Roundhouse
Pro Adventurer
One of the best animated shows ever?
It's startlingly good!
It's startlingly good!
Arcane
- Thread starter Roundhouse
- Start date
ForceStealer
Double Growth
Best animated show is a tall claim that I don't feel like trying to really weigh.
But it was very good. I'm glad I didn't know anything about LoL, when I looked stuff up after finishing it, I found how obvious it would have made where the characters were going to end up. I'm glad I was along for the ride.
And yeah, the animation itself looks fantastic.
But it was very good. I'm glad I didn't know anything about LoL, when I looked stuff up after finishing it, I found how obvious it would have made where the characters were going to end up. I'm glad I was along for the ride.
And yeah, the animation itself looks fantastic.
looneymoon
they/them
- AKA
- Rishi
its kind of insane how the quality of these multi episode TV project is comparable in visual quality to spider-verse.
I really hate the opening tho and I hope they change it for the next season.
I really hate the opening tho and I hope they change it for the next season.
Ite
Save your valediction (she/her)
- AKA
- Ite
I kinda liked the intro, ngl, don’t know why it gets dunked on so much. Could definitely use a new song each season, but I like the “living statues” visuals. The whole thing is just so artful.
Of all the things I love about the show, the thing I like the least is the politics,
Of all the things I love about the show, the thing I like the least is the politics,
which is strange because I’m usually a sucker for nobles bickering around tables. The sense I got was that the show was trying hard to be, like, centrist? Very establishment-democrat-vibe morality, with the tragedy flavour being “If only they could have trusted the process,” but maybe I’m too much of a blue haired leftist to appreciate it. Caitlin may be a precious gay cinnamon roll, but even then, ACAB.
Erotic Materia
[CONFUSED SCREAMING]
I've only watched the first episode so far, but I'm already hooked. The art style, the music, and the violent, authentic feel of the street fight, that was gooooood.
looneymoon
they/them
- AKA
- Rishi
i never know you were a member of imagine dragons (lol i jk)
but ye I think the show tries its best to like, as inoffensive as possible. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing? I definitely think it shows when an episode/character wants to make a broader point about something, but the overarching desire to keep things within a very Neoliberal Sensibility kinda stifles some of the drama. But like, I think the level of complexity is sufficient for its target audience, which is probably teenagers.
I was having a discussion with a friend (who's really into League, bless her) about whether it was intentional Caitlin is the best and least problematic of the cast. Her response was that she is indeed the best, but Heimerdinger is probably the least problematic, and I was like oh ya tru.
Roundhouse
Pro Adventurer
This isn't Looney's fault, but that term (problematic) gives me a headache XD I think Tumblr and Twitter have absolutely ruined it for me.
I will say that the level of complexity being teenager level is surprising to hear, because I was struck by how mature and complex the writing for the show actually was. Not that teenage level writing can't be that -- my fav animated show is actually Avatar: The Last Airbender -- but I think Arcane feels closer to adult than teenager in terms of complexity. [But yes, target audience is surely teenager.]
I will say that the level of complexity being teenager level is surprising to hear, because I was struck by how mature and complex the writing for the show actually was. Not that teenage level writing can't be that -- my fav animated show is actually Avatar: The Last Airbender -- but I think Arcane feels closer to adult than teenager in terms of complexity. [But yes, target audience is surely teenager.]
looneymoon
they/them
- AKA
- Rishi
Maybe complexity isn't the right way to put it. I think the show is very obvious when it condemns certain character's outlooks, despite them not being necessarily wrong.
for the record, that convo I was having definitely had a good layer of irony to it.
for the record, that convo I was having definitely had a good layer of irony to it.
Mobius Stripper
perfectly normal human worm baby
- AKA
- PunkassDiogenes
I finally watched this last week. It is great. The art style rocks.
And "fraught" >>>> "problematic"
And "fraught" >>>> "problematic"
Lulcielid
Eyes of the Lord
- AKA
- Lulcy
The five part making of series:
* Part 1: I Only Dream in Risky
* Part 2: Persistence (Or When Your Best Still Sucks)
* Part 3: Killstreaks Meets Keyframes
* Part 4: Musical Misfits
* Part 5: We Gave It Our Best Shot
* Part 1: I Only Dream in Risky
* Part 2: Persistence (Or When Your Best Still Sucks)
* Part 3: Killstreaks Meets Keyframes
* Part 4: Musical Misfits
* Part 5: We Gave It Our Best Shot
Lulcielid
Eyes of the Lord
- AKA
- Lulcy
Show won an Emmy for 'Best Animated Program'.
