Now that the dust has settled, what did we think of Arcane?
i enjoyed the first season and actively didn't watch the second
homo
>>154005257Perhaps the real Arcane was how a show can be so good for one season only
>>154006265The Timebomb subplot was worse than CaitVi was
>>154005257Don't like the art style, nor what it did to the characters, the story, or the game.I miss when LoL's lore was simple. Don't like them making everything melodramatic.
>>154005455This
>>154005257S1 is legit some of the best television out there. Doesn't even need to be qualified with "animated television." It's fantastic. S2 is a significant drop in quality that's still watchable but feels doubly disappointing after the lightning in a bottle that was S1. I continue to be shocked that something this high quality was a League of Legends spinoff. of all things.
>>154005257Here's my review https://www.instagram.com/normhighlights/reel/DXH4BrCgCWS/
>>154006598I'm conflicted about Ekko. On one hand, he's a nigger, which is pretty bad. On the other hand, letting Jinx murder you and all your friends repeatedly and still saving her is pretty based
>>154006265>>154006598My only gripe with it is why this random necklace was pulled from nowhere to symbolize their relationship
The first season was very successful at recognizing the trends of the last two decades and using them to engineer something that was perfectly optimized to appeal to nerds. It had young adult fantasy stuff and steampunk stuff and anime stuff and Star Wars stuff and superhero stuff and, obviously, video game stuff. They knew their audience, they knew exactly what that audience wanted and then they pandered to them for all they're worth.Which makes it all the more funny how hard the second season failed to repeat it. I have no idea what happened there. Somehow, they kept adding plot threads when they should have cut down on them until they ended up with some nonsense JRPG mess that failed to make yiu care about any of them, much less resolve them satisfyingly. Complete fucking hack job. Literally killing a goose that lays golden eggs out of sheer incompetence.
>>154007634You're simplifying it a lot, sure it has that stuff but so do a lot of other media, but it wasn't as great as arcane
This is my wife, jinx. Say something nice about her!
>>154007701No, obviously it had amazing production values and a lot of talented people working on it, I'm not denying.
As someone who enjoys shows with some level of political intrigue, the politics in the show, specifically in the relationship between piltover and zaun, are completely retarded and incredibly weak. To the point where it makes me wonder if the writers have any concept of how reality works.
>>154008302the best part of season 1 was the lack of bias from the authors. It wasn't showing Silco as pure eveel and didn't seem to celebrate Jinx fucking everything up at the end. Now Season 2, fucking hell you can clearly see the agenda>>154008173great incest generator
>>154008378Season 1 was good on accident. They never actually meant you to interpret Silco’s actions as potentially good. They wanted a villain with a justification for their villainy, but they accidentally made the justification too compelling.
>>154008302Not just that but the writing and pacing. Arcane was very difficult to write, but also done every elegantly >Has to create large timeskip, something most shows fuck up>Has to alternate between two or three narrative threads, close enough that they feel in the same tempo and not like some forgotten narrative >Has a very small script, on average one word is spoken per second (the average speaking speed is two, so half of Arcane has no dialogue)
>>154008385>source: my victim complex
>>154008392Huh? The entire show acts like piltover being rich and Zaun being poor are just a coincidence, and not causally related. What seemed like a guy who saw his people getting taken advantage of turned out to be a guy that was just jealous because his neighbors were rich. You don’t see Zaun people working low wage jobs in piltover, like you would in a real city. They all stick to their own cities outside of a few rich people wanting to go to a sex club or something. It’s absolutely retarded.
>>154005257>commercial for a video game with rigged matchmakinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWsU_GgsSbM
>>154008438just pirate the first season, no one tells you to suscribe to netflix
>>154008420The canonical explanation is Zaunites do work as menial labourers in the fissures to extract resources for Piltover.
>>154008378Powder/Jinx didn't even do anything wrong>Bring a 7 year old to heist a dangerous research lab>Blame her when something bad happens>Leave her, the girl with abandonment issues, while you fall into a trap by Silco>Surprised when she follows youShe also saved Vi btw. If it weren't for her the coked up purple hulk would've easily broken through the door and killed them.
>>154008639weren't the kids about to free Vander up? Also the show doesn't really tell you Vi was right to lash out, she immediatly regretted it then got "saved" by the crooked cop
>>154008663Claggor managed to break a hole in the outer wall but they were like five storeys up. It's not even that Jinx isn't at fault, Vi was a horrible sister.
