RWBY



"Red like roses fills my dreams and brings me to the place you rest

White is cold and always yearning, burdened by the royal test

Black the beast descends from shadows

Yellow beauty burns gold"

In the world of Remnant, humanity clings to civilization in the face of the creatures of Grimm, a veritable army of monsters and supernatural forces. Only the power of a substance known only as "Dust" allowed humanity to win a battle for its survival against the Grimm, and even now its creatures are only barely held at bay.

Responsible for defending human civilization from the forces of darkness are the Huntsmen and Huntresses, highly skilled individuals with unique weapons and a mastery of the use of Dust. These guardians are trained in special institutions, such as Beacon Academy in the nation of Vale.

RWBY follows the story of four extraordinary girls and their friends as they make their way through their training at Beacon, and come face-to-face with not only the creatures of Grimm, but all-too-human threats to the survival of humanity in this dangerous world.

An innovative Web Animation series by Monty Oum of Rooster Teeth, it was heralded months in advance by a series of carefully doled-out trailers ("Red", "White", "Black" and "Yellow"), which built up a remarkable level of excitement and speculation before its premiere in July 2013.

As of Fall 2013, it has completed sixteen episodes -- the first half-season of a projected ten seasons.

A dedicated wiki exists for the show, containing a surprisingly vast amount of detail gathered from a wide variety of sources.

RWBY includes examples of the following tropes:
(List compiled at the end of Volume One of Season One, and is subject to update/revision.)

