RWBY: The Abridged Series
, is, well, an
Abridged Series of the popular online show
RWBY. In the usual vein of abridged series, it’s a
hilariously dark adaptation of the original show, created by
Stormy Kopa and
IndyRevolution. Ruby is a creepy
Sociopathic Hero who’s dating her scythe. Yang is barely a
Cool Big Sis who often tries to get away from Ruby. Blake is an anarchist. Weiss is a racist
Rich Bitch who hides a thick German accent by sniffing Dust (read: drugs). And we're just getting started...
Episodes:
RWBY: The Abridged Series contains examples of:
- Accidental Murder: Ruby unknowingly killed Roman Torchwick’s thugs with her fancy moves instead of just knocking them out, though she doesn’t actually feel bad about it when she finds out.
- Accidental Pervert: After Yang food-poisons Jaune, he accidentally runs into the girls' bathroom to vomit.
Random Girl: “Ah! Get out of here pervert!” (starts beating up Jaune}
Jaune: “OW! Hey, stop it! It was an accident, I’m sorry! Ah, stop pulling my hair, ow, ow! I’m a natural blonde!”
- Adaptational Comic Relief: The Creatures of Grimm are now capable of speech. Their weird, stereotypical or heavily accented voices combined with the bizarre situations they get caught up in makes up several of the abridged series' jokes.
- Adaptational Heroism: The Creatures of Grimm are less psychopathic monsters bent on the destruction of humanity and more quirky animals. There are still bad Grimm, like the Death Stalker that molests Jaune, but for the most part, they're polite, friendly and have a good sense of humor.
- Adaptational Villainy:
- Weiss Schnee. While Weiss was a bit of a jerk early on in the original show, she eventually grew out of it and became a nicer person. She also became a huntress in training to regain her family's honor after her father’s immoral (and suspected illegal) business practices damaged the Schnee Dust Company’s reputation. In the abridged series, Weiss is a cold, callous Jerkass who fully takes advantage of her being heiress to the Schnee Dust Company. She openly abuses her employees, kidnaps Yang’s friends and repurposes them to do what she wants, asks Pyrrha if she wants to go faunus hunting and takes drugs-I mean “Dust” to hide a thick German accent.
- Ruby Rose. Ruby was originally a very idealistic and optimistic character who was only interested in becoming a huntress because she always wanted to help people. Here, Ruby is at best a sociopathic anti-hero who has no problem with committing homicide when protecting herself, stealing other people's possessions, getting high off Dust, and laughing at the misery of others.
- Nora Valkyrie. Nora was obsessed with trying to be teammates with Ren in the original show, but it was out of them being longtime friends and while she did have a sadistic streak, Nora only really had it towards Grimm and people like Cardin. Here, Nora has no problem with trying to Blackmail Ren into being her teammate and seriously considers murdering all of the other students just so there’s no risk Ren will end up partnering with someone else. She’s also a serious drug addict if her comment about stealing fifty pounds of Dust from Weiss is anything to go by.
- Professor Ozpin. While he doesn’t seem like it at first, it becomes increasingly obvious from episode one onward that abridged Ozpin is a much worse person than his canon counterpart. He accepts Ruby into his academy, despite knowing she just killed five people, he launches all of the first year applicants into a dangerous forest to see how many of them survive because he couldn’t be bothered to come up with a proper training exercise, he nearly walks away from said event because all of the students (yes, even Jaune) actually survived the landing and only doesn’t leave because Weiss set the forest on fire and “made things interesting,” and episode four’s ending credits imply this particular forest is a legally protected animal and tree habitat and that Ozpin is fully willing to break the law just for his own amusement. He also punishes Ruby for eating all of the cookies by halting her character development for most of volume one and two, and then gives it to team JNPR.
