General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

RWBY Chibi

RWBY Chibi is an American animated comedy web series and spin-off of RWBY, produced by Rooster Teeth Productions, in which the main series' characters appear as stylized, super-deformed "chibi" versions in short, self-contained comedy sketches with no connection to the main show's plot.¹ It was created by Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross, both writers and directors on the main series.²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Episodes of roughly 2–4 minutes, each made of several self-contained comedy shorts with little to no overarching storyline¹
Original run	May 7, 2016 to August 18, 2018 (three seasons); a fourth batch of shorts ran under Neon Konbini from May 27 to July 15, 2021¹
Episode count	64 episodes across three seasons, 74 counting the ten Neon Konbini episodes¹
Canon status	Non-canon to the main RWBY continuity¹
Voice cast	The main series' actors reprise their roles: Lindsay Jones (Ruby Rose), Kara Eberle (Weiss Schnee), Arryn Zech (Blake Belladonna), Barbara Dunkelman (Yang Xiao Long), Miles Luna (Jaune Arc), and others³
Rating	TV-PG; IMDb audience score of 7.5/10 from 666 votes⁴
Animation	3D animation in Autodesk Maya, without motion capture, by a team separate from the one working on RWBY Volume 4¹

Spoilers

Format and premise

Each episode strings together several short segments, from a few seconds to a few minutes long, in which the cast of RWBY plays tag, bakes cookies, poses as police officers, and otherwise behaves in ways the main show's action-horror plot would not allow.¹^•² The series is explicitly non-canon: nothing that happens in it affects the main story. According to Rooster Teeth's Gray G. Haddock, it was conceived as a spin-off for younger audiences after RWBY itself became more mature.¹

Although there is no overarching plot, the show relies on recurring themes and running gags, and individual shorts carry their own titles and are produced by individual teams.¹ The first episode, "Ruby Makes Cookies," is typical: Ruby attempts to bake cookies, finds a book Blake has been reading, and Weiss attends a literal game of pin the tail on the donkey.⁵

Production

The series was announced on April 1, 2016, as part of the 13th-anniversary celebrations of Rooster Teeth's founding, and began airing on May 7, 2016, as part of the studio's 2016 "Summer of Animation." It ran weekly on Saturday mornings until the start of RWBY Volume 4 in the fall, and later seasons aired in the hiatuses between main-series volumes.⁶^•⁷

Design and pipeline. The character designs came with help from Hajime "Mojojoj" Nakamura, a Japanese fan artist well known in the RWBY community, whom Rooster Teeth contacted directly; his designs served as references for the show's 3D models.¹ The show was animated in Autodesk Maya, unlike earlier volumes of RWBY, which used Smith Micro's Poser, and it did not use motion capture.¹ The production has been described as a testing ground for animation techniques, new tools, the Maya pipeline, and the crew itself, and the animators were given more creative freedom than on the main show because the shorts were less closely storyboarded.¹ Art director Pat Rodriguez described the goal as taking the original show's look and giving it a simpler, cuter style with faster-paced action.⁸

Writing sources. Ideas for shorts came from collaborative pitching sessions open to Rooster Teeth staff, and some shorts were adapted directly from fan-comics, with the original artists given writing and story credits.¹

Cast

The spin-off reuses the main series' voice cast. Lindsay Jones voices Ruby Rose, Kara Eberle voices Weiss Schnee, Arryn Zech voices Blake Belladonna, Barbara Dunkelman voices Yang Xiao Long, Miles Luna voices Jaune Arc, Michael Jones voices Sun Wukong, Jen Brown voices Pyrrha Nikos, Neath Oum voices Lie Ren, Jessica Nigri voices Cinder Fall, and Kerry Shawcross voices Neptune Vasilias.³ Gray G. Haddock voiced Roman Torchwick, and Burnie Burns voiced Taiyang Xiao Long.⁹

Release history

Season 1 ran for 24 episodes from May to October 2016, ending one week before Volume 4 premiered; season 2 also had 24 episodes, and season 3 had 16, ending with "RWBY Dreams" on August 18, 2018.¹^•² After a multi-year gap, ten further shorts aired in 2021 as segments of Neon Konbini, a Rooster Teeth anthology series, and are counted by some listings as a fourth season, bringing the total to 74 episodes.¹^•¹⁰ On March 4, 2023, most of the skit episodes were reuploaded to the Rooster Teeth Animation YouTube channel, though not in order.¹ As of recent listings, the show is not available for streaming in the United States.³

Reception and role in the franchise

The series holds a 7.5/10 audience rating on IMDb.⁴ A parent guide rates it TV-PG and recommends it for ages 8 and up, noting frequent slapstick violence played for laughs with no injury or consequences and only very mild language.¹¹

Retrospective commentary has described the show as sure of its identity and well matched to Rooster Teeth's comedic strengths, and has noted that the third season appeared cut short before the Neon Konbini revival.¹² Within the franchise, RWBY Chibi is counted among the spin-offs that expanded RWBY beyond the main series, alongside RWBY: Ice Queendom and the Justice League x RWBY crossover films.¹³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Comedy, drama, and general-genre web series › Premiered 1999 to 2016

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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