The day that we have all been waiting for has finally arrived. A glimpse into what the universe of Cosmic Rage.
Episode 1 is currently in production, stay tuned for more production updates and don’t forget to share with your friends!
Last week I posted about prologues and ways that they can be used to help enhance stories. I was referring to the first three episodes of Soul Eater and also Crest of the Stars. However, I completely blanked out on something I saw a while back, a trailer to the Black character in Roosterteeth’s RWBY project. Here are all of the characters prologues, in the order they were released.
I first heard of Roosterteeth when I was in college and a friend showed me the world of Red vs Blue. If your not familiar with that, thats a whole other rabbit hole you will have to look into, but you can start here.
Anyways, I believe it was at some point around season 4 or 5 that I caught up with Red vs Blue and admittedly kinda forgot about it, even though it was hilarious. It was probably around the time I was moving around. But one day I was on Anime News Network (ANN) and saw a trailer to the Black character in RWBY. When I was at Akon and met up with my composer, he told me that he went to the Roosterteeth panel to see the final character, Yellow, trailer revealed. I planned on going to the panel but the line was super long and there was no way I was going to get into the panel.
So post A-kon I recently decided to check out all of the RWBY trailers (as seen above). They all do we a very nice job of building up intrigue for each character. At the end of the Yellow trailer we see that the original Red character is her sister. In the Black trailer we see the character leave a guy behind. At the end of each trailer we are shown the silhouettes of the remaining characters that we know nothing about at certain points. We also get the released date of when we can expect the next video or unveiling of the world of these characters.
I felt compelled to show show these trailers because we are currently in the process of seeing the power of the prologue that Roosterteeth is utilizing as we approach the July date of yet another announcement or unveiling. I guess we will both have to stay tuned to see where this trip ends up. I am looking forward to seeing where it goes.
One of the titles I have been watching here and there is Soul Eater released by Funimation. Check out the trailer below if your looking for a fun title to watch.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTTCUzmHKvI&w=560&h=315]
Anyways, I’m not here today to write up a review on the series, that will come much later. What I wanted to talk about today, was the use prologues as the first 3 episodes of the series. In Soul Eater, there are characters that are reapers and characters that act as weapons for the reapers. In the first episode we look at reaper Maka and her death scythe Soul. We get a chance to see the interaction between the 2 characters and also learn a bit about the universe the story is set in. Soul has to eat 99 souls and the 100th soul he eats needs to be a witch for him to become a death scythe.
In the second episode we meet the team of Black Star and Tsubaki. Again we get a chance to see the dynamic between the two characters and learn about them as well.
The final episode of their prologue is the team of Death the Kid and his two weapons Liz and Patty. We learn some of the perks of Death the Kid’s personality in this episode and see his weakness based on asymmetry.
Now some people may feel that prologues aren’t needed. Information in prologues could be integrated into a story, but on the flip side, by using a prologue, you can cut down on filler and recap segments. Another benefit of using a prologue, is that the story teller can tell a story and use a prologue to fill in some blanks as the story progresses.
For instance, I am toying around with the idea of utilizing prologues to flesh out more of the characters backstories before each episode. I haven’t committed to the idea yet, but I like the idea of being able to add additional information to the story and characters without having to dedicate an entire episode to it or by writing an extended paragraph.
You don’t see a lot of prologues for series these days, so it was great to watch a series and see them utilize essentially 3 prologues for each team of characters. I personally felt it was a great way to connect with a character before seeing how they interact with others and the decisions they will make in the universe of the story. Generally this type of episode, in anime series, tend to happen mid series or the later half. The series that tends to come to mind with this approach is Wolf’s Rain.
Another different series that uses prologues is the Crest of the Stars franchise, which would play a small prologue before each episode. Which is the approach I may take. Stay tuned for another update on Monday!