- Glynda Goodwitch. While not completely obvious as she’s mostly just Professor Ozpin’s Beleaguered Assistant who doesn’t get paid enough to put up with his antics, but Goodwitch doesn’t care about the well-being of Beacon Academy’s first year applicants. She expressed indifference to whether the students can survive their initiation test since they already paid their tuitions, which implies she’s only working with Ozpin and Beacon for financial reasons.
- The Death Stalker. While most Grimm are given friendlier interpretations, the Death Stalker Pyrrha and Jaune run into is somehow made to be far worse than in the original series. The Death Stalker was an antagonist, but it was simply a mindless creature who just happened to have an instinct to Kill All Humans it ran across and Jaune accidentally provoked it by grabbing its tail. Here, the Death Stalker is a sadistic monster that molests Jaune at the first opportunity, and is all but outright stated to be a rapist. The Death Stalker expresses no concern for Jaune’s safety when it tosses him into the forest as part of a contest with Pyrrha to see who gets to keep him and attacks Pyrrha when it loses. The Death Stalker shows Ruby absolutely no mercy when it attacks her for trying to kill it, and while the Death Stalker is in the right for defending itself, it goes far beyond that when it injures Ruby somewhere “important” simply for its own amusement. The Death Stalker also speaks in a stereotypical gay guy voice for no logical reason.
- All Germans Are Nazis: When explaining how her day went to Yang, Ruby refers to Weiss as a "Coked-Out Nazi" and “This Stupid Nazi Girl.” Weiss has a very noticeable German accent whenever she’s not sniffing Dust and her first line in the series has her fantasizing about performing an ethnic cleansing on Beacon Academy.
- Ambiguously Gay: While we don’t know their actual gender, the King Tajitu pair that Ren gets into a fight with, and the Death Stalker Pyrrha and Jaune run into have effeminate gay guy voices and speak in stereotypical gay slang.
- Arson, Murder, and Lifesaving: When Goodwitch is interrogating Ruby, Professor Ozpin comes in and, completely ignoring Goodwitch’s protests, points out to Ruby that even though she didn’t stop the robbery, she did place herself in great danger to protect a vulnerable old man from being robbed by committing homicide in the name of justice. Ruby only attacked the thieves for trying to steal her jacket and actually stole a pair of headphones herself from the same old man.
- Bad Boss: Weiss forcing one of her workers to sleep in a freezer and then slapping him when he complains about not being able to feel his face is only the first in a long list of ways she abuses her employees.
Weiss: “What is wrong with my workers?”
Blake: “Slaves.”
Weiss: "
Servants! They're not doing any work cause they’re all stoned out of their minds!”
Yang: “Oh yeah, I was really bored, so I decided to share some of your cookies with them and see what would happen… They look like they're having a good time.”
Weiss: “They're my employees, they’re not supposed to be having a good time!”
- Background Music / Climactic Music: The series has utilized a few licensed tracks here and there, but to avoid getting blocked for copyright, have mostly stuck to using original music written by Stormy's band, Eris and the Pantheon. These songs usually appear in action scenes during episodes.
- Big Good: Lampshaded when Professor Ozpin points out that the students are idiots for pranking him when he could probably level the entire school by himself, but can’t exact his vengeance against them specifically because he’s the series Big Good.
- Big "NO!": Ruby lets loose one of these when Ozpin threatens her standing as the show's protagonist, as payback for eating all the cookies.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Both Ruby and Ozpin seem to be aware of the fact that they are fictional characters.
- Brick Joke: After Ruby discovers Roman's (rather flimsy) attempt to break her up with Crescent Rose, he declares that he will have to find other means to entertain himself. He seems to have found them later in the episode, by impersonating Roman Bellic and annoying Niko by inviting him to go bowling together.
- Butt-Monkey: Jaune Arc. He gets food-poisoned by Yang and accidentally runs into the ladies' restroom by mistake when he needs to vomit, getting beaten up in the process, gets threatened by Ruby for fifteen minutes straight, is shot multiple times by Nora using Ren’s guns, gets impaled in one of his arms right after coming out of the infirmary for said gunshot wounds, is catapulted into the woods right as he’s about to confess cheating his way into Beacon Academy, gets impaled in his other arm when Pyrrha saves him from falling to his death, then he’s forced to rely on her just to stay alive, which results in him getting repeatedly molested by Pyrrha, then he gets molested by a freaking Death Stalker and thrown into the forest by said giant scorpion. This all happens to him in just the first four episodes.
- Censored for Comedy: All curse words are censored, although this does nothing to make the series more tasteful.
- Comedic Sociopathy: The characters will very rarely be concerned when their friends are in difficult or threatening situations, choosing to laugh at them instead.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: Ozpin's punishment to Ruby for eating all the cookies.
Ozpin: "Your character development will be halted almost immediately for the remainder of volume 1. And quite possibly into volume 2 as well."
Ruby: "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
- Cool Big Sis: Zig-Zagged. Yang is still Ruby's older sister, and the confident, outgoing one of the group, but she is clearly disturbed by some of her younger sister’s creepy habits and tries to avoid her as much as possible. She acts nice to Ruby but in reality doesn't seem to like her very much.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Shockingly enough, the creatures of Grimm. Ruby intentionally kills an avian Grimm who was just minding his own business and enjoying a beautiful sunny afternoon. Ruby and Weiss started a fight with a pack of Beowolves after Weiss accidentally insulted them and the Beowolves didn’t even seem that interested in the fight. When Weiss and Ruby get into an argument, the Beowolves simply ask if they need a minute alone and later tell them to get a room. The black King Tajitu head Ren gets into a fight with was just trying to be nice, believing Ren was lost in the woods and the white head attacked him only after Ren stabbed his friend. The Ursa pair did make a swipe at Yang, but she severely beats the crap out of one of them just for slicing off a piece of her hair and when the other one tries to negotiate a surrender, Blake kills him. The only Grimm in the first four episodes to be unapologetically bad was the Death Stalker, who molested Jaune and tossed him into the forest and later brutally beat the crap out of Ruby.
- Deadpan Snarker: A lot of Blake’s dialogue consists of her making witty comments to other people. A pretty good example appears when Yang gets Ruby to try to talk to Blake.
Blake: "It’s called, go the
f(BLEEP) away."
Ruby: "Oh, err… what’s it about?"
Blake: "It’s about, none of your damn business."
- Depraved Homosexual: Possibly. The Death Stalker Jaune and Pyrrha run into has no problem with molesting Jaune and then tossing him into the forest as part of a Catfight with Pyrrha over him.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Roman Torchwick is frequently made fun of for looking like a woman. The Dust Till Dawn shopkeeper tells him he looks very pretty like his daughter and offers to sell him a bikini. Ruby insults Roman by rhetorically asking him if anyone ever told him his balls never dropped. Glynda Goodwitch calls him Dorothy. Cinder jokes that Mercury wants to take him out on a date. Lisa Lavender never returns his calls because she doesn’t date guys who wear more eyeliner than her.
- Dude, Not Funny!: In-Universe. Yang tells a couple of jokes about faunus to Blake. While the first one just isn’t funny and Blake is left confused by its intention. The other two are really tasteless and offensive jokes about faunus suffering in society and Yang pisses off Blake in the process.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The conversation between Ruby and Weiss at the end of episode three sounds more like Ruby is trying to convince Weiss to touch her genitals rather than her weapon.
Weiss: “For the last time, I don’t want to play with it!”
Ruby: (zips in front of Weiss) “Do you want to hold it?”
Weiss: (reels back in surprise) “No!”
Ruby: “Do you want me to pull it out?”
Weiss: “Ruby, if you mention scythe one more time, I am going to put it through your kidney’s and blow your ***ing insides apart!”
- Homage: The fifth episode of the series is devoted almost entirely to My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. None of the characters seem to be aware of the change except Ren, who is quickly told off for not having enough friendship.
- The opening sequence to episode 1 matches Roman's alleyway walk as a parody to Michael Jackson's Beat It.
- Horrible Judge of Character: When Weiss asks Pyrrha if she wants to go faunus hunting with her, she completely misses the fact that Pyrrha is uncomfortable with the subject and believes she’s gaining her trust, even though Pyrrha explicitly stated she finds it immoral and that some of her best friends are faunus.
- Hypocritical Humor: Ruby tries to stop Roman because he robbed the Dust Till Dawn store. She stole her headphones from the exact same store. Later, Ruby calls out Weiss for setting the forest on fire, claiming that it wasn't the trees' fault that Weiss has a drug problem. A few seconds after this, Ruby cuts down a tree with her scythe because she can’t deal with being rejected by Weiss.
- Immune to Drugs: Near the beginning of episode three, Ren spikes Nora’s pancakes with enough sedatives to kill half the school… after she already took about twenty-five pounds of Weiss’s Dust… not only did Nora appear to be unaware of this, the drugs somehow ended up making her stronger.
- I'm Okay!: Ruby's attempt to single-handedly take on a Death Stalker results in one of these moments shortly before said Death Stalker brings the pain.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Lampshaded in episode 1 when Ruby fights Roman's thugs.
Henchman: (Shoots at Ruby) “I'll get her! I didn't go to Stormtrooper School for nothing-” (is promptly killed by Ruby).
- Insane Troll Logic: When Pyrrha questions the morality of faunus hunting, Weiss simply tells her that faunus would have basic civil rights if they were people.
- Insistent Terminology: Weiss refers to her drugs as Dust and calls what are obviously her slaves as "servants/workers/employees". Blake often calls her out on this.
Blake: "You dropped your drugs."
Weiss: "It’s Dust, you imbecile!"
(later that evening)
Weiss: "What is wrong with my workers?"
Blake: "Slaves."
Weiss: "Servants!"
- Jerkass: Weiss abuses her workers (slaves), hunts faunus for sport, kidnaps and repurposes people to do what she wants, burns everything that defies her, yells at people constantly, and is all around a very unpleasant person.
- Professor Ozpin often punishes or thinks about punishing people for the slightest indiscretions, and puts people in life-threatening danger on a regular basis for his own amusement.
- The Death Stalker that appears in episodes four and five is a (possibly) Depraved Homosexual that molests Jaune, who then tries to kidnap Jaune and make him his sex slave, and later attacks Pyrrha when she beats him in a contest to see who gets Jaune. He also brutally beats the ever-loving crap out of Ruby for no real reason other than he enjoys it.
- Ruby steals any items she likes, insults or threatens anyone who makes fun of her relationship with Crescent Rose, pesters unwilling people with questions about their weapons and mocks anyone who doesn’t measure up to her standards, is constantly killing or trying to kill Grimm simply because she can get away with it, and expresses hypocritical standards when it comes to protecting the forest.
- Blake mocks Weiss for her use of insistent terminologies, tells Ruby to leave her alone in the rudest way possible, kills an Ursa that was begging for its life, and when Jaune asks if she’s his friend, Blake responds with a, “Oh, f*** no.”
- Yang food-poisons Jaune, beats up and kills an Ursa because he sliced off a single piece of her hair, inconveniences Weiss by drugging her slaves because “she was really bored,” expresses indifference towards and might even support the racist attitudes in her society. Yang is also constantly trying to avoid Ruby, only pretending to like her whenever they’re forced to interact with each other, and Yang makes no attempt to help Ruby when she gets beat up by a Death Stalker, even when Ruby starts begging Yang to help her.
- Just for Fun: Every episode is published with a disclaimer in the video description, stating in no uncertain terms that the creators aren't making the abridged series out of disrespect.