>>154008684>Vi is a horrible sisterand again am pretty sure the show tells you that, and her quest to redeem Jinx stems from self-loathing (while also battling a crippling addiction to piltie coochie)
>>154008687I don't Vi is shown in even a remotely bad light but as a victim of circumstance, virtually no one seems to think Vi is a terrible person
>>154008420>You don’t see Zaun people working low wage jobs in piltover, like you would in a real city.This is the case though, even though it's not explicitly stated. When Jayce closes the border in S1 they are mad for a reason.
>whatcha looking at anon>It ain't gonna eat itself
>>154009241Imagine if they injected some kind of Parasite style subplot about a Zaunite family struggling to look for work
>>154009274Would be better than the Warwick/Black Rose subplots for sure.
>>154009266you just know she doesnt shave
>>154008378>the lack of biasSilco talks about revolution but he is portrayed as a hypocritical, greedy industrial capitalist and drug trafficker.The liberal centrist bias was present since S1 but at least it was more subtle than S2 which was centrist garbage and ended with a pro status quo finale.
>>154005257Everything was going "well"Until they thought it was a good idea to justify the terrorist and victimize her by giving her a mute narrative puppy that basically put the fandom and the story in "if you're not with Jinx, you're a fascist bastard monster" mode.Besides liking to bastardize and beat Vi, the girl literally lived years in prison and somehow, she's the bitch who should be sympathetic to the murderer who took her family away and sucked the dick and balls of the murderous drug dealer who killed her father
>>154009628She doesn't bathe
>>154005257The first season was masterful, with some flaws, the second season was just shipficking cringe.... What a shame.
>>1540052571st season was good, 2nd season was too rushed, needed a 3rd season
S2 felt too disconnected like the writers had zero communication and just threw random ideas into it. Though some of those like alternative universe one and Viktor's story were still interesting.
>>154007086Geting BLAKK'D by Ekko is a privilege. Not season 2's feminized version tho.
>>154005257s'okay
>>154005257S1 was fantastic, S2 struggled with pacing and divergent storylines quite a bit. Realistically, this should have been a three season show, not 2. Way, way too much was crammed into S2 for it to have literally any fleshing out. >jinx/vi/cait This story was solid and was a great continuation of S1. It was a little shippy and melodramatic at times, but you cared about them and their relationship with Vander/ww. >noxus/black roseThis is where the problems were, as the entire show is sort of revolving around hextech, but then we're introducing this larger, regional conflict between Noxus/LeBlanc and its enemies. Ambessa wants hextech so that she can challenge LeBlanc, but this storlyine is mostly contained to her and Mel. The Jayce/Viktor and Ekko/Heimer stories don't get involved, and so you have these extremely significant events completely divorced from anything else going on. In the lore, these moments are ultra important, but when you watch, it feels shallow and fleeting given it only directly impacts 2 people. Arcane should have spent S2 slowly introducing the much larger political machinations behind the Black Rose and Noxus politics while continuing to focus on all the interconnecting character-driven storylines we had in S1. Then, S3 could have been a much larger conclusion that felt like it had more stakes than just some random city battle. Still was great for what it was, and hoping they improve come the new series in a year or whatever.
>>154005257First season was great. Second not so much.
>>154009266All the girls from Zaun probably smell like shit
Noxus either needed cut from the plot, or expanded on further. Neither Ambessa nor Mel existed before Arcane; the actual leaders of Zaun are a triad between Swain, Darius, and an unknown third, and only one of them is even alluded to in the show.LeBlanc doesn't need included at all since, even though she's existed in the universe, only ties back to the plot through Ambessa. What you then get is a character who's only ties to the story is through someone we're just meeting, making the whole thing arbitrary and forced. Even funnier is that the greater League story continued right after season 2, and followed LeBlanc's actions in response to Mel. What happens? LeBlanc fucks off to study Mordekaiser (if you don't know who that is, the congrats on understanding my point about her otherwise irrelevance) and Darkin weapons, and Mel fucks off to head some arena in Noxus. Neither one of them do anything more in Piltover/Zaun, so the diversion is completely meaningless!
>>154009628Anon, she's not THAT crazy
>>154013126>Unwashed Jinx
>>154009266>>154009628>>154013343>>154013403Just remembered that second-person domme piss fetish fic I read on AO3.
>>154013608.... And who is doing the pissing?
