I never played League of Legends. So, I know nothing about it.
Arcane is an animation series built upon the lore of the League of Legends, so, I never showed much interest in it, as I thought it would be more of a fan service animation series.
However, a friend kept recommending it to me every time I saw him, so I decided to give it a go.
It proved that I was wrong to write it off simply because of my assumption it is a fan service series. It was more than that. And in our day and age, it became even more relatable.
The premise was quite straightforward – the privileged people and the commoners sharing the same world, one above the ground, enjoying the warmth of the sun and breeze of the sea, the other, stay dark under the neon lights to guide their ways where the lanes lead to nowhere but death and despair.
Instead of cross-star lovers, we have sisters who were crossed by the stars and needed to survive through the snaring and onslaught of fate.
Around them is a whole roster of colourful and strongly characterised supporting characters who consciously or unconsciously shaped their future and their path.
The series kicked off in a very directive way to let the audience what this is about – a war that nobody wants but everybody thought was necessary. Be it a class war or an actual one. Everyone is tied by their background, while trying to walk a path that divert from their destined path because of who they are. The society they live in tolerates no margin of error, accepting who they are seemed to be the only way out, but at times, if you fight hard enough, you might be able to embark on a completely different life journey – however, the question became, on this new path, does it lead to somewhere better?
Arcane touched on a lot of other serious issues too. The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) suffered by Powder / Jinx that continued to terrorise her mind growing up; Jayce and Viktor’s science accomplishment that started out for good, but trying to keep them away from those who want to use it for their own greed; the question of life and death and why living when death is certain; the price you are willing to pay to achieve something seemingly good; progress that was supposed to be good but can turn sour; all these were themes that ran through the veins of this series.
As I said, I never played the League of Legends games, so I do not know how much is fan service, and what are the Easter eggs laid inside the 9-episode run of this first season. But what I knew was, it was a lot more engaging than I originally expected it to be. And I found myself wanted to find out what happened every time an episode ended on a cliff-hanger.
Art style-wise. Arcane employed a brutalist cel-shade art direction that surprisingly suited the story telling of the series. It allowed the expression of both brutality and humour, and also provided a great canvas for the display of both technology and the arcane magic.
Throughout the series, we gradually understand the reason behind the motivation and story arc of each character. The series did a clever job of not trying to do much about each character immediately, but laid seeds in the dialogues, so later when it came back to talk about the background or back story of these characters, they all made sense, and you strongly felt that the story enriched the character you had spent time with in the last few hours.
Music-wise, the soundtrack is a mixed of rap, hip-hop, heavy metal and orchestral. The sombre and ambient orchestral score provided a lot of atmosphere creation for tense and ominous moments of the series, while at the same time highlighted the grandeur of the world above. When it comes to rap, hip-hop and heavy metal, they were a lot of times being used for characters in the undercity and the old industrial revolution style undercity. This distinction of music style allows the music to help telling the story, and move the plot along in a smooth and fluid way.
After finishing the 9 episodes of the first series, I look forward to find out what could be in stock for the next season.
Arcane is now streaming on Netflix.