"Weiss: No. She seems much more coordinated."
 * Absurdly Sharp Blade: Ruby's scythe, which can effortlessly slice were beowolves in half, chop down old-growth trees, and is capable of decapitating giant monsters.
 * Academic Athlete: Pyrrha Nikos.
 * Action Girl: Pretty much every female character.
 * Alien Sky: Remnant is definitely not Earth, not with a shattered moon in the sky.
 * American Accents: In addition to the "default" accent imposed by being an American production, the two cops investigating the Dust shop robbery in S1E15 have distinct Joisey/Bronx accents.
 * Alternate Universe: No argument. A broken moon in the sky, unfamiliar continents, active magic with technology, humanity beseiged by hordes of monsters...
 * Ancestral Weapon: Jaune's sword and shield, which belonged to his great-grandfather, a great hero.
 * Artsy Moon: If you consider being broken into a few dozen pieces "artsy".
 * Ascended Fangirl: Ruby, who geeks out over huntsmen and huntresses, manages to get into Beacon Academy years before she normally would be old enough, on the basis of both skill and overwhelming enthusiasm.
 * Applied Phlebotinum: Dust, which seems to be a fuel for magic or magic-like effects.  Plus, whatever it is that makes all the weapons do what they do.
 * Art Shift: The "news broadcast" seen at the end of S1E1 is, or is made to look like, traditional animation instead of CGI.
 * Badass Adorable: Ruby Rose.
 * Also Nora Valkyrie and Velvet Scarlatina (the latter mainly by Word of God as of November 2013).
 * Battle Aura: Demonstrated by Yang in her trailer as part of her fire powers, but also seems to be a visible manifestation of "aura" or a "semblance" in use.
 * Beast Folk: The Faunus, who are treated as second-class citizens.
 * Bellisario's Maxim: Invoked (along with the Rule of Funny) in the director's commentary track for volume 1 when discussing how Weiss and Ruby ended up clinging to the flying Nevermore.
 * Berserk Button: Never, ever, touch Yang's hair.
 * Beware the Silly Ones: Nora.  If only because she has a Grenade Launcher.
 * Big Ball of Violence: Ruby and Yang, the first night at Beacon.  Complete with the sound of That Poor Cat.
 * Big Eater: Ruby, at least as far as cookies are concerned.  And Nora when it comes to sweets.
 * Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics: Blake's weapons seem to demonstrate this in the "Black" trailer.
 * The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In: .  Then again, her weapons are clearly designed to do this.
 * Blah Blah Blah: Professor Port's first lecture turns into this as the camera focuses on Weiss's growing irritation with Ruby's behavior in class.
 * Blackmail: Cardin uses  secret to basically turn him into a lackey and dogsbody.
 * Blank White Eyes: Numerous times in the series.
 * Bloodless Carnage: The closest thing we see to spraying blood are showers of rose petals.
 * Book Ends: The Jaune arc begins and ends with scenes on a roof.
 * Butt Monkey: Jaune.  Lampshaded when he complains to Pyrrha that he wants to be more than just the "loveable idiot stuck in a tree while his friends are fighting for their lives."
 * By the Lights of Their Eyes: Several times, most notably during the "initiation" sequence.
 * Call a Rabbit A Smeerp: A mix of averted and expressed.  The obvious werewolves Ruby fights in the "Red" trailer are called beowolves, but many of the other creatures of the Grimm are original and have original names.
 * Catch Phrase: It's too early to be completely sure, but Penny appears to have one in, "I'm combat-ready!"
 * Catgirl:.
 * Cheaters Never Prosper: Appears to be subverted with.
 * Chekhov's Gun: "Landing strategies" and the rocket-propelled lockers, by Word of God on the director's commentary track for Volume 1.
 * Chest Insignia: All of the girls in Team RWBY as well as a few other characters have distinctive symbols that are worn or appear on their equipment.
 * Ruby's rose symbol can be seen on her headphones in the first episode, and hangs on her belt near her right hip.
 * Weiss' snowflake is on the back of her jacket.
 * Blake's whatever-it-is can be seen at the top of one of her thigh-high stockings.
 * Yang wears her flame insignia, partly hidden, on one breast.
 * Nora uses a heart, which appears on her grenades and launcher and as the cutout of her decolletage. She also seems to have a stylized "hammer-in-a-circle" logo -- prominent during her "I'm queen of the castle" song-and-dance during the initiation arc.
 * Chirping Crickets: Tumbleweed variation only, during the first encounter with Penny.  Twice.
 * Circling Birdies: When Ruby is momentarily stunned, alternating stars and cartoon wolves orbit her head.
