This Week in Anime

The Rise and Fall of Rooster Teeth

Nick
Lucas! First off, welcome to the team. I'm excited to work with you on one of these finally. Second, I have a quick question for you:

What? No, I meant why are we here in this column talking about a video game parody? We're This Week in Anime, after all.
What was all that stuff about God?

Also, if anyone's getting pedantic about it, Rooster Teeth is also responsible for at least one bona fide anime and two shows that an out-of-touch parent might confuse for anime.

No, but I spot at least three anime fans in that picture.
More importantly, I have to imagine there's at least a decent overlap between anime fans and fans of Rooster Teeth's output across two decades. My high school anime club friends could quote half of Red vs. Blue back in the day.

TBF that's less cringe than watching RWBY entirely of your own volition.

RWBY is an...interesting beast, I'll say. Its most compelling part is its place in the larger story of Rooster Teeth. For readers younger than the company, Rooster Teeth started as some guys making game review videos while they got drunk together. The company's original name was Drunk Gamers, and they changed it to Rooster Teeth because nobody would send review copies to a company with "Drunk" in its name. How they got from that to a full-fledged production company under one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world is as fascinating as it is depressing.

That is probably the weirdest deep cut I've ever seen. You're already bringing something special to this column.

I think it's fair to feel sad. Rooster Teeth had its issues as a company, partly stemming from its origin as a group of amateurs who stumbled into success through the power of burgeoning internet video content. Yet that was also what made their products feel special and approachable. They were fans of Halo and video games in general, and seeing them turn that into a career before "YouTuber" and "Influencer" were even terms was practically aspirational for their audience.

They had the reputation of a fan company that got elevated into the spotlight and were very keen on maintaining that image. They typically recruited creators for their company by finding YouTube content they liked and reaching out. This was how they got then-indie animator Monty Oum on board to create original, non-game engine sequences for Red vs. Blue. Even when they were by all rights a professional company with major partnerships in the entertainment industry, many fans - myself included - still thought of Rooster Teeth as "just fans". To bring it back around to RWBY's place in this whole story, is how they got away with releasing a professionally produced animated series that looked like this:

Without getting roasted alive on social media.

They did that a few years later, though I wouldn't say the show has ever looked nearly as good as it should considering how much was behind it. Yet I remember how it was back in 2013, with people defending the series as a "fan work" being made by folks who just loved anime and wanted to make their own. People were willing to give RWBY a lot of leeway specifically because it was an internet series made by Rooster Teeth rather than a "real" animation company.

It was the breaking point between RT's origin and what it eventually became. Later on, when producing multiple animated series, they hired professional voice actors, screenwriters, etc. The kind of actions any company owned by AT&T would do. But RWBY was saddled with largely untrained actors who worked for Rooster Teeth already since that was how they handled most of Red vs. Blue. That resulted in predictably amateur performances, to the point where the show getting a Japanese dub with actual professionals was revelatory.

gen:LOCK is certainly more professional than early RWBY, at least. It also represents the shift that went down at Rooster Teeth between 2013 and 2019. In 2013, their main focus was still Red vs. Blue, and they were a relatively small company. You could craft a complete list of their staff based on who they brought in on their Drunk Tank podcast (later renamed Rooster Teeth Podcast for the same reasons as above). By the time gen:LOCK came out, they had an entire animation studio and the connections to hire A-list actors. Any semblance of a "fan" company was long gone.

This is one of those instances where the story behind the show is more interesting than what is, generously, a 5/10 mecha series.

It's hard to say, though they almost certainly wouldn't have seen the success they did with their productions. Without the connections of their corporate overlords looking for international appeal, would RWBY have gotten big enough to get multiple manga adaptations and side stories? Or characters in a Blazblue game? Or a full-on anime produced by SHAFT?

Unfortunately, it's hard to say how the creators feel about it. Monty Oum, its creative lead, passed away after Volume 2. Somehow, it wasn't the most depressing behind-the-scenes info on a Rooster Teeth production.

It was a shock, and a big part of that was how connected Oum and the rest of Rooster Teeth were to their community. They had dedicated forums and comment sections and would reply to fans there. Whether or not RWBY originally counted as a "fan" project, it was one fueled by Oum's passion, and that earned a lot of goodwill when it was at its roughest.
As you can imagine, as Rooster Teeth got more prominent and more professional, that goodwill slowly faded, culminating in an outpouring of support against the company when it came out that gen:LOCK season 1 was allegedly produced under horrible conditions and abusive management that forced animators to ruin their health and live at the studio office to meet deadlines. Maybe it was an anime, after all.

Hard to know, but the presence of that blithe corporate mismanagement makes it clear that the casual "just friends making funny videos together" culture was dead. It solidified that whatever Rooster Teeth used to be was completely over. It's where most people I know lost any lingering emotional investment they had with the brand and either moved to more insular fandoms for RWBY and RvB or just tossed them out altogether.

I don't know if that's fair. To me, it's more that indie internet creators inevitably hit a wall when it comes to growing their reach and resources. The internet opened a lot of avenues, but there is undeniable calcification at the top echelons of entertainment that you can't overcome. Combine that with a lot of these folks not being all that business-minded, and I can see why it would seem reasonable to, for lack of a better word, sell out. It's essentially a much larger version of the early YouTube phenomenon of signing with "YouTube networks" that would allegedly help them make ad revenue but skimmed money off thousands of channels and did nothing.

To be fair, living well as a corporate creator is also getting less and less true! Everyone's dreams are being crushed equally under the boots of myopic executives who view all art and entertainment as spreadsheets that need to be balanced!

It's possible, but honestly, if I were a RWBY fan, I would rather it end inconclusively instead of being picked up by a new company to be milked for money. As always, I suggest following creators rather than brands or IPs, so if the folks behind any Rooster Teeth product you like wind up somewhere else, support them. They're the reason you liked it in the first place.

I hope that's the case. Even when I'm not personally interested in what they're making, healthy creator-owned studios make any industry a more vibrant and creative place. If there's anything to be learned from the legacy of Rooster Teeth, it's that something can succeed and grow in ways you'd never imagine, and I hope that means we can see both online and traditional media bounce back from the screw-ups of corporate ghouls. So we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, you know where to find us: