RTX 2020 at Home: Recorded by Arizal Panel Recap

Recorded by Arizal, Rooster Teeth’s potential new series and brainchild of longtime contributor Yssa Badiloa, got its first panel this year, which hopefully won’t be its last. While the series hasn’t officially started yet, or even gotten a proper release date, it did release four short prelude episodes over July and August to introduce viewers to the titular protagonist, Arizal, and her world in order to gauge interest. This panel mainly went into further detail on those preludes, with Yssa, her co-writer Joshua Kazemi, and the voice of Arizal, Christine Marie Cabanos, discussing the numerous influences from life and media that went into creating them. Much was mentioned on how Arizal’s design and Filipino heritage took from Yssa’s own background growing up, with her friends Lia and Rizella being inspired by Yssa’s own real life friends, which in turn inspired how they would bring out certain aspects in Arizal.

The Filipino aspect of her also turned out to be much appreciated by Filipino viewers, who reportedly were appreciative of seeing someone like them in animation. The third episode of the prelude proved to have the greatest reception, particularly Arizal’s mental breakdown which turned out to be quite relatable to viewers. The panel also debuted the first piece of Arizal related merch: a t-shirt that was apparently made to encapsulate the prelude and immediately became available on the RT Store. The main highlight was a clip of rough animation for a future episode with Yssa doing temp vocals, showing that there is indeed more story being made, though the panel did not give any confirmation on an actual release date for the series going forward, leaving some fans nervous about the show’s future. It will certainly be a shame if this is the last we see of Recorded by Arizal, as the team behind it seem to be putting quite a bit of passion and love behind it, but time will tell.

Recorded by Arizal’s preludes can be viewed here.