@@mascotwithadinosaur9353 Everything about League is good except for the main game itself. If you really want to explore the Runeterra universe more, Legends of Runeterra, Ruined King and online novels are much better
Tbh this is just one huge circlejerk. League can be toxic, addictive, ect., but so are many other online competitive games. Not a league shill, I haven't played in 5 years, but I'd say go for it if league looks fun to you. Enjoyment is subjective anyways.
It's fun as long as you stay away from ranked. But it also comes down to the fact that the game has nearly nothing to do with the series. If you expect a story based game, you're in the wrong place xd
that line lives rent free in my head lmao, but yeah it definitely sums up one of the major themes running through the show. People grappling with their ideologies versus their love for their children. 'What are you willing to give up' indeed.
@@Zahlenteufel1 Silco, Vandar, the police chief, Singed and even Mel's mother are parents who struggle with their ideologies and their roles as parents. Vandar had one shot to kill Silco but he gave it up to save Vi. Silco was practically given his dreams on a silver platter but was willing to throw it all away to keep Jinx sage. And the police chief was Silco's inside man to protect his own little daughter. As for Singed...well, he has the look of someone with nothing left to lose.
@@kira-dk2mx yeah, I got that mostly, but how is this "undoing"? Just using that word as an adjective is trippin me up. Is the effect the daughters have on their parents undoing the potential things the parents were going to do? or what?
Silco's relationship with Jinx was an incredibly well written one. I think if you pay attention to the sub-text in their relationship, there is never ANY DOUBT he will refuse to give her up. People talk about how he is choosing her over his dream of a free Zaun, but I don't think he saw that as the choice. It was a choice between someone who embodied everything he thought Zaun was and a free Zaun. Jinx is a broken creature who has been betrayed (at least Silco sees it that way) and yet not only survived the harsh environment that enveloped her, but became stronger (as Silco sees strength anyway). That is, he sees her as "perfect". One thing shows with poor writing miss in similar situations is that there needs to be something that ties characters together - being adopted by a guardian does not suddenly make that person significant or the ties between them strong. Silco and Jinx's relationship works because you can see that they both value a part of the other. I hope the writing stays at this quality in the subsequent seasons.
That's the exact same thing Silco's voice actor said in a interview: that Silco sees Jinx as an embodiment of zuan. Jinx is broken and betrayed just like zuan. Yet silco loves this broken city and jinx, and for his eyes they both are perfect.
I agree. I was certain that Silco would never consider turning Jinx over to Piltover. It just wasn't an option, as tempting as the thought of achieving his dream may be. His immediate reaction in terms of body language when Jayce asks for Jinx in exchange screams a congruous 'no'. His genuine care and concern for her has always been detailed in their interactions. I'm wondering if many people misread their relationship either because the camera often focused on the expressionless left side of his face, or were just clouded by the cinematic tools utilized to depict him as a villain - it's easier to process 1-dimensional characters that are seen in so many popular movies, after all. There's so many moments in the series where you can see he genuinely loves her. He's a chembaron actively using a cup and map in his office that Jinx doodled on, for goodness' sake. Even after the friendly fire incident with Sevika, Silco took the time to ask for Jinx's first-hand account. People who don't care wouldn't bother to do that. I'll also point out excerpts from Jinx's journal from the Council Archives: "Now I'm taken care of, too - the nice kind of taken care of. Silco trusts me. I have Silco now. He trusts me. He is there for me. He loves me." I even noticed Silco often covers up his injury with makeup post-timeskip, and I wouldn't be surprised if he started doing that for Jinx given that in the same journal it says, "Give Silco his medicine. It's not so scary anymore." Precious. Silco's voice actor even confirmed at the finale event that Silco genuinely cared for Jinx. Indeed, I'm often confused why people accuse Silco of creating the 'monster' in Jinx. Jinx is not a product of ~Silco's evil machinations~. Jinx said it herself in the show. It wasn't Silco; it was Vi and the people she considered her family. Sometimes I wonder if a lot of people who are haven't been through trauma themselves fail to understand how it impacts survivors throughout their lives. Trauma is generational and can be difficult to manage, and the Undercity certainly doesn't seem to have the resources for therapy or medical treatment. Given the limitations of the world they live in, I think Silco and Jinx truly did the best they can to survive and support each other. I'm thankful Silco gave Jinx the one thing she craved from her sister that her Vi couldn't give her - unconditional love. And no, I don't blame Vi for that. I couldn't do that either if I were in her shoes. Also, I find it genuinely interesting people seem to put Vander on such a pedestal when he literally tried to murder his 'brother' (albeit for reasons unknown as of yet) and refused to do what his people wanted from him as a leader of the lanes. That's not 'heroic' - but he is human, and that's why I love Vander's character too. Same with Vi. There is almost no character in Arcane who is guitless. Arcane is the epitome of fantastic character writing. I just wish people didn't read Silco's character and his relationship with Jinx with such a skewed or 1-dimensional perspective.
Silco's face fell the moment Jayce told him he had to hand Jinx over. That was when he realised that, no matter how close he was to having everything he'd ever wanted, he would have to give up his daughter to get to it- and that was the one price he could not pay. The first thing he does after the meeting is head to Vander's memorial- not because he has to choose, but because he is grieving the loss of his dream. Silco is presented here with the choice Vander faced all those years ago- between Zaun and their children. And after all these years... he realises that he and Vander were not so different after all.
I think the first episode of act 2, with the shimmer eye drop and first episode of act 3, with the same scene kinda shows the trust between them. You don't let someone who you don't trust put something that sharp and dangerous near your eye.
@@BunsGlazing768 He also makes the reference of how he was wrong when he confronted vander originally, such that he is also grieving the loss of his friend. This is shown when he says the line "I now understand" It was that he realized that he had simply not understood Vander's perspective that pushing them into that would entail losing Zaun, and he wasn't willing to sacrifice his people for it.
Even when the show was still in that lighter tone in the first two episodes like you mentioned, I was impressed with how much respect they gave to a group of teenagers getting into a fight. It didn't turn into a big cartoon dustball with fists flying all over the place, people were grabbing each other's hair, bodyslamming others, fighting dirty, the works. Also, Powder throws a nail bomb at somebody. Granted it's a dud, but she was going to straight up maim a kid in a fight. Same thing with a knife coming out at the end of the fight in episode 1, the kid doesn't have the nerve to use it, but that whole scenario was on the razor's edge of turning into a murder. I guess if I had to pick one word for the tone, it would be grounded. Super cool show.
Hell one of the first things we see is the aftermath of the under-city uprising (I think that’s what it was) where Vi and Powder’s parents’ bodies are shown.
The show was ALWAYS dark from episode 1 and that fight and the grittiness of it all highlights that completely. Love the show for it ever scene I saw it.
I'm dumb for replying this late, but Claggor played into this whole narrative. He was silent-ish when trying to help Powder, but not really. He died silently too, which was admirable but tragic as well.
@@danzansandeev6033 Christian Linke was already the head of the music department at Riot for Curse of the Sad Mummy. Though his story is still interesting, since he started in player support and went on to build out their stellar music department and is now showrunning Arcane.
The thing that amazed me the most in Arcane in the end is the lack Big Bad. Plenty of nuanced tales fail in the end I feel because they decide to go what I consider an "easy" route by revealing a Big Bad that is defeated, making the watcher feel good by having a "moral" victory. But Arcane doesn't do that, on the contrary. Silco started as the Big Bad of the show, but the more it progressed, the more you realize that Silco is just another cog in a machine consisting of people having their own agenda. And that's the strength of Arcane, each character is someone with interests, hopes and dreams. It could have been so easy to reveal Mel to be manipulating Jayce for her own benefit, but on the contrary it's revealed that it's precisely her caring for people that made her an exile in her own country. Victor could have doubled down after her assistant death, but instead he gives up when he realizes that sometime the cost is too great, even if your life is at stake. Jinx could have gone through with her death game but in the end it's Silco that forces her hand. Even the less important people in the council, that were shown to be corrupt, howl when Jayce first propose to go through with Zaun independence, but by the time the series end, they came around to realize that it was the only way forward possible and unanimously voted for it. Which makes Jinx taking Silco's mantle and blowing the council all the more tragic.
