RWBY fans who will be on hand for this year’s iteration of Rooster Teeth’s RTX convention will be among the first to see RWBY: Ice Queendom, the new anime series from Japanese studio Shaft.
The first-ever theatrical screening of RWBY: Ice Queendom will be held at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas on Thursday, June 30 — the eve of RTX Austin 2022, which will properly take place from Friday, July 1 to Sunday, July 3. It was nine years ago that the original RWBY series premiered at RTX 2013.
Ice Queendom will premiere on television in Japan on July 3. That same day, viewers in the United States will be able to stream the anime series on Crunchyroll and Rooster Teeth FIRST. Additionally, according to the official Ice Queendom website, the first three episodes of the anime will be available to stream on YouTube for a limited time starting on Friday, June 24, exclusively in Japan.
“When we premiered RWBY at RTX in 2013, I never imagined that we would be where we are today with the show,” said RWBY showrunner Kerry Shawcross. “We’re fans of anime and that’s how this all started. To see RWBY inspire Japanese artists to create RWBY: Ice Queendom is surreal to say the least. It’s only fitting that our biggest fans be the first to experience this show at the event where it all started.”
Created by the late, great Monty Oum, Rooster Teeth’s RWBY is an anime-inspired, CG-animated series that currently has eight seasons under its belt, not to mention a variety a spinoffs and tie-ins across various mediums. New information on the upcoming ninth season is expected at RTX. In the meantime, Ice Queendom was announced in March 2022 as a proper anime adaptation of the action series.
Ice Queendom stars Saori Hayami, Yoko Hikasa, Yu Shimamura and Ami Koshimizu as the voices of franchise protagonists Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long, respectively. Hayami, Hikasa, Shimamura and Koshimizu previously voiced the characters in the Japanese dub of Rooster Teeth’s RWBY. In an interesting role reversal, original RWBY stars Lindsay Jones, Kara Eberle, Arryn Zech and Barbara Dunkelman will voice their respective characters in the English dub of Shaft’s Ice Queendom.
An official trailer for Ice Queendom re-imagines key scenes from Rooster Teeth’s RWBY Volume 1 with a more traditional anime art style. However, the new series is not a one-to-one adaptation of the original. Rather, Ice Queendom will “establish the world of RWBY before taking viewers on a brand new adventure that RWBY fans have never seen.”
Source: Rooster Teeth; Anime “RWBY ICE QUEENDOM” official site