According to the show music producer, "season 2 is finished".
According to the show music producer, "season 2 is finished".
Lulcielid
Eyes of the Lord
- AKA
- Lulcy
Arcane season 1 will get a BD release via GKIDS Films.
Lulcielid
Eyes of the Lord
- AKA
- Lulcy
X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
Finally got around to this and consumed it all in one go.
Season 1 was spectacular. Basically no notes. Really damn solid. Coming from a position of knowing absolutely not a single goddamn thing about any of this, I got a really good sense of the world & setting from the characters, everyone had their individual motivations and drives that were un-ideally balanced in a complex and off-center web chaining events back-and-forth between various parties. As one thread on the chain breaks, the focus swings more heavily in a natural balance towards the parties who have to bear the weight of that change as a choice.
Season 2... felt like it should have been two seasons. The scope of the conflict has absolutely zero time to naturally evolve through the individual characters and their circumstances with one another, but is instead always has this sense of the plot as something existing outside of the characters invisibly ripping them forwards at a breakneck pace. It loses sense of the scope of what's happening and how those choices fit into the carefully constructed moral framework that drove all of the characters, and instead becomes the thing that forces their choices to fit one railroaded path. It's also hard to keep track of how long certain events happen for, which means that various character relationships feel really imbalanced. As such, it the story loses some of the most important magic & heart of what made the first season so outstanding.
So – that all being said, it doesn't at all take away from the fact that holy fucking GODS this show in absurdly gorgeous.
Like, it's just a mastercraft in all sorts of amazingly artistic an interesting choices with animation. There's a very particular vibe to some of the moments of Arcane coming through and bleeding into reality that reminded me heavily of the Temporal Vortex in Chrono Cross having a similarly surrealist visual style, but realized on a whole other level. The blending of 2D & 3D animation styles really nail that Spider-Verse sort of middle ground that really feels like it's one of the most satisfying ways to preserve a lot of the stylistic options from traditional art & animation that don't otherwise translate into 3D.
The visuals alone make this unforgettable, and there's so much in Season 2 that's just above and beyond anything in Season 1 that even with all of my frustrations, I'd still say it's worth a watch regardless as some of the things that they do are just utterly incredible.
X
Season 1 was spectacular. Basically no notes. Really damn solid. Coming from a position of knowing absolutely not a single goddamn thing about any of this, I got a really good sense of the world & setting from the characters, everyone had their individual motivations and drives that were un-ideally balanced in a complex and off-center web chaining events back-and-forth between various parties. As one thread on the chain breaks, the focus swings more heavily in a natural balance towards the parties who have to bear the weight of that change as a choice.
Season 2... felt like it should have been two seasons. The scope of the conflict has absolutely zero time to naturally evolve through the individual characters and their circumstances with one another, but is instead always has this sense of the plot as something existing outside of the characters invisibly ripping them forwards at a breakneck pace. It loses sense of the scope of what's happening and how those choices fit into the carefully constructed moral framework that drove all of the characters, and instead becomes the thing that forces their choices to fit one railroaded path. It's also hard to keep track of how long certain events happen for, which means that various character relationships feel really imbalanced. As such, it the story loses some of the most important magic & heart of what made the first season so outstanding.
One of the things most ill-serviced by Season 2 are the new characters, with number one being Maddie and a close second is Loris. Maddie's slightly-too-convenient reveal with Vi and rapid replacement of Vi's romantic position with Caitlyn made it feel fairly clear that she was in some way an asset that Ambessa was putting weight on – likely after her troops saved Maddie from death during the opening attack. However, the length of the relationship between her & Caitlyn during the martial law escalation made it feel infinitely more significant than the VERY brief & scattered fragments of time that Vi & Cait shared with their faces kinda close together. You even have moments with Maddie seemingly being the catalyst to get Cait to take a step away from the power that she's been manipulated into shouldering, with Ambessa even warning Cait against professional entanglements after Maddie is ordered out of the room (a rather rich line to draw given that Mel manipulates Jayce into a Council position and sleeps with him the instant that happens, and Ambessa is shown as being exceptionally direct in utilization of physical relationships with other people as assets from her position of power).
