The new LoL series impresses with its great visuals, but in the first act, it mainly captivates us with its gripping story. Find out why it works so well in our series review.
For years I’ve been getting on people’s nerves with League of Legends. No, I don’t want you all to start playing the MOBA, there are very good reasons not to – I say as a fan. My annoyance comes from somewhere else entirely: both players and non-players ignore the fact that LoL offers one of the most exciting fantasy universes ever! And Riot is not innocent of this, after all they hide their fantastic lore in champion descriptions, trailers and short web comics. Until now.
Because the new Netflix series Arcane has not only exceeded my personal expectations by miles, but is currently convincing hundreds of thousands of viewers that Runeterra is one hell of a cool world that we definitely need to see more of! Whether you like LoL, don’t like LoL or don’t care at all, this series is definitely worth your time. What’s it all about and why is it so well done?
This is what Arcane is about
One thing up front: you don’t need to know LoL to understand the series. The setting is explained quite elegantly, although prior knowledge will of course give you the odd cool “aha!” moment. As someone who knows LoL, I’m very happy when a familiar face appears, but if you haven’t had anything to do with the universe yet, you even have an advantage: you don’t know what will become of the characters later. Arcane is a kind of prequel and takes place before the events in the MOBA.
The series tells the story of two mismatched sisters, Vi and Powder, who live in the filthy and dangerous undercity of Zhaun. Here, toxic sewage flows through the sewers, unscrupulous criminals and mad scientists are up to no good. Not a particularly nice place to grow up. While Vi makes her way as the daring leader of a youthful gang, little Powder is often just her frightened appendage who does everything wrong.
Nevertheless, the two love each other dearly – but as the official trailer already reveals, they are tragically torn apart and end up on different sides of a brutal conflict.
In the three episodes (together they form Act 1 of 3) we see Vi and Powder in their childhood. Together with their friends, they venture on a raid to Piltover, the clean and stone-rich upper town that is traditionally at enmity with Zhaun. Unbeknownst to them, they steal a deadly invention and inadvertently instigate a bloody battle between Piltover and Zhaun, into which their adoptive father Vander is also drawn.
Speaking of bloody: It’s much more brutal and gritty here than in the comic-like MOBA, Arcane is definitely aimed at an older audience. However, not quite as much violence is shown as in Castlevania or Nightmare of the Wolf, for example. In particularly gruesome scenes, there is a rather conspicuous fade-out and the action is only hinted at. In return, the themes at stake are all the more adult: violence, poverty, despair, trauma, discrimination and cohesion. And Arcane fortunately doesn’t simply tick off one controversial point after another, but looks at everything from several sides without judging. That is left up to us to decide for ourselves.
Besides Vi and Powder (who is later called Jinx), other well-known champions appear, I found nine in total. For example, the genius academy leader Heimerdinger or the ambitious researcher Jayce, who works on forbidden hex technology. They are given their very own exciting storylines, which of course are all connected somehow. But also completely new characters like the merciless Silco take on important roles – whereby I am firmly convinced that some of them will soon become playable champions in LoL. I’m taking bets in the comments.
This is one of Arcane’s great strengths: every important character is believable and complex, has understandable motivations and believes they are doing the right thing. Arcane completely avoids black-and-white painting and at the same time takes a lot of time to build up the setting and characters properly. For example, the rich Piltover is not just the stuck-up oppressor of the bitterly poor Zhaun – one of many clichés the series elegantly avoids.
Arcane comes across brilliantly
The viewer ratings clearly show: Arcane is fantastically received right at the Netflix launch. On Metacritic, the series currently has a user score of 9.2; on IMDB, over 5000 users have given it an average of 9.4. And there are also cheers on Reddit and the like, with colleague Leya from My MMO even talking about the best video game adaptation of all time. How does the series manage to excite people so much? Apart from the gripping story, there are even more reasons.
Not least of all, it’s because of the beautiful visuals – Arcane’s style stands out very clearly from anime or western cartoons and often resembles a painting in motion. All the scenes are so smoothly animated that I sometimes rewound directly, simply to admire a fight or a facial expression again.
Riot has a lot of experience with fancy animations (and matching soundtrack!): the cinematic trailers and music videos regularly go viral. Arcane also demonstrates the same quality and attention to detail. And thus fulfils the wish that many fans have been shouting from the rooftops for years: “Please make a series that looks as cool as this one!”
If you plan to watch Arcane in German: The German dubbing is really well done, even though I personally always prefer the original sound. English with German subtitles is of course also possible on Netflix.
What didn’t I like about Arcane? No series without weaknesses, but there are actually very few things here that I find fault with. The only thing that really bothered me was a key scene in the last episode where a character’s transformation from “sad and distraught” to “angry and ready to set the world on fire” happened way too fast for my taste.
But that’s complaining on a very, very high level. Anyway, I can’t wait until the next part comes out! Act 2 will be released on Netflix on 13 November, followed by the final Act 3 on 20 November. Each act contains three episodes, so in total the first season consists of nine episodes. Nothing is known yet about a possible sequel.