 * In the "Yellow" trailer, a stunned Junior momentarily is circled by a ring of hearts.
 * Color-Coded Elements: Definitely present, although not clearly universal, and clearly linked to the Color Motifs.
 * Color Motif: The production team explicitly designed the look of everything in the series around a specific system of colors/meanings.
 * Competence Zone: Realistically averted.  The main characters are supposed to be exceptional individuals, going to a school teaching them to be even more exceptional -- and their teachers are definitely more competent than they are, more than capable of teaching them things they need to know.  Other adults vary, just as they would in the real world.
 * Cool Big Sis: Yang, to Ruby.
 * Crash Into Hello: How Weiss met Ruby.  And how Weiss met Penny.
 * The Volume 1 director's commentary hinted that this might be a Running Gag for Weiss.
 * Cyborg:, maybe.  If she's not a Robot Girl.
 * Diegetic Switch: Subverted.  In the opening scenes of the very first episode, Ruby's clearly listening to "This Will Be The Day" until she decides to interrupt the robbery of the Dust shop.  After she follows one of the Mooks through the shop window, the music switches from a tinny, "heard over headphones" version to a high-quality version -- until we hear the "click" of Ruby turning off her player and the music stops.
 * Drink Order: An important part of early character design according to Word of God.  When they figured out that Blake drank tea and Weiss drank coffee, Monty Oum and company felt they were starting to get somewhere.
 * Ruby, by the way, drinks coffee, black, with five sugars.
 * Drop the Hammer: Nora's weapon, which is also a Grenade Launcher.  With hearts on it.
 * Epic Flail: Sun's pistol-chucks.
 * Everything's Worse With Rapier Wasps
 * Eye Cam: We first see Nora through Ren's eyes as he wakes up on the morning of the initiation.
 * Extraordinarily Empowered Girl: Most if not all of the female cast.
 * Face Fault: Not long after team RWBY meets Penny for the first time.
 * Fairy Tale Motifs: Everywhere you look.
 * Fantastic Racism: Towards the Faunus.
 * Fantasy World Map: Glimpsed in part or full several times so far during the first season.  Played with, in that Monty Oum allegedly squirted ketchup into a paper napkin, wadded it up, and then unfolded it to determine the basic landmasses of the world.
 * Feather Flechettes: The Nevermore fires its immense feathers in this manner.
 * Fighting With Chucks: Sun Wukon.
 * Force Field: As Jaune and Pyrrha make clear, one of the effects that Aura can provide.
 * Genki Girl: Ruby.
 * Nora, even more so -- Ruby can at least stand still for extended periods of time. Nora, however... On the director's commentary for Volume 1, it's stated that the half-joking idea behind Nora and Lie Ren is that they share a single pool of energy, and Nora hogs it all.
 * Good Scars, Evil Scars: Weiss's surprisingly subtle facial scar is definitely a "good scar".
 * Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: When Jaune leaps out to catch a falling Weiss, it becomes a classic Looney Tunes "Oh Crap" pause-and-plunge moment.
 * Great White Hunter: Professor Peter Port.
 * Grenade Launcher: Nora's weapon is one of these, when it isn't a warhammer.  With hearts on it.
 * Groin Attack: As part of his bullying, Cardin gets one in on Jaune.
 * Guns Do Not Work That Way: Certainly not as part of transforming gadgets which are melee weapons half the time.
 * Averted in the "Yellow" trailer, by Junior: using it as a bludgeon is a great way to break your rocket launcher.
 * Hair of Gold: Yang.
 * Hammerspace: Where Ren keeps his gunblades, although it does appear the portals are in his sleeves.
 * And where Cardin kept that box of rapier wasps.
 * Hand Blast: 's Wave Motion Gun, with extra bonus swords.
 * Happy Dance: Nora can be seen doing one after retrieving the artifacts but before the battle with the Deathstalker and the Nevermore during the initiation arc.
 * Heart Symbol: Nora, all over.  Literally -- from her weapon to the cutout on her decolletage.
 * I Call Her "Vera": Ruby with Crescent Rose (and to a lesser degree weapons in general).
 * Idiot Hair: Penny.
 * Imagine Spot: Weiss plotting in S1E2 how she and Pyrrha will be an unstoppable team together.
 * Important Hair Accessory Blake's bow.
 * Instant Runes: Weiss's snowflake-like "glyphs".
 * Ironic Echo: Penny's rapid-fire recitation of all the fun things she and Ruby can do together since they are now friends echoes word-for-word Weiss's sarcastic inventory of "girl things" to (not) do with Ruby when they met for the second time at the Beacon opening ceremonies.
 * Ruby picks up on some of this, asking Weiss moments afterwards, "Is this what I was like when we met?"