To add to that, Vi's life-spiraling goth arc has her shacking up with Loris – the drunk guy she literally met in an alleyway after walking out on Caitlyn's offer to join her in creating a unified front when moving to the Undercity to try and prevent violence from creating a schism... because Vi is bitching about the idea of wearing a badge being impossible because of how her parents were killed by Enforcers when Cait's mom was LITERALLY just killed by Vi's sister in one of the most painfully tone-deaf moments ever... which is just prior to Maddie's introduction pushing Vi towards a path that she ought to have been taking anyway. Maddie's a positive influence on everyone she's involved with. The fact that Vi's, "I'm bi but it's just a goth phase" thing to make her the darker foil to Jinx being relegated to a montage the same way Vi's ascension into a trapped military authoritarian commander was done is what it is, but also feels like it's a genuine moving on-point for both of them despite that tumultuously drunk physical relationship unsurprisingly not being stable between Vi & Loris. They're different as characters than they had been, and they've taken different paths in life, there's character growth & development in an interesting way.
Then – despite all of that and the way in which their relationship is portrayed, Caitlyn's unconventionally cold & dismissive to Maddie when Vi shows back up out of nowhere, looking in on their private meeting because it's with Vi's ex who she's inexplicably still weak for. Cait belatedly admits that she "started seeing someone" when she goes down to fuck Vi in Jinx's prison cell for absolutely no motivationally believable reason whatsoever, but just so that their pairing gets artificially sanctioned. That all seems forced into place so that they can deliver a HORRIBLY imbalanced reveal of Maddie as being more loyal to Ambessa by dropping a cold line about appreciating Cait as a warm body – which now, rather than seeming like it's because Ambessa is wily & manipulative of a vulnerable, peppy, optimistic enforcer cadet, OR making it seem like Maddie was potentially just playing the part the whole time and was always a double agent... it really just comes off like it's happening because Caitlyn's been holding authoritarian power despite having the ability to let it go, and becoming more and more of a callous & untrustworthy companion, followed just just being a straight up cheating bitch who seemingly never even lets Maddie know.
Maddie's reward for that betrayal is a ricocheted bullet to the brain and instant death... thanks to Mel – the only person in the series who could've possibly made that sort of poetic injustice about the ethics of professional romantic entanglements even more sickeningly negative. Meanwhile Loris is operating heavy artillery on the front lines firing shipping containers, and takes arrows to the back, neck, & head, getting killed in his seat while Vi is fighting off troops nearby. Literally NEITHER of those two new characters who accompanied them to the undercity AND had long-standing intimate relationships with two main characters get mourned AT ALL. Loris even gets pulled out of his seat and tossed to the ground by a scrawny kid to just take over firing – and THAT'S something that earns a positive reaction from Vi, while Maddie drops stone dead and gets utterly dismissed as her line frames her as "othered" traitorous garbage that it never takes any moment to even partially acknowledge after that.
This is from the series where in the first season, even characters like Silco have time to give a deeply nuanced meaning to his choices, the weights that influence why he takes the questionable actions that he takes, what lead to his life being what it is, as well as multiple characters mourning from the weight of their relationship to him. Vi & Cait who have both gone through the painful loss of people exceptionally close to them feel LITERALLY NOTHING when their ACTUALY lovers die in front of them – let alone do we ever get ANY moment of clarity on what made Maddie or Loris make the choices that they did to be able to understand them as individuals. They come off as being rebound bait inserted solely so that the lesbian shipping fandom of Vi & Caitlyn have to wait around for getting their intimacy payoff, rather than meaningful human developments as a result of relationships that the entire series' moral center is predicated upon. A series that made video game characters feel real undoes that by making new characters feel like trivialized NPCs, which undercuts the ability to stay attached to them or trust those choices. (TBH, Caitlyn had been the only character I'd really liked in Season 1, and that all vanished instantly upon her being the puppet head of martial law, because she lost hold of the bits of fundamental integrity that she'd had all of Season 1 that guided her choices).
