You might not know exactly what RWBY (pronounced “Ruby”) is, but chances are you’ve seen the name or one of its colorful characters featured at video game and comic book events, particularly New York Comic Con (NYCC), which usually takes place a week before a new season starts.
The digital Japanese anime-inspired show that follows a group of magical monster hunters has grown a massive fan base, and it made its presence known on the NYCC show floor, where there was a RWBY megabooth accompanied by a panel held at Madison Square Garden.
Rooster Teeth, famous for creating popular digital content such as Red vs. Blue long before there were platforms for it, is ramping up its activities in perpetration for the October 14 premiere of Volume 5 on First, the company’s digital subscription platform. The studio has worked with Twitch to host a week-long marathon of previous seasons, and it also partnered with Fathom Events to bring the Volume 5 premiere to movie theaters days ahead of its showing on First.
Gray Haddock, head of Rooster Teeth Animation, told AListDaily that the list goes on. Rooster Teeth is also launching the behind-the-scenes mini-documentary series CRWBY along with the dedicated talk show RWBY Rewind to support the animated series, which are both exclusive to the First platform.
Furthermore, NYCC attendees had a chance to try out RWBY: Combat Ready, a board game that’s on Kickstarter, and BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, which is in development by Arc System Works set for a 2018 launch. The fighting game will feature characters from RWBY alongside those from the Persona and Under Night franchises. Fans in the UK will be able to try them this week, as the games will make their way to RTX London—Rooster Teeth’s own fan festival—on October 14.
As if that weren’t enough, Rooster Teeth is also preparing to launch the new mecha action show Gen:Lock, which is the first large-scale production the studio has done since the launch of RWBY. Love for the show has grown all over the world, even in Japan, where the digital show is localized for broadcast TV.
“What’s been really fun is that the fans’ energy seems to have a life of its own,” said Haddock, discussing how Rooster Teeth engages with fans during RWBY’s offseason. “They keep the show alive for us in the offseason through their art, cosplay, representing RWBY at conventions and writing fan fiction.”
However, that doesn’t mean that the show’s crew takes a complete backseat during the offseason. Haddock also said that RWBY Chibi, a Looney Toons-style comedy sketch show that features super-kawaii (super-cute) versions of characters, has also helped keep the energy going. He also said that Chibi provides a safe RWBY viewing experience for families and younger audience members.
“We were very surprised to learn how young the RWBY viewers are,” said Haddock, explaining how kids were either finding the show on their own or through a parent or sibling who watched it with them. As the main show’s themes mature with each season, RWBY Chibi offers a respite from its drama. Nobody dies, so fans can still find characters that aren’t on RWBY anymore.
As the show launches its fifth season, Haddock went into further detail about how new viewers were discovering the show.
“I still think there’s a lot of word-of-mouth. Friends who—once they learn that they know someone who hasn’t seen it—show it to them,” he said. “The show is being distributed in a bunch of different ways. We’re still on Crunchyroll and YouTube, and videos are starting to appear on sites such as Facebook. I think it’s also some of the ancillary activities. It could be the game on Steam, RWBY: Grimm Eclipse. Maybe they play this adventure game and realize that it’s based on a web series, then go to check it out. I think sometimes they see costumes go by at conventions. It’s crazy how far the RWBY brand is breaking into the mainstream. People go into Hot Topic, Target or Walmart and see RWBY products. The look of the show, with the colorful character designs and crazy title, hooks people in. They’re curious, so they look it up and start to watch.”
For a show that’s meant to attract more First subscribers, RWBY remains incredibly accessible. New episodes are shown on platforms such as YouTube and Crunchyroll a week after they premiere on First. Viewers who don’t want to be spoiled, or are interested in the platform’s social features, may be motivated to subscribe, but the approach still begs the question: why release new episodes for free at all? Or why not wait until the end of the season to do so?
“That is a question that our programming team at Rooster Teeth is constantly asking themselves,” said Haddock. “But I think because RWBY has been going on for so long, we want to make sure that decision is more of a conversation with the fans. There are so many people watching RWBY on their platform of choice that we don’t want to disrupt it so late in the game if we can avoid it. Some of the new shows might only live on First or on certain distribution platforms, but right now, the RWBY brand has taken on a life of its own because we keep investing in exposure.
Haddock said that, although Rooster Teeth may consider keeping RWBY behind a paywall or limit it to certain partner sites someday, the company’s current goal is still to get as many viewers as possible exposed to the show. That means erring on the side of broad distribution.
Volume 4 saw more than a million views per episode on YouTube alone. “We keep seeing an accelerated curve to the numbers,” Haddock said, meaning that episodes break a million views faster with each successive season, further demonstrating the growing enthusiasm fans have for the show. However, RWBY’s phenomenal success doesn’t set a roadmap for upcoming shows like Gen:Lock, which will have high expectations at launch.
“We’re all aware of the success that RWBY has brought the company, but you can’t design for that,” Haddock said. “I don’t know how you plan for the happy accidents that we had to have for RWBY to take off the way that it did. So, all we can do is not spend too much time thinking about that and stay focused on trying to tell a good story and have some cool ideas and big action. If we do our job right, and we get lucky, maybe we’ll have a chance to develop another show that people will be as happy with as they are with RWBY.”
Repeating RWBY’s success is no small feat, considering how the show’s rapid growth came as a surprise, even to its creators.
“With RWBY, we didn’t design for this level of success—we didn’t know that it would be what it turned into,” he said. “If someone told me five years ago, while we were working on Volume 1, that it was going to be running on Japanese national television as it is right now, I wouldn’t have believed them . . . It’s like asking, ‘how do you make a viral video?’ All you can do is do your best, love what you do, and keep trying to improve at it. Hopefully, there are people out there who like the same things that you do. If you make enough noise about it, slowly but surely, maybe they’ll find you, tell their friends, and the word-of-mouth keeps growing from there.”
However, that doesn’t mean that Rooster Teeth hasn’t learned a few things about growing digital franchises. One of the biggest lessons is to be careful not be too heavily invested in one streaming platform, as the fate of the brand may become tied to it.
“Rooster Teeth started putting content online before YouTube even existed,” said Haddock. “They’re used having their subscriber model, building their community, and making sure everyone enjoys spending time on the website.”
The company continues to invest in improving the First experience so that it offers features that Twitch and YouTube aren’t capable of. But at the same time, Rooster Teeth is following its own rule by continuing to spread its content out across multiple platforms.
“We want to go where the audience is,” Haddock explained. “If we can encourage people to come to RoosterTeeth.com, then that’s beautiful. But if the person prefers to watch on Netflix, Twitch or Facebook, then we will find a way to bring the content to them. If one of them goes away, then it’s all right. That platform winds down and we can go on to the next one.”
With RWBY growing across video games, clothing, spin-off shows, manga and more, Haddock explained what the core of the RWBY brand was that helped attract a global fan base.
“Storytelling with heart,” he said simply. “We want to entertain people and maybe distract them from what they’re dealing with in real life—telling stories that can energize them so they can go back to deal with things. I think we have very charming characters that you want to spend time with. Regardless of what show it is, you become friends with those characters and emotionally involved with their stories. As long as you’re doing that right, the audience will follow you.”