"Penny: It sure is windy today."
 * Ki Attacks: One way that Aura can manifest.
 * Kill It With Fire: Yang.
 * Kill It With Ice: Weiss incorporates this in her style.
 * Large Ham: Professor Peter Port.
 * Lampshade Hanging: The tumbleweeds blowing by.


 * Legacy Hero: What Jaune feels he has to be.
 * Limited Wardrobe: The most we've seen anyone own is three outfits:  battledress, school uniform, and sleepwear.
 * Little Miss Badass: Just about every girl in the cast who isn't a Badass Adorable.
 * Little Red Fighting Hood: Ruby, oh so much.
 * Machinima
 * Magical Security Cam: Several instances of footage reused as cam views.  Possibly justified by the (perhaps literal) magical computers in use.
 * The Man Behind the Man:
 * Mana Meter: Actually present within the story -- every student at Beacon can check their aura level with their handheld computer/phone/PDA, and are exhorted to do so when fighting, so they know when to shift to defensive tactics if it gets too low. The aura display appears as a classic colored bar, starting out green, growing shorter as aura is used, and turning red when too much aura has been expended.
 * Meaningful Name: It appears that nearly everyone in the cast has a name that makes some kind of reference to fairy tales or fantasy literature.
 * Miss Exposition: Pyrrha, regarding Aura and Semblances.
 * Mix and Match Weapon/Impossibly Cool Weapon: Everybody's got one!  Most combine a firearm of some sort with a melee weapon, and change shape between functions.
 * Sun Wukon goes one better: his weapon is a staff that splits into a pair of nunchaku, which themselves are made out of pairs of pistols (which look like flintlocks, but are multi-shot).
 * Blake's Gambol Shroud can be a used as one or two blades for melee, as a kusarigama/sickle-and-chain, and as a gunblade.
 * Pyrrha's spear/rifle and chakram-shield.
 * Jaune seems to avert this; his sword doesn't appear to turn into anything else, even if it is an Ancestral Weapon. His shield, though, folds for convenient storage.
 * Mooks: Torchwick has a small crew of them, and he's not impressed by their quality.
 * Junior's minions in the "Yellow" trailer seem to be the same group -- they have the same black-suit-white-face-and-little-red-sunglasses look. Given that Torchwick is very briefly seen concluding some kind of deal with Junior in the club just before Yang walks up to the bar, it's possible that he acquired his goons from Junior.
 * Torchwick later appears to be in charge of a squad of.
 * Motion Capture: Confirmed to have been used for many scenes. However, it's often painfully obvious when it wasn't.
 * Motionless Chin: Averted. In close-ups, chin movements are obvious and clearly synchronized to the Mouth Flaps.
 * Motor Mouth: Ruby, when she gets excited.
 * My Hero!: Uttered by Weiss in a totally bored and unimpressed manner when Jaune flubs an attempt to flashily rescue her from a fall.
 * Named Weapons: Most if not all of the multiform weapons have names:
 * Ruby named her scythe Crescent Rose.
 * Weiss' sword is Myrtenaster.
 * Blake's gunblade/kusarigama is called Gambol Shroud.
 * Yang's "Dual Ranged Shot Gauntlets" are called Ember Celica.
 * Possibly averted by Jaune's sword, which seems to have no name.
 * No Sense of Personal Space: Penny.
 * Nobody Touches the Hair: Yang -- it's her Berserk Button, in fact.
 * Not Allowed to Grow Up: Averted, according to Word of God.  The intent is that characters will age in real time with the viewers; the example given by Monty Oum is that after ten years of production, 15-year-old Ruby will be 25.
 * Not a Morning Person: Lie Ren.  For reasons explained in Genki Girl, above.
 * Off-Model: Much of the animation -- at least some of it done by Motion Capture -- is beautifully fluid and realistic. Other moments... not so much.
 * There's one moment in S1E16 where two characters are standing in such a way that the one closer to the viewers is partially obscuring the one further away, but one of the gestures made by the further character happens in front of the closer character -- that is, closer to the viewer.
 * Off With Its Head: Ruby decapitates a fair number of the beowolves attacking her in the "Red" trailer.
 * Ruby killing the Nevermore during the Emerald Forest initiation.
 * Jaune killing the ursa in S1E14.