The fact that that scene is immediately followed up by Caitlyn rematching Ambessa with a knife literally still stuck into her gut brings me around to the second point, which is that it's not just the emotion or humanization, but literally nothing carries the same weight that it did in Season 1. Vi's literally been training for close combat her entire life ever since she was a scrappy little kid. We see her take hits HARD and when Vi go stabbed like this, Cait had to trade her own gun for medicine, and Vi was basically helplessly woozy despite appearances. She is our baseline for what a strong human character looks like with this type of injury, and Cait has ALWAYS been the weaker counterpart to her. Historically, duels basically went to the point of getting stabbed, because that experience is excruciatingly painful, and even despite the fact that Cait has been training with Ambessa for a blurrily indeterminate number of months – there's no way she should be kicking about like that, since she doesn't have a single ounce of supernatural Shimmer, or even the rigorous reinforcement of a hard upbringing to bolster her. Cait's literally the sniper princess, and she's out of her element, but the power creep into videogamey levels of fighting is an issue even before the finale, but it's not just that.
Almost every fight in Season 2 feels like it's an AMV meant to give you vibes. They're almost ALWAYS set to a theme song, and there's almost never any smooth, readable choreography or storytelling happening in the fight at all. Even the street brawl with everyone as kids in Season 1 is better than this, and the showdown between Vi & Sevika was absolutely spectacular at feeling like there was actually a fight choreographer involved in storytelling through the combat scenes. Even the first episode of Season 2, Vi leaves an ongoing fight to find Jayce's enormous hammer in a room in a huge building she's unfamiliar with. She'd barely have made it in the building before that conflict played out, and worse is that the timing of how everything happens there is pivotal because that's the whole plot that's wholly a puppeted orchestration by Ambessa where everything is meant to feel slightly-too-perfect with her troops' intervention (as this also muddies Maddie's whole character introduction & establishment of her underlying motives).
Although there are fights that can have soundtracks that work well, it feels like they wanted to have songs also serve the purpose of being unique themes for each episode like with Paint The Town Blue, so whether or not they're shouldering a ton of rushed plot information or just some cool action shots being montaged doesn't really land. (A juxtaposition to a series that actually does this well is Chainsaw Man having a unique ending theme every episode that punctuates everything that happened during the episode, but that doesn't really work with the way Netflix wants to force you into the next episode immediately). There are ways, especially with diagetic tunes that actually work for this, like the jukebox in The Last Drop, but that's barely ever something that's done. For the most part all of the audio of the combat and other elements are muted BELOW the music soundtrack, so it's not background music to the events, it's literally just an AMV. There is probably only one of those fights that I think worked well with this format the whole second season because it actually had coherent coordination, and I can't even remember which one it was – because they were just pasted in as a vibe and because of that they all blur together since... that's not actually storytelling, which is what those key moments of conflict are MEANT to be.
Lastly is that Jinx went through a ton of really uneven portrayals to what her mental state is supposed to be which get exacerbated by the really uneven way that the passage of time is handled. Worse is that she landed in a totally fucked up spot that feels really off for how they wrapped things up. Season 1 did excellently in showcasing her as being fragile, mentally scarred, and genuinely unstable in DEEPLY believable ways given what she went through. Her trauma & isolation gets triggered in the voices that she hears, she forms a really important & co-dependent bond to Silco as they're both replacing the lost key familial relationship that they both suffered. She's damaged in a way where Vi can't find a way back to her, and like it or not, she's a liability to the safety of EVERYONE at the end of Season 1.
As a mentally unstable person, she falls into the lap of infamy and doesn't know what to do with it, because she doesn't have any of the necessary skills to manage something like that and is likely just gonna get swallowed alive by it (essentially in the same way the first Joker film establishes that character). Sevika takes up the necessary mantle, but again in the rush we don't really see how that relationship balance works. What we do get is Isha & Jinx to highlight that she's NEVER really been able to grow up from the point where she was significantly traumatized. She replaces her psuedo-parental sibling relationship with Vi when she gets taken by Silco, where she does the same thing in helping him with his meds every day, and doing the kind of routines that parentified children do – where they often become necessarily precocious in one facet of their lives while remaining developmentally frozen in the other. That mutual traumatic codependency from two people whose abusive behaviours that stem from that trauma of betrayal at the hands of the person they trusted most amplifies their protectiveness over each other even more, which is why their relationship has a lot of identically & purposefully uncomfortable moments where that level of intimacy makes a super fuzzy near-border to them being lovers (which is SUPER common with those two particular backgrounds of abuse coming together).
