RWBY General Discussion

I really do think the marketability of RWBY has been underestimated.

The company is the problem. The show is flawed but not wholly unlikable. It was stupidly popular once in fact. You had

• the hype Monty Oum period where indie digital content creation was in big swing and he was a pioneering talent
• the post Monty Oum period where the creative passion/clout/remorse combined to make people really want the shoe to continue on per Monty's abstract as hell philosophical quotes
• the big boost it got in recognition from having a manga, a comic book, a second manga, a novel, a Japanese dub, an appearance in a major fighting gsme crossover, two video games, a card game.

This show had con presence. People were actively dressing up as these

Like there was a time when this show was considered too big to fail. I feel like Volume 8-ish it still had great publicity/public clout.

Whoever picks it up will take on the ire of the, hrh-hrm, chuds who feel RWBY is woke and ruined. It will also take on the praise of people desperate to see it continue thankful its getting another shot.

...huh, whatever happened to that one troper in this thread who used to write short novels about the show?

Edited by FOFD on Apr 29th 2024 at 6:11:04 AM

Presumably he could somehow convince WBD to continue funding it and/or get someone else involved.

I'm very skeptical myself, but I cannot imagine what other company would — from a cold cynical capitalist perspective — want to retain the original creative team when they could just throw their own employees on it.

Justice League × RWBY: Super Heroes & Huntsmen Part One was shown on cartoon network Canada last Friday and this Friday their showing part 2.

I feel people have just assumed that since rooster Teeth failed that must mean everything they had was unprofitable, but we have no idea how profitable RWBY is, it's entirely possible RWBY made bank but RT was such a shitshow it couldn't save them

If RWBY was so profitable then why is WBD trying to offload to some other company? Why did RT need Crunchyroll to make Volume 9 and not get help from their parent company? Why did Crunchyroll not greenlight Volume 10?^note This one can admittedly be explained somewhat by the fact that there's little audience overlap between RT and CR. But I'm willing to bet a decent chunk of the RWBY fanbase did bite the bullet and got CR subs, yet that still wasn't enough.

Too many things point to the show being a money pit.

Edited by Karxrida on Apr 29th 2024 at 5:59:05 AM

Because the company was going downhill and public suppprt was dwindling. There's a difference between where the show's marketability was and where it ends up after a company has 3-5 damning public scandals one years after another.

WBD / WB I've been hearing has been dropping animation in general.

The show is likely expensive. Any animated work is and when it isn't the result shows.

RWBY had potential to make a ton of money with merch, but Rooster Teeth as a whole was falling apart and it lost that momentum.

Edited by FOFD on Apr 29th 2024 at 9:35:52 AM

When it comes to a property especially one under a large corporation like WB, it's hard to make too many assumptions because a lot of critical facts are usually obscured. It's possible that RWBY was profitable, not profitable, or both at the same time.

For example, sometimes a property is valuable but not directly. For example, the Simpsons tv show is actually the least profitable part of the franchise. The merchandise is actually why it stays on the air.

Other times, the property is a loss leader. It's not profitable to make the show, but the publicity it generates for other products makes up the difference. Warren Bros actually used to do this for their records. They would give away records to encourage people to buy the hardware and other tracks.

It could also be that RWBY isn't profitable enough. It's possible for a franchise to be profitable but the rate of growth isn't considered good enough for the company. This is usually the case for many movie franchises that make back their budget usually on home video or streaming sales.

At the end of the day, it seems like RWBY suffered from series mismanagement for years Rooster Teeth and from WB.

Edited by Freshwater on Apr 29th 2024 at 6:43:22 AM

So I heard some buzz about how Ruby and Yang were drinking tea, despite the last time Ruby drank tea, it was a suicide attempt apparently. What's up with that?

Moment I saw the title I was like "ohhh no Yang what the hell are you doing-" but uhh turns out Ruby loves boba.

fwiw my posts were working under the assumption that all aspects of the IP (i.e. merch) were being considered when determining whether the show was profitable. Anyone looking to buy it would want to see those merch sales numbers anyway.

"Not profitable enough" is a good point and would also drive away potential buyers unless they wanted to reboot. Even if the show is technically profitable, the company that acquires would want to try to recoup their payment as soon as possible. "It makes money but not that much" isn't good enough in this case.

Well it's pretty clear RWBY is worth more than you or I thought it was, if they have been able to find a buyer, who want's to keep the show in it's current incarnation going.

Edited by Gaogaigar54 on Apr 30th 2024 at 1:20:33 AM

I admittedly don't have a good frame of reference for how much buying an IP costs, but even if RWBY was a failure it would definitely be expensive.

Also, nothing has been finalized as far as we know. Anything could change during the negotiation process. Plus it could theoretically end up being finished as a comic or novel or even a movie.

Edited by Karxrida on Apr 30th 2024 at 2:49:22 AM

Sure but the fact that it reached the point of such negotiations, suggest we underestimated it's worth.

RWBY is the kind of show that would be to big to sell to some small indy group, but not necessarily big enough to sell to anyone major. Kind of an awkward spot to be in, where they are simultaneously too big and not big enough.

If they really have found a potential buyer and negotiations have gone as far as they have, then I guess they might actually be big enough after all.

