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The dirt under your nails - ARCANE

Eventua

Eventua

Just Me

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXmAurh012s




View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Svs_hl897c



Well... damn.

I was anticipating this show would be good, but within the first few seconds I was hooked and watched the first three episodes in one go - only reason I didn't binge it in full is cause they're only releasing it in three episode batches called "Acts" that each have self-contained story arcs.

Fantastic animation, directing, music, writing and voice work all around, and having a look for reviews it was a real struggle to find anything negative other than some concerns the show doesn't have enough content warnings, because HO BOY does this show get real dark.
 
My only previous contact with League were those music videos, and a couple of the animated trailers. I had no issues following the story, and in fact my understanding, admittedly informed by hearsay, is that playing the game would hardly give you much insight. Arcane is written to present you with everything you need to know about Piltover, and it's an origin story for almost all the characters, so you don't need any prior knowledge. There were occasions where I wondered whether, if I were a player, I might go 'oh, it's that character!' but that's not a huge deal.

I'm kind of tempted to change the thread title to 'Fortiche Production's Arcane' because hoooooo the level of presentation here is super impressive impressive and goes a long way to supporting and selling the story and performances. Not that those are bad or anything, I was really drawn in by both, but this is really up there as far as CG productions go. I'm looking forward to Act 2.
 
Playing the game basically just lets you know who the big name charaters are and where they will probably end up, e.g
Singed & Silco turning Vander into Warwick, Viktor turning himself into a cyborg and breaking up with Jayce, Vi & Cait becoming a cop duo
League itself doesn't really introduce most of the things in the show anyway, aside from short lines in game that I bet 90% of the playerbase doesn't listen to.

Don't let the name League of Legends put you off watching the show, even if you don't care about LOL in the slightest it's still worth watching for some 10/10 art and animation.
 
I want to like this show on its own merits, but political bent of LoL's lore makes me terrified for the future storyline.
Please don't bothside this, please don't do that Fortiche and Riot, please don't make "Pharaoh and Noah story, but Pharaoh is the good guy and Noah is the villain" again, you even called an episode "The base level of violence necessary for change", something great can come of this.
 
Alitur said:
I want to like this show on its own merits, but political bent of LoL's lore makes me terrified for the future storyline.
Please don't bothside this, please don't do that Fortiche and Riot, please don't make "Pharaoh and Noah story, but Pharaoh is the good guy and Noah is the villain" again, you even called an episode "The base level of violence necessary for change", something great can come of this.
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I like the show as it is right now - actually, no, I freaking *LOVE* the show, it's amazing - but yeah. I can understand that fear. The way they
wrote Silco as a murderous and clearly villainous sociopath and had Vander as deeply repentant for his part in the uprising does... kind of suggest they're going to bothsides this. But hey! Maybe I'm wrong!
 
Ford Prefect said:
My only previous contact with League were those music videos, and a couple of the animated trailers. I had no issues following the story, and in fact my understanding, admittedly informed by hearsay, is that playing the game would hardly give you much insight. Arcane is written to present you with everything you need to know about Piltover, and it's an origin story for almost all the characters, so you don't need any prior knowledge. There were occasions where I wondered whether, if I were a player, I might go 'oh, it's that character!' but that's not a huge deal.

I'm kind of tempted to change the thread title to 'Fortiche Production's Arcane' because hoooooo the level of presentation here is super impressive impressive and goes a long way to supporting and selling the story and performances. Not that those are bad or anything, I was really drawn in by both, but this is really up there as far as CG productions go. I'm looking forward to Act 2.
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Yeah, that might be for the best -- it's unclear exactly what aspects of this were handled by which company/studio, but Fortiche definitely handled all of the animation, VFX and presentation and that's what lifts it from "7-8 out of 10" to "10 out of 10" in my mind.
 
The show is really good. Very tight writing, great character design, excellent voice acting and splendid animation. Looking forward to Act II.
 
Alitur said:
I want to like this show on its own merits, but political bent of LoL's lore makes me terrified for the future storyline.
Please don't bothside this, please don't do that Fortiche and Riot, please don't make "Pharaoh and Noah story, but Pharaoh is the good guy and Noah is the villain" again, you even called an episode "The base level of violence necessary for change", something great can come of this.
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Regarding that:
I'm not sure how "Jinx becoming an explosion loving Harley Quinn rip-off" and "Vi becomes a violent cowboy cop for Piltover" follows from what we've seen in Act 1, and knowing that's what they canonically become kind of hangs over the story to the point I feel I might've liked it more if I hadn't known. Jinx becoming a villain working for Silco maybe, Vi becoming a cop for Zaun maybe, but not that. Knowing that the protagonists will suffer de facto personality death and a total betrayal of their own principles respectively makes it a tad hard to get invested in them.

The story hints at something more complicated, there is a shot in the trailer where an adult Vi and Jinx are fighting back to back, but still iffy.
 
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Hearing more about LoL's canon lore, I'm hoping now that this show is going to be a sort of 'inspired by' or 'adapted from' production, instead of being forced onto whatever past story rails have been set.
 
They could also decide to just retcon the character's lore in game if the show has a different take that feels/sells better.
 