But Isha as a mute permanent tiny child puts her in this odd position in that she's a juxtaposition to just how WHOLLY unprepared Powder was mentally for things like that when she was WAY older. Isha idolizes the adult parts of Jinx like a younger sibling like that does in a way which is important for unpacking the trauma of what Vi had to go through with a little sibling who needed protection... except that Isha is a precocious catalyst that also IS the adult parts of Jinx as a plot device. She's the one leading Jinx & Goth-Vi through the tunnel to get reunited with Vander. She's never phased by the fear of seeing Jinx almost getting killed and even if she is, she's mute and we don't spend the time on her character to really get to unpack what makes Vi & Linx foils at that point. We don't see how her mental struggles look now given that marked dynamic shift and the different weights that are supported between Jinx-Sevika-Isha compared to what had previously existed with Silco-Sevika-Jinx. That should have been a whole season to get into that, and the fact that it's Episode 5/9 really emphasizes what sort of things get lost and why Season 2 feels so rushed.
So, when Isha stuffs a gun full of gems to kill Vander – who she also hugged and cared for like a little third adopted sibling & gets blown up in front of Jinx in a fucked up parallel to Jinx trying to help save everyone and ending up killing them as the core foundation of her trauma... we get a montage of that. We see a few brief moments of depressed Jinx sitting in prison wanting to die, and apologizing to Caitlyn for killing her mom – almost immediately after which, she escapes so that her sister Vi can go down on Cait in that prison cell. We get a music video of her being suicidal, we get a partially comedic scene of Ekko repeatedly rolling back Jinx literally blowing herself up or jumping off of a cliff after he spent time in an alternate universe with Powder. And then after trying to get Vi to save herself from a rickety ledge, Jinx ACTUALLY blows herself & Vander up to save her sister in this weirdly uncomfortable martyrdom as a way to get out of others needing to hold her accountable post-conflict. That not only feels massively antithetical & over-glorifies her suicide, but also undercuts everything about how seriously Season 1 took her mental illness while also solidifying everything about Vi's character never really making ANY level of meaningful development whatsoever.
Vi doesn't understand anyone else at any point, and is so locked-in to her own self-centered characterization that ending up with Caitlyn and repeating a nickname she used right around when she was pawning Cait off on some guy in a brothel as a distraction so that she could gather intel on her own feels just... like everyone in Season 2 was written to serve a means to an end, rather than telling a story that came about as a result of their individual flaws & choices. Ultimately if you're attempting to tell an impactful story about the importance of individual agency over destiny the way that the ultimate conflict between Jayce & Viktor sets up with the Childhood's End evolutionary ascension into a shared consciousness – you have to make sure that you characters have individual agency in the story.
They did in Season 1, they don't in Season 2. Moreso, Jayce is still in the role as the sole presiding arbiter of that choice for everyone else exactly as much as he was when he was manipulated onto the Council seat as the pseudo-president in Season 1. No one else gets to have a decision about whether or not they exist in the cult-like hippie commune where they're all interconnected to remove the things that cause them pain, or if that could give some people a better life and it needs to be given space to exist. There's no real weight of importance placed on the fact that the alternate reality future that Jayce is so hell-bent on stopping is one that literally isn't locked in stone to happen. Things in the series could pan out a thousand thousand different ways if the people who are in place make important choices with an escalating scope of impact like they did in Season 1... but they don't have the necessary agency as individual characters to do that given the writing, which paradoxically loops back in on itself. And to that point, the finale REALLY just left me with only one singular take away...
– The entire world would demonstrably be an infinitely better place if Vi, the only character incapable of any growth whatsoever, was just dead.
To add to that, Vi's life-spiraling goth arc has her shacking up with Loris – the drunk guy she literally met in an alleyway after walking out on Caitlyn's offer to join her in creating a unified front when moving to the Undercity to try and prevent violence from creating a schism... because Vi is bitching about the idea of wearing a badge being impossible because of how her parents were killed by Enforcers when Cait's mom was LITERALLY just killed by Vi's sister in one of the most painfully tone-deaf moments ever... which is just prior to Maddie's introduction pushing Vi towards a path that she ought to have been taking anyway. Maddie's a positive influence on everyone she's involved with. The fact that Vi's, "I'm bi but it's just a goth phase" thing to make her the darker foil to Jinx being relegated to a montage the same way Vi's ascension into a trapped military authoritarian commander was done is what it is, but also feels like it's a genuine moving on-point for both of them despite that tumultuously drunk physical relationship unsurprisingly not being stable between Vi & Loris. They're different as characters than they had been, and they've taken different paths in life, there's character growth & development in an interesting way.
