Although I'm aware of Rwby's origins as a popular anime-inspired web series, I know very little else about it and approached this anime version with a clean slate. Though Rwby: Ice Queendom feels rather uneven, it's turned out to be a pleasant surprise overall.

The premise of Rwby feels incredibly generic: the world Remnant is constantly under threat by evil creatures called the Grimm and there are people with superpowers who can fight them. A prestigious school called Beacon Academy trains talented fighters into hunters that go after the Grimm. There also exists magical dirt that everyone seems to want. Be warned that the show is quite jargony early on but to its credit Ice Queendom avoids huge info dumps and instead fills in the details piece by piece as the story unfolds.

Rwby: Ice Queendom can be considered in three parts: Episodes 1 - 3, 4 - 11, and the final episode.

The first part introduces and brings together the four main characters as part of a new crop of students starting at the Beacon Academy. These are: Ruby and her older sister Yang, Weiss, who is the rich heiress of a mega corp that manufactures magical dirt, and Blake, who seems to be some kind of persecuted furry.

In the early episodes, the characters' personalities are archetypical, and their development feel rudimentary and transparent. The bigger problem though, is that the series is dominated by a long second arc with a story line that requires foundational relationships to be established amongst the main characters. Unfortunately, Ice Queendom rushed into this arc soon after bringing the characters together, so the required foundation wasn't actually built yet and the strength of the characters' feelings for one another just feels unearned. Ironically, the arc does end up driving some pretty good character development later on, but it really should have been done upfront.

If you can suspend your disbelief and pretend the character relationships were more established than what was shown prior to second arc, then that arc can actually be very enjoyable. The action scenes and the special effects are generally nice looking, the plot has plenty of twists and turns and the pacing is excellent. Almost every episode ends on a cliff hanger and it's addictive to watch. As the tension ramps up, the characterisations undergoes considerable refinement, particularly in exploring the psyche of Weiss. It was great to see the characters grow beyond their simplistic moulds and I could even start to feel the chemistry between the characters for real.

Alas, I found Ice Queendom's last few episodes disappointing. I wasn't really sold by the last major plot development or the deus ex moment that resolved one of the final battles. I also found the ending to the second arc a bit too saccharine and cringey. The entire last episode is like an overly long epilogue and it made me realise something: the main characters are kinda annoying. It wasn't as bad when serious business is going on in the foreground, but once all that is stripped away, it's clear that the girls simply cannot carry the show on the merits of their character interactions alone.

Presentation wise, Ice Queendom contains copious amount of CG, possibly in keeping with the original source material. For the most part, this looked fine, particularly the flashy battle sequences full of dazzling lightworks - there's even a gloriously animated food fight! The colour use of Ice Queendom is noteworthy, as the four main girls all have their own colour themes going on and these colours dominate their costumes and special effects. Another nice stylistic touch is the use of split screens which, along with the cliff hanger driven pacing, made me think Ice Queendom's dramatic flourishes took its cues from the TV series 24.

Outside of the action, the layering, colour shading and animation sometimes can appear cheap, and the attempt to reproduce the effects of camera focus and blurring looked strange to me. I watched all the episode on an iPad with the exception of one on a PC, and that one episode didn't look as good, which makes me wonder whether watching this on iPad flattered the visuals.

I must say I'm surprised by the apparent frosty viewer reception for Rwby: Ice Queendom. Not having seen the source material, I don't know whether this was due to the backlash of a hardcore fandom against an unsatisfactory adaptation, but as a standalone series I thought it was good on balance. The anime suffers from some serious flaws for sure, but the stylistic production, nice music and the riveting middle stretch of episodes won me over.