11/24/2024 - Arcane review

Hello all, once again it is time for me to review media, this time however, it is a TV show, arcane. I've never tried to review something serialized before, so you'll have to bear with me as I try to fit a pretty decent show into a relatively short for its length review. I feel my review may be somewhat tainted as I'm writing this just after finishing the finale, and of course its been nearly a year since I saw season 1, I still remember most all of it, and season 2 does a good job of not actually needing a whole lot of season 1 to be really really good, but I'm just putting it out there that it has been awhile since I've seen season 1. I also want to say I do not watch a lot of TV shows, not that tv shows are bad, I just typically like more contained stories. HOWEVER, after this I may be picking up some new shows.... 

Final Rating: 3.5/5
(though season 1 is probably more a 4 or 4.5)

Alright, with the prologue out of the way, Lets talk about arcane. If you dont know what arcane is (somehow) I will be giving an overview of what it is, but unlike some of my other reviews, I will not be summarizing the story, there's simply too much to cover. 

Arcane is a spin off from the hit game league of legend (I cannot believe I am praising league) that takes place in one of the settings of the lore, a thriving city called Piltover, as well as the underbelly lawless city called Zaun. The show follows Vi as she tries to get her sister, powder (jinx) back, or rescue her, or.. listen a lot happens, point is Vi is sort of our protagonist. 


Arcane covers an insane amount of ground in a generally short time span, it's actually super impressive, and that's the first thing I want to talk about: the sheer amount of events that they manage to fit into a 2 season show. So much happened in fact, it makes some of the events from season 1 seem trivial by comparison, the main characters come a very very very long way. There is, of course, a central thread (even if we dont know it till the show is half over) that being the hextech (talk more about that later). But I'm already getting lost in this review, back to the impressive aspect of fitting a lot into your show. Using examples of other great shows, such as Breaking Bad, I sort of see the typical show like this running something like 5 to 8 seasons, with 8 being on the long side for something serialized and not episodic. This allows plenttyyyy of time for a slowburn show. something monumental doesn't happen every episode of breaking bad, and it doesn't have too! I'm not really sure what the exact combinations of words is, but hopefully you understand the point I'm trying to make: Most shows use key episodes to display key events, and then run in between episodes to build to said events. This sets a stable pacing that makes the show easy to follow while still being impactful. Arcane does not do this. Every episode in arcane is a key episode, so much so that even my mom, who I watched this with, lost the plot once or twice. This show moves INCREDIBLY quick. and for me ? I love that. Some of you may know one of my all time favorite anime kill la kill operates much under the same function, Fast paced breakneck speed plot. Things are ALWAYS happening. Unlike kill la kill, this show isn't all action, but the point still stands, even in the comparative downtime, the plot moves quick. Yet, for me at least, this didn't make any of the key moments any less exciting. I never found myself desensitized to deaths of important characters, I always found the next event to keep my attention just as well as the last. Anyway I realize I have not spoken much on the plot itself here, but rather just the pacing, but I felt it deserved its own section in this review. 

Talking about some Big Picture Stuff: I love hextech, I love how it seemed like a background element of the show. It was always present from the very first scene where the hextech blew up on Vi and gang in episode 1, but we didn't see it's relevance until much later. I feel many of the plots share that sentiment, their implications reaching far beyond what initially thought. OF course the jinx arc comes to mind. What started off as Vi trying to rescue her sister turned into a moral debate about whether or not those who have done evil can still be good.  I enjoyed the show's commitment to the fact that nobody was the good guy here, everyone is flawed and complicated and subject to emotion. I think Victor sought to end suffering by removing emotion, but realized that by removing emotion you have been left with nothing. The stance being that suffering is worth it as long as there is also good, or at least preferable to "perfect nothingness" and that was an interesting conclusion. The depiction of class struggle, while valiant, I feel still fell into a slight trap of "poor = violent" as we saw little of regular Zaun life other than aggression. 

I appreciate the plotlines as far as they go, the characters are obviously really cool and generally fleshed out especially in season 1, As far as main characters go I think I probably liked Vi the most even though she seemingly got put on the backburner in terms of development during season 2.  The plotline with viktor was obviously the MOST throughline throughout the show, and I would say that between season 1 and season 2's big change of pace and character motivations, his stayed pretty consistent. 

Again, there are a lot of plot lines, a lot of characters, and unfortunately a lot of them are sort of nerfed between season 1 and season 2, the downside of getting this big noxus and viktor plot is we sort of lose that fight between Zaun and Piltover, we lose Vi "wanting piltover to respect zaun" because generally by the end nothing has really changed for zaun, it remains, as Vi puts it to Cait "the dirt beneath her nails". Anyway, if I were to write more about plotlines I would really have to watch the show again start to finish with this writing in mind.

As for worldbuilding, it is.... ok! serviceable. This show isn't really trying to build a comprehensive world, and it doesn't have time too in any case. The setting itself is incredibly beautiful, but I'll talk about art direction in a bit. We dont really get to know much about our setting outside of our main characters, which was one of the biggest flaws I found with the show, the world felt like it didn't really move outside of our main characters, this wasn't always true, but often I felt it was. This was somewhat offset with how quickly the plot moves, and they didn't really have time to develop such a world of course. But yeah. the world sometimes feels like a set for characters to act on rather than a living breathing society.

And that's my first thoughts! again, this is a show that I really should have been taking notes on, just because there is an absurd amount to say, and I'm already 2 years out from arcane season 1. I may return to this review sometime and flesh it out more if I decide to rewatch things later.

Thanks everyone, next TV review will probably be on "wolfs rain" which I think will be a little easier to do.