 * Personality Powers: The Beacon students all appear to have gifts or talents, and most of the ones we've seen seem to be reflective of their owners' personalities:  Ruby's speed, Yang's fire, and Pyrrha's magnetism, for example.
 * Petal Power: Any time Ruby's in action.
 * Promotion to Parent: Yang seems at times quite maternal in regards to Ruby.
 * Reckless Gun Usage: The Vale police investigating the dust shop robbery. (Lampshaded by Torchwick's map which notes there are "dumb cops" in that part of Vale.)
 * Red Eyes Take Warning: When Yang gets angry or frustrated, her eyes change from silver to red.  And she bursts into flame.
 * Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The King Taijitu, a monstrous two-headed duotone snake fought by Lie Ren in the Emerald Forest.
 * Retcon: In the earliest materials, the planet on which the story is set is called "Vytal", but during the production the creative team renamed it to "Remnant".  "Vytal" remains as the name of the festival that is impending at the end of Volume 1.
 * Rich Bitch: Weiss gives this impression during her first few screen appearances, and bits of it keep surfacing throughout volume one, but she's considerably more complex than this basic character type.
 * Robot Girl:, maybe.  If she's not a Cyborg.
 * Rule of Cool: Appears to be a law of nature.
 * Rule of Funny: Yang's Berserk Button:  she's a cool, laid-back girl -- unless you muss her hair.
 * Running Gag:
 * Volume 1:
 * Jaune getting stuck in trees.
 * Weiss falling over when she runs into someone she wasn't expecting to be in her way.
 * Set Swords to Stun: Despite being all about flying swords, none of 's attacks actually draw blood, and her Wave Motion Gun only damages property, not people.
 * Shields Are Useless: Averted by Jaune, whose shield seems pretty awesome even if he doesn't quite realize it.
 * Also averted by Pyrrha, whose shield is rather handy itself.
 * Shout Out: Built on them, and many are rolled into Meaningful Names.  Where can we start?
 * The fairy tale references in and around the girls of Team RWBY: Ruby/Little Red Riding Hood, Weiss/Snow White, Blake/Beauty and The Beast, and Yang/Goldilocks and The Three Bears.
 * It's been suggested that Blake may also reference Puss in Boots. She also has a candelabra that looks like Lumiere during their first night at Beacon.
 * Yang allegedly also references an obscure Grimm fairy tale, "The Golden Bird".
 * The Wizard of Oz references in Professor Ozpin and Glynda Goodwitch.
 * Jaune Arc and his tormentor Cardin Winchester.
 * Sun Wukon
 * Roman Torchwick, whose name has echoes of "roman candle" (which is what his gun-cane looks like in action), and who looks like he just stepped out of A Clockwork Orange.
 * The White Fang.
 * might be a reference to both Pinocchio and Blaz Blue, and possibly to Inspector Gadget.
 * Professor Bartholomew Oobleck obviously references Dr. Seuss' Bartholomew and the Oobleck.
 * Professor Peter Port is explicitly described in the director's commentary track for volume 1 as "Peter from Peter and The Wolf grown up".
 * The Grimm are an obvious play on the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales.
 * Shy Finger-Twiddling: Ruby during the first time she meets Weiss.
 * Slow-Motion Pass-By: When Blake and Sun Wukon first see each other.
 * Stealth Hi Bye: Penny, most notably.  Ruby's speed lets her do basically this if she wants.  Other characters manage this when it's funny.
 * Stealth Pun: The crescents on Jaune's shield?  They're arcs.
 * Stock Sound Effects: Construction sounds -- saws, jackhammers, drills, etc. -- in the few seconds it takes them to turn their beds into (dubious) bunkbeds.
 * Strange Girl: Penny definitely comes across like this, from the first few moments of conversation with Team RWBY (done entirely while laying on her back in the street) to the odd way she holds her hands at her sides as she walks.
 * Super Deformed: Ruby in her first moments on the Beacon campus, as well as the images in her "thought bubble" as she races to find a partner in the Emerald Forest.
 * Super Speed: Ruby seems to come close; Professor Oobleck definitely has it.
 * Swiss Army Weapon: Most of the weapons we see in the series. The few exceptions include Jaune's sword (although his shield might count), Ren's pistols (which while combining blades and guns haven't yet shown ability to change shape), and Torchwick's cane-gun.