Then – despite all of that and the way in which their relationship is portrayed, Caitlyn's unconventionally cold & dismissive to Maddie when Vi shows back up out of nowhere, looking in on their private meeting because it's with Vi's ex who she's inexplicably still weak for. Cait belatedly admits that she "started seeing someone" when she goes down to fuck Vi in Jinx's prison cell for absolutely no motivationally believable reason whatsoever, but just so that their pairing gets artificially sanctioned. That all seems forced into place so that they can deliver a HORRIBLY imbalanced reveal of Maddie as being more loyal to Ambessa by dropping a cold line about appreciating Cait as a warm body – which now, rather than seeming like it's because Ambessa is wily & manipulative of a vulnerable, peppy, optimistic enforcer cadet, OR making it seem like Maddie was potentially just playing the part the whole time and was always a double agent... it really just comes off like it's happening because Caitlyn's been holding authoritarian power despite having the ability to let it go, and becoming more and more of a callous & untrustworthy companion, followed just just being a straight up cheating bitch who seemingly never even lets Maddie know.
Maddie's reward for that betrayal is a ricocheted bullet to the brain and instant death... thanks to Mel – the only person in the series who could've possibly made that sort of poetic injustice about the ethics of professional romantic entanglements even more sickeningly negative. Meanwhile Loris is operating heavy artillery on the front lines firing shipping containers, and takes arrows to the back, neck, & head, getting killed in his seat while Vi is fighting off troops nearby. Literally NEITHER of those two new characters who accompanied them to the undercity AND had long-standing intimate relationships with two main characters get mourned AT ALL. Loris even gets pulled out of his seat and tossed to the ground by a scrawny kid to just take over firing – and THAT'S something that earns a positive reaction from Vi, while Maddie drops stone dead and gets utterly dismissed as her line frames her as "othered" traitorous garbage that it never takes any moment to even partially acknowledge after that.
This is from the series where in the first season, even characters like Silco have time to give a deeply nuanced meaning to his choices, the weights that influence why he takes the questionable actions that he takes, what lead to his life being what it is, as well as multiple characters mourning from the weight of their relationship to him. Vi & Cait who have both gone through the painful loss of people exceptionally close to them feel LITERALLY NOTHING when their ACTUALY lovers die in front of them – let alone do we ever get ANY moment of clarity on what made Maddie or Loris make the choices that they did to be able to understand them as individuals. They come off as being rebound bait inserted solely so that the lesbian shipping fandom of Vi & Caitlyn have to wait around for getting their intimacy payoff, rather than meaningful human developments as a result of relationships that the entire series' moral center is predicated upon. A series that made video game characters feel real undoes that by making new characters feel like trivialized NPCs, which undercuts the ability to stay attached to them or trust those choices. (TBH, Caitlyn had been the only character I'd really liked in Season 1, and that all vanished instantly upon her being the puppet head of martial law, because she lost hold of the bits of fundamental integrity that she'd had all of Season 1 that guided her choices).
The fact that that scene is immediately followed up by Caitlyn rematching Ambessa with a knife literally still stuck into her gut brings me around to the second point, which is that it's not just the emotion or humanization, but literally nothing carries the same weight that it did in Season 1. Vi's literally been training for close combat her entire life ever since she was a scrappy little kid. We see her take hits HARD and when Vi go stabbed like this, Cait had to trade her own gun for medicine, and Vi was basically helplessly woozy despite appearances. She is our baseline for what a strong human character looks like with this type of injury, and Cait has ALWAYS been the weaker counterpart to her. Historically, duels basically went to the point of getting stabbed, because that experience is excruciatingly painful, and even despite the fact that Cait has been training with Ambessa for a blurrily indeterminate number of months – there's no way she should be kicking about like that, since she doesn't have a single ounce of supernatural Shimmer, or even the rigorous reinforcement of a hard upbringing to bolster her. Cait's literally the sniper princess, and she's out of her element, but the power creep into videogamey levels of fighting is an issue even before the finale, but it's not just that.
