Reviews

I don't understand why this episode gets bad reviews for its simple story while other simple episodes (like The Tall Grass or Jibaro) are not faulted for that. The dialogue was simple, but carried more meaning than the pompous talks in other episodes, which is an approach I vastly prefer. The visuals are among the best in the entire series, with a beautiful art style and smooth animation. The whole thing felt like a cohesive and genuine experience, telegraphing clearly what's going to happen and executing it with confidence, which in my opinion is more commendable than relying on cheap plot twists.

This episode made me think about life and death, but in a comforting way, which is nice sometimes between all the depressing, existential crisis type of stories. It's slow paced, yes, but I never felt like it was wasting my time or using filler content. In my opinion, it is one of the more mature episodes despite (or maybe because of it) not featuring gore, sex or a bucket of swearing.

There's a lot to like about this episode and it's obviously a neatly crafted experience. However I wasn't as fascinated by it as other people. The cuts and noises, while probably necessary to hide how silly what was happening could look like, were pretty annoying. I did not care for any of the characters and I didn't need to see that much of the violence to get the idea, so the runtime felt a bit too long to me because of it.

Overall it's a very basic story, elevated by some details and dragged down by others. What this episode really wants (and accomplishes) to be is a weird spectacle and that's perfectly fine, but some sequences felt too self-indulging and silly at times, even with the careful editing.

This episode has a lot to say, but it does it in the worst way possible - by having one character monologue everything with pompous words and comparisons, in an accent that is meant to sound intellectual. Most of what he says barely has anything to do with what's happening (if you can say that anything is happening in the first place), which is a clunky way to integrate those themes in the episode, and isn't anything groundbreaking.

This is an episode where a lot of effort went into relying its message, but that's all. Don't let the physiognomy talk and the pretentious enunciation and words trick you into thinking this episode is any deeper than philosophy student level. As for the visuals, they are good, but they have no style and are nothing special after so many other CGI episodes. Perhaps the point was to highlight the sad banality of tragedy, but either way I was not impressed.

I let my feelings and thoughts settle for a while, but it's really one of those shows that gets dumber the more you think about. The individual ratings I gave to every episode of season one are slightly higher, but the problem is that they lead nowhere in the finale and I see no way for them to retroactively fix that in season 2.

I was thinking of starting with the good things, but they really don't matter in front of the glaring issues. It doesn't matter if the casting is overall good and the acting decent to good if the writing for almost all the characters is abysmal. It doesn't matter if some of the production elements like costumes are good and if the CGI is good in some episodes if in others it looks very fake and underwhelming. It doesn't matter that I like the intro and theme song if they are forgettable and followed by awful stuff. And so on...

It's so obvious that this show is bad fanfiction made by people who think they are injecting progressive ideas into an old story. Aside from the fact that the story in the show is overall worse than the one in the books (not because it's different, but because it's inconsistent, has terrible pacing, doesn't have compelling and complex characters, doesn't build arcs properly and many other issues), this story is overall NOT more progressive than the one in the books. The show is so set on lifting up women, but at the cost of bringing down men which is not what feminism is about and contradicts a core part of the story - that men and women need to learn to work together and treat each other as equals. It takes away all the accomplishments and positive traits of men and turns them into useless wimps. And then it turns the women into laughable Mary Sues who constantly act stupid but save the day because they are so powerful without any training. I don't understand why, in the books the women were already more powerful and respected than men in society, but they had limits to keep them grounded. And while in the books men are basically facing sexism at times, they are constantly overcoming their fears to survive and protect the people they care about so they are strong and imperfect characters. So instead of turning feminism into anti-feminism by accident, why not change only the lack of LGBT+ representation of the source material (but in a way that doesn't worsen the story, of course) ? Also don't let some people trick you into thinking that the book is full of white people and the show improved on racial diversity, the book obviously has different races and cultures in a way that makes sense.

The only significantly good thing about this show was reviving the interest in the book series and bringing in new readers. I know plenty of book readers like it a lot, but my guess is that's because they are excited about seeing the story on a screen more than them actually liking the show in itself. And if you enjoy it for whatever reason that's great, good for you, just don't tell people that only book purists dislike this show, there's plenty of valid reasons to not like it.

If you haven't read the books, I recommend the books but not the show - it's not a great fantasy show, barely even good. If you read the books, I don't recommend the show unless you can separate the books from the show completely (especially if you like Perrin, they ruined him)... only then it could be a fun watch for either good or bad reasons. But don't go into this expecting a faithful adaptation in the slightest! It's amateur fanfiction from a Moiraine lover and that's it.

And before saying that it doesn't matter if it's a bad adaptation, think about it. They are relying on the WOT name to attract the book lovers for ratings, but don't respect the books. They chose a story with clear core themes and completely tried to change them in the adaptation and it doesn't work on any level, the end result is a mess of inconsistent worldbuilding and magic rules and overbearing new ideas like "the world needs no help from men to be saved from the Dark One" which the source material doesn't support at all. What do you have left if you strip a story of everything that made it good in the first place anyway? Just make an original fantasy story if you're not going to care about the books you're "adapting".

I usually avoid giving a show a 10 because no show is perfect, but I honestly can't find enough flaws in Arcane to give it a 9. There could be some nitpicking about some cliche scenes or about the worldbuilding being just little bit lacking for those unfamiliar with League's universe or about, but these pale compared to the amazing art style and animation, interesting and exciting music choices, character building and arcs, intertwined plots making every character feel important to the world, plenty of emotional payoff and amazing attention to every detail for continuity and foreshadowing. Something else that I love is the stylish but not intrusive way they incorporated scenes that are pretty much music videos about the game, but manage to still be important scenes for the show full of both action and emotion. But most of all, I love that while you can find here villains and heroes judging by normal standards, no character is fully good or fully evil, they are just human and any of them are capable of both good and bad actions.

A possible significant issue is that the first 2 episodes are a bit slow and focused on kids, which can be annoying at times. However the payoff starting from episode 3 and onward is worth it and there's still plenty of interesting and charming moments in there. Also the first season does end in a cliffhanger, but season 2 got confirmed right away so we're eventually getting an answer to the big questions for sure, so as long as they don't keep ending seasons in a cliffhanger then it's cool.

The first 2-3 episodes are good, but what comes after it was great and left me impressed that this show is actually full of heart and passion and received the funds needed for creating it. It could have easily been a cash grab filled with obnoxious references and still do well enough, but instead we got one of the best video games adaptations ever made and an amazing show and story on its own as well. I hope Arcane will be very successful over the years and that we'll get to see more of League's champions on screen, with their own fascinating stories.