I've watched a lot of expensive, ambitious animated series over the years aimed at older audiences, and many of them fall victim to certain common issues. The biggest one is that they're simply not very well written or conceived, often too reliant on their visuals or their adult content. "Arcane," based on the "League of Legends" game franchise, is one of the best I've seen because it is absolutely rock-solid in its storytelling. It's not just that the worldbuilding is strong, or the characters are unusually nuanced, but because it understands the strengths of animation, and what to do with them.
Set in the steampunk fantasy world of Runeterra, "Arcane" follows several characters who live in the city of Piltover, renowned for its scientists and inventors, and Zaun, the dangerous "undercity" below it. Two orphaned sisters, Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) and Powder (Mia Sinclair Jenness) grow up in Zaun under the care of their foster father Vander (JB Blanc), while dodging crime lords like Silco (Jason Spisak) and Piltover's law enforcers. One day, their gang steals "arcane" crystals from a promising young scientist, Jayce (Kevin Alejandro), who is at the center of another group of characters - an enforcer, Caitlyn (Katie Leung), a professor, Heimerdinger (Mick Wingert), his assistant Viktor (Harry Lloyd), and an ambitious member of Piltover's ruling council, Mel Medarda (Toks Olagundoye). This sets off a chain of events with major consequences for both Piltover and Zaun.
I spent a good amount of time reading up on the production details for this series, because "Arcane" feels like it came out of nowhere. The unusually high quality animation was produced by Paris based Fortiche Production, which has previously only done animation for other "League of Legends" projects. The style is similar to Sony's "Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse" and SPA's "Klaus," using a combination of CGI and traditional animation. This allows the characters to combine the expressiveness of hand-drawn animation and the polish of CGI, which is important because so much of the series is focused on character relationships and interactions. The series being animated helps it to realize all sorts of impossible environments, weapons, and visuals. The characters include wildly stylized humans, non-human creatures, and people who are magically enhanced. Notably, it also allows the early episodes to put its young leads into dangerous situations, and portray violence as more brutal than genre shows are usually comfortable with.
And this is the crucial thing that distinguishes "Arcane" from other animated projects I've seen in this vein. It offers up plenty of action and spectacle, but always in service of its thoughtful, multi-faceted story. All the characters rely on very familiar tropes often found in gaming and anime, but they change and grow and subvert stereotypes. I love tough-girl Vi, cunning Mel Medarda, and the deeply twisted Silco. This is a universe where everyone is trying to do the right thing according to their own systems of morality, but good intentions often bring about catastrophe. I appreciate that every major conflict is driven by specific choices and their unintended consequences. The writing does a nice job of giving every major player an arc, and showing us how the world works more often than telling us how it works. There's only one major character I have reservations about, Jynx (Ella Purnell), a Harley Quinn-like agent of chaos, whose mental instability makes her a little too much of a psycho cutie cliche. And yet, she's so charismatic, it's hard to take your eyes off of her.
"Arcane" has some rough edges and tonal problems. Parts of the story are repetitive - Vi is kidnapped or carried off with alarming frequency - and there's no getting around its reliance on easy shocks. However, I like that it takes its cues from darker, bleaker anime series like "Fullmetal Alchemist." And it does right by its characters, never letting the audience write anyone off, even when they seem irredeemable. I have no experience with Riot Games or "League of Legends" whatsoever, but the show got me completely invested in the fates of these characters and their world. I can't wait to see what else this franchise has in store.
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