For context, I didn't know much about League of Legends besides that they're a video game. Before watching, I didn't know Arcane is a part of LoL's world. Regardless, I'm a fan of animated shows so after hearing about it I became interested.
The first episode was impressive & engaging. I was confused at times but still glued to the screen. I remember being moved by Episode 1's ending scene where Powder & Vi were talking and looking at the city. The visuals, dialogue & music altogether during that fit perfectly. Afterwards, I knew this show was going to be unique.
Fortunately the rest of the episodes were overall pretty great too. I don't think there was a boring or bad episode. Watching the story lines unfold felt like being on a roller coaster. There were a mix of action, angst, & heartfelt moments. My highlights were the action scenes and awesome battle choreography.
Other aspects such as character designs, dialogue, and world building were great too. Character designs were cool; Jinx, Vi, Ekko, Heimerdinger, and Mel's mother designs stood out the most to me. In terms of world-building, the show actually felt lived-in & immersive thanks to the dialogue, characters, events, environments, and information put out.
The music and voice acting were also superb. Shout out to the songs included and how they were used because they helped with feeling the scenes even more. Having an episode end with an epic or sad song was nicely done. Voice acting is as vital as everything else and they did not disappoint here.
The animation, without a doubt, is one of the most captivating & best parts of Arcane. There's a painting look and feel to it. It's colorful, expressive, and overall very artistic. There are animated series targeted towards adults, but still look very cartoon-ish and are usually in 2D style (nothing wrong with those), but it was just a nice change with Arcane. The cinematography and editing were well done too.
I love that the two main characters are women and sisters. I think these two things are rarely shown in mainstream animation. There's also a brewing romance between Vi & Caitlyn which I'm interested in and hope are shown more next season.
Being an adult and avid animation fan myself, it's nice to have a show with this style with mature content and themes. It reminds me of video games like Bioshock Infinite and Dishonored but in tv series format.
Now despite my praises, Arcane's first season was not perfect. There were also parts I disliked. For example: Silco & Jinx's relationship. I understand that they were portraying a father-daughter relationship, but it was also weird.I also wasn't emotionally attached to all characters (main or supporting). No one was completely uninteresting though.
Overall, I personally enjoyed Arcane S1 and would also recommend it to others. If you're a fan of badass animation, sci-fi, action, artistic storytelling, and unique characters then you might like this show.
Arcane is as good if not even better than the praise it receives. The gorgeous and artistic animation in itself would elevate a flawed and boring story to an enjoyable experience. The amount of detail and love shown in each scene is simply breathtaking and makes the setting feel that much more real.
Arcane, however, is not only visually stunning but also provides an intriguing plot within an interesting setting. The plot is compelling and not once fully predictable. The world building is executed flawlessly as it doesn't rely on cheap exposition dumps but instead has faith in the viewers intelligence. As a consequence, the viewer feels a lot more intrigied and automatically pays more attention to every detail as it isn't simply handed to one on a silver platter.
Of course, well written, interesting and, sensible characters are what make a good show and this might be what Arcane excels at the most. Every character has ambitions and reasons to act the way they do. The decisions they are sensible from their standpoint even if they are generally deemed evil or wrong. The character development is gripping and never feels forced or illogical. Additionally, the set of interesting characters is voiced by a cast of very talented voice actors performing expertly written dialogues that feel natural. The combination of these factor lead to a set of insanely likeable, relatable and touching characters.
Arcane's soundtrack also needs to be commend to the fullest. The orchestral score in the background could not have been composed any better to fit the tone of each scene. In addition to the great score, the set of songs solely written for this series fit marvelously despite being rather unconventional at times.
All in all, Arcane is a near perfect masterpiece of a series with high quality in every single aspect.
10/10
I think this is my favorite animated show of the decade ! I have never really been a League of Legends player, I started playing when Jinx was released, played a few and then stopped. When I saw they did a show about LoL, I thought that I wouldn't really be into it because I wasn't in the game, but I was soo wrong.. Whether it is for the story, the animation or even the music, every single second of it is a masterpiece. I don't even have the words to describe how I feel, the strong impression it left me, I can't stop thinking about it. All the characters have a lot of subtilities and depth, you can understand they past stories and their choices, even a second plan character can make you feel interests, empathy. The universe they created is complex and you want to know more about it. I know I said it before but the animation is really flawless. I am so thankful for the huge work the Fortiche studio made, in the writing, animation, sound, everything ! (also I'm a little bit proud because it's a French studio haha, so happy that they created something like that).
