English Dub Review: RWBY: Ice Queendom “Best Day Ever”

Overview

After defeating and later freeing themselves from the Nightmare Grimm, Team RWBY and Team JNPR resume their school life. The teammates had opened their hearts to each other more than before. Along with Ozpin, Shion who is going to set out on another journey watches over the students who were growing up. Experiencing that building a relationship of trust with her friends leads to power, Ruby decides to do her best as a leader, and Yang supports her younger sister’s decision. Meanwhile, Weiss and Blake promise to accept each other as teammates. The girls had deepened their bonds with their friends, and together, they set out on their way to becoming Huntsmen..

Our Take

In what seems to be a nice little epilogue of sorts, they adapted the iconic food fight scene from volume 2 episode 1, and even threw in a lovely tribute to Monty at the end. Although Monty was sadly not alive to see this, at the very least he would’ve been proud of what Studio Shaft accomplished given their reputation of past works involving Cute Girls doing violent adventurous things.

It was a nice little original take on the series that managed to set up the story and attempt something different with the core cast of characters that the original series took way too many volumes to do. It almost feels like a retconned chapter that should’ve been part of the story, and given the anime-exclusive characters that appeared, I doubt we’ll see them again, especially after what happens in the future with most of the core cast and the hardships they all experience in different ways.

Overall, this mostly worked as a fresh take on a series that has, in my eyes, been struggling to find a clear-cut direction ever since Monty passed away. Rooster Teeth is lucky if they’ll ever make another one of these, but I hope that it does well enough to warrant another anime series (or even film) by the very same animation team in the future. Take notes, Rooster Teeth. Rest in peace, Monty…