The West Bend Current

By Noah Mintie, Current Staff

The hardest part of making great television is sticking the landing.

Over the last three weekends, Netflix has incrementally dropped the second and final season of the acclaimed animated series “Arcane.” The show currently holds the title for the most expensive animated series of all time, and it earned a reputation for putting that money to good use in its beloved first season. Because of this, many worried that the second installment would lose its luster. While the second season’s conclusion brings a lot to unpack, “Arcane” has successfully wrapped up on a high note.

What was great still is

Despite being an adaptation of the heavily controversial “League of Legends” PC game, “Arcane”’s first season was near-unanimously praised for almost every trait it possessed, including brilliant writing, unique characters and gritty action. Five years of development made way for innovative animation. Individual scenes and subplots still boasted full-length video essays singing their praise years after the season had already concluded.

When word of a second season began to spread, many of the show’s fans began to worry that it would be impossible to live up to every high bar set by the original. The story of a TV show that starts strong yet tapers off over every following season is something everyone has seen at least once.

Thankfully these fears seemed to immediately silence after the first three episodes dropped, and for good reason. Episode one opens with a funeral scene which was animated with real charcoal drawings, where the only colors are a stark white, muddy grays and blacks, and hues of deep scarlet. The mixing of 2D and 3D animation is nothing new, but the way that “Arcane” blends them together with its gritty, smudgy animation looks incredible. The animators then take a step farther in scenes such as the funeral, by throwing a third completely unique art style in with the other two to create visuals which can presently be found nowhere else in the industry.

The animation isn’t the only masterful trait carried over from the first season. “Arcane’”s storytelling, particularly in the way of worldbuilding and characterization, still packs a punch. It begins by focusing on its characters after season one’s explosive ending. Each of the leads is in a different place, both literally and figuratively, so the first episodes guide the viewer through their psyche. “Arcane” uses expressive facial animation and other staples of visual storytelling to convey what characters think without requiring any dialogue. When they do speak, the characters create a window leading simultaneously to their philosophies and their feelings, which further hints at their motivations and underlying psychology.

The sci-fi plot points of the first season also carry over, and are executed well. A central conflict of the show asks, at what point does the drive for progress become immoral? The show uses this plot to make fairly biting commentary on the nature of innovation, and how the upper-class’s push for it can in turn exploit and destroy the lower class. The show is also very ambiguous about whether or not its new technology is a safe (or in some cases, nearly biblical) cure for disease, or an uncanny evil posing as a benefit to society. 

The pacing is worth discussing

Shortly after season two’s second act was released, Erik Kain of Forbes posted a review in which he said “There’s so much really top-notch stuff in Season 2, but I get a little out of breath watching it, like we’re just rushing from one thing to the next so quickly.”

This article’s sentiment that season two is too fast-paced has been frequently echoed, and it is not difficult to see why. The first six episodes cover a lot of ground and several significant time jumps. Critical plot points are often conveyed through an artsy montage, usually less than a minute or two, and then immediately come into play. Characters that went through one big arc in season one now go through several major developments in the span of only a few episodes.

So is it too fast? At first I thought that the biggest flaw of this season was its pacing, but after closer analysis, I no longer feel that way. Many of the plot points that the show delegates to a montage are uninteresting subject matter when taken in the thematic context of the show. The show focuses on a story of class struggle on a large scale by highlighting the experiences of several characters from across that spectrum. Nearly every plot-heavy scene that is given a lot of time is tied to this conflict, or ties to the development of characters. All of the scenes that breeze by very quickly simply aren’t important. “Arcane” doesn’t rush its second season, it is just extremely efficient.

To illustrate this point one can look to many of the plot points that are considered rushed. There is an episode which opens with a montage of the protagonist Vi, as she loses herself to a miserable life of cage fighting and loneliness. In the span of 90 seconds her mental state degrades, depicting the development of several months. The aftermath of this transition is then shown as she reunites with her sister to save an old friend. While it may seem that such a massive shift requires thorough exploration, this is actually not true. The aftermath does, and it gets exploration in the aforementioned adventure. The downfall itself? Does dedicating a very long scene or several short scenes over the course of the episode feel necessary for such a simple development? There is value in respecting the audience’s time, and “Arcane” tells viewers  everything they need to know. Specific details should be saved for what is thematically important, and that’s exactly what “Arcane” does. 

Cultural impact

In the wake of “Arcane”’s success, developers of the source material Riot Games has announced that more TV shows based off of “League of Legends” are soon to come. The public response to this announcement has overwhelmingly been as follows: “If it’s as good as ‘Arcane’ is, sure. If not, I don’t care.”

What made “Arcane” great could be hotly debated. Was it because the production was allowed to take as long as it needed? Was it just because it innovated on the animation front? Was it because of the massive budget? It’s likely a combination of the three, but I’ve never seen anyone try to argue that it was good because it was an adaptation of “League of Legends.” Ironically, that fact was the main reason that people thought the show would be awful before it was released. So when the only future “Arcane”-related content to be announced by Riot isn’t announced to be written, directed, or animated by the same people; and it could be an entirely different beast, it has become abundantly clear that “Arcane”’s time to shine is over.

While it’s sad that there will be no season three or any type of spin-off, it’s also somewhat relieving. It seems that nowadays no films or shows are safe from being rebooted for a quick buck. “Intellectual property culture” has ruled over original artistic works for the better part of the decade, and perhaps longer. It is reassuring that “Arcane” can just be a great show without overstaying its welcome. This ensures that I can recommend “Arcane” to friends in full confidence. It’s a relatively quick watch and everything is nearly perfect. No asterisk. Something like this is relatively hard to come across.

The revolutionary animation of “Arcane” will likely show its age with time. Other works of art will borrow from what made it so great and then expand upon it. Some will do so successfully, and others will not. Its cultural relevance may begin to fade without new seasons to give it a shot in the arm. However, I believe that all of this is a necessary sacrifice to ensure that the show as a whole is, and always will be, a masterpiece.