Jaune is to go inside his dreams and defeat the Nightmare, but only those close to him are allowed to enter. The members of Team JNPR agree to go into the dream and save Jaune where we see he’s being haunted by insecurities. Team JNPR easily find him and save him quite easily (which is a shame because I was hoping to see more of the dream fight and Jaune reveal his secret to the team). The Nightmare leaves Jaune’s body and gets captured by Shion who puts it in a container (very Ghostbusters) where it transforms into a leaf (scene here: https://youtu.be/Yc6_uDZxv3g). The next day, they go into town on their day off where a shop was robbed of all their Dust and the police think it was the White Fang. This leads to an argument between Blake and Weiss as well as the introduction of Penny and Sun (Shizuku: Who is not surprisingly sexier in anime form. If only he were a tiger. (Nitsuj): Do I need to get the hose or fire extinguisher to calm you down?). In the heat of the argument, Blake reveals that she’s a Faunus and runs away where she gets found by Sun and they talk. It turns out Blake was a member of the White Fang that used to be a peaceful group, but then they went rogue and started committing crimes. Not agreeing with their methods, Blake left and came to Beacon to start a new life and use her powers for good. She wants to find out if the White Fang really are behind these robberies and Sun reveals that there’s a freight of Dust from the Schnee company coming in tonight which would be the prime target for the robbers. That night, we see that the robberies are indeed being done by the White Fang and in a move that makes absolutely no sense and pisses me off they skip over the fight between Blake, Sun, and the White Fang (well that’s a huge slap in the face to the fandom. I can understand them wanting to rush through the first season to focus on their own story, but don’t rush past scenes. Especially ones that you know are gonna be good). After the fight, everyone arrives at the harbor where Weiss apologizes in her own way and they return to school where Weiss is revealed to be infected with a Nightmare.
So episode 4 starts off on a rather confusing note. Ruby is in a snowy field with winter gear on. She’s inside Weiss’s dreamworld to save her from the Nightmare. Yang and Blake had to stay behind because the Nightmare has rooted itself so deep within Weiss that if they all jumped in it would scare the Nightmare into hiding even more. Ruby now has to locate the nightmare and then the others will join her to take it down (this is taking Inception and Persona 5 to a whole new level). Ruby has some coins which allow her to communicate with the outside world, but she has to use them sparingly as they run on Shion’s aura. After following some railroad tracks where a train got attacked by the White Fang, Ruby comes to a maze-like fortress and makes it inside where she finds a giant city (well one thing you can say about Wiess: she doesn’t lack creativity). The whole city is crawling with droids, underpaid workers, statues of Jacque that speak, Klein bots, and Wesley bat (so she sees her brother as a bat and her dad is a statue spitting out BS? Why do I get the feeling her standards for men are high?). We see how Weiss views Jaune, Nora, and Rin as dummies and keeps them locked up and we eventually find Weiss who has to come to arrest Ruby (we are still far away from the friendship stage). Ruby and Weiss fight where Ruby gets overpowered and tries to retreat but Weiss finds her and corners her (scene here: https://youtu.be/P3YQBkEtDpM).
Episodes 5-8
At the start of episode 5 Shion’s aura almost runs out and she pulls Ruby out of the dream just in time. Ruby tells the others what she saw and Shion tells her not to let the dream Weiss fool her. Shion’s aura is restored and this time the whole team decides to go in and save Weiss (scene here: https://youtu.be/L7GtM0vy9io). The three make it back to the city where Ruby comes across Pyrrha singing Mirror Mirror (well this is a nice surprise) before meeting up with Yang and Blake who found an entrance that’ll bring them closer to Weiss’s tower (scene here: https://youtu.be/-B1wasqP1U4). After distracting the guards, they make it through the entrance where Ruby and Yang allow themselves to get captured because Weiss is looking for them. The two get taken to a room that looks like their dorm room (it even has their bunk beds. How cute). Blake busts them out but Yang stays behind to not arouse suspicion. Blake and Ruby explore a new area that leads to the core of Weiss’s mind where Weiss and her droids were waiting for them.
Episode 6 starts with Blake distracting Weiss while Ruby gets Yang and journeys deeper to the core of Weiss’s mind (scene here: https://youtu.be/JZF92WfIYdg). Using the chess piece from their exam, Ruby and Yang reach the core of Weiss’s mind and create a waypoint for Blake to join them (welcome to the party). They finally find the Nightmare, but Weiss interferes and fights against them. They have a short fight where the chess piece gets destroyed and the girls are forced to retreat with all their waypoints destroyed so they have to start over (damn, it’s like losing all your save data. Or playing the original Steel Battalion and dying) and this time they have to succeed or Weiss’s life will be in danger. They get something to eat and then split off to be alone and think. Ruby is having a hard time understanding Weiss, who considers her a precious friend but treats her coldly (she is tsundere, what did you expect?). Blake doesn’t know if Weiss sees her as a friend and Yang can’t stand Weiss’s criticism of the way she treats Ruby believing that she may have hindered her growth. After talking with their friends they all come up with good strategies to save Weiss and this time they bring Jaune along since he’s had prior experience with a Nightmare. Thus, he’s immune to them and can move around freely.