 * Teen Genius: Word of God describes Ruby as a prodigy with immense natural talent, who subsequently doesn't have to work very hard to excel as she has.  This is a source of friction between her and Weiss, who puts a great deal of effort into being as good as she is.
 * Theme Naming: All over the place. Particularly Colourful Theme Naming -- allegedly every character has some kind of color reference in their name. A few examples:
 * The girls of Team RWBY: "Ruby Rose" is obvious; "Weiss Schnee"="Snow White"; "Blake" is an old English word for "black"; "Yang Xiao Long" is Chinese for "Little Dragon of the Sun", but includes characters which can mean "yellow" or "gold".
 * "Jaune" is French for "yellow".
 * Velvet Scarlatina.
 * Although it's never actually given on-screen, the newscaster on the broadcast seen at the end of S1E1 is, according to Word of God, named Cyril Leon (i.e., "cerulean"). His co-anchor is billed as "Lisa Lavender".
 * Theme Song Reveal: It's hard to be sure this early, but "This Will Be The Day" definitely seems to be hinting at something.
 * The songs from the four Trailers also are clearly implying things; as of the first season's halfway point, "From Shadows" (from the "Black" trailer) seems to be the most comprehensible, referring (in retrospect) to Blake's history.
 * Theme Tune Cameo: In the first scene of the first episode, Ruby's listening to "This Will Be The Day" on her player, before it's been used as the theme tune for the first time.
 * Thick Line Animation: It's not consistent across all the artwork, but in general the show has this kind of look.  It's especially noticeable with things like the Deathstalker and character faces.
 * Throw Down the Bomblet: Although she uses a grenade launcher instead of throwing them, Nora certainly demonstrates the "poor impulse control" aspect of this trope.
 * Throwing Your Shield Always Works: Pyrrha's shield.
 * Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Especially if you're telekinetically controlling a dozen or so...
 * Toilet Humour: Ruby's scribbled drawing of Professor Port calling him "Professor Poop".
 * Tomboy and Girly Girl: Definitely in play between Ruby (tomboy) and Weiss (girly girl). Appears also to be part of the dynamic between Yang and Blake, but they seem to swap off on who's who as needed.
 * Too Soon: Asked by Sun Wukon of Blake after making a snarky comment about.
 * Took a Level In Badass:  in S1E14.
 * Trailers: Starting November 5, 2012, Rooster Teeth released four trailers, spaced eight to ten weeks apart, which each featured one of the four main characters. Combining beautiful animation, non-stop action, Foreshadowing and awesome music, they were responsible for a remarkable level of anticipation and speculation before the series' premiere in July 2013.
 * Train Job: The "Black" trailer is about one.
 * Uncanny Valley: Averted.  Despite being made with Poser, whose photorealistic figures live in the Uncanny Valley, RWBY's animation has its detail level dialed back and its abstraction level dialed up to give it a resemblance to traditional animation, and handily escapes the creepiness factor.
 * Vomit Discretion Shot: Jaune, offscreen at the end of S1E1, and onscreen at a trash can at the start of S1E2.
 * Wacky Girl: Nora.
 * Web Animation
 * Weird Moon: A moon in pieces certainly counts.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: The modern incarnation of the White Fang, but there are hints that they are being manipulated for some sinister purpose.
 * Western Terrorists: The current version of the White Fang is somewhere between Type VII and Type VIII.  It started out as a non-violent Civil Rights Movement for Faunus, but there was a change in leadership about five years before the start of the series, and their methods turned violent.  There are hints that they are being manipulated by someone else for more sinister purposes.
 * The Wiki Rule: As noted in the main text
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Almost entirely averted so far -- the only character with an "unnatural" hair color as of the end of volume 1 is Professor Oobleck, who has green hair.
 * Lie Ren has a magenta stripe through the hair on the left side of his face, but it could simply be dyed.
 * Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: What the current version of White Fang thinks of itself, of course.
 * Zettai Ryouiki: Blake's stockings in her battle garb; Yang's stockings in her school uniform.  Both are Rank A.