Review: The World of RWBY: The Official Companion

Daniel Wallace, Rooster Teeth, and Viz Media have teamed up to give longtime fans and newbies a comprehensive look at the creative process it took to make RWBY. This fully illustrated coffee table book delivers in spades and it shows just how much care and attention was put toward the production of the book. The book provides an exquisite level of detail as it pertains to characters and gives fans a primer as to the characters’ powers, aesthetic, and personality that should give any curious fan of the series enough to jump right into the show at any time.

You even learn random little things like how a certain ideas & character concepts within the show came to be.  Everything from important terminology to note from the show, to the inspiration of the characters that coincide with the beautiful art, character bios and the weapon designs featured throughout. The book manages to impress with its in-depth knowledge about the RWBY world and the creative decisions that were made to help shape them into the characters that we have known and loved since 2013. Lots of insight is given into character decisions as made by Monty before his untimely passing that are still used in not only RWBY but the Chibi take on the series as well.

The World of RWBY: The Official Companion features in-depth “How-to’s” from the producers of the series on how to draw your favorite characters and even your not-so-favorite characters so fans who are hell-bent on maybe getting a job at Rooster Teeth one day can use this book as a cheat sheet in order to do just that.

The book’s final chapters mainly consist of storyboards of the artists’ favorite action sequences during the course of Volumes 1-6. As someone who has followed the show for years, I appreciate that the final pages don’t really spoil anything other than show Team RWBY’s current redesigns from Vol.7, and makes sure the fans know how important they have been to the longevity of the RWBY series to transcend the Rooster Teeth brand to new heights.

 I can see this book helping people new to RWBY or those slowly getting into the series with a deeper understanding of the show but honestly? If they make a “Volume 2” of this after the show ends, I’d be 100% ok with it.