I think my favorite part in this show is when Jinx is creating Hex tech in her lab while listening to her own theme music that was released at the beginning of the creation of the character in the game hahaha, with Silco's reacting as a real father, it was funny, loved it ! You can feel the evolution of your beliefs about the character, when the music was released I was like "oh my God she's so crazy and don't give a f about anything, she's so funny I love her!" and after finishing Arcane it hit me different, I though "wow... that's sad, I would like to help her".
Anyway, best show of the year year and more, even if you don't like animated stuff, video games or I don't know, WATCH ARCANE, you can't imagine what you're missing.. It's unique :sparkling_heart:
Arcane really shows how much untapped potential games have within the movie/show world. All of the lore, characters and places you'd love to see and rediscover through the eyes of the big screen.
Arcane is split up into phases, displaying the characters lives and surroundings at different times and its interesting to see how it all unfolds. Normally this would sound confusing but its really well put together.
The story is about the sisters Jinx and Vi that have been tossed into the centre of the ring. Its a mystery, thriller and if the characters aren't enough, the awesome graphics are.
Arcane, with its female-lead is a rare find that's been historically dominated by male protagonists. It's a refreshing step to normal gaming where a lot of focus is placed on the game play rather than the characters themselves.
Speaking of gameplay the mechanics are really good and the graphics great. It's really refreshing to play an online title that has been developed by its female developer, I personally feel that women are underrepresented in the video gaming industry and having a female lead title is a step in the right direction.
Upon completing the game you unlock additional characters to play as and I don't want that.
I rate it 9/10,
would have given it a 10/10 if there was more. Some stuff I wish was "dragged out" or explained further but other than that the show is all around amazing.
Much like A New Hope or Avatar: The Last Airbender, if you connect with it at the right age you’ll probably think it’s one of the best things ever made for the rest of your life. The animation, cinematography, action sequences, worldbuilding and score (aside from its hideous opening title song, as well as some other tasteless needle drops) are all truly excellent, technically it’s easily one of my favorite things to come out of pop culture in recent times. However, when it comes to story and character, it honestly doesn’t bring much to the table. It uses all the familiar tropes for this kind of story without putting much of its own spin on it, so the end result is far too predictable for its own good. If you’re already familiar with stuff like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and other YA material, you probably won’t get that much out of this. The characters (as well as their arcs) are all very typical, the story is (again) very plain, nor is there’s not a lot of interesting or challenging subtext. I can see future seasons improving on the story by adding more bells and whistles as its main target audience matures, but right now this is something I’d mostly recommend as a technical achievement.
6/10
Arcane is as good if not even better than the praise it receives. The gorgeous and artistic animation in itself would elevate a flawed and boring story to an enjoyable experience. The amount of detail and love shown in each scene is simply breathtaking and makes the setting feel that much more real.
Arcane, however, is not only visually stunning but also provides an intriguing plot within an interesting setting. The plot is compelling and not once fully predictable. The world building is executed flawlessly as it doesn't rely on cheap exposition dumps but instead has faith in the viewers intelligence. As a consequence, the viewer feels a lot more intrigied and automatically pays more attention to every detail as it isn't simply handed to one on a silver platter.
Of course, well written, interesting and, sensible characters are what make a good show and this might be what Arcane excels at the most. Every character has ambitions and reasons to act the way they do. The decisions they are sensible from their standpoint even if they are generally deemed evil or wrong. The character development is gripping and never feels forced or illogical. Additionally, the set of interesting characters is voiced by a cast of very talented voice actors performing expertly written dialogues that feel natural. The combination of these factor lead to a set of insanely likeable, relatable and touching characters.