I think silco would be the big bad because his actions cause most of the conflict between the cities. His method of raising jinx and refusing to punish her when she bombed the fair also deeply escalated everything
Yeah, totally agree. Though Silco is a pretty clear big bad. He's understandable in his motivation, and his "love" for Jinx is a positive, but there's no question that the way he runs the undercity is immoral. He's not a gray character like Viktor, or Mel, or even Jinx.
"immorality" doesn't mean Big Bad in my book. If you go by that line of thinking, Mel's mother is also a Big Bad because she doesn't to hesitate killing children. To me it is logical that an oppressed people is pushed further and further in the ropes until they start having to rely on desperate mesures (drug production and dealing is a recurrent source of insurgency income throughout history), and the Undercity is clearly at that point by the time of the series, hence why Vander is abandonned by his comrade in profit of Silco.
It's frustrating how so many people haven't understood that Vi didn't mean to abandon Powder. Vi was just a kid too. Albeit older than Powder, but still just a kid. She needed to process what she just witnessed. Tragic
To me it seemed more like she felt ashamed for what she did, that she wanted to hide her face from her sister whom she promised to protect but ended up hurting.
@T Dub we dont need too look at the definition of being abandoned, looking at the bigger picture would be much more jsut here, Vi had just seen her entire family getting killed at the fragile age of 16, (13)? if i was Vi, let me just say i wouldnt have stopped at just one punch. And i certainly wouldnt have gone back for her. But Vi did, honestly, considering her age and current trauma she handled the situation better than anyone else would
Well, she kind of did intend to abandon Powder. Not in that moment, to be sure, but keep in mind that Vi's original intention was to give herself over to the enforcers, which would mean abandoning Powder. Which makes me wonder, if Vi's plan had gone through, and Vander and Silco hadn't intervened, would Powder have still developed issues related to abandonment?
One thing I really love about the first act of Arcane is that basically sets up a three trial act for Powder. Her first trial was looting Jayces home, which she ended up failing by blowing it up. The second trial, was getting the bag safely to The Last Drop. She failed that by dropping the bag into the river. Now In most shows they set it up where the protagonists fails two times, and succeeds on the third time to prove themselves. And that’s what I was completely expecting with Powder. When I saw Vi losing against the monster I figured that was when Powder would swoop in and save the rest of the characters. But then we see the characters about to escape without her help, and that’s when you know everything’s about to go wrong. Instead of the third trial being Powders success, it’s her greatest failure and transformation to her character. And what’s great about it is that it’s not just subversive, it genuinely takes the story to more interesting places. You get the conflict with Vi and Jinx, you see Jinx’s mental struggles, and Silco becomes infinitely more compelling by seeing his parental role with Jinx. Arcane is just so damn good, I’m seriously excited to see more of it
The show is written to make you think Powder is gonna save them, the girl who escapes and comes help anyways, the intense moment where she finally could make a bomb work and help her sister, it's written to play with your expectations from tropes
@@MrLebruleur There is beautiful irony in that scene - she finally succeeds, only to fail everything completely. As OP said, the story is setup in such a way (the three-step-trial) that the audience expects Jinx to finally succeed in what she failed before. And she does - the bomb works! But her success simultaneously destroys everything she loves. The setup is really what makes this scene so tragic. When the audience is put into the mindset that Jinx will succeed, the tragedy of the final failure becomes that more relatable to the audience. The one time she was supposed to succeed, everything is ruined because of her. This beautifully establishes Jinx's conflict in the future Arcs: will she ever succeed in anything if everything she creates only destroys things. This conflict combined with her need of acceptance make Jinx such an interesting character. This emotional void left by the tragedy is also the perfect space for Silco to step in and fill with his parenting and manipulation. The story in this show is so well crafted, it's really a joy to watch.
OMG! I just realized one thing: it is true Powder failed three times as a child. But when she is Jinx she succeed three time. She succeed to take the hex stabilised crystal at Jayce lab killing enforcers, secondly she succeed to get the hex crystal near water (instead of throwing the bag) and secondly she succeed to explode the Council (same when she killed Mylo and Claygor). It s like she lives once again her childhood
Just saying, re: Vicktor and Jayce I realized that Jayce is on the bottom of the totem pole of Piltover(noble family but a smaller/weaker one), while Viktor is the top of the top heap for the undercity(rose to live in Piltover). It gives them alternative perspectives unique to their origin places and let's them contrast further, especially with how they take advancement Viktor is much more pragmatic when it comes to advancement, willing to destroy the hexcore after he sees what it can do, but at the same time, regarding humans, is much more idealistic; willing to reach out for peace, understands the nuances of the undercity and how it could benefit from hextech Jayce is more idealistic when it comes to hextech, rambling about what it could do in the future and advertising it to his poltilca friends, but is much more pragmatic; he has to, he's a politician Both of them being brilliant, hard-working scientists only benefits this contrast. When two characters have alike traits, their differences stand out more
I also find interesting how Viktor is much more likely to take risks. From breaking into Heimerdinger's office to experimenting on himself. When he and Jayce are working together for the first time Jayce asks him if he knows what he's doing and he just shrugs. When working on the hexcore he's asked if he's sure it's safe and he answears "of course not". It makes a lot of sense when you consider his background. If you want to survive in Zaun you have to take any chances you are given. Not to mention his disability and how, despite all odds, he managed to get to the top. He's used to taking risks. It is pretty similar to how Singed pushes forward no matter the costs, as opposed to Heimer.
This show messed me up man. Can't stop thinking about how innocent Powder was... to the point where she didn't even realize what she'd done. She was just happy her little contraption worked. And her realization (and the ultra realistic facial expressions) was very hard to watch.
The thing I find so fascinating about Arcane is its ability to make its characters likeable, even in this morally grey dystopia. Most characters in Arcane are just legitimately trying to protect and help the ones they love, but they're navigating the world which is designed to set them against each other. Usually in shows like this, say, Game of Thrones, most characters end up looking like complete jerks, but here I actually find myself loving the characters and understanding their motivations, even when they sometimes do terrible things.
It sounds so simple, but this really is a huge part of what made the show work for me. I didn't hate anyone, even when I hated the results of their actions. There was no simplistic deranged psycho like Ramsay Bolton who existed for viewers to wish death upon. Every single character was complex and empathetic.
Even Jayce was handled pretty well, and I kinda see how he became who he is in the in-game lore, full of ego. He wants to leave his mark in the world by pumping out new inventions that will help both cities, mostly Piltover. In his childhood, he wanted to become a hero(when looking at a child drawing of a buff man, wielding a hammer), protecting people, especially those who are dear to him, like Caitlyn and Viktor.
Seriously. I can't watch a lot of shows because I just hate all the characters. Arcane's characters remaining as relatable people throughout kept it enjoyable
Vi didn't abandon Powder, I hate it when people can't even pick up on that. She left Powder to go cool down so that she didn't hurt Powder anymore, she had no intention of leaving and just needed a few minutes. Powder thinks Vi left her because an enforcer took her while she was going back. It's what makes this whole scene hurt the absolute most and you didn't even get that.
I think people are o lying saying that because of Powder's reaction to stepping away from her. VI knew she needed to cool herself down to not hurt her only family she has, but in Powder's mind the only person she looks up to and wants to show she can stand on her own is Vi. The fact that the writers wrote it that Vi basically gets taken away as Silco starts to take Powder under his wing was really smart showing her start into the decent of her madness.
Stop gatekeeping morality. Vi definitely did in a way "leave her behind". Ofc she intended to come back after cooling off, but in my opinion the whole situation is purely one of sorrow and not of anger, which is why it's bad enough that Vi hit her and then left her in a place that was still full of danger. I personally feel that the way the show had their cake and ate it too by making Vi both leave Powder and try and come back to be the good guy, weakened the scene. I think the scene would have been stronger if Vi actually left her there by choice and not through shenanigans.
