I’ve been waiting to make a blog post about this, even though I wanted to for a while now. I didn’t want to be seen as hype chasing though, as this blog is small and even though riding the hype wave is a good way to get readers, it’s also not my style to do that.

Besides that, at first, I had a lot of conflicted thoughts about the show and what it might turn out to be. Therefore, I just wanted to sit and collect my thoughts. It can be really easy to become over excited or overly critical of new content before it releases, and I wanted to be impartial in my thoughts of this new impending series.

First of all, if you haven’t seen the trailer for RWBY Ice Queendom, you should do that first so that you know what I’m talking about.

Watched it at least once? Okay cool, so by now you’ve likely figured out that this is a upcoming Japanese animated series (anime) that’s being co-created by Rooster Teeth Productions (who also serves as producers for the show) and Studio SHAFT. This new anime is set to be released in 2022. That being said, we have no firm release date yet.

I’m of two minds for this upcoming show. The first is that I’m excited. I love RWBY, and I particularly love the early volumes before the show got too big for its own narrative footing. Getting a chance to reexamine this series with a fresh coat of paint will be something spectacular, I’m sure. There’s a lot of moments that you’ll notice look very self-same, and I’m sure that they’ll want to cover some of those key plot points anew, just as many series tend to do.

This isn’t a reboot, mind you. It won’t be purely the same cannon, either. It is being called “canon adjacent”. To my understanding of what I can pick up via social media and chit-chat among the fandom, RWBY Ice Queendom will stand someplace in the middle of pure canon and an alternate universe. I think that suits the situation just fine.

I know a lot of people are a little edgy about it, I was too at first. However, in truth I think that the RWBY series is at its strongest when it isn’t crammed into tight fitting boxes, or perfectly fitting labels.

For example, if the Faunus plight is handled with a better hand here, we gain quite a bit. If we have a chance to see it better addressed, and with more nuance offered when it comes to the opinions of Faunus have in general, then that’s a win across the entirety of all the series within RWBY as a material. There’s nothing to lose from that.

Literally, we only have the opportunity to gain here unless a garbage fire well and truly occurs, which I doubt it will. If the Faunus plight is done worse or just as sub-par in some places than the show we’ve already got, well, we’re still where we were before… the fandom will pick up the slack just as we always have.

However, if it is done better, then we have something better to contextualize the RWBY universe with. We may end up with more avenues to explore regarding this, paving the way for new fan fiction angles and fan art alike.

We’ve only go gain with this fluid mind set, and unlike written material, this show will be much more easy to access for viewers who may hate the idea of reading. Therefore the RWBY fan base who don’t read the books in the wider universe will have more material to enjoy as well. The same goes for the games. We’re not all gamers, so the canon material found there may be lost to some people. This show can serve as a deeper gateway into wider lore, and we should see that as a bonus, not a loss.

The end of the trailer though, that’s what interests me. When Weiss sees herself at the end, it brings to mind the callback of her original trailer we had from all the way back before Volume 1 aired. It really excites me to think we may have deeper extrapolations of characters and their metaphors on our hands here.

If there is little else though, this new series can and will breathe new life into the fandom. We desperately need that most of all. For those of us that have been around since the earliest days, enjoying the RWBY series for all that it has to offer, even the most die-hard fan can agree that not everything is perfect. There was always a little something lacking across the volumes here and there. At the end of the day, love it or hate it, RWBY Ice Queendom will provide fans of RWBY a new bone to chew. That alone is worth giving it a try in my opinion. As someone who likes to dive deep with the RWBY universe, this is what excites me the most.

All we have to do is wait for it to come out.