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"

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

As of Fall 2013, it has completed the first of a projected sixteen seasons.

( -- placeholder -- )

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


 * Absurdly Sharp Blade: Ruby's scythe, which can effortlessly slice werewolves in half and is capable of decapitating giant monsters.
 * Alien Sky: This is definitely not Earth, not with two moons in the sky (one of which is shattered).
 * Alternate Universe: No argument. Two moons in the sky, active magic with technology, humanity beseiged by hordes of monsters...
 * Artsy Moon: If you consider being broken into a few dozen pieces "artsy".
 * Ascended Fangirl: Ruby, who geeks out over hunters 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.
 * Badass Adorable: All the girls on Team RWBY, but especially Ruby Rose.  Also Nora Valkyrie.
 * Beast Folk: The Faunus, who are treated as second-class citizens.
 * Berserk Button: Never, ever, touch Yang's hair.
 * Beware the Silly Ones: Nora.
 * Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics: Blake's weapons seem to demonstrate this in the "Black" trailer.
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: During the fight in the forest in "Players and Pieces" (S1 Ep8), Nora winks at and blows a kiss to the camera.
 * 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.
 * Cyborg:, maybe.  If she's not a Robot Girl.
 * Drop the Hammer: Nora's weapon, which is also a Grenade Launcher.
 * Genki Girl: Ruby.
 * 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.
 * Important Hair Accessory Blake's bow.
 * Kill It With Fire: Yang.
 * Kill It With Ice: Weiss incorporates this in her style.
 * Machinima
 * Mix and Match Weapon/Impossibly Cool Weapon: Everybody's got one!  Most combine a firearm of some sort with a melee weapon.  Son Goku goes one better:  his weapon is a staff that splits into a pair of nunchaku, which themselves are made out of pairs of flintlock pistols.
 * Mooks: Torchwick has a small crew of them, and he's not impressed by their quality.
 * Junior's minions in the "Yellow" trailer.
 * Motor Mouth: Ruby, when she gets excited.
 * 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.
 * Robot Girl:, maybe.  If she's not a Cyborg.
 * Rule of Cool: Appears to be a law of nature.
 * Shout Out: Built on them.  Where can we start?
 * The fairy tale references in and around the girls of Team RWBY.
 * The Wizard of Oz references in Professor Ozpin and Glynda Goodwitch.
 * Jaune Arc and his tormentor Cardin Winchester.
 * Son Goku
 * Roman Torchwick, whose name has echoes of "roman candle", 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 Oobleck may reference Dr. Seuss' Bartholomew and the Oobleck.
 * Theme Naming: All over the place.
 * The girls of Team RWBY all have names which are or incorporate colors. ("Weiss Schnee"="Snow White"; "Yang" is the Chinese word for both "sun" and "light".)
 * Trailers: Starting November 5, 2012, Rooster Teeth released four trailers, spaced four to six 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.
 * Wacky Girl: Nora.
 * Web Animation
 * Weird Moon: There are two moons in the sky, and one of them is shattered.
 * 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.
 * Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: What the White Fang thinks of itself, of course.