>>154008370What do you mean? It's one of the most well written parts. Unless you mean you want some incredibly obtuse political narrative, like the effects of trade policy on unemployment or something
>>154013621"Domme" implies female, so in this case, it'd be Jinx.
>>154013637NTA but I think the issue is that they failed to show how and why Zaun is even mad. Yes, they're poor and forgotten, but you could easily draw the conclusion that they are this way because the people down there are antisocial inept retards rather than disenfranchised workers ignored through policy. Where were the scenes of businessmen and elites diverting funds away from say, road repair, to stupid projects like fountains and ornate halls? The show basically started as if Zaun was already a separate entity vs. a collection of very poor districts within a single city. Didn't help that actual Zaun in the lore wasn't across a bridge, but rather was comprised of the "undercity" of Piltover. They did some of that in S1, but it's clear by S2 that Zaun cannot be reached unless you cross the river, as Echo ends up stuck in Piltover with a busted leg.
>>154008420>You don’t see Zaun people working low wage jobs in piltover, like you would in a real cityI hate how much this is true because this was one of ht emany interesting things in the old Ekko lore. The idiots who wrote this crap got rid of so many things he had going and for no good reason. Imagine if Ekko had the subplot of his parents being overworked in Piltover, it would make his reasoning for wanting Zaun to become the best city even more interesting. Instead, his whole arc is MUH SNOWBUNNY
>>154006690the problem with statements like arcane s1 "being the best television out there" is that television at this moment is weak and dying. s1 was a trauma fest only held up because people identified with silco's nutless renegade monologue
Jinx confirmed heterosexual who only loves black kings
>>154014144By western standards it still holds. For reasons I don't understand, shows like Sopranos and The Wire are considered the peak of art. Petty suburbian drama is what most of Hollywood considers the epitome of writing
>>154013972The overall plot of Zaunites being menial labourers is in Arcane, but the cast is overcrowded as it is. Ekko is solidly a secondary character
>>154013663Not my cup of tea, but y'know what they say, if you love someone you gotta love all of them. Even if it's hot and stinks and gets in your hair
>>154013728It's more subtle than poor and forgotten. Many Zaunites are rich, like Silco. Zaun in original lore and implied in Arcane is ruled by a powerful elite of industrialists/drug dealers. Piltover exploits Zaun both in a social way, by enforcing a rigid class structure, and a mercantilist way by controlling the ports, hexgates and flow of commerce (as specified by Silco's demands), thereby restricting Zaun to low value menial work. The laws of Piltover apparently supercede Zaun, as enforcers can make arrests in Zaun. Zaun exists in a state of quasi anarchy, there probably isn't even a public works department. It seems unlikely that Piltover taxes Zaun as normally enforcers don't even go down there.In the current lore there are still multiple ways from Zaun to Piltover including hydraulic lifts like the Rising Howl or the one Cait tried to take when she first went into Zaun. The bridge is a large one, but probably entirely focused on for thematic reasons. Iirc the bridge also existed before Arcane
>constantly seeks validation >Intrusive thoughts of people angry at her>Violent urges>Uncontrollable vocalisations Omg she's literally me
>>154008438caring about skill on a party game
>>154015316Jinx is basically a Zaunite princess who lived in luxury during half of her childhood but still complains about muh Pilties and muh daddy to her sister who spend the same time in a cold moist jail cell.
>>154015825>Lived in luxury She lived in a giant air vent
>>154015847that's more space than most Zaunites get. with Vander she shared a room for 4, and he already was the de facto leader of Zaun.
>>154014210>Jinx confirmed heterosexual who only loves black kings
>>154015847By choice. When it comes to luxuries, she got everything she wanted when she wanted
>>154005257Outstanding first season.
>>154016470>>154015955Oh yeah? If she was so rich why couldn't she buy someone who loved her
>>154016611How have you lived this long and never heard "money can't buy love"?
>>154016611because the one who loved her would've accepted her back for free
>>154016641Money can't buy love but poverty sure as hell can destroy it. Don't ask me how that works.
>>154016672>He does it for free
>>154009266Jinx pussy probably stinks. Powder pussy is where it's at.
>>154017243Well anon, when you love someone, you gotta accept all of them
>>154008370>>154013728Everyone missed the real moral of Arcane:
>>154017810This is 100% true.