Not sure if this is spoilers or not.

League's "lore" is kind of schizophrenic on certain subjects as a result of how it was constantly rewritten and the matter of Zaun vs Piltover is one of those things. Part of the problem is that characters like Caitlyn and Vi have never been conceptually updated from the old version of the conflict which was two geographically distinct, and morally black and white city-states. The Old Zaun was not the literal underside of Old Piltover and the Old Zaun was very much an antagonistic, villainous aggressor. Good guys came from Piltover while bad guys came from Zaun and that was basically the extent of it. Even the characterisation of the two cities was kind of flipped. Zaun was a capitalist dystopia, literally a city that was run by/for a greedy corporation. It was a centre of a booming slave economy, kidnapping people from other countries and regions to be worked to the death in the name of alchemical profit. Piltover had some problems because of the way the text uncritically embraced certain ideas but as it was intended was basically a democratic, technological, demilitarised, eco-friendly utopia.

They were shallow together in this way for like half of League's existence. The relationship I just described existed for maybe 6 years during League's formative years for most characters. The relative moral complexity of Piltover's 'progress' being literally built on top of (and the cause of) the Zaun undercity didn't become a thing until late 2016 or so and even that didn't get fully fleshed out until maybe 2018. Vi becoming a cop was decided in that context and despite the fact that her literal story is theoretically up to date the conceptual underpinning of the character as the rough and tumble partner of Sherrif Caitlyn isn't something that can be smoothed over as easily.
 
firefossil said:
Regarding that:
I'm not sure how "Jinx becoming an explosion loving Harley Quinn rip-off" and "Vi becomes a violent cowboy cop for Piltover" follows from what we've seen in Act 1, and knowing that's what they canonically become kind of hangs over the story to the point I feel I might've liked it more if I hadn't known. Jinx becoming a villain working for Silco maybe, Vi becoming a cop for Zaun maybe, but not that. Knowing that the protagonists will suffer de facto personality death and a total betrayal of their own principles respectively makes it a tad hard to get invested in them.

The story hints at something more complicated, there is a shot in the trailer where an adult Vi and Jinx are fighting back to back, but still iffy.
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So, I wont lie, this has been worrying me a little but the way I see it can go one of two directions:

--- A) The writers and actors are obviously good at this and care about what they create, and they've already shown a lot of change in character (that flows naturally) in the space of three episodes. With six episodes and at least one timeskip to go (possibly another between episodes 6 and 7?) I could see them writing such a change in a way that still "works" even if it's pretty far from where the characters are now.
--- B) They take the principle of "screw the rules, we'll retcon when we retcon" once again and just... change the official lore to match closer to where-ever Arcane ends. Personally, I prefer this option because it gives the writers a lot more freedom as to where they want to take the story and characters and also implies we might one day get an actually good version of the Ruined King/Ruination storyline.
 
I'm made slightly optimistic by the recent pve lore event in Legends of Runeterra, which tells a great little story with Jinx, Vi and Caitlyn (presumably post Arcane) that is considerably different in tone and feel than previous 'post-Arcane' canon of Jinx, Vi and Caitlyn interacting (though that does vary somewhat depending on what choice you pick at a certain point). While I think it's inevitable that the series will be - especially by the standards of most of us on this forum - pretty milquetoast centrist in terms of its ultimate conclusion, the recent event gives me hope that it won't be as bad as it could be in that regard.
 
Rafin said:
I feel like some of you would enjoy this guy's preamble about the (potential) political themes of Arcane.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDXbfXLW5JM
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TB Skyen's videos in general are very good.

king208 said:
So did Riot ever quit being especially shitty even among game developers or are they still a festering pile of human misery?
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No, they're still scumsucking fuckers (though not especially bad - Ubisoft is still worse I think?).
 
Well I watched Act 2 and I'll crosspost my opinion from SB:... It wasn't as good, it's not bad but it doesn't hit the same level of 'almost perfect' execution that Act 1 does.

Specifically, The firelights are a Deus Ex Machina right now, they're the inciting incident for Cait to start her investigation, they're the ones who come in when Jinx is at a critical time with Vi... I like how the show has used standard tropes to expedite its story telling but this time the execution wasn't great and it's not like we didn't have Silco introduced to us in Act 1, it feels like they're holding back on the introduction, I fear because the leader will be reavealed as a champion after Act 3.

On top of that, Cait is looking Mary Sue-ish, which is a massive problem in a series about conflicted characters whose main storyline runs on those characters making poor decisions based on their flaws, ...she sticks out. it's even worse knowing what little I do about the game because not only does that feed the Vi as an enforcer narrative, it also looks like pandering since AFAIK Cait is one of the most popular champions.

Tl,Dr: I feel like some narrative choices are made for the game now, not to the point of killing my enjoyment of the show, but it does lessen the experience IMO.
 
loving how it doesn't take the easy way out anywhere, thematically or character-wise, and heisendonger gets called out for his immortal incrementalism/skewed perspective

also hOOOH lordy that's some pretty explicit sexual tension in episodes 5 and 6, i think they might actually go the distance and give us an on screen smooch
 
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