Let’s assume you never saw the original RWBY—and that’s perfectly fine. RWBY: Ice Queendom makes that guess as well by reintroducing us to the world of Remnant and our main cast of Huntresses. Following team RWBY (Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Yang Xiao Long, and Blake Belladonna), these very different girls have joined the prestigious academy of Beacon to obtain licenses to hunt deadly beasts called Grimm. Even as fans of the original, the story here is simple and more than effective at keeping us engaged in each girl, their personality, and their reasons for wanting to fight such dangerous entities. We are loving the story for RWBY: Ice Queendom and don’t worry too much about it being too similar to the original.

Shaft has never really disappointed us when it comes to animation they have done and now we can add RWBY: Ice Queendom to their animated works. Honestly, the visuals for RWBY: Ice Queendom are spectacular with bold colors, fluid movements, and solid action sequences. RWBY: Ice Queendom is quite breathtaking and clearly has the heart of what Monty Oum wanted in his creation.

We won’t even lie, we were fooled by the first few episodes of RWBY: Ice Queendom. At first, we thought RWBY’s anime adaptation was trying to stay extremely safe to the source material and avoid angering past fans by changing up the tale too much, which is understandable. Then by episode 3, we began to notice small changes in the story that might have bigger impacts on the entire RWBY narrative. It could all be a trick to just ensure fans wouldn’t get tired of re-experiencing the first season now in anime format, but RWBY: Ice Queendom might have some more tricks up its sleeve and as fans, we can’t wait to see them!

RWBY: Ice Queendom sounds like it could be the next great Shaft anime: great visuals, a decent story that harkens to the original, but has a unique twist, and stellar music. Yet, RWBY: Ice Queendom feels…incomplete for some reason. Maybe because it feels so much more polished than the original, RWBY: Ice Queendom lacks something we can’t figure out. That could be us, as fans of the original, but we know we aren’t alone seeing as some are stating the same thing on various anime forums online.