Recorded By Arizal is a Rooster Teeth slice-of-life animated short series created by Yssa Badiola revolving around the personal vlogs of the titular character Arizal, a 16-year old Filipina student who dreams of becoming a record keeper. The shorts are a prequel to an upcoming series.
Recorded By Arizal contains examples of:
- Asian and Nerdy: She's of Filipina descent, lives with her tita, and adores books about travel.
- Bookworm: Arizal loves books and her room is shown to have lots of them. She proudly displays her favorite book on a separate shelf, as it's a special edition 50th anniversary hardcover that she's never opened because she has a digital copy. She even cries when she realizes she can't bring her books with her if she does become a Record Keeper.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Arizal is very explicitly identified as Filipina behind the scenes, and displays at least one explicit sign of it in-series by calling her aunt her tita, but the world of the series seems to be one other than our own, so if Arizal and family are "Filipina" in-universe or a speculative-fiction counterpart with a different name remains to be seen.
- Nephewism: Arizal lives with her tito and tita.
- Parental Abandonment: Her mom is mentioned as having passed away. No word on dad, though.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Arizal's interview with Dante reveals that there's a lot more to the Record Keeper job than she expected. Although he tells her it's an ultimately rewarding job, he mentions some of the more difficult realities: carrying only the essentials (especially toilet paper), a lot of solitude, and sometimes the job is not what he expected. His video call also shows that he's since grown a grizzled beard and unkempt hair, he's trying to avoid an oncoming sandstorm, and his hand is injured and wrapped in bandages.
- Vlog Series: The vlogs are Arizal's extra credit summer project so she can apply to be a Record Keeper.
- Wham Episode: "Prelude: Log iv". After traversing a mountain, Arizal receives an urgent phone call from her tita about Lia coming by to give some bad news regarding Rizella. On top of that, higher-ups approve of Arizal's vlogs.
- Wham Line: In "Prelude: Log iv", Arizal's tita calls her about a visit from Lia. Her voice is shaky, so Arizal asks what the matter was.Tita Cherry: Rizella... something happened to her.
- Wham Shot: The ending of "Prelude: Log iv" has an unknown person viewing Arizal's vlog results on a screen. Two buttons appear: "accept" or "deny". The former is selected.
