Nature Rays and Camp Swings: A Rooster Teeth Animation Retrospective Part 1
X-Ray & Vav (2014-2015)
In one of the strangest origin stories for a show’s concept, the conception of X-Ray & Vav began in, of all places, a three-minute “Achievement Guide” episode of Achievement Hunter, where staff members Ray Navaraez Jr. and Gavin Free coined their nicknames completely candidly. This soon caught on with both the two and the fan community, as they put together superhero characters for later Let’s Plays and AH videos. This soon turned into official merchandise, cosplay designs, and eventually this show, written by RTAA Animator Jordan Cwierz and Lindsay Jones, who had then just started work as Ruby Rose on RWBY.
The show’s most obvious influence seems to be “Powerpuff Girls”, showing a comedic take on superhero antics with a dab of the usual RT humor. Ray and Gavin play fictionalized versions of themselves as hapless hopeful superheroes who are given gadgets by an inventor named Hilda (played by Lindsay) and aided by a tinfoil-hat-wearing bum named Rusty (Gray G. Haddock) while combating other fictionalized versions of Achievement Hunter characters. The first season was a scant four episodes near the end of 2014 that covered the duo’s gaining of powers while they fought the Corpirate (Geoff Ramsey) and saved the city from mind control.
The second season was more than twice as long at ten episodes, which gave the writers and animators more room to stretch their legs with the ideas…and also basically empty out all their AH in-joke toybox with a longer over-arching storyline. A barbarian named Mogar (Michael Jones) starts upstaging the dynamic duo as Vav is distracted by a crush on a local reporter and the Mad King (Ryan Haywood) begins using their drifting focus to take control of the city with a dairy-related scheme. Friendship wins in the end, everyone learns a lesson, milk makes healthy bones, the end.
I don’t really watch much Achievement Hunter, so I had to be informed of all the references later on. That said, going into it without that knowledge, I think it was a pretty decent show. Check out the playlist of the whole show here and, if you enjoyed it enough, maybe by the complete series DVD over here.
Sadly, it was not meant to last, as Ray left for better pastures by the end of the second season and the show couldn’t continue without him. This left all of the staff, writers, and resources with all the experience gained from that work and readily available for RT’s next show…
"There are also other characters that come and go (also owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery conglomerate media company)."
Huh. Is that just referring to other characters from the show itself, or is this implying that the new season is going to have cameos from other WBD IPs