I kind of wish all production companies were more like Rooster Teeth and that all animated series were more like RWBY. That's not to say I want RT to be the only game in town (though the relatively small Austin-based company would probably be okay with that) or that I think all cartoon series should look like RWBY, but rather that I would love to see Rooster Teeth's level of dedication to their fans, cast, crew, and creators mirrored by other such production studios. Theirs is a company built on a strong connection with their fanbase and ongoing, two-way communication with those audience members who watch their shows, attend their conventions, and buy their many and varied array of products. It's a win-win situation, but Rooster Teeth does it better than anyone else in the animation game. To see why, you have to look no further than the newly released RWBY: Volume 5 Blu-ray.

RWBY may have started as the kernel of an idea by the late Monty Oum, but that ideas soon spread to his friends and co-workers like Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross, who took a risk with Gray G. Haddock when they shopped their idea to Rooster Teeth execs Burnie Burns and Matt Hullum. The RWBY faithful know this story well, but in an attempt to honor Oum's legacy, the hard work put in by the crew (known as CRWBY) over the years, and the dedication from the growing fanbase, this Blu-ray release includes a touching and informative retrospective on the series' story so far. It's one of my very favorite parts of this home video release. It not only illustrates just how unlikely RWBY's success was thanks to the many pitfalls along the way, it really serves to remind viewers of the many, many hands that have a part to play in bringing the series to life.

And that leads me to my other favorite part of this Blu-ray: The CRWBY shorts. I don't think I've ever seen a wildly popular, internationally known animated series do a behind-the-scenes video documentary with the crew of technical artists for each episode, but that's what Rooster Teeth does for RWBY. Luckily, those 14 episodes are right here for folks who picked up this Blu-ray, and they're a fantastic resources for anyone interested in how the show gets made, what sort of software the animation teams use, and just how difficult it is to put all the pieces together. The CRWBY shorts are as replayable as the episodes themselves, and that's something you don't find on almost any Blu-ray release these days.

So while you may already be convinced that the RWBY: Volume 5 Blu-ray is worth a pick-up, just wait ... there's more! Each of the 14 episodes also has a pair of commentary tracks: one for the writers and directors, one for the technical artists. I've included some trivia tidbits from all 28 commentary tracks below if you're interested or just want to get a sense of what kind of banter the cast, crew, and creative team get up to. It's not your run-of-the-mill, last-minute, well-I-guess-we-have-to-do-this commentary track; these are every bit as thoughtful, insightful and informative as they are silly and hilarious.

There's a reason people love RWBY and it's not just the characters and the all-out action: It's also the hard-working men and women of Rooster Teeth who wear their hearts on their sleeves for this show and are more than happy to give everything they've got back to fans who do the same. RWBY isn't just a cartoon, it's a community.

Rating: ★★★★★ Excellent

Here's a more detailed breakdown of the bonus features you'll find on Disc 2; the audio commentaries are paired with the episodes themselves on Disc 1:

Bonus Features: 

5 Years of RWBY (10 minutes) – A fantastic retrospective on the story of RWBY so far as Shawcross and Luna revisit Oum’s legacy from the beginning to the modern day. It’s an excellent look at just how far RWBY has come and a real story of inspiration for aspiring animators and storytellers. Haddock comes in to talk about convincing Matt Hullum and Burnie Burns that RWBY was a risk, but one with a big upside. It quickly becomes clear that making RWBY was nowhere near as easy as the team made it seem, but the bombshell loss of Oum hit the team as they were rolling into Volume 3. It’s a testament to the RWBY faithful both behind the scenes at Rooster Teeth and in the show’s fan-base that they soldiered on to not only continue the show but to improve it at every turn.

Character Shorts – Weiss, Blake, and Yang (with Ruby) get their own animated shorts.

CRWBY – All 14 episodes of CRWBY, the behind-the-scenes featurette that shows off the talent and hard work of the RWBY crew from the beginning of Volume 5 to its wrap-up. These are must-watch featurettes for aspiring animators.

CRWBY Photos

Trailers - Need more Rooster Teeth suggestions? Check out some new and current animated series teased here.

Writer/director Episode Commentary with Miles Luna, Koen Wooten, Kerry Shawcross, and Gray G. Haddock, plus CRWBY commentary.

Chapter 1: “Welcome to Haven”

• First-ever premiere episode with no fight scenes
• Haven Academy in Mistral is between sessions when Ruby arrives, explaining the lack of students.
• Fans became enamored with a particular “Cute Guard”/Menagerie Guard member in this episode. The guard was voiced by rigging artist Giovanna “Gio” Coutinho.
• Some interesting technical notes about light of characters and scenes, and how they differ from scene to scene and even volume to volume.
• Volume 5 saw the addition of SpeedTree vegetation modeling software.
• Volume 5 included 27-28 animators, roughly 10 more than they’ve had in the past.