Almost every fight in Season 2 feels like it's an AMV meant to give you vibes. They're almost ALWAYS set to a theme song, and there's almost never any smooth, readable choreography or storytelling happening in the fight at all. Even the street brawl with everyone as kids in Season 1 is better than this, and the showdown between Vi & Sevika was absolutely spectacular at feeling like there was actually a fight choreographer involved in storytelling through the combat scenes. Even the first episode of Season 2, Vi leaves an ongoing fight to find Jayce's enormous hammer in a room in a huge building she's unfamiliar with. She'd barely have made it in the building before that conflict played out, and worse is that the timing of how everything happens there is pivotal because that's the whole plot that's wholly a puppeted orchestration by Ambessa where everything is meant to feel slightly-too-perfect with her troops' intervention (as this also muddies Maddie's whole character introduction & establishment of her underlying motives).
Although there are fights that can have soundtracks that work well, it feels like they wanted to have songs also serve the purpose of being unique themes for each episode like with Paint The Town Blue, so whether or not they're shouldering a ton of rushed plot information or just some cool action shots being montaged doesn't really land. (A juxtaposition to a series that actually does this well is Chainsaw Man having a unique ending theme every episode that punctuates everything that happened during the episode, but that doesn't really work with the way Netflix wants to force you into the next episode immediately). There are ways, especially with diagetic tunes that actually work for this, like the jukebox in The Last Drop, but that's barely ever something that's done. For the most part all of the audio of the combat and other elements are muted BELOW the music soundtrack, so it's not background music to the events, it's literally just an AMV. There is probably only one of those fights that I think worked well with this format the whole second season because it actually had coherent coordination, and I can't even remember which one it was – because they were just pasted in as a vibe and because of that they all blur together since... that's not actually storytelling, which is what those key moments of conflict are MEANT to be.
Lastly is that Jinx went through a ton of really uneven portrayals to what her mental state is supposed to be which get exacerbated by the really uneven way that the passage of time is handled. Worse is that she landed in a totally fucked up spot that feels really off for how they wrapped things up. Season 1 did excellently in showcasing her as being fragile, mentally scarred, and genuinely unstable in DEEPLY believable ways given what she went through. Her trauma & isolation gets triggered in the voices that she hears, she forms a really important & co-dependent bond to Silco as they're both replacing the lost key familial relationship that they both suffered. She's damaged in a way where Vi can't find a way back to her, and like it or not, she's a liability to the safety of EVERYONE at the end of Season 1.
As a mentally unstable person, she falls into the lap of infamy and doesn't know what to do with it, because she doesn't have any of the necessary skills to manage something like that and is likely just gonna get swallowed alive by it (essentially in the same way the first Joker film establishes that character). Sevika takes up the necessary mantle, but again in the rush we don't really see how that relationship balance works. What we do get is Isha & Jinx to highlight that she's NEVER really been able to grow up from the point where she was significantly traumatized. She replaces her psuedo-parental sibling relationship with Vi when she gets taken by Silco, where she does the same thing in helping him with his meds every day, and doing the kind of routines that parentified children do – where they often become necessarily precocious in one facet of their lives while remaining developmentally frozen in the other. That mutual traumatic codependency from two people whose abusive behaviours that stem from that trauma of betrayal at the hands of the person they trusted most amplifies their protectiveness over each other even more, which is why their relationship has a lot of identically & purposefully uncomfortable moments where that level of intimacy makes a super fuzzy near-border to them being lovers (which is SUPER common with those two particular backgrounds of abuse coming together).
But Isha as a mute permanent tiny child puts her in this odd position in that she's a juxtaposition to just how WHOLLY unprepared Powder was mentally for things like that when she was WAY older. Isha idolizes the adult parts of Jinx like a younger sibling like that does in a way which is important for unpacking the trauma of what Vi had to go through with a little sibling who needed protection... except that Isha is a precocious catalyst that also IS the adult parts of Jinx as a plot device. She's the one leading Jinx & Goth-Vi through the tunnel to get reunited with Vander. She's never phased by the fear of seeing Jinx almost getting killed and even if she is, she's mute and we don't spend the time on her character to really get to unpack what makes Vi & Linx foils at that point. We don't see how her mental struggles look now given that marked dynamic shift and the different weights that are supported between Jinx-Sevika-Isha compared to what had previously existed with Silco-Sevika-Jinx. That should have been a whole season to get into that, and the fact that it's Episode 5/9 really emphasizes what sort of things get lost and why Season 2 feels so rushed.