- Kick the Dog: One of Weiss’s slaves asks her to stop making him sleep in the freezer, claiming that he couldn't feel his face. She slaps him to prove he still could and then makes him fetch her luggage. Another slave asks her for food after having not eaten in three days. In response, Weiss starts whipping him to make him carry her luggage faster, more concerned about being late than his well-being.
- It is revealed that Ozpin knows about Jaune cheating his way into Beacon Academy, yet has no problem catapulting him into a forest to see if he dies. He also does this right as Jaune chickens out and was about to confess his "secret".
- Karma Houdini: Ruby gets away with stealing a pair of headphones from the Dust Until Dawn store and killing five people because Ozpin decides he wants her to attend his school.
- Several students wrote famous quotes from fantasy novels all over Ozpin’s speech cards and ruined his Beacon Academy welcoming speech. They never face any consequences for this despite it being heavily implied Ozpin knows which students did it. Lampshaded and Justified when Ozpin complains that he can’t do anything to them because he’s the series' Big Good.
- Mistaken for Gay: Roman is straight, as shown by his interest in rekindling his relationship with Lisa Lavender. However, none of the other characters seem to believe this.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Off-screen. While Ruby was threatening Jaune with her scythe, he somehow interpreted the conversation, leading to him talking about the first time he caught his parents having sex.
- Reference Overdosed: Episode 5 in particular. The episode has received a mixed response from viewers, especially the ones who didn't get all the brony jokes.
- Scream Discretion Shot: The main characters watch as Ruby gets the crap kicked out of her by the Death Stalker, although for the viewers it's all off-screen. Nonetheless, it does not sound pleasant.
- Self-Deprecation: The fanfiction-related jokes in episode 2 were penned by and at the expense of Stormy, who is an avid fanfiction writer.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: "Boop", a song from the main RWBY series soundtrack, is an extremely cheerful, silly and upbeat song about how much Nora "together-together" loves Ren. The song is played in the background of abridged Nora's introductory scene, which has her talking about blackmailing Ren into being teammates, bludgeoning small animals, spiking a Beacon teacher's coffee with dust, and seriously contemplating mass murder.
- Shout-Out
- A very obvious Wizard of Oz reference is made in the first episode.
Goodwitch: "You ain't in Kansas anymore, Dorothy."
- Some lines are direct copies of the original show, though they are either to make fun of its usage in the original show, or are used in a very different context.
Roman: "Okay! I'll give up my life of crime and we'll be bffs! We can paint our nails, and try on clothes, and talk about cute boys!"
Jaune: "Ah, stop pulling my hair, ow, ow! I’m a natural blonde!"
- Episode 2 opens to Weiss' monologue, set to The Imperial March from Star Wars.
- A time transition screen appears in episode 2 in direct imitation of the Spongebob Squarepants style.
- The music accompanying the exterior shot of Beacon Academy is the signature Harry Potter theme.
- The words that Ruby was "writing" in is part of an actual fanfiction by Stormy, called Kopa's Legacy.
- Episode 3 borrows a direct quote from Rooster Teeth's flagship show, Red vs. Blue.
Ruby: "Dammit, who's been messing with the scope on this thing?!!"
- Many, many lines in episode 5.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Pyrrha usually inverts this trope a lot, although there was at least one instance where she plays it straight.
Jaune: “So...why did we come in here again?”
Pyrrha: “Oh, I thought that maybe this dark creepy cave where no one can see us would be a likely place to find the relic!”
- Take That!: The first episode takes direct shots at the story of the original volume 1, as well as any fans who would take offense to said jokes. Surprisingly, most viewers have seemed okay with this, or even found it funny.
- Unexplained Recovery: Nora is decapitated by Ren at the end of episode 4, and yet she reappears in the next episode with no apparent repercussions. For some reason, not even Ren questions this.
- Viewer Gender Confusion: In-Universe. Glynda Goodwitch mistakes Roman for a woman. Although she might have just been mocking his physical appearance.
