Arcane Season One Review
Arcane is a Netflix animated adaptation of a video game that bored me into dropping it after five minutes. Netflix recently announced it was cancelling a slew of animated projects in the face of falling revenue (which might have something to do with constant price hikes and new streaming services with more competitive offerings), so it might seem like a bad time to take a shot on a Netflix animated show. Even if you like it, who says it’ll ever get a decent ending? And if you’re in the vast majority of people, why would you try this show about a video game you’ve never played anyway?
And I don’t know… maybe because it rules?
In a world full of follow-the-leader shows and films, where every blockbuster movie wants to be the next Marvel Cinematic Universe and so many shows feel like you’ve seen them before, Arcane is doing its own thing, and it’s really, really good at it.
The show begins with a flashback to a great riot between the shining, technologically-advanced city of Piltover, and the have-not districts of the Undercity, where that technology generally only shows up stolen or in the form of police violence. The show follows two sisters, Vi and Powder, who were orphaned in the riot and are now being raised by hero of the Undercity, Vander, as they try to survive in a world more cutthroat and politically explosive than they could possibly guess.
That’s just the start of the cast, though. In nine episodes we meet an inventor struggling to combine technology and magic, an ancient and adorable professor whose world is changing around him, a politician so savvy that she can almost convince herself she doesn’t have a conscience, and a shark-eyed crime lord who’s finally ready to take what’s his… to name a few, anyway.
God, what’s not to love about this show? The art just looks different than almost any other animated show out there, and the style highlights the exciting wonders of the world and the horrifying shadows lurking beneath it. Action is fluid and exciting. It’s impossible to check out during a good fight or chase scene once you’ve had time to get attached to these characters. The little scenes are appropriately endearing or unsettling, and the big scenes are jaw-dropping.
I also give this show incredible credit for daring not to fit in a checkbox. This is a show that starts with a cast of mostly children characters, but it doesn’t rely on wacky goofs, comic relief, or cartoon violence. The show dives into the world of politics, economic disparity, and crime, but without trying to be a new Game of Thrones fantasy. Several characters are deeply morally gray, but the show doesn’t lose itself in depressing hopelessness.
This show very appropriately saw a groundswell of support on its release, and before the first season ended, Netflix was already hard at work on the second season. With that in mind, it’s hard to say that this show came out of nowhere, but that’s still how it feels. It’s from a French animation studio called Fortiche that even a lot of animation fans had never heard of before the show launched. It’s not based on a property that the majority of viewers have any experience with. It doesn’t have a cast full of recognizable Hollywood names.
What it does have is a story so good that none of those other things hold it back. This is great TV, and it’s a good reminder that taking a chance on something different with a strong vision can really pay off.
5 Undercity orphans out of 5. This one is a must-see.