Arcane's soundtrack also needs to be commend to the fullest. The orchestral score in the background could not have been composed any better to fit the tone of each scene. In addition to the great score, the set of songs solely written for this series fit marvelously despite being rather unconventional at times.
All in all, Arcane is a near perfect masterpiece of a series with high quality in every single aspect.
10/10
Never played league of legends, know nothing about the characters. In fact, to be honest, I was a bit prejudiced against this show. I thought "It's based on a game, It must suck". A few months after it ended I saw it has a rating of 90+% on Trakt. And however subjective ratings are, you don't get scores north of 90% if you're shit, so I decided to check it out.
Was not disappointed. This is the best work of art I've seen in the last several years. The animation is stellar. You could pause it on almost every frame and set it as your desktop wallpaper. This is not an exaggeration. Almost every frame looks like it could have been painted by an artist. The voice acting is phenomenal, the expressiveness of the characters is spot on.
In terms of story, I only saw 5 episodes so far, so take it with a grain of salt, but I think there are many storytelling tropes here that people would find familiar. However, this is by no means a bad thing. Story-telling tropes exist for a reason - they make good stories. You only need to do them right. And this show does. There were too many modern shows and movies that tried to "SuBvErT eXpEcAtIoNs" just to fall on their face.
To summarize, I'm not one to give 10/10 ratings lightly, but I think it's completely deserved.
This show's animation is really stunning and a real step forward for the medium. It isn't perfect and the character models in particular look off sometimes, but pretty much every fan of animation needs to see the new ground that animation achieves here. The show is very high quality in other ways such as the storyboarding, the character depth, and the shifting writing where it feels like anybody can be a bad guy (and some bad guys can be good guys). There are some standout scenes.
I think the show is also fairly solid queer rep. The lead protagonist is female but presents very masculine, so while they are cisgender I think any transmale or AFAB non-binary person could see themselves in the character. The main romance of the show is queer too, which is nice. But there's also a bit of queer baiting.
The reason why I give this show (just one season, as of writing) a 6/10 though is because while it is well dressed, the actual substance isn't very noteworthy or solidly built. Sometimes characters will completely change their goals between episodes. There aren't any likeable characters. You can't really root for anybody. The setting is very "been there, done that." Often there will be story beats that make you go, "Wait, what was their goal again?" or "What was the significance of that?" or "But in the last episode they said they were FOR this, now they are AGAINST it." A big chunk of the show hinges on very unbelievable character development. Most of the women are "bad bitch" archetypes and most of the men are "mad genius" archetypes (not sure if I am accurately describing that one). It all amounts to a show that is beautiful to watch and experience but has a very uninteresting narrative, perhaps even boring or worse, confusing.
I think this is a very positive example of Western animation because it really breaks out of a lot of the problems that Western animation falls into. And the aesthetic may appeal to people who like "punch first, ask questions later" characters or "Harley Quinn" characters. But overall, a lot of its strengths in some areas are brought down by some real weaknesses in other areas, and ultimately I would say the show is just okay. Check it out if you want a grungy magicpunk show with beautiful animation.
Review by snoopy1492VIP OG 12BlockedParent2022-01-07T16:19:20Z
You know, I'm not really into animated shows or movies.
I play many games but League of Legends isn't something I'm interested in.
When I saw this on Netflix, I thought "well not for me".
Boy, was I wrong.
After reading many articles, I decided I should give it a try and launched the first episode.
And the second, and the third and so on and on.
I was blown away. I am still blown away.
The story is great, and far reaching. I know nothing of league of legends, didn't need to.
The setting, this steampunk/victorian/magical world is so unique.
The characters are full of life, full of emotions, doubts. They are not empty shells but full on humans/humanoids. More so than many live-action characters.
The graphics and animation are the most amazing I've had the pleasure to witness. I mean, every scene is grandiose. Like moving paintings. What a feast for the eyes.
And last (but not least), the music is perfect. The main title by imagine dragons is on point, and the score complements the story so well. Case in point, many scenes don't have any dialogue, the animation and the score being sufficient.
Emotions are high at the end, I can't wait for what's in store next year.
Please, please, please, do watch it. Even if games are not your things, even if League of Legends isn't. Even if animated video aren't.
Watch it.