CRWBY Commentary: Art Director Patrick Rodriguez, lead rigging artist Sean Stephenson, and lead compositor Zane Rutledge, who also voiced the bartender.

• Technical rundown of everything from matte paintings, to choosing the right look for a waterfall, to doing R&D with shadow and light, what they mean by character “zones”, adding “bones” to fabric or anything that moves when rigging a character, and CBBs or “could be betters”

Chapter 2: “Dread in the Air”

• People also fell in love with the background character “Pilot Boi”, voiced by Richard Norman. The writers/directors talk about casting the characters.
• This episode featured the show’s first aerial dogfight sequence including the Grimm creatures Lancers, which the animation team dubbed “Spooky Bees.”
• It also features the largest set by size that the show has ever done so far.
• They also talk about designing Sienna Khan, voiced by Monica Rial, and how much effort went into her character, despite the fact that they knew she wouldn’t be around very long.

CRWBY Commentary: VFX artist Quentin Holtz, assistant producer Luis “Paco” Vazquez, editor Connor Pickens, lead animator Dustin Matthews

• The team talks about the VFX attributes of the Seer sphere, the vast scope of the aerial dogfight scene,

Chapter 3: “Unforeseen Complications”

• Ghira’s speech was originally a bit longer but had to be cut down for time. It was partially inspired by Obama’s oratory skills.
• The crowd simulations were done using Golaem software, a new addition to the show’s toolkit.
• Saber Rodentia was originally scripted as a “giant gerbil man” who was “not a Faunus with one animal trait, but an animal with one human trait.”
• They talk about the pairing and blending of Oscar and Ozpin’s voices, specifically talking about voice actors Aaron Dismuke and Shannon McCormick.
• Vernal has no last name.
• One major rewrite this volume had to do with introducing a major character, but that will have to wait until at least Volume 6.

CRWBY Commentary: Layout/storyboard artists Ethan Marler, Jacob Hilton, Kate Warner, and Nathaniel Terhune

• The team talks about attempting to simulate large crowds for the first time using Golaem, as opposed to the layout team having to place and animate individual characters.
• They also separate the differences between layout artists and animators.

Chapter 4: “Lighting the Fire”

• The shady bandit was officially named Shay D. Mann, and he’s voiced by Clifford Chapin of My Hero Academia fame.

CRWBY Commentary: Artists Rachel Doda, Giovanna Coutinho, Joel Mann

• The bandit fight was an ambitious collaboration between different departments, even more so than usual for RWBY.
• Fun, super-insider trivia about little accessories, hair, grennery, and scenery that the team had to go in and fix over the course of the production.

Chapter 5: “Necessary Sacrifice”

• There was a beautiful matte painting of Menagerie made for Volume 4 that never made it into the show, but it appears in the opening of this episode.
• They talk about the Shallow Sea and introducing new Faunus, like those with wings or fins. These sub-types are rarer than most other Faunus, but the Shallow Sea is a likely place for them to hang out.
• Corsac and Fennec were originally written to appear way back in Volume 1 where they attempted to sabotage the Emerald Forest trials.

CRWBY Commentary: Assistant producer Nick Todd, lead animator Dustin Matthews, Alex Leonard

• Cool breakdown of the opening/intro sequence.
• The team sings the praises of SpeedTree for streamlining greenery animation compared to previous volumes, along with the crowd software and the water animation effects work.

Chapter 6: “Known by Its Song”

• In Raven’s tent, her belongings are designed to look like they’ve been gathered from all over the world during her bandit adventures.
• It’s a big deal that Raven can turn into a bird since it’s not possible to most characters, despite the fact that they can use energy to manipulate glyphs and dust.

CRWBY Commentary: Zane Rutledge, Sean Stephenson, Giovanna Coutinho

• The ramen shop owner is voiced by Nick Landis.
• The team talks about peculiarities in animating characters, especially the face-off between Yang and Raven in this episode.
• Even the torches used in this episode were derived from R&D, focusing on a pixel-driven process, but almost didn’t get finished in time. There’s still some work to do.
• The cooking scene if interesting, not only for the individual animation of the food, but the fact that every part of the pipeline was handled only by women. It wasn’t planned, it just sort of happened that way because Rooster Teeth’s team is more well-balanced than most.
• A good animation solution for tears/crying was derived in the previous volume, which helped smooth things for Volume 5.

Chapter 7: “Rest and Resolutions”

• Yang’s arm-wrestling scene was to set up the fact that her metal arm can detach.

