YMMV / RWBY: Ice Queendom

• Awesome Moments: After having not used it since the Nevermore fight, Yang finally unleashes her semblance in episode 11. It single-handedly takes down the massive Big Nicholas robot, breaking it apart through a single punch straight through its fist.
• Awesome Music: The haunting rendition of "Mirror, Mirror" sang in episode 5. Being sung in English by Megumi Toyoguchi helps with the tone. There's also the version sung by Nightmare Weiss in Chapter 9, which is even more haunting, on top of being incredibly depressing.
• Fan Nickname: Because of the large amount of Les Yay between Ruby and Weiss, some fans have called Ice Queendom the "White Rose anime"
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When RWBY first aired in 2013^* The initial "Red" trailer actually first released in November 2012, it sparked massive debates across the Internet about whether it classified as an anime; the topic had to be banned on r/anime for being too controversial and Anime News Network dropped all coverage of it after its debut. Almost a decade later, Volume 1 is revamped as an introduction into an anime spin-off of the show.
  • RWBY's debut trailer had many comparing the then-upcoming series to Black★Rock Shooter, with Monty Oum himself citing the CG-rendered fight scenes of the TV anime based on Black Rock Shooter's OVA as an example of the merits of animating RWBY in 3D. huke, Black Rock Shooter's primary creator, would end up doing character designs for Ice Queendom.
  • Blazblue Cross Tag Battle; a game that features the "RWBY" cast, would have them appear in the 2D animated opening sequence. 4 years later, they would have a 2D anime dedicated to themselves
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Those who were primarily interested in the anime for the original story were not too thrilled by the first three episodes being a heavily abridged Recap of the first volume, with fans seeing them as nothing more than a waste of time that could've been given to further developing the original story instead. On the other side of the fence, those hoping for a rework of the first season which would have adjusted some of its Early-Installment Weirdness, Fridge Logic and less well-handled moments of also felt the trope as Ice Queendom is ultimately still pretty true to the original in what it does recreate (though to its credit, Yang's controversial treatment of Ruby when it comes to the need to find friends has been changed to be more supportive).
• Les Yay:
  • Weiss desperately wants to be team-mates with Pyrrha, with her behaving at the airship locker like she has a celebrity crush. Even after she fails to be put on the same team as Pyrrha, she continues watching and mimicking Pyrrha from afar like a stalker. One of the things Weiss literally cries about later on is not being Pyrrha's team-mate. In her dream world, Weiss "cattily" reduces Pyrrha's teammates to prisoners in the Sillies Jail, who constantly mewl like pet-shop kittens, implying some level of resentment towards them "claiming" Pyrrha. Pyrrha is later seen in the same jail, though unlike the rest of her team, she's dressed immaculately, and is shown singing, as if Weiss is clinging (or perhaps projecting) onto an idealized, perfect image of Pyrrha.
  • In Weiss' dream, Blake is a Faunus who is banned from the empire but keeps sneaking her way into the inner echelons of Weiss' sanctum. As Sun points out, since the dream is a World of Symbolism, Weiss can apparently not stop thinking about Blake, no matter how much she tries.
  • Weiss's dream heavily implies that for all the complaining Weiss does, she actually does care very deeply about Ruby, which unfortunately gets twisted by Nega-Weiss into an almost Yandere-like obsession, where she hunts Ruby and Yang down so that she can lock the former away in a tower because Ruby is "precious" to her.
  • Ruby speaks with Weiss in her own dream world about things that are precious to her. When Weiss starts to leave, Ruby asks, "Aren't we sleeping here together?". Sure, it's supposed to be because they're in their dorm room and be in bunk beds, but...
  • Not surprising given future developments there's some between Blake and Yang as well, especially once they end up separated from Ruby. Yang is frantic over Blake's plan to get possessed on purpose and needs a lot of convincing, being uncharacteristically twitchy the whole time. When it does happen, the Nightmare actually doesn't hurt her, but instead helps her by giving her Jaune's discarded cloak, showing how much Blake cares about Yang even when under the influence of a Grimm. It's also specifically Yang who can get through to Blake. Blake, when she realized Yang is there, finds enough strength to physically break through the illusion of Adam - the person she fears most in the world - to reach out to Yang. The smile the two share when Yang pulls her out of the Nightmare version of her is nothing short of loving.