@@lukasmedici31415 would've hit pretty hard, sure. but it makes no sense story and character wise- Vi was angry at Powder, but she still loved her. If they made her leave by her own choice it'd be purely for the show's benefit which is NOT at all how good shows are made. They follow what the character would do given their personality. Personally it hits harder that Powder thinks Vi abandoned her solely because she didn't see her trying to come back.
@@tobenamed610I think what happened in the show already went against Vi's character since she's so far been portrayed as someone with great empathy and moral righteousness. You are right however that my idea would go against her character even more. To fix my issue I think Vi's character would have to be changed from the ground up or the whole situation in which the tragedy happened would have to be changed in a way for things to make more sense. I love so much of the show with intensity that it just hurts me that there are some scenes that keep it from being a masterpiece in my eyes.
I like how despite making us empathize with both sides, the show still makes it mostly clear where the problem stems from. There isn't and there can be no reconciliation while the interests are not aligned. Not when some are worried about maintaining status and luxury while others are in locked in a violent and self-destructive struggle to survive. And those wounds can only get deeper with time.
You say the show makes it clear, but I can't help but feel this video just "both sides"d the situation. The steward of progress oversaw the institution of terrible inequality. The enforcers enforce laws like the worst assumptions of what cops are. The oligarchs are rich but it is never established how and by what cost they achieve that. (Trading what? Selling to whom?). In Zaun we see addiction and gang skirmishesand pollution but it is under developed as to why people aren't/can't do anything about it. Anyway just my thoughts.
Jayce geniunely cares about Piltover's future and its people, that's why he went ahead and proposed the independence of Zaun. If they went to war with the Undercity, countless of bodies will drop, from both sides. I get why he wants power and fame, so that he could have a voice in important decisions within the Council. If he stayed a scientist like Viktor, the Councilors won't give a shit about him.
@@carnivoriousleaf I don't think stating that both sides have issues mutually excludes stating that one of the sides is the source of most of the problems. Like in that moment when Caitlyn asks if Piltover is to blame for everything and Vi just responds with "not everything". That being said, I do agree that the political and economical explanations for that are underdeveloped in the show, but I'm already surprised with what we got, considering it's funded by a multibillion corporation. I just wish they had dedicated a couple minutes to explaining the general history of the cities at least since the days of the Shuriman Empire. I feel like we're left to infer that the reasons for that are the same as in our world, something along the lines of inequality generating more inequality and violence (both between the cities, and inside of Zaun). Piltover is set on the path of progress while Zaun is struggling to survive against itself while immersed in toxic fumes.
@@eduardoserpa1682 So first off I think we have pretty similar views and opinions. I hear what you are saying in that we are left to infer. I just also feel that inference leaves Silco as a higher villain to the oligarchs of Piltover. The status quo is murderous and I don't think the show takes that seriously enough. Work was made into making the vibe of a suffering underclass, but the Zaunish people are dying due to the inequality. A part that really sticks with me is the show seems to show the Piltover council agrees to give up power to a new Zaun authority and it all happens off screen. To me it breaks my suspension of disbelief. anyway thanks for talking.
@@carnivoriousleaf think it happens off screen as its things we already know like if Jinx isn't handed over a key part of the peace deal Zaun has access to all of Piltover's trade secrets a key for their success. they are agreeing to indenpence as at the same time shimmer are major economic driver has to halted and Jinx who cracked their secrets has to be stopped its like saying your free but you have to cut your leg and arm off at the same time. council is agreeing because they have to not because of any moral reason.
I think Silco is the perfect example of how to make a villain multi-layered without necessarily making them sympathetic or subtracting from their villainy. He's a violent drug lord, essentially, an idealist who doesn't live up to his promises (he basically takes charge of the Undercity, but still can't established the nation of Zaun he envisioned), but he also IS an idealist at all. He wants his people to be free of the oppression they've faced and he is a loving father figure to Jinx, even if still a toxic one (he uses her for personal gain a lot of the time and doesn't fully empathize with her mental issues, and they both kind of bring out the worst in each other). He feels like a real person without ever feeling like a good person. He's just... A whole fucked up person and that's so cool to me.
I think what arcane did most diferent from other game adaptations is that it isn’t trying to be an adaptation it’s trying to tell a good story. That’s why it’s perfectly understandable for people who have never played the game or read about the characters. Add to that, great writing, great animation and soundtrack
I thought the same about Silco, being a manipulative kingpin who adopts Powder to change her into Jynx fueled by her anger at his sister but in the end with his last act it made me doubt about his character but it was beautiful in a way, even in his wicked state of mind i wanted him to achieve his goal, his Nation of Zaun, to see if he could run it the same way he did in the underworld but he paid the ultimate price for it long ago when he saved Jynx from dying by taking her to Singed and in his last moment of emotional breakdown which he encouraged with his speeches, he died by the hand of his own "daughter" without knowing what could have been of Zaun, even for an antagonist it was poetically tragic. That's why Silco it's my favorite character from Arcane and i can't believe how well designed it was.
Honestly, I was prety sold on him being unwilling to give up Jinx and loving her as a daughter when he had his moment at the statue of Vander. Silco could not understand why Vander would give up on the dream of a free Zaun, until he was told to choose between his dream and Jinx. It was at that moment that Silco finally realized why Vander did what he did, and why he would do the same.
Vi is the one who change Powder to Jinx... even Jinx herself said that... What Vi did after heard Vander's last words was the beginning. Silco is the one who actually save Jinx soul and keeping her from going completely insane.
You see, i disagree that he adopted her to make her into Jinx. Silco was a man driven by two goals. Revenge for Vanders betrayal and to gave Zaun's independence. And while he is very much in the school of "the ends justify the means" he is not absent emotions. I think when Powder clang to him and spoke of how she was abandoned, it rang with him. Reminded him of his own pain at Vanders betrayal and he genuinely whatd to help. As for making her a weapon i would add a slight caveat. You raise your children to be able to survive your environment. Silco saw Zaun as being as war, and in such a situation you teach your children to fight.
He truly was one of the best characters of the show and he ended up realizing he having more in common with Vander at the end than he realized. He was willing to give up his dream for his family. But its also worth questioning whether Silco wanted to gain respect for Piltover was truly through diplomatic means since he supported the riot in the past with Vander, utilized shimmer-induced minions, and pushed Jinx to create the mega death rocket. While the end goal might have been for Zaun to be its own independent nation with Piltover's respect, I feel Silco would be just as happy with giving Piltover elites the middle finger, via rocket missile.
a part that i love about the show is the scene with the rocket travelling to the council window. it's long enough to understand many things. how everything changes. the relationships between vi and jinx, caitlyn and jinx, probably jayce with viktor. the little tidbits into future characters and who will come back. but the most important thing you realize there is how close everyone was to peace. the decision had been made for zaun to become it's own country, in light of how much the two citites had drifted ideologically and how piltover, through neglect or greed, could not help zaun. but as the rocket flew through the sky, you could see that one moment of true peace die out.
*Spoilers for Metro 2033/34 games* Now that you lay it out like that, it reminds me of the "bad" ending in the "Metro" games, where you are just a few words away from peace and a chance at a new start on the destroyed surface of the earth but decide to shoot a nuclear missle at the "nest" of mutants that all this time tried to communicate with you and help humankind emerge from the tunnel system they made their home...
@@Srynan the difference is the player has control there and depending on what they want it may weigh less or more on them. in the case of the show beyond it being out of our control, it's kind of beyond everyones control. no one was there that could stop the rocket. silco, dead, vi and cait, injured and vander, a long dead ghost. peace was a hopeless ploy all along, all because of the existence of a girl that was a jinx and would ruin it all. p.s. i just realized the irony of jinx jinxing the peace between piltover and zaun. what a lovely show
They were close to peace sure but the council or jayce more like, wanted jinx to pay for the crimes. That was the price of peace which silco wasn't gonna pay. So I don't think there was gonna be any peace between them.
Vi did NOT abandon jinx. She was about to run in and suicide for her when she saw Silco but got taken away. To call that abandonment is so viscerally wrong
She didnt abandon her, but that's how it looks from the perspective of Silco and Powder, and based on that perspective its how their relationship begins, two little brothers abandoned by their big bros
im fairly sure Vi stepped away to control her own feelings, so she would refrain from hurting Powder again. She was most likely about to go back to Powder before Silco showed up.
