'Arcane' is Fantastic

We finished watching 'Arcane' on Netflix last week, and holy hell, how is this show so good? It is a Netflix original animated show based on a plotless video game. By all accounts, it should be hot garbage. Instead, it is one of the best pieces of media I have watched in years.

After hearing good reviews, I put it on while the wife was at rugby practice, figuring it would be some brainless fun that I'd find distracting that wouldn't appeal to her. The very first scene sucked me in and I realized she was going to have to see it too. One of the best openings of any piece of media I've ever seen. It threw down the gauntlet on all the poorly done, pretentious, vapid, talk-down-to-your-audience shows that have come down to us. With no dialogue, we're introduced perfectly to and invested in our leads, the tone, the world, and the central conflict that serves as a backdrop. It lets you know exactly what this show is going to be about in perfectly animated facial expressions.

Then the gut-punches keep coming.

The whole experience... it has the style of 'Into the Spidervers', the brilliance of 'Akira', the quiet energy of 'Cowboy Bebop' (the cartoon), the Gothic Art Deco menace of 'Bioshock', the moral ambiguity and believable characterization of 'Breaking Bad', and the willingness to kill off characters you've become attached to of 'Game of Thrones'.

It draws heavy inspiration widely, but distills it all into something new and unique to it.

I have a strong philosophy that the best works of art reward attention, but don't demand it. This lives up to that at every turn.

We enjoyed it thoroughly. I had a hard time with the animation at first but it really is quite beautiful later on. I think we binged it over three evenings? Idk if they're planning another season, but I'll watch it if they do. 

This may be the only positive thing to ever come from League of Legends.

Will have to check this out...don't forget that Cowboy Bebop was only made to sell toy spaceships!

I also liked it, I was trying to figure out the game tie-in but finally decided that there wasn't really one.

In reply to Beer Baron :

Umm, you kept me up way way to late last night. Definitely tones of Bioshock Infinite, and yes opening shot fantastic, soundtrack great. Thanks for bringing this up as I would not have seen it otherwise

chandler said:

I also liked it, I was trying to figure out the game tie-in but finally decided that there wasn't really one.

I gahter there are easter eggs all over the place, and they use characters and lore.

I never really played LoL. Just did the tutorial before realizing it wasn't for me. I only caught a couple easter egg references ("the lanes", shambling purple mooks, glowing blue orbs on pedestals).

I have no idea what any of you are talking about. 
 

I'll have to watch it. 

It was very well done indeed.

I just watched the first episode, not bad at all.  My oldest walked by and said the animation looked like Borderlands.

Would it be interesting to someone whose exposure to gamer culture ended with Pong and occasional shouts from his son's room?

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

Would it be interesting to someone whose exposure to gamer culture ended with Pong and occasional shouts from his son's room?

Yes. Absolutely.

It won't appeal to everyone, but it's not a "show for gamers". If you enjoy Science Fiction, Fantasy, Super Heroes, or Gangster Underworld Action shows and movies (Game of Thrones, The Expanse, Firefly, Into the Spiderverse, John Wick, Mission Impossible, Breaking Bad, Thor Ragnarok, The Boys, Cowboy Bebop, Akira...), Arcane is very enjoyable. If you're my mother and mostly watch BBC or PBS produced period dramas, not so much.

I was originally skeptical of it *because* I'm familiar with gamer culture, and shows steeped in that usually aren't very good. This limits its gamer references pretty much exclusively to background easter eggs the way that The Simpsons and Futurama sprinkle in math jokes.

Bumping this so I come back to watch it.  I started watching Vox Machina recently, thinking it was the subject of this thread.  Its pretty fun and delightfully foul, but I can't decide if its appropriate for my 9 year old or not.

Arcane appears to be TV-14 so a safer bet to start with.

Just jumped from this thread to the first show. Took about 10 minutes to adjust to the animation mode and enjoyed the  episode. Gonna watch the rest.

Woulda sworn that Vander was the same character/actor as Butcher in "The Boys".

I've rewatched it for the third time. So many little details and elements that I keep catching. Details that are set up early that you don't realize the significance of until you already know how they play out. Just realizing how much depth there is.

I was surprised how emotionally invested I was knowing how it would play out. I kept wishing characters would make different decisions, knowing how what they do turns out, but realizing that the characterization and motivation of each character is so good that all of their bad decisions are inevitable.

I'm really looking forward to Season 2 coming out next month.