So, when Isha stuffs a gun full of gems to kill Vander – who she also hugged and cared for like a little third adopted sibling & gets blown up in front of Jinx in a fucked up parallel to Jinx trying to help save everyone and ending up killing them as the core foundation of her trauma... we get a montage of that. We see a few brief moments of depressed Jinx sitting in prison wanting to die, and apologizing to Caitlyn for killing her mom – almost immediately after which, she escapes so that her sister Vi can go down on Cait in that prison cell. We get a music video of her being suicidal, we get a partially comedic scene of Ekko repeatedly rolling back Jinx literally blowing herself up or jumping off of a cliff after he spent time in an alternate universe with Powder. And then after trying to get Vi to save herself from a rickety ledge, Jinx ACTUALLY blows herself & Vander up to save her sister in this weirdly uncomfortable martyrdom as a way to get out of others needing to hold her accountable post-conflict. That not only feels massively antithetical & over-glorifies her suicide, but also undercuts everything about how seriously Season 1 took her mental illness while also solidifying everything about Vi's character never really making ANY level of meaningful development whatsoever.
Vi doesn't understand anyone else at any point, and is so locked-in to her own self-centered characterization that ending up with Caitlyn and repeating a nickname she used right around when she was pawning Cait off on some guy in a brothel as a distraction so that she could gather intel on her own feels just... like everyone in Season 2 was written to serve a means to an end, rather than telling a story that came about as a result of their individual flaws & choices. Ultimately if you're attempting to tell an impactful story about the importance of individual agency over destiny the way that the ultimate conflict between Jayce & Viktor sets up with the Childhood's End evolutionary ascension into a shared consciousness – you have to make sure that you characters have individual agency in the story.
They did in Season 1, they don't in Season 2. Moreso, Jayce is still in the role as the sole presiding arbiter of that choice for everyone else exactly as much as he was when he was manipulated onto the Council seat as the pseudo-president in Season 1. No one else gets to have a decision about whether or not they exist in the cult-like hippie commune where they're all interconnected to remove the things that cause them pain, or if that could give some people a better life and it needs to be given space to exist. There's no real weight of importance placed on the fact that the alternate reality future that Jayce is so hell-bent on stopping is one that literally isn't locked in stone to happen. Things in the series could pan out a thousand thousand different ways if the people who are in place make important choices with an escalating scope of impact like they did in Season 1... but they don't have the necessary agency as individual characters to do that given the writing, which paradoxically loops back in on itself. And to that point, the finale REALLY just left me with only one singular take away...
– The entire world would demonstrably be an infinitely better place if Vi, the only character incapable of any growth whatsoever, was just dead.
So – that all being said, it doesn't at all take away from the fact that holy fucking GODS this show in absurdly gorgeous.
Like, it's just a mastercraft in all sorts of amazingly artistic an interesting choices with animation. There's a very particular vibe to some of the moments of Arcane coming through and bleeding into reality that reminded me heavily of the Temporal Vortex in Chrono Cross having a similarly surrealist visual style, but realized on a whole other level. The blending of 2D & 3D animation styles really nail that Spider-Verse sort of middle ground that really feels like it's one of the most satisfying ways to preserve a lot of the stylistic options from traditional art & animation that don't otherwise translate into 3D.
The visuals alone make this unforgettable, and there's so much in Season 2 that's just above and beyond anything in Season 1 that even with all of my frustrations, I'd still say it's worth a watch regardless as some of the things that they do are just utterly incredible.
X
Lulcielid
Eyes of the Lord
- AKA
- Lulcy
Fantastic season all around. Can only be described as...
Looking forward to more, and speaking of which, Riot Games and Fortiche are / have been working on a follow up show to Arcane.
www.polygon.com
Looking forward to more, and speaking of which, Riot Games and Fortiche are / have been working on a follow up show to Arcane.
Arcane is only the beginning of Riot and Fortiche’s plans for League of Legends shows
The next show could head to Bandle City or the Shadow Isles
www.polygon.com
Last edited:
Ite
Save your valediction (she/her)
- AKA
- Ite
Season 2 is growing on me, previously I thought it was rushed, but I don’t think that’s true. It left me wanting more. On rewatches, I’m picking up details, just like with Season 1.
Also, I perfectly understood both Cait and Vi and think their actions in all of their scenes are perfectly understandable and relatable, and I think that the prison cell scene is one of the most romantic things I’ve ever seen. Maybe you just need to be a lesbian.
Also, I perfectly understood both Cait and Vi and think their actions in all of their scenes are perfectly understandable and relatable, and I think that the prison cell scene is one of the most romantic things I’ve ever seen. Maybe you just need to be a lesbian.