@@El-de6nj yes, thats def what happened but when people say that vi abandoned jinx, i think they are talking specifically about jinx's perspective. at the end of the day, even if these weren't vi's intentions, this is what happened
What I also like about Singed's character is he doesn't need to lie and manipulate people. He is needed, he shows what he truly believe and explains the consequences without any sugar coating.
I'm still impressed at how they managed to pack the theme *everywhere,* whether in the characters, the setting, but also items and parallel events, such as the hex crystals. In Piltover, the first succesful contraption using the crystals literally made two scientists fly. At the same time, in the undercity, that same crystal was used to make a bomb that killed two children and ripped a woman's arm.
I realize this's well written after episode 3. This's kind of show you just watch for fun or because arts are beautiful but it delivered more than you excepted. And I love it. They should take as much time as they want for writing and shouldn't push to be fast. I want to see season 2 but I can also wait for good writings and fascinating arts it can deliver. As a person whose dream is to be a story teller and an animator, this show influenced me a lot. Thanks riot team.
To me it was difficult on several fronts. The pacing was not well done, some character decisions in terms of psychology were completely nonsensical. Dialogue/writing was college level at best. plenty of 4/10 scenes in the season, but overall I give it a 5-6 out of 10. I had a tough time making it all the way thru and had to force myself.
Same I’m just brainstorming my story but this show inspired me to consider more substance when creating or expanding my characters. Is just really well written narrative
@@fettmaneiii4439 got me a little confused since after watching hours of analysis videos i continue to adore the show. why do you think the was pacing bad? why do you think that way in general about the show? i’m curious.
The theme of duality is expressed in many places in Arcane. Perhaps my favorite one is described through a line from Viktor, "In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good." Good or noble intentions, with terrible or tragic results. Everyone is doing things with what they view as noble intentions, improving a city, advancing technology, creating a new nation, being a father. But it all goes tragically wrong, either due to their own misguided actions and mistakes, or due to factors largely out of their control. Sometimes things just don't work out, regardless of your intentions or even your best efforts. You can do everything right, but due to something as simple as random chance, it still might not work out.
I was so upset when Silco died. I thought his and Jinx's relationship was really interesting and complex, and fatherly to the max. Like, Silco loving Jinx was the epitome of unconditional love. He adopted her, he saw her strengths when she didn't, and fostered them, and even when she messed up he defended her, and in the end he even said he would never sell her out to anyone, that everyone always abandoned them but he would not abandon her. AND it was when she had FATALLED WOUNDED him he said this. He still loved her and accepted her how she was, and didn't blame her, even though she was the reason for his death. I just. Amazing. I loved their relationship.
That’s why he made such a good foil to vander. Plus just like vander we all know he’s not gone and will be back in season two. The only difference is that vander is in a tortured and monsterous state. Silco is in jinx mind as one of the voices to her tortured and monsterous mind.
His love for Jinx was toxic. It was the love of an enabler of ones worst vices. Beautiful yes, but tragically misguided and in many ways, he destroyed Powder for the worse both for herself and her ability to connect with others
who knew that in a year with movies like Dune and shows like squid game in the end everyone would just be mourning the loss of Silco and feeling for Jinx, a LoL champion
Sigh…. He loved her. He empathized with her. He protected her, even nurtured and stood by her. But he is the reason why she is so traumatized. People seem to gloss over that he tried to murder 3 children, and then Powder till he realized she was abandoned. He raised her on his own bitter and cynical worldview, to the point where her own beliefs about her past, Vi’s love and Ekko’s friendship, which were still there, were constantly plagued by self doubt. Her talent and obvious instability was turned into violence for a criminal empire that created who knows how many thousands of addicts and enshrined a drug lord oligarchy as the rulers of the Undercity. She is what, 14 years old and totally comfortable with murdering other people, including teens like her. She has deep insecurities and fears that he takes advantage of, whether he knows it or not. Every time he talks to her when she’s coming apart, it always ends with him saying that she can trust only him and no one else. This is incredibly toxic and self destructive for the both of them. The tragedy is not his death but the hell Jinx has fallen into because of misunderstandings, trauma and violence. Seeing it as a wholly wholesome relationship is such a fucked up thing. It’s a toxic relationship, and just because you sympathize with him or it’s not a typical abusive/ neglectful relationship doesn’t make it any less toxic. Pablo Escobar was a great Dad and he ordered the deaths of thousands of innocents, targeted children and flooded his community with drugs and crime, under the guise of a Robinhood figure. It’s human contradiction.
The entire series just dumps on the characters but it feels so real: The show is a string of bad luck, misunderstandings and bad decisions on everyone’s part, that’s what makes it so gut wrenching I think. These characters feel like actual people. A great example of all of them is Vi and Powder’s relationship and what makes it all the more tragic is that Vi and Powder never reconcile, there’s an underlying hope throughout the show that they will but they simply don’t get the chance too as every time they meet up something else happens: the first time they meet up is interrupted by Caitlyn and the Firelights, the second time is before the fight with Ekko (which was just a tense situation as Jinx just killed several people not a good place to have a heart to heart), and finally the “Tea Party” (which was made worse by Silco being there). It’s amazing how things could’ve turned out if things were only slightly different.
And that all feed to that final line in the song at the end, ‘what could have been’ I think that is the greatest strength of Arcane, in every action and moment you see what could have been in different circumstances, if a different choice was made. So in the end you can see what could have been, and that makes it all the more tragic
saw this on another video and im not gonna write a whole essay again but the way this show teases you with Powder and Vi being close again only to rip it away from you is painful
I haven't made it through Arcane yet, but I'm so delighted to hear reviewers/critiques/essayists I respect say it's amazing! I've waited so long for League to put its universe in show form and I'm so glad they seem to have hit gold. Can't wait to watch this in a few days!
Arcane is the best animated show I've ever seen. The story is extremely impressive, but the part not mentioned above is, the artwork. Every single scene is a painting, moving and evolving to tell the visual story.
MY favorite part of Arcane is not just that there exists so many foils and dualities but how often the plight of one inevitably is the exact same decision the other must make in some way. This is especially highlighted for Vander and Silco. Both were in positions of immense power and when faced with a deal which would protect their people and their city the cost that must be paid was their daughter. And neither was willing to make that trade. That moment when Silco is at the statue of Vander hit me harder than most any other scene in the show. Whether they were true brothers or as the theme of the show suggests simply family by association they shared the same burden and met the same fate despite their opposing methods.
It only makes sense that a show based on a video game where people get so attached to characters should focus so heavily on the relationships and dualities between so many sets of those characters and their loved ones. This show blows me away every day when I think more about it.
Everyone says that Vi left Powder for what she did and I'm just sitting here like, No, she left because she broke down at the actions of Powder and needed to compose herself before she did anything worse than slap Powder, and as a result, that accidentally became the worst thing that happened to Powder. It wasn't actively her choice to leave Powder, that was out of her control. It's a reoccurring event throughout the show where Vi is interrupted by something else or never able to support Powder/Jinx when she needed it the most, and because of that, JInx comes to her own conclusions that fit the perception of her reality that's slowly been built up over the 6 years she's been separated from Vi. Powder final action is saving Vi and because of all the little things that built up to that moment, that's when Jinx is solidified. The writing justifies her turn, and it also shows "what could have been" in every instance that got interrupted. In Jinx's mind Vi left her three different times. But for Vi, she only truly left her once when she left with Caitlyn on the Bridge. The other two times, was because she was distracted trying to get back to Powder.
