Review: Red vs Blue “Orange is the New Red”

Coming Soon: Blue-Jack Horseman

A common byproduct of a long-running sci-fi franchise is that, as interest in the main story and the universe overall rises, there is demand for examination of the events from other perspectives. A fresh, new cast is brought in to see the established world from different eyes. This is especially typical of franchises based around war stories, as those are large scale conflicts which impact many individuals we don’t see. The Gundam franchise had more than a few of these with “08th MS Team”, which followed the journey of standard ground troops concurrently with the events of the first series, and “0080: War in the Pocket”, which viewed the conflict from the antagonist and civilian sides. Star Wars did so with multiple short stories from both of their “Clone Wars” TV shows, and plan to continue with their upcoming “Rogue One” film this Fall. The popular Attack on Titan manga series spawned several these, some giving the spotlight to popular supporting characters and others creating brand new ones to tell brand new stories. Halo, the game RVB owes its existence to, as also done this with the “Fall of Reach” novel, similarly named prequel game, and several other entries. Fittingly for an anthology season, Red vs Blue introduces its own new team of random spin-off jack-offs with this new multi-part story, starting with “Orange is the New Red”.

We have Joshua Ornelas, the other Assistant Director from Seasons 11-13, helming the Director’s chair, while the writing is handled by James Willems of the Funhaus division of RT. Funhaus is kind of the diet version of Achievement Hunter (RT’s Let’s Play and Walk through division) and as such, seems to have a mixed reception amongst the viewer base. However, this batch of episodes is pretty much the Funhaus episodes of RVB, with them making up the cast of at least this part, so we’re stuck with them for the next couple of weeks. Luckily, we’re also back in the Halo 3 engine, where arguably the best RVB story happened, so it’s not without benefit.

We’re introduced to Unit FH57, a Red Team stationed in what might be the desert seen in Season 7. These Reds have a bit more subtle personalities than the ones we’re used to. The CO, Turf, is bossy and dedicated to their cause, but not so much in destructive, neurotic way Sarge usually is. More often he just comes off like an ass, which makes it fitting that our introduction is him farting loudly to the displeasure of his subordinates. Likewise, other members like Santos and Drag have the respective nerdy and whiny tendencies of Simmons and Grif, but are distinct enough in look and performance that you can tell they’re different characters.

Seems a few months back, during one of the grueling battles with their Blue Team, Unit AH13, (seeing it now? Fun-Haus? Achievement-Hunter?) an alien ship crash landed on their battlefield. Thanks to this, these Reds gained a decked out, unattended alien warship with a functioning AI they could use to annihilate their blue adversaries…had said ship not flattened the Blue base and all Blues inside. Now lost without an enemy to fight and steadily waning in morale, the ship’s AI, nicknamed Cherry, brings them a live feed of the first episode of The Blood Gulch Chronicles. To be continued!

This is a good start to the next multi-parter for this season. This new team is introduced effectively and establishes their group dynamic and conflict with no wasted time. They’re not just carbon copies of the Blood Gulch team, they’re just another, less important facet of this whole simulation game we’ve seen. I don’t think their interesting enough that I’d watch a full season about them, but it’s another angle to this whole thing that is intriguing to finally see. The comedy is in the same tone as BGC, (and it makes sense that it would, being more or less in the same situation) but doesn’t have to borrow any jokes in order to get that point across. What does confuse me is how this team has the Halo 3 armor when the Blood Gulch team is using theirs from Halo 1, but that might be explained as we continue. I can’t imagine they actually get to meet the other team since that never happened in that season, but damn if it won’t be funny to see them try. These seemingly insignificant footnote tales are exactly what this season was made for, and it’ll be a blast to see them take off.