English Dub Season Review: RWBY: Ice Queendom Season One

Since ancient times, the World of Remnant has been under constant threat by the Grimm: creatures of nightmare obsessed with destroying both humans and the half-human Faunus. To protect themselves, the four kingdoms of the world established academies that train young people to become huntsmen: warriors tasked with destroying Grimm.

In the kingdom of Vale, the cheerful 15-year-old Ruby Rose has always dreamed of a life at the prestigious Beacon Academy. Sadly, being too young, she can only watch as her elder sister, Yang Xiao Long, sets off for the academy alone. But everything changes when Ruby fights off a group of armed robbers, and the news of her skillful exploit reaches Beacon’s headmaster, Professor Ozpin.

Ruby is over the moon when she receives an invitation to join the academy alongside her sister. Meanwhile, halfway across the world in the kingdom of Atlas, corporate heiress Weiss Schnee defies her father’s wish and sets off for Beacon, her heart brimming with anxious resolve. At the same time, lonesome rogue Blake Belladonna abandons her vigilante group in hopes of finding a better life at the academy. When their paths converge, the meeting between the four girls is anything but friendly. With vastly different personalities and beliefs, they often end up clashing. However, when they work together, team RWBY begins to create ripples across Beacon, the likes of which have never been seen before…


The anime produced by Studio Shaft best known for Pretty Boy Detective Club, Dance in the Vampire Bund, and a majority of the Puella Magi Madoka Magica franchise. Directed by Toshimasa Suzuki, with chief direction by Kenjirou Okada, animation concept by Gen Urobuchi, scripts written by Tow Ubukata, and music composed by Nobuko Toda and Kazuma Jinnouchi. Nobuhiro Sugiyama designed the characters for animation, based on character concepts by illustrator Huke. The opening theme song is “Beyond Selves” by Void_Chords feat. L, while the ending theme song is “Awake” by Saori Hayami.

In a nutshell, this is a RWBY side-story that mostly consists of Volume 1’s plot which is mostly condensed within the first 3 episodes but slowly does its own thing later on with added details that flesh out the other characters in different ways. And despite later seasons introducing some of these supporting characters such as Weiss’s family members, and her butler, they end up becoming equally prominent during the show’s core narrative due to the promotional material making Weiss the focus within the titular “Ice Queendom” that is her mind. It even introduces a new anime-exclusive character named Shion Zaiden whose importance is later revealed by the 4th or 5th episode.

Since anything can happen in a dream, Studio Shaft pulls out all the stops showing the endless possibilities and trippy imagery they’re capable of showing inside the troubled mind of a spoiled rich kid who wants to escape her abusive family and as the story gets progressively interesting, the rest of Team RWBY venture deeper inside Weiss’s twisted Dreams where her negative side remains dominant and doubles down on segregating and imprisoning anything that behaves rebelliously within her mind that helps give a sense of urgency to the proceedings with lots of symbolism and references I’m sure anime fans can easily pick up on, especially what happens to Ruby much later on.

However, not all of it is perfect. At times the pacing dragged in places with the entirety of the show taking place in a Dreamworld throughout its 12-episode run. This is a series of more or less cool ideas but poor execution, in the directing and animation department, and concluded in such a way, that I doubt the anime-exclusive characters that appeared in this will ever be seen again. Especially after what happens in the future with most of the core cast and the hardships they all experience in different ways.

Overall, while this side story might have started a bit bumpy while trying to tie itself into the show’s lore, 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’s passing in 2015. At times it almost feels like a ret-conned chapter that should’ve been part of the story. The only other real shame is that Monty didn’t live long enough to see this passion project become a reality, the way that his esteemed series arguably should’ve been animated. With the recent announcements of future RWBY projects such as an “animated DC crossover” and despite recent problems within Rooster Teeth, they’ll be lucky they ever make another one of these again, but I hope someday, that this series gets a proper conclusion to the franchise that would make Monty and by extension, the fanbase can all be proud of…