>>154017810>>154018085>Girls with bpd are bad news>Lesbians are bad news>Ethnic minorities are bad newsWtf I love arcane now
>>154005257The people have a clear love for animation but the story has a shitload of redflags that go over the cost of actual storytelling. I was fine with it in the first season but with all the spoilers of the second season it went above what i could bear.I drop shows that have the dramatic haircut meme especially when it coincidently turns into a sideshave. The Jinx skin already spoiled what was going to happen so i didnt even have to watch it.
>>154018760Arcane (S1 at least) has by far the best writing of a show - hell any piece of media - in a long long time
>>154019146got any similar recommendation?
>>154019229I honestly can't think of anything that reaches the depth, intensity, complexity and style of S1. Some close things>ATLA, although less depth and complexity>Act 1 of Legend of Korra, broadly similar themes> Deus Ex is politically complex, but characters are more one dimensional>Heaven Official's Blessing (the novel at least), deep characters but little politics
Feels like it could have run for four seasons overall, just following how the Piltover and Zaun conflict evolved with constantly shifting status quo changes and character alliances. Like a 2020s Black Sails.
>season 1 was pretty good >season 2 felt like a rushed mess
>>154020245Spending ~14 million per episode probably didn't help. Interestingly, there was a cut side plot where Silco was working with Mel.
The Jayce Mel sex scene from the first season was genuine kino. Spectacular cinematography.The Vi cait sex scene was cringe. I fast-forwarded through that part it was so awful. Heimerdinger's got a set of pipes on him. S2 was worth it alone just to hear that yordle sing. There is just something supremely kino about when the autistic tech dude starts doing music.
>>154020518Yeah but Caitvi sex scene has a better soundtrack than Mel and Jayce>I'm feeling fantastic >I'm fucking fantastic
>>154020469It was only $9 million per episode (actually somewhat cheap by modern genre television standards). The overall production budget for S1 was $81 million. The budget for the entire series, including marketing, was $256 million.The problem was moreso the amount of time that had to be spent simultaneously working on the story and animation together, so there would be a three year gap between seasons.
>>154019540Drop whatever you were doing and buy the Visual Novel "The Silver Case" right now. Don't ask. Just do it.
Did season 2 really shit the bed that hard?
>>154022243Only unbiased opinion in this thread: S2 considered in itself is an incredible show. What happened was S1 was so unprecedented it set expectations too high. If S1 and S2 were inverted, Arcane would be praised as a new standard of animated shows.
>>154022243It was very disappointing compared to S1 but the animation was still god-tier.
>>154022199The play station game?
>>154022243it's still watchable and even entertaining but season 1 had set the standard so high that the dip in quality was tragicthe random pause on the plot for a public lesbian prison sex scene was dumb as hell though
>>154022271>If S1 and S2 were inverted, Arcane would be praised as a new standard of animated shows.It still is, we haven't really gotten a 3D animated series on the same level as Arcane. Maybe Blue Eye Samurai, but we'll see if S2 sticks the landing.
>>154022381I like BES but it really has nowhere near the animation quality, depth of storytelling, writing or complexity of Arcane.
>>154022286Playstation, Steam, Switch, doesn't really matter what you play it on.
>>154022715I've been playing it for half an hour and all I see is half a VN with a pretty cool background and a really shitty game engine
>>154022826Stick with it. It doesn't really click until the second half, but then it really clicks. Switch between the two plotlines after each chapter.
>>154022841Can't I just play MGS2 instead at least I get to shoot people and hear funny names
>>154022860You could do that, sure. It's a pretty good game.I just don't really vibe with Kojima's "Sit down the player and lecture him on what the game he just played was about for 20 minutes in the third act" approach to writing.
>>154009681>greedy He wasn't greedy. When presented with the choice of getting all the power he wanted and realize his goals in exchange for Jinx, he was unwilling to do thatThe show was sympathetic for left wingers even when in the real life you massacre with bullets black children during you armed terrorist occupations, get to commit numerous violent crimes before getting slapped on your wrist for murdering a woman in a subway, shill for a guy with a Nazi tattoo because he hates Israel more than a billionaire who has awkwardly waved his hand, and keep firing bullets at right wing political figures while acting like anyone oppresses you because you are just spoiled sociopathic cunts
>>154019146>>154019540What about the Pantheon cartoon? It is just as good as S1 Arcane and sticks the landing in own S2
>>154023041Ivincible ass looking animation
>>154023202Pantheon actually has decent fight scenes unlike Invincible. Animation-wise, it's around Castlevanoa/Vox Machina tier.
