Thread by @sytokun

Arknights Is Secretly A RWBY Rewrite:
a crack theory that I've spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about

My theory is that Arknights' creators knew about RWBY and wrote it with elements that directly respond to RWBY's story flaws, specifically the White Fang & Faunus.

Exhibit 1: Production
Hypergryph (Arknights' developer) was founded in January 2017 and the first trailer for Arknights dropped in August 2019.

This development time would have roughly spanned the runtime of Volumes 4-6, aka much of the White Fang/Adam arc. This brings us to:

Exhibit 2: Faunus/Ancients
RWBY has the half-animal Faunus, an important race we still don't know the origins to 9 years later.

Compare this with Arknights' Ancients. Only half-animal humans exist in the setting, and each subspecies has their own distinct culture and history.

Exhibit 3: Dust/Originium
RWBY has Dust, a crystalline power source that facilitates elemental energy.

Compare with Arknights' Originium, which is also a crystal used for energy and the casting of magical Arts. However, Originium is dangerous and causes the disease of Oripathy.

Exhibit 4: White Fang/Reunion
In RWBY, the White Fang are a militant faction formed by oppressed Faunus.

In Arknights, Reunion is instead formed by victims of Oripathy, aka the Infected, who are oppressed worldwide. Both are major antagonists for these stories' first story arcs.

Exhibit 5: Velvet/Amiya
Velvet is one of RWBY's first Faunus characters. Her very first scene shows her struggling with discrimination.

Arknights' protagonist is Amiya, a brown-haired bunny girl and an Infected, who fights to end discrimination against people like her. Um??

Exhibit 5: Hypergryph got Jeff and Casey Lee Williams, of ALL the artists in the world, to write and perform a song for Arknights.

And then the song legit sounds like you can fit it in RWBY's White Fang storyline with just 1-2 word changes.

You're legit messing with me here HG

SUMMARY
A world populated by half-animal people
Fueled by magic rocks
With a half-animal girl fighting against an extremist freedom fighter group

The only difference is that the oppression is based on disease instead of racism -- yea if I saw the WF plot I'd change that shit too

CONCLUSION
> Hypergryph knows RWBY exists
> Not only does HG know RWBY exists, Arknights was written as a response to RWBY's incredibly shallow White Fang storyline
> mfw when a professional RWBY rewrite already exists
> tl/dr: play Arknights if you want Faunus and WF done right