• Memetic Psychopath: Some viewers jokingly treat Pyrrha this way due to her offer to team up with Jaune coming across as oddly sinister given the ominous background music during the entire scene.
• Memetic Molester: In the exact same scene, partially due to how she speaks to him and her pose bringing to mind the "Ara ara" meme, some viewers have joked that Pyrrha wanted a bit more than a partnership from Jaune.
• Memetic Mutation: See Here.
• Moe:
  • Ruby's more childlike traits are highlighted here, and it makes her all the cuter.
  • Penny also is given a much more childlike attitude, with Genki Girl traits and saying sound effects out loud, making her even more adorable than in canon.
  • The miniature versions of Weiss in episode 7. They all represent her suppressed childhood desires, and they're all too eager to express them once they escape captivity and start rampaging around town, happily slicing up robots and even Grumpy Klein.
• Narm: The term "Big Nicholas" is supposed to reflect the level of respect and control Nicholas and his legacy have over Atlas and is used as a way to display and enforce loyalty. However, the phrase doesn't work in English and creates a great deal of comedy moments, from turning Ruby's failure to respond correctly to a robot using it as a codeword into slapstick comedy, to the robotic greeting ritual between Jacques and Weiss reflecting parodies of dystopian settings. The fandom has had a lot of fun with the phrase as a result.
• She Really Can Act: Despite retreading events of Volume 1, hearing Team RWBY with their updated voices is phenomenal, showing how far the cast has come when compared to the original Volume. But the standouts are Kara and Arryn, who get to give Weiss and Blake vastly different performances with their Nightmare selves.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus is that it isn't awful and does have some good moments, but it suffers from inconsistent animation that fluctuates between good and bad (a Studio SHAFT staple), odd writing choices, and poor pacing. It has also been argued that the dragged-out plot might have better suited a movie or OVA rather than a 12-episode show.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Episode 4 reveals Weiss' dreamscape. It's a miserable existence where she imagines her father watching everyone and everything like an authoritarian dictator, her brother is a deceitful bat, spying on her and pestering her, and Winter is nothing more than a Nightmare-controlled Great Big Book of Everything, whom Weiss constantly relies on for information and judgment. She is an isolated girl in a heavily controlled environment, not allowed to think or live for herself and barely able to connect with the rest of the world around her. It's easy to see how she's absorbed toxic beliefs given the environment she's been forcibly raised in.
  • In Episode 5, Ruby runs into the Dream World version of Pyrrha inside a cage, who begins singing "Mirror Mirror", leaving the girl entranced by it. When Yang calls her, she solemnly waves to Pyrrha and the rest of Team JNPR who stepped out with her. Even more saddening is that, even if this is how Weiss feels inside, she's unwittingly got Pyrrha correct!
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The removal of most of Jeff Williams' score has received this reception from some, feeling his soundtrack is iconic and a major part of RWBY's identity, with many feeling that the new score by Nobuko Toda and Kazuma Jinnouchi, while not bad, doesn't live up to the original show's score by Williams, with many lamenting the lack of any version of Red Like Roses during the recreation of the battle with the Nevermore.
  • While fans were cautiously accepting of the compressed retelling that Ice Queendom offered early on with the hope that the series would either expand or fix some issues that plagued the series since conception, Episode 3 drove away a lot of potential fans by effectively crunching the rest of the season together in a way that both harmed the story telling and caused some major scenes being completely skipped over, most prominently Jaune's entire arc is put aside and the finale fight with Roman, Blake, Sun and Penny is almost completely off-screen. This caused some fans to become exasperated and drop the series as a result.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In Chapter 8, Ruby ends up in a nightmare-infested dream-world of her very own, which has a ton of interesting potential. Unfortunately, the next episode contains a single scene of her talking to Weiss, and then Jaune wakes her up shortly after the scene ends.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Many of the scenes are outright spectacular looking, with several key moments in fights taking up a major Animation Bump, in particular Ruby's fight with Roman's grunts in the first episode, and Team RWBY taking down the Giant Nevermore in the second having some incredibly dynamic, detailed, and fluid animation.

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