An important thing to remember when dealing with media companies and the like; they're nowhere near as logical as you think they'd be. Young Justice got great ratings and was cancelled because it was popular with girls. Angel got cancelled because it had the best ratings in its run and the execs decided that it'll never get that high again. Because the Catwoman and Elecktra movies bombed Hollywood executives took that as proof that women and people of colour who werent Samuel L. Jackson or Will Smith can't headline action or comic book movies for over a decade. Because the Wolfman remake bombed Del Toro's at the Mountains of Madness adaptation with Tom Cruise was cancelled because that executive took it as a sign that horror movies were no longer profitable. EA saddled Dead Space 3 with the goal of making 5 million in sales quickly despite that being more than the combined sales of all other games in the franchise.

We can talk about profitable all we want and that'd be a waste of time because Rooster Teeth never released any details of their costs and profits and the closest we have as a source is Barbara making a comment about the show never being profitable and an estimation from her as to how much each minute of volume 9 cost, but we have zero details about the rest of it. We don't know how much each individual volume cost and made back, we don't know how much the merch made, we don't know how valuable the IP was for crossovers besides RWBY getting crossed over into a number of western and Japanese games.

So amongst all the optimism and pessimism we have to admit that we know nowhere near enough to be making predictions of anything behind the scenes.

x2 I've seen the idea of a Japanese company trying to buy RWBY floated around. Probably someone mid-tier.

Edited by Karxrida on May 1st 2024 at 7:47:37 AM

The last time we had a Japanese-produced RWBY at least 3 of the main cast went up a cup size.

I'm serious, look at the manga and the anime.

SHAFT endgame pls

Not SHAFT please. Unless you want production to crash and burn so badly that they completely change the end of RWBY as a result and we end up with episodes with missing dialogue and scenes to be done later.

Grimm Campaign has a new episode.

Has anybody seen this fanmade RWBY project?

• The outfits look less complicated
• Oscar and Alice are in Beacon with Ilia
• Ruby is fighting Torchwick, Yang is fighting Hazel, Weiss is fighting Watts, and Blake is fighting Adam... in Vale
• Jaune and Pyrrha are happily dating and fighting back to back
• The song used in this is called "Evermore" from RWBY Arrowfell

Also there are RWBY RVB crossovers

Edited by FOFD on May 5th 2024 at 11:41:00 AM

How do people here feel about Yang being a bad sister accusations?

They fumbled her writing in later seasons (such as her being more concerned over her waifu Blake's opinion if her in Atlas isntead of Ruby's because as her sister "she'll get over it and we'll be fine" attitude) which they try address in the volume 9 beyond episode with her and Ruby by pointing out she could have worded her concerns better (or you know read the roomfor timing) and not taken her for granted.

Edited by Psyga315 on May 7th 2024 at 8:35:18 AM

There are some valid points, but a lot of the complaints have always come across to me as though they're being made by people who have no idea what stable, healthy sibling relationships are like in real life. Siblings with strong relationships who have a falling out over which decision to take don't belabour or dramatise it because they know that it's not the kind of argument that dents or threatens their relationship. They know they'll get over the disagreement and won't always agree. Perhaps they'll have some communication lessons to work on improving, but the relationship itself is safe. Meanwhile, Yang's relationship with Blake was in flux and unsettled.

Frankly, Yang and Ruby's disagreement wasn't even much of a falling out because Oscar and Jaune put a stop to it before it got very far. The only character who was worried that their argument would damage their relationship was Blake, who is an only child and whose closest relationships growing up have been revealed as dysfunctional, dangerous and resulted in serious consequences when they fell out with each other (Adam and Ilia). The characters who had either siblings or more positive bonded relationships growing up (Weiss, Jaune and Nora) brushed off Blake's concern because they didn't see anything to worry about (relationship-wise). Blake's also in the middle of Yang and Ruby in a way Weiss isn't — Ruby is both Weiss's partner and leader, but Blake had to choose between supporting her leader or supporting her partner. Blake also has the insecurity of the further, unspoken feelings, so it makes sense for her to be more nervous about the disagreement than the others are.

The same is true for Yang. Her wondering about Blake instead of Ruby told us how healthy he relationship with Ruby was (disagreements don't damage their bond) and how insecure she was about her relationship with Blake (not knowing how disagreements will damage their bond). So, all that does is reinforce what we saw in the things Weiss, Blake, Nora and Jaune all said.

What I think has always been missing from this sibling discussion is the lack of opportunity to explore the full implication of Yang's insecurity about Blake where differences of opinion are concerned. Specifically, the way she jumped to the idea of telling Robyn in V7 right when it looked like she and Blake had different ideas about whether Ironwood should have been told the secret. Yang effectively forced that uncomfortable realisation away by diving on the first thing she could think of that would please Blake — giving intel to Robyn instead of hunting her down and arresting her. There was insecurity in their relationship there, which feeds in to the V8 scene in the outpost but also caused complications with Ironwood because it was an impulsive, gut-driven decision rather than one that had been carefully considered.

It's also worth observing that, by the end of Volume 8, it's only been a few weeks since Blake rejoined the group at the end of Volume 5 (Volume 6 covers about 5 days, the first half of Volume 7 covers about 7 weeks, and Volume 8 covers about three days and two nights — Rebel and I worked out a RWBY timeline back when After the Fall came out, which I've kept updated as the show went on, and could dig out if people are interested).

Edited by Wyldchyld on May 9th 2024 at 1:18:42 PM

I think, also, that the falling out scene has a rather dark implication given that Yang throwing Ruby under the bus for something she chose to do just to placate Blake (who was comparing her to Adam again... Which given the last time she compared her to Adam was also the last time they spoke before the Fall of Beacon has some rather dark implications in of itself), since Ruby's depression stems from doubting herself as a leader...

Meaning Yang may have kickstarted Ruby's suicidal depression.