In episode 7 Team RWBY and Jaune enter Weiss’s mind once again. The first thing they do is protect the train from the White Fang attack and make it out of the valley. At first, Weiss is hesitant to open the gates, but she lets them in at the last minute (that would have been one hell of a wreck if she didn’t). Once they reach their stop they then enact step two of their plan, releasing the rest of JNPR. Jaune manages to enter the cage holding JNPR and uses his shield to stop the door from closing fully (glad to see that shield has versatility). Once inside the cage he comes across the relic from the exam and a bunch of loli Weisses who represent her childish nature (she even locked up her childhood? This girl seriously needs therapy). Jaune escapes with Team JNPR and the loli Weisses who begin fighting against the robots and expressing what she’s always wanted to do as a child (scene here: https://youtu.be/WPNg6ZAj1hs). Things start to get a little crazy when the lolis become giants (Attack on Weiss. Coming this winter to Rooster Teeth. Assuming they haven’t imploded on themselves) and Weiss finally having enough takes action and prepares to unleash judgment on everyone.
Weiss unleashes judgment in episode 8 as she starts capturing the loli Weisses and attacking everyone. Jaune calls Shion who explains that if the changes are too much then the heart will resist them (https://youtu.be/gqQ99s4Ywnw). The Nightmare is of course taking advantage of this resistance to do more harm to Weiss. Weiss manages to re-capture Jaune, Pyrrha, and the loli Weisses, but they escape and seek refuge on the train where the Nightmare can’t attack them. Back with Team RWBY, they make it back to the Nightmare only to get stopped by Weiss once again (at this point I have to ask, does Weiss even want to be saved? I mean if she’s putting up this much resistance then I say we rip the band-aid off and let her go). Yang and Blake get caught and banished from the kingdom, but Ruby escapes thanks to Jaune (when and how did you get here?). The two retreat back to the train where Jaune says they might have done more harm than good by releasing everyone. Jaune thinks the reason Weiss locked up everyone was to keep them safe because they’re precious to her and sometimes being an adult means locking up your childish tendencies and taking responsibility (it’s like I said before: being an adult isn’t about giving up what you love as a child, it’s knowing where it fits in your life as an adult). As Ruby starts to realize she doesn’t know anything about Weiss (not your fault, it’s hers. That girl refuses to open up to anyone) and feels bad, she falls asleep and becomes infected by the Nightmare (a dream within a dream. Saw this coming). Meanwhile, Yang and Blake find themselves on the outskirts of the kingdom and come to a distorted mansion which holds everything Weiss doesn’t like.
Episodes 9-12
Episode 9 opens up with Jaune able to wake Ruby up from the Nightmare (well that made the ending of last episode totally pointless). After this not much happens. Yang and Blake retrieve the relic inside the distorted mansion while on Ruby’s side, she drives the train to the top of the tower only to get stopped by Weiss. Just when it seems like it’s over, the sky opens up and out pops Fauneses, Yang, and Weiss’s warped vision of Blake (scene here: https://youtu.be/UtS1CVxX3Hc. Wow, she looks like a female Adam).
At the start episode 10 we find out that Blake allowed herself to get possessed by a Nightmare in order to be on equal footing with Weiss (scene here: https://youtu.be/RgvhMugLWIk). As a result, Blake and Weiss’s nightmares are overlapping with each other creating chaos (and I’m just gonna say it, the animation in this episode is ass). Blake is able to control the Nightmare but there’s no telling how long she can last, and the group is short on time as Shion’s aura is almost depleted. While Blake keeps Weiss busy (scene here: https://youtu.be/8sh-Luscr3A), Ruby goes to face the Nightmare once again (third time’s the charm).
In episode 11 we finally see Ruby defeat the Nightmare and return Weiss back to normal (took you long enough). They then focus their attention on Blake where they’re able to separate her from her Nightmare self. They then fight against the Nightmare (where the animation got a big improvement over the previous episode) and manage to defeat it just in time (scene here: https://youtu.be/-SRaPoCLIjA). Now everybody can finally wake up and put this nightmare behind them (also, you have a full day of class to make up).
In the final episode we start with Weiss and Ruby writing to their family members about how they’ve learned an important lesson about trusting each other and being more open with one another (scene here: https://youtu.be/PF5jk127xOs). Not much else happens in the episode until the end where we get the best food fight ever (scene here: https://youtu.be/-redctcbxPg).
Final Thoughts
Ice Queendom on paper isn’t a bad idea. The idea of a Grimm invading the body of the characters and having to explore their mind to save them is good and cool. It fits within the world of RWBY and Shion’s character design is great as well. The only problem is the arc overstayed its welcome. It didn’t need to go on as long as it should have. We wanted to see more of Ruby and the others living their school life, growing as a team, and go on missions together. Don’t get me wrong the Ice Queendom was interesting as it showed us just how many issues Weiss has with her family, but it dragged on for too long when it didn’t need to and didn’t add anything new to the characters we didn’t already know. A lot of the action scenes are good with some nice choreography and the animation started off great, but it kept dropping in quality after the third episode little by little. The only thing that was consistently good was the music. You can always count on the music being a hit in the RWBY series and the music in this anime is decent I could definitely see them putting it in the original series. Pyrrha’s rendition of Mirror Mirror was beautiful and I like the subtlety of Weiss projecting herself on Pyrrha in her dream. In Weiss’s mind, Pyrrha is everything Weiss wants to be, but not what she needs to be.
Final Score
My final score for RWBY: Ice Queendom is a 5.5/10. A series that started off with great potential and a good idea, but dragged on the story for way too long and lost the audience as it went on. Is this anime awful? No. Just a missed opportunity to do so much more with this series. I don’t know if they’ll make another RWBY anime. If they do, cool, but they better not drag the story and introduce something new about the characters. It’s really tragic to see Monty’s series struggle like this. It has all the right ingredients to be great, but the people behind it keep messing up and it’s so frustrating to watch. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.