I think the show will somehow reconcile the sister's broken relationship after something big or major happens. The theme is duality but throughout the whole season 1, both vi and jinx have always had the mentality to never give up on each other. You could argue that jinx is way past it but somehow inside there, there's still a person longing to reunite with her sister. Look at vi and jinx when they first met after being separated, the eyes and animated drawn is different than any other scenes that you'd see after episode 3. The eye and face jinx made was genuinely the same powder whereas the puppy eye she makes in other scenes were literally jinx smirking sad face. Even the fight with ekko, the puppy eye she gave was a jinx face. I foresee the two sisters having been fighting out for some time and towards the end they choose to reconcile their difference but it would probably be too late cause both of them dies and the story ends. They are literally the start and end to the story. But they died remaining as sisters
I think Vi leaving Jinx on the bridge mirrors her decision as a kid to step away to think after hitting Powder. Vi stepped away on the bridge to find a new approach to get to her, which she resolved as taking down Silco who was confirmed to have a grip on her
Arcane is a case study for storytelling. It did such a good job of exceeding the expectations of the audience by actually being a great story on its own, not tied to the game to narrate it... I want more of this
Just like watching Arcane, I was glued to my screen without interruption until the end. Great video, I appreciate the way you were able to concisely explain so much about why the season excelled.
It blows my mind how good this show was. And that it was immediately universally praised on just about every front. For an adaptation. Based on league. Mind blowing.
I am more inclined to read the lore than playing the game 😂 This is one of the few games were the fanbase bad rep actually makes me not playing. And I know for a fact I would freak out in multiplayer, reason why all games I play are solo 👌
I love Arcane. Its so well written. My favourite was Silco as they made an Antagonist who is a human at heart and does not fall into tropes. He loved Jinx because he had fatherly feelings towards her without abusing her as an instrument or have sexual motives like many other shows did. I recommanded it to friends and family who did know nothing about LoL and they loved it.
This so much, when he took Jinx in ep 3 I was ready for the show to jump the shark on abuse and playing him as a comically evil villain who just uses her as a weapon. Instead we get a genuine father figure who loved his daughter despite all her flaws, and believed in her until the very end. The circustances of his death were singlehandely the most heartbreaking moment of the seires for me.
I love the way silco is straight up absolutely ruthless when it comes to keeping those around him in check except for jinx. The scene when she's stabbing him with the injector for example, or when she bombs piltover to steal the hex gem. Anyone else silco would have ended immediately but he loves and understands jinx to a degree that she becomes his main weakness. As for jinx they show her affection for him by her setting up fireworks for presenting a gift, on silco's desk there's a mug and ashtray doodled on by jinx as gifts. Even fishbone's jinx's rocket launcher which silco asked her to make for him she made in the fashion of something she knew he loved, sea monsters. She even added a black scar on its eye so he would know it was for him. It's the tiniest of details for me that elevate these relationships to such a believable level that you cannot help but feel something for them.
Love the channel, love the video. But Arcane slapped me with its dark tone right from the get-go when it shows the enforcer gun down a person who clearly, at that moment, was a shell-shocked non-threat. This is quickly followed up by showing all the casualties of the (riot? Protest?) and the the fact that these two kids we see are now orphans. Only after that does it time-skip to rooftop hijinks. So dark tone established in minute one.
Just finished this series and have been looking for something to summarize this topic. The way tragedy was written was amazing. The concept of these characters outgrowing each other - coupled with the huge misunderstandings and preventable situations - add so much to the tragic aspect. This series is amazing.
I think it’s all cemented through the way as an audience we can see what could have been, we see the misunderstandings, and how close somethings come to a kind of resolution, just to see it all ripped away again. It’s so heartbreaking
@@JelleBeans I definitely agree! The characters being more than caricatures controlled by the plot are what contribute as well; the narrative is developed not solely through external forces, but by the consequences of the characters actions; Vi constantly telling Powder she was ready when she clearly isn’t, Mylo reiterating the idea that Powder is a Jinx, Silco’s actions led to Vi and co. nearly dying in an attempt to free Vander, leading to Powder using three hex cores in her bomb to prove her worth because Vi basically proved that she believed powder to be a jinx (solidifying her unstable mental health), causing her and Vi’s family to die… Vi finally saying Powder was a jinx. And, you know the rest. Not only does it further pull the interest of the viewers into the characters, but it develops the story in a realistic way.
Everyone talking about how great arcane is but I just wanna say that this video is also great. Loved how it broke down and explained the key things that make arcane a good show. Great job man
I don't play the game, but I'm glad this story was as good as it was. We need way more stories like this. There are parts of the story I would have elaborated on, some of the flashbacks felt out of place but maybe cause I watched all of them consecutively. Either way it's neat getting an insight on something like this and comparing it to my own story and what I can play around with to make the story better.
Some of the flashback wouldn't make sense probably because you're not familiar with the lore. Although they're not that important some of them are crucial for the understanding of the background of both of the city. But i think they did what they can with the amount of time needed for the story.
Pretty sure almost all of the flashbacks were placed at the beginning of the episode before the opening. They didn't feel out of place to me as they'd already established a consistent theme there.
I was curious if they were going to discuss where the hex crystals come from and how they were suddenly obtained. Have they always been easy to access but nobody touched them because they are unstable? Did Jayce find them himself? In Benzo's shop? If so Where did Benzo come across it - we know he has a sort of collectable shop. I really wanted more, but at the same time considereding how dense those 9 episodes were I'd understand if there wasn't time to delve into a few of the more finer details. All around though I went in expecting to have a good time and I left blown away from this show.
@17:45 You just summarized perfectly why exactly I fell in love with this show. I am no gamer and have no interest in LoL. It was the one thing that almost drove me away from the series. But I am so glad I watched this. As a writer who has lost my spark for a while, the writing and depth and emotional core of Arcane made me pick up my pen again. Love this video!! Excellent analysis!
This is the first time I noticed that powder placed a bunch of crystals inside the monkey and that’s why the explosion was so much bigger than in episode one. They really thought of everything.
Uh-huh! I remember watching Hawkeye a few days ago (and I like the MCU) and was just like... but it's not arcane. Riot/Fortiche pushed the bar to the sky with this one!
Arcane just might be the best animated show ever,I can't say it enough. Every single last character not only matters, but their motives make sense. There's no can't do any wrong protagonist or mustache twirling antagonist who's evil for the sake of it,just ideals of circumstance. Everything from the smallest changes in facial expressions to the weaving in fights feels alive. The punches have weight,the voices have life,the world building is vast,etc. Brilliance man,fxxking Brilliance!!!!!
Yay, so glad you made a video Arcane, the storytelling is by one of the most interesting stories, while it follows a lot of tropes it also innovates on top of it and doesn't waste time in unnecessary dialogue or exposition.
This show just made the the Production company, Fortiche, millions and millions of $$$. They are set for life now. The demand for their work is guaranteed for the next 10-20yrs. They deserve every cent, because they made an absolute masterpiece here !!
I was in love with the show by the end of episode 2 and episode 3 had me convinced I was watching a masterpiece. I don't know anything about the game so I had no idea who Jinx was. I just knew Powder. What a ride. Great video!
Also you missed Marcus' character development. At the start he wants to totally control the undercity and stamp out all crime, but by the second act he's become sheriff and has disgracefully realised that deals have to be cut in order to keep the peace between the two cities
I’m a small writer who currently works on a series called SeiKU. I often take inspiration from successful TV shows,movies, and story etc. I got So hooked onto movies that my writing often feels like one. But bad 😢
Your point about familial bonds fleshing out the characters and enhancing the tragedy definitely extends beyond mere familial bonds. As your own editting touches on you see similar aspects with say, Ekko and Jinx during their fight on the bridge- two childhood friends who may, in another life, have been more, at eachother's throats and despite his own doomsaying about Jinx to Vi, Ekko finds himself unable to stop Jinx by dealing a final blow, leading to him nearly losing his life and losing the gemstone. The mentor-student relationship between Jayce and Heim enhances how much it hurts to see Jayce motion to remove him from the council, and you see how much it hurts Heim especially. The sort of warped version of Jayce and Heim's relationship seen between Singed and Viktor similarly fleshes out exactly what kind of person Viktor is, and why he latched onto Jayce's Hextech dreams in the first place and was willing to break the law despite Heim's warnings. I feel like something could be said about Caitlyn and Vi as well but I'm coming up blank.