CRWBY Commentary: Nick Todd, Luis “Paco” Vazquez, and lighting lead Mark Osborne

• The team talks about the process of taking scenes and sets from the concept stage to the final execution as far as lighting is concerned. Kerry Shawcross and the lighting and animation teams have a good rapport.
• This team further breaks down the food scene, which admittedly made all the animators hungry.
• Osborne describes the essentials of basic lighting and they compare the look of the show from the early days of Poser to the current version in Maya.
• The lighting and composition team alone totals about 22 people.

Chapter 8: “Alone Together”

• Be sure to let the writers know if you’d like to see their idea for the three-headed fowl Grimm, the DuckDuckGoose, be a real thing.
• Sometimes, in color balancing, light blue eyes look silver. Keep that in mind, RWBY fans!

CRWBY Commentary: Patrick Rodriguez, Connor Pickens, Joel Mann

• The team talks about this episode setting up the all-out action that is to come in the closing episodes.

Chapter 9: “A Perfect Storm”

CRWBY Commentary: ASMR commentary from Dustin Matthews, Alex Leonard, and Jamie Smith

• The team talks about their work on the crowd scenes as part of the layout/final camera crew; there’s a CRWBY episode specifically for this.
• The pillows were a surprisingly difficult asset to add to the scene in Raven’s tent.
• Animation does a first pass through, but Layout catches things in a final pass.

Chapter 10: “True Colors”

• My Hero Academia viewers and All Might fans will recognize the influence on one of Ghira’s fight scenes here.
• It’s clear that the writing team takes the show’s racism/discrimination allegory very seriously.

CRWBY Commentary: Lead audio engineer Chris Kokkinos, lead lighting artist Mark Osborne, assistant lead animator Kim Newman

• If you look closely, Leo’s necktie tassels are missing in one shot, a continuity error that’s called by the very folks who are used to calling out such things.
• RWBY’s awesome fight scenes are compiled after “amateur” fighters (ie the animators and other artists themselves) mo-capping the sequences, which are cleaned up and brought to life by the animators.
• Newman talks about revisiting the late Monty Oum’s early fight scenes to get the feel for how he animated them.

Chapter 11: “The More the Merrier”

• The broken moon orbiting Remnant still rotates, according to Monty’s notes.
• Raven’s feelings about Ruby’s mother Summer is foreshadowed in this scene.

CRWBY Commentary: Chris Kokkinos, production coordinator Jennifer K. Tidwell, Alex Leonard

• The phases of the moon: “On. On and off. Always on. Rotates.”
• This was Tidwell’s first mocap scene ever.
• William Orendorff not only voiced Hazel Rainart, he’s also voiced most of the Grimm in the series.
• They pay special attention to the musical themes that bounce between the characters in focus, as well as their specific powers and abilities.
• They teased some audio clips that never made it into the show but you can hear them at RTX ’18 this summer!

Chapter 12: “Vault of the Spring Maiden”

CRWBY Commentary: Connor Pickens, Jen Tidwell, Kim Newman

• Newman talks about performing mocap for various characters in these scenes, so whether it’s a death scene or a brutal fight, you have her to thank for part of it. What’s funny is that the 5’4” Newman had to mocap for the 8’ Hazel; the character was scaled up to match.

Chapter 13: “Downfall”

CRWBY Commentary: Quentin Holtz, John Mann, Jamie Smith, Zane Rutledge

• One of the most effects-heavy episodes.
• Tracking the epic fight scenes is “one of the most challenging things” the effects team has ever done.
• One extra technical challenge was the lightning rig used for Hazel when he’s being electrocuted, along with his visible skeleton.
• The “Maiden Eyes” aren’t done through the Maya engine; that’s done through composite.
• The Maiden fight sequence was worked on by every department for weeks.
• Cinder’s weapons all have fire on the inside; they’re basically glass with fire elements inside of them.

Chapter 14: “Haven’s Fate”

• Emerald’s power display of her semblance was referred to among the animators as “Spooky Flashbang.”
• Expect to find out more about the mysterious lamp in Volume 6!

CRWBY Commentary: Patrick Rodriguez, Luis “Paco” Vazquez, Chris Kokkinos

• Shout-out to Jen Tidwell for keeping up with continuity for this full volume and the final chapter.
• One of the final shots of this episode features a new, otherworldly realm, per Kerry Shawcross’ instructions.
• Originally, the sound design for the lamp sounded too similar to The Lord of the Rings.
• When Lionheart dies off-camera, the first impact strikes him in the back, and the second strikes him in his head, in case you were wondering. He’s very dead.
• You can see everyone at RTX 2018 this summer!