The Netflix TV series confirms itself to be a gem of writing and animation.
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| Image Credit: Netflix |
Arcane is back and it did it in the best way. In 2021, the first season of Arcane came out on Netflix a little quietly as animated series do not enjoy the same treatment as the most anticipated films or TV series, but it immediately captured attention. With a story made of political intrigue, social discrepancies, two sisters as protagonists, and an original animation style, Arcane quickly distanced itself from the video game from which it is based, League of Legends, to become something more.
After three years, Arcane returns to the small screens with a final season divided into three parts. An intelligent strategy that allows the viewer to fully enjoy these three years of work without falling into the often frenetic dynamics of binge-watching. A final season that, according to the first three episodes, is worth watching.
Power, intrigue, and politics reign supreme in these first episodes
A war between “the rats of the surface” and the inhabitants of an underground city abandoned to itself, a war that is above all politically dominated by intrigues and dynamics of submission and power, but also an unstable magic whose rules are difficult to decipher. This is how Arcane left us, with a Jinx completely devastated by grief who points her missile launcher at the Capitol where the council is meeting to decide whether to officially declare war or vote for peace and independence of the underground city.
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| Image Credit: Netflix |
A declaration that does not come from the top, but from one of the most interesting and multifaceted protagonists that have been missing for a long time in Western animation. Thus begins a battle to the death that sees, as in the first season, Vi and Jinx as the perfect representatives of how war reduces innocent people. A change that is the true lifeblood of Arcane that demonstrates once again how to write, and stage, a story.
If the first episodes of the series focused on presenting the narrative world, this new season does not dwell on what has already been said but goes straight to the action. The authors Christian Linke and Alex Yee do not rest on their laurels by re-proposing a strategy that had proven successful but dedicate themselves to deepening the dynamics between the characters who occupy the top of the social ladder and the political intrigues without forgetting to increase the world building that remains one of the distinctive traits of the series.
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| Image Credit: Netflix |
A jewel of animation and writing
Even from an aesthetic point of view, Arcane does not disappoint and continues to give pearls. The two different worlds - the one on the surface inhabited by the middle class, academics, and the political class and the underground, dark and degraded one in which the outcasts of society live - continue to be visually represented in an excellent way both using classic stylistic elements, such as the use of dark colors for the hidden city and a more sumptuous and bright palette for the capital, but also thanks to the union of different animation and drawing styles. The classic is renewed by the encounter of a style dominated by bold lines, neon colors, different animation schools that merge, and a strong love for the aesthetics of video games.
Arcane 2: League of Legends – Part 1: Evaluation and conclusion
The streaming platform industry is saturated and can't keep up with the flagship series that it creates itself, ending up taking even many years between the release of one season and the next. And often the result is not worth the wait. Fortunately, this is not the case with Arcane, which returns with splendid episodes from every point of view. The artistic choices are accompanied by a pen that manages to outline a society in its smallest details, thanks above all to dialogues that always hit the point and multifaceted characters whose strong point is originality.
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