Season Review: Neon Konbini Season One

For the first season of the show, I at first thought it was a bit under-handed that they’d use unaired episodes of RWBY: Chibi as a selling point, but thankfully it more than made up for it through various comedy sketches in an anthology-like format akin to other experimental animated shows like Liquid Television, Cartoon Sushi, TripTank or Nickelodeon’s kid-friendly equivalent “Kablam!”.

It’s clear Rooster Teeth is going through an experimental phase in terms of new content while showing these episodes, as many of them were surprisingly funny such as “Game Over Drinker” which was a clever parody of “Drunk History”, while others were a mixed bag and some your left unsure if they’ll lead anywhere within their respective narrative structures such as “Walko” and “Lunar Farm” or the Fact that “Hero High” uses characters from Legend of Zelda without spelling it out who’s who within the storyline.

Visually only a small few felt a bit lazy in terms of animation such as recycling old 70’s Anime footage being voiced over by the RT cast with the “S.T.A.R. Busters” sketches. Or the fact they recycled gaming footage from Fortnite for certain sketches, but this is more than compensated with original storylines such as “Human Beans” which goes into the life of a struggling Coffee Bean person named Sean (get it?) who wants to be taken seriously as an individual where Bean people are supposedly the minority.

The RWBY Chibi sketches themselves despite how short they are, have easily become one of the highlights of this show as they consistently remained the most animated and wacky in terms of tone and humor. At times I don’t know what RT was trying to accomplish by releasing the sketches by themselves later on their social media pages such as Facebook or Twitter, but since the introduction of newly added characters Velvet and Coco Adel, many new jokes and character interactions have made things a bit interesting on a dynamic level.

As a whole, this was a decent anthology series that didn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth. It remains to be if seen if Season 2 will happen or if some of these animated sketches will be stepping stones for original content in terms of Rooster Teeth’s future, but if Season 2 does happen I look forward to checking it out!