What I really like in the first act, as someone who knew nothing of LOL and therefore nothing about Jinx, is how they lull us into believing Powder IS gonna help. They set the whole narrative of how her inventions never work, she feels useless, she just wants to help, and we expect the trope to payoff as the usual >> struggling protagonist finally succeeds when the need arises. But that doesn't happen. Instead, they make us realize how unreasonable the concept is in the first place, that a child would solve an issue even adults would fold under; that a child with highly unstable explosives would be anything but a danger to everyone involved BECAUSE they are a damn KID, how could he expect them to know how to properly judge their power and handle them? I love how I went from "cmon Powder!!" to "YES!" then immediately to "oh", as the realization sunk in. And after I cant even be mad that I was "tricked", it's a good "plot twist" because in retrospective how could I have expected anything else? Explosions are messy. You hand a ten year old a dynamite and expect anything but disaster?
It's so cool how Riot managed to be consistent for like 8 years now. They wrote Jinx and Vi a decade ago but threw out hints and interactions here and there that the community got confused and excited about. I will never sleep the same after knowing I was spoiled about a show i liked 8 years ago
Loved Arcane, I was genuinely excited to clic that "watch next episode" button every time it showed up. That's not a feeling I get very often these days. I came into it with low expectations, and it blew me away.
Arcane is arguably one of the best pieces of media ever created, and if you haven't seen it yet you definitely should. Its absolutely incredible, even if you don't know a thing about the game it's based on. The writing, animation, plot, characters, fight scenes, original songs, the background music, etc. It just Does. Not. Miss.
Yes, Arcane is absolutely amazing. One of my favorite shows now, and I barely play the game. Arcane is Avatar: The Last Airbender levels of good. And it's hard to come close to being that good.
Talking about themes, I love that arcane doesn't shy away from Drama and Dark themes despite being a colorful looking show Coming from marvels "I lost my entire family but here is a joke about gamers" is refreshing to see a show actually care for once
It depend. GOTG 2 sometimes joke about Yondu and Peter relationship. But when it needs to be serious, like when Yondu confess to Rocket or when he sacrifice, they do treat it seriously
The brilliance in their application of foils is how characters *can have more than one foil, because they're complex characters.* We see how different characters in different scenarios bounce off each other in interesting ways as the story develops. First encountering Caitlyn, we see her compared/contrasted with upper city characters, but then see whole new elements of her with her working with Vi, then some of that even going the other way when Vi, usually contrasted with lower city characters, working with Jayce.
I love how this show handles violence - it's brutal, all of the action scenes look amazing, and some of them look like music videos, but all of them come at a cost. Echo Vs Jinx is really stylised and you get glimpses of them as children play fighting, only now they're not playing anymore and you see that as the scene ends. They're both ready to kill a person they once cared about and eventually, Echo realises this and falters. Even just before this, Jinx's attack on the bridge with the green bugs is visually stunning but the deaths caused aren't faceless. Marcus dies and you know he has a daughter he wanted to live for. You're initially fed the scene with Vi and Jayce in the undercity as them taking action against shimmer production - it looks badass and then a child dies and you realise innocent people (that they're ultimately trying to protect) have been hurt with barely any gain. It's just really refreshing to see the consequences of violence carry so much weight in the show in comparison to a lot of other media that have disposable bad guy armies for the protagonist to take down in a visually pleasing manner, while keeping them on a moral high ground with their actions unquestioned. You're given a chance to understand both sides of the conflict and the motivations that caused the conflict to arise but ultimately, "nobody wins in war" - Vander
It's funny you're talking about narrative foils, because this theme of duality is actually prevalent, not just in Piltover and Zaun, but also throughout all of Runeterra. Every region has its own issues and some, if not most, of those issues are represented through two or more champions/characters that represent one ideal vs another. Ashe vs Sejuani - Civility vs Barbarism Ornn vs Volibear - Same deal but they're both deities, so the disagreement's a lot messier Shen vs Zed - Pacifism vs Violence Yasuo vs Yone - Fucking around vs Taking shit seriously Azir vs Xerath - Priviliged royalty vs Slavery Nasus vs Renekton - Brains vs Brawn Xayah vs Rakan - Hard vs soft diplomacy Diana vs Leona - Skepticism vs Faith Vastayans vs Humans - Nature vs......Us If they follow the lore, not only will new foils be introduced but the ones that already exist will be intensified until..... *creepy swingset*..........BOOM
@@kiyoegg I'd also argue Garen vs Lux or even Garen vs Jarvan IV. Like Savage Books mentioned, characters can serve as foils to several other characters simultaneously and I feel Garen's a perfect example of that. Though most of his foils are laced with the same theme: his relationship to magic and people who use it
I never expected Riot to portray the cycle of violence and how it effects the deeply rooted bonds between people so well but here we are. Proof that they actually DO know how to produce quality.
Duality is so deep in this series, savage even missed the duality between the nature of the superpowers of the too side and bottom side, with topside having hex-tech which seems primarily technological in nature but is interestingly coloured blue which is often a colour associated with peace and purity, whereas the under-city uses shimmer which is primarily biological in nature (Although it is sometimes used to power machinery as well) and uses the colour purple which often is used alongside green to depict corruption, toxicity, violence and greed, which becomes especially interesting when you look at the hex core and how its appearance evolves when Victor's blood is incorporated into it, as it devolves from its pure blue hue to look more like shimmer with it's toxic purple as if the combination of technology and biology is an abomination and that this duality will always create conflict as once combined, the hex core starts to become more aggressive and violent in nature. God I love this show.
I don't care how many time I say this on how many videos, but if anything deserves the title of Masterpiece, it is Arcane. I've watched this series 4 times now and it gets more powerful with each watching...absolutely breathtaking.
I can't believe I waited so long to watch this. My favorite video by far. I learned a lot and I didn't think it possible, but I have even more respect for the creators of this show.
I think good stories need to have a simple core. A family feud is always a good one. It doesn’t matter the scale of the actual conflict, from Star Wars to Arcane to the infinity saga, it’s all about families fighting and reconciling or not.
Another aspect of Arcane that explores "Duality" are the internal struggles of the characters. Silco with having to choose his dreams or his daughter. Vi & Jinx with having to choose weither to believe that powder can comeback or accept that she is now Jinx.(hell even Ekko is struggling with this.) Jayce with weaponizing Hextech or follow his friend's advice which is to destroy those.
Silco is my single favorite character to ever exist in any show, EVER. And here is why. The intricacies of how truly fucked up and horrible he is, and the fact that he cares so much for Jinx is the most human thing I have ever seen. So many of us would totally kill and doom a whole city just to save that one person that we love the most. Parents do horrible things for their children. Lovers do horrible things for their lovers. We literally see Silco go from horrible bad guy, to loving father back to back. It's so jarring but depicts the true human nature. We are all bad and good. Good people do bad things, and bad people can do good things. There is no one person on this earth that is 100% good. We all have monsters that lie within, and we all have angels that lie within. Some of us just have our monsters closer to the surface. Characters like Silco show you that even in the worst of humans, there is a speckle of good to find. And characters like Jayce show you that even in the best-intentioned people, there is a devil within. I am fucking obsessed with Silco.
Amazing video. The only thing I would add is the phenomenal use of archetypes. The reason why a lot of modern(not necessarily modern but more frequently modern) stories and shows fail imo is they try way too hard to create more original stories-something we've never seen before. Arcane uses archetypes. The reason why soo many people like Star Wars is because it uses simple but beautiful archetypes of good and evil and puts them against each other. 'Good vs is evil' is something we all love for its beautiful simplicity, even tho we've seen it a million times. Archetypes like this give the show purity, make them feel elevated and absent of vulgarity. Arcane uses them perfectly. We have Jayce-a symbol of a young, naive, good man who lacks experience and constantly has doubts, because sometimes we have to choose between doing the best thing for ourselves and for the rest of the world. We have the conflict of two siblings(Silco-Vander,Vi-Jinx) which you explained, it's one of the most famous conflicts in literature. We have the undercity-Zaun, a dark slum where people resort to crime due to deep issues present in the society... There are way too many to count. I apologise for my poor english, also some of the terms i probably straight-up butchered and used innapropriately as I'm not educated in literature or storywriting.
Great essay! 8 days ago i didn't know the name of this show and was 'tricked' into watching the first ep. I finished it yesterday and now i look forward to re-watching it, for all the reasons you detail; it is truly a great show, a piece of entertainment art. I'm staggered that this is the writers first screen play!
At the end of S1, Why Jinx has to shot rocket at Piltover..? What is her motivation..!? Jinx want Vi to feel the same way she felt right then. She want her to feel suffer and hopeless. It's a revenge for Silco. Vi is trying to manipulate Jink to become Powder and that's action cost life of Silco. In Jinx mind, Vi is the one who killed her father. Duality.... as Powder is the one who killed Vander, Vi father.
omg you nailed it because episode 3 was like the ultimate revelation of the tone--I totally didn't expect all of that to happen so I was just total hands over my mouth, jaw-dropped
Arcane is one of those shows that you really need to watch multiple times to truly appreciate how fantastic it is. Seeing all the tiny details build up as you watch knowing the the result in the end really shows just how much effort and love was put into this show
Savage book: The death of these children shifted the tone of the show from a lighter one to one without mercy Me: I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! They were too important to stay alive and not be league characters!
On the topic of duality, the 1st act is a perfect show for the characters in said act (act is the bundle of 3 episodes). Jayce’s story ends with him not only achieving his dream, but also gaining allies while Vi’s story ends with her losing most of those close to her and her dream a now impossible goal.
its funny, because for those who read the league of legends lore (comics, short stories, etc) it wasnt a surprise the writing in arcane, hell even the dialoges of characters from 4 o 5 years ago (Swain and Warwick) reference what happens in arcane. just you wait till this come to Jonia and the tragedy that... well... Noxus is a dick.
You know what i love about this video? is that the theme of the show is duality and this video starts as a calm and collected analysis, while at the end is a poetic and passionate love, so the theme and the tone of the video are the same as Arcane
The best analysis video on Arcane I have yet seen. Clear, concise and sharp observations on what may be the top animated show of all time. A true favorite and intelligently made show. Described what made it so good at a story and writing level.
My only concern with both sides storytelling is that while there is never a truly pure good vs a truly pure evil one should not mistake this for meaning that all sides are equal. Taking Arcane as an example, Piltover is clearly the side most in the wrong. Piltover's exploitation of Zaun is what caused this whole mess and the greatest tragedy of the show is that the leaders of Piltover only realised this, and took steps to fix it, when it was already far too late. I'm worried that the show will be ruined by milquetoast liberal moralizing saying that, while the oppression and exploitation of Piltover are bad, the Zaunites fighting back with violence makes them as bad or worse. It's the sort of "moderate" centrism that MLK decried in his letter from the Birmingham jail. The attitude that would lead someone from Pultover to say "while I sympathize with your plight, I think you are moving too quickly" to a person from Zaun fighting to have air that dosnt actively kill the people breathing it. While there may be no good guys in this show, one side is still clearly worse than the other, and I hope the writers dont shoot themselves in the foot like marvel did with Falcom and the Winter Soldier.
The CCP was born out of a violent revolution intended to do good. Fighting back with violence doesn't solve problems, it just makes more of them. 🤣 The only real way to change the world is the control of information. Hearts and minds and all that shit.
@@JohnDoe-ry8sr slavery in the US was ended through a violent civil war. It was violence by Zionists that caused the british to leave their mandate in Israel and Palestine. Violence is the reason why Vietnam is no longer a french colony. And even if peacefull means were always the better option (I'm sure pacifism would have worked great against the Axis in WWII) one cannot then consider the victims of oppression to be equivalent to the perpetrators just because they too resort to violence. Maybe it's an ineffective strategy, but violently fighting back against oppression is justified.
@@volodymyrboitchouk Revolutions that ended for the better wasn't just achieved through violence. it was sparked by the patriotic or progressive ideals of the revolutionary leaders and the public. Even if violence ended slavery, without popular public opinion slavery would have returned to the US eventually.
The Axis may have won WWII by world pacifism but it would have crumbled just as quickly without worldwide majority indoctrination to the Nazi ideology. Something that would just be impossible without a fast chain of information control like what the CCP uses to keep it's territorial residents in line. Silco was willing to corrupt and enslave his own people he's trying to help just so he can have his dream while the councilors didn't give a damn as long as they got their money. That's why Ekko built his own community for he saw the two sides were just the same.
@@JohnDoe-ry8sr you do realize most americans didnt support abolition until late in the war. In fact, the emancipation proclamation was largely seen as a military strategy, which is why it didnt get much attention in the north. It was only after the end of the war that the republicans were strong enough to push for the true end of slavery. It also helped that the south were sore losers and gave the north plenty of reasons to be more punishing. Voting rights for black people and the 13th and 15th ammendments were largely a response to southern grand standing post war, meant to pit white southerners back on their place. It was violence and war that ended slavery, not "hearts and minds". Also, fascism loosing in the long run even if the rest of the world decided to be pacifists isnt some great gotya. Had it not been for the violent opposition to the Axis we might not have any European Jews left. Hell, we might not even have any Slavs or Roma. Sometimes violence is in fact the best and only option. And even when it's not, violence in opposition to oppression is never equivalent to oppression itself. Anybody who would use violence as an excuse to stay "neutral" in the face of oppression is clearly not all that interested in ending injustice in the first place.
i really love the way you distinguish theme and tone!! i find people so often explore "themes," when it is clear what they are describing about what they like in a story is based more on the tone. Despite being different funtions in a story, with the way one affects the other, it can be hard sometimes to tear them apart enough to really see the inner workings! great vid as always
League of Legends is a game that I tried to desperately to get into but ultimately the incredible characters and lore weren’t enough to make up for the toxicity of the game itself. I don’t think I’ll try playing it again for a long time but at least Arcane allows me to stay connected to the parts of the franchise I adore.
I love the passion for writing in these videos. I could probably watch some of these videos three times over again, because the passion is so apparent and matches mine.
I really hope this doesent get buried... You mentioned in the video that killing a child can be done cheaply to set a tone. Well what exsamples do you have that it is done cheaply, what makes it that way, and how do you avoid it?
In a sea of pop video essayists, you demonstrate true understanding and skill when it comes to writing-this was a fantastic video, and I look forward to more from you!
I so like how you pointed out the tragedy of children killing children. It's what made Lizzie and Micah so important to Carol's development in the Walking Dead
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I just love how League of Legends fans are telling people to NOT play the game and only watch the show 😆😆😆
And as someone who's been playing for 8 years, I repeat that message myself :)
Playing with friends especially in game modes like urf and one for all is actually fun. Just avoid ranked games.
@@mascotwithadinosaur9353 Everything about League is good except for the main game itself.
If you really want to explore the Runeterra universe more, Legends of Runeterra, Ruined King and online novels are much better
Tbh this is just one huge circlejerk. League can be toxic, addictive, ect., but so are many other online competitive games. Not a league shill, I haven't played in 5 years, but I'd say go for it if league looks fun to you. Enjoyment is subjective anyways.
It's fun as long as you stay away from ranked. But it also comes down to the fact that the game has nearly nothing to do with the series. If you expect a story based game, you're in the wrong place xd
"Is there anything more undoing than a daughter?" That line literally speaks about almost every major character in the show.
woah you're right!! not only Vander and Silco but also Marcus, Caitlyn's mother, Singed, Medarda big lady and even Sevika's father(mentioned)
that line lives rent free in my head lmao, but yeah it definitely sums up one of the major themes running through the show. People grappling with their ideologies versus their love for their children. 'What are you willing to give up' indeed.
can you explain it to me a bit? English is not my native language. I kind of get it I think, but I feel like I'm missing something.
@@Zahlenteufel1 Silco, Vandar, the police chief, Singed and even Mel's mother are parents who struggle with their ideologies and their roles as parents. Vandar had one shot to kill Silco but he gave it up to save Vi. Silco was practically given his dreams on a silver platter but was willing to throw it all away to keep Jinx sage. And the police chief was Silco's inside man to protect his own little daughter.
As for Singed...well, he has the look of someone with nothing left to lose.
@@kira-dk2mx yeah, I got that mostly, but how is this "undoing"? Just using that word as an adjective is trippin me up. Is the effect the daughters have on their parents undoing the potential things the parents were going to do? or what?
Silco's relationship with Jinx was an incredibly well written one. I think if you pay attention to the sub-text in their relationship, there is never ANY DOUBT he will refuse to give her up. People talk about how he is choosing her over his dream of a free Zaun, but I don't think he saw that as the choice. It was a choice between someone who embodied everything he thought Zaun was and a free Zaun. Jinx is a broken creature who has been betrayed (at least Silco sees it that way) and yet not only survived the harsh environment that enveloped her, but became stronger (as Silco sees strength anyway). That is, he sees her as "perfect".
One thing shows with poor writing miss in similar situations is that there needs to be something that ties characters together - being adopted by a guardian does not suddenly make that person significant or the ties between them strong. Silco and Jinx's relationship works because you can see that they both value a part of the other.
I hope the writing stays at this quality in the subsequent seasons.
That's the exact same thing Silco's voice actor said in a interview: that Silco sees Jinx as an embodiment of zuan. Jinx is broken and betrayed just like zuan. Yet silco loves this broken city and jinx, and for his eyes they both are perfect.
I agree. I was certain that Silco would never consider turning Jinx over to Piltover. It just wasn't an option, as tempting as the thought of achieving his dream may be. His immediate reaction in terms of body language when Jayce asks for Jinx in exchange screams a congruous 'no'. His genuine care and concern for her has always been detailed in their interactions. I'm wondering if many people misread their relationship either because the camera often focused on the expressionless left side of his face, or were just clouded by the cinematic tools utilized to depict him as a villain - it's easier to process 1-dimensional characters that are seen in so many popular movies, after all. There's so many moments in the series where you can see he genuinely loves her. He's a chembaron actively using a cup and map in his office that Jinx doodled on, for goodness' sake. Even after the friendly fire incident with Sevika, Silco took the time to ask for Jinx's first-hand account. People who don't care wouldn't bother to do that. I'll also point out excerpts from Jinx's journal from the Council Archives: "Now I'm taken care of, too - the nice kind of taken care of. Silco trusts me. I have Silco now. He trusts me. He is there for me. He loves me." I even noticed Silco often covers up his injury with makeup post-timeskip, and I wouldn't be surprised if he started doing that for Jinx given that in the same journal it says, "Give Silco his medicine. It's not so scary anymore." Precious. Silco's voice actor even confirmed at the finale event that Silco genuinely cared for Jinx.
Indeed, I'm often confused why people accuse Silco of creating the 'monster' in Jinx. Jinx is not a product of ~Silco's evil machinations~. Jinx said it herself in the show. It wasn't Silco; it was Vi and the people she considered her family. Sometimes I wonder if a lot of people who are haven't been through trauma themselves fail to understand how it impacts survivors throughout their lives. Trauma is generational and can be difficult to manage, and the Undercity certainly doesn't seem to have the resources for therapy or medical treatment. Given the limitations of the world they live in, I think Silco and Jinx truly did the best they can to survive and support each other. I'm thankful Silco gave Jinx the one thing she craved from her sister that her Vi couldn't give her - unconditional love. And no, I don't blame Vi for that. I couldn't do that either if I were in her shoes.
Also, I find it genuinely interesting people seem to put Vander on such a pedestal when he literally tried to murder his 'brother' (albeit for reasons unknown as of yet) and refused to do what his people wanted from him as a leader of the lanes. That's not 'heroic' - but he is human, and that's why I love Vander's character too. Same with Vi. There is almost no character in Arcane who is guitless. Arcane is the epitome of fantastic character writing. I just wish people didn't read Silco's character and his relationship with Jinx with such a skewed or 1-dimensional perspective.
Silco's face fell the moment Jayce told him he had to hand Jinx over. That was when he realised that, no matter how close he was to having everything he'd ever wanted, he would have to give up his daughter to get to it- and that was the one price he could not pay. The first thing he does after the meeting is head to Vander's memorial- not because he has to choose, but because he is grieving the loss of his dream. Silco is presented here with the choice Vander faced all those years ago- between Zaun and their children. And after all these years... he realises that he and Vander were not so different after all.
I think the first episode of act 2, with the shimmer eye drop and first episode of act 3, with the same scene kinda shows the trust between them.
You don't let someone who you don't trust put something that sharp and dangerous near your eye.
@@BunsGlazing768 He also makes the reference of how he was wrong when he confronted vander originally, such that he is also grieving the loss of his friend. This is shown when he says the line "I now understand" It was that he realized that he had simply not understood Vander's perspective that pushing them into that would entail losing Zaun, and he wasn't willing to sacrifice his people for it.
Even when the show was still in that lighter tone in the first two episodes like you mentioned, I was impressed with how much respect they gave to a group of teenagers getting into a fight. It didn't turn into a big cartoon dustball with fists flying all over the place, people were grabbing each other's hair, bodyslamming others, fighting dirty, the works. Also, Powder throws a nail bomb at somebody. Granted it's a dud, but she was going to straight up maim a kid in a fight. Same thing with a knife coming out at the end of the fight in episode 1, the kid doesn't have the nerve to use it, but that whole scenario was on the razor's edge of turning into a murder. I guess if I had to pick one word for the tone, it would be grounded. Super cool show.
Hell one of the first things we see is the aftermath of the under-city uprising (I think that’s what it was) where Vi and Powder’s parents’ bodies are shown.
"Want to see how that ends?" God, talk about establishing character moments.
The show was ALWAYS dark from episode 1 and that fight and the grittiness of it all highlights that completely. Love the show for it ever scene I saw it.
I'm dumb for replying this late, but Claggor played into this whole narrative. He was silent-ish when trying to help Powder, but not really. He died silently too, which was admirable but tragic as well.
Whoever was in charge of Arcane is on that Hexillionaire Mindset
We don't see that often in entertainment industry anymore!
One of the co creators was one of those fans who got into work with riot cause he made the curse of the sad mummy, Christian linke
they understood the assignment, they understood the class, they understood the whole dang course
@@twentyonetortas5921 and they knew that they could only do it themselves
@@danzansandeev6033 Christian Linke was already the head of the music department at Riot for Curse of the Sad Mummy. Though his story is still interesting, since he started in player support and went on to build out their stellar music department and is now showrunning Arcane.
The thing that amazed me the most in Arcane in the end is the lack Big Bad. Plenty of nuanced tales fail in the end I feel because they decide to go what I consider an "easy" route by revealing a Big Bad that is defeated, making the watcher feel good by having a "moral" victory. But Arcane doesn't do that, on the contrary. Silco started as the Big Bad of the show, but the more it progressed, the more you realize that Silco is just another cog in a machine consisting of people having their own agenda.
And that's the strength of Arcane, each character is someone with interests, hopes and dreams. It could have been so easy to reveal Mel to be manipulating Jayce for her own benefit, but on the contrary it's revealed that it's precisely her caring for people that made her an exile in her own country. Victor could have doubled down after her assistant death, but instead he gives up when he realizes that sometime the cost is too great, even if your life is at stake. Jinx could have gone through with her death game but in the end it's Silco that forces her hand.
Even the less important people in the council, that were shown to be corrupt, howl when Jayce first propose to go through with Zaun independence, but by the time the series end, they came around to realize that it was the only way forward possible and unanimously voted for it. Which makes Jinx taking Silco's mantle and blowing the council all the more tragic.
I think silco would be the big bad because his actions cause most of the conflict between the cities. His method of raising jinx and refusing to punish her when she bombed the fair also deeply escalated everything
Yeah, totally agree. Though Silco is a pretty clear big bad. He's understandable in his motivation, and his "love" for Jinx is a positive, but there's no question that the way he runs the undercity is immoral. He's not a gray character like Viktor, or Mel, or even Jinx.
"immorality" doesn't mean Big Bad in my book. If you go by that line of thinking, Mel's mother is also a Big Bad because she doesn't to hesitate killing children.
To me it is logical that an oppressed people is pushed further and further in the ropes until they start having to rely on desperate mesures (drug production and dealing is a recurrent source of insurgency income throughout history), and the Undercity is clearly at that point by the time of the