User blog comment:Gundam Legilis/What if The Red Trailer was better?/@comment-410526-20160301132340

In line with the other two comments, I don't think this would have been "better" at all. The Trailers were a completely different animal to the series, in that they relied almost entirely on visual storytelling (the first two especially) rather than exposition and dialogue to get their point across. What grabbed people's attention in the first place, and the reason why the "Red" Trailer has >9 million views on YouTube, is the mystery and the speculation that comes from that open-ended visual storytelling.

Ultimately, it comes down to two very different methods of presentation, one which tells the audience what's up ("Hi I'm totally-not-evil-Cortana and here's what's up with humans and Grimm") and one which shows the audience something and lets them draw their own conclusions (there's this badass girl who kinda looks like red riding hood and she fights shadow wolves in a forest, you decide what's up with that).

The Trailers did the latter option really, really well. They might not have established character quite as well, but they definitely established the strengths of the series and what to expect from the get-go. The "Red" Trailer was the most effective exposure for RWBY that could ever be crammed into 3 minutes and 30 seconds, and I think adding dialogue would definitely have detracted from that impact.