#viz

The female cast being so extensive as it is.

DireGentleman put it well here but a too common element of certain stories has been that they'll have a few or one female character amongst their sausage fest of a cast. Few of these cases are active intent on the author's part but it does speak to a "male as default" pitfall that is very much rendered invisible by a sphere of normality.

As such, you'll get female commanders in armies where the troops are all shown as male (@swan2swan made a few posts on the "female Stormtrooper" problem) for one and, for a classic example, one female character amongst an ensemble of boys.

Sometimes she's one of them and other times she's an April O'Neil to their Ninja Turtles, a normie to their extraordinary lives. Either way, there won't be much in the way of gender diversity. Especially if it's based on a toy line that subscribes to the "boys or bust" mentality that would rather kill off a profit that pivot.

But that's been dissected better in other posts...

Thankfully, RWBY was created first and foremost as an animated story project before the thought of merchendising was considered since RT wasn't super-duper confident it'd stick. Now it has firmly supplanted Red Vs. Blue as Rooster Teeth's flagship animation (the latter gearing up for its final season even).

This frees it from the shackles of heavily corporatized media that would prefer a toyetic show have a male prescense in the story or one where the female prescense is... palatable.

No character has to be the token girl who's either super bubbly and awkward or super stand-offish before the right guy comes along or rather reserve until the right guy comes along or one of the boys until the right- okay, I've made my point.

And it goes beyond the main cast as there's a smattering of girls and boys among the ensemble so it never feels like they were tacked on when the writers realizes, "Oh sh*t, forgot the estrogen," by Season Four or something.

If anything, Jaune is the token girl but genderflipped. He has healing powers. He has an arc but it all ultimately comes back to the main girls for the bigger plotlines. He's often the normal one that balks at the eccentricities of the girls and their shenanegins.

I mean... HE GREW UP WITH MANY SISTERS AND NO BROTHERS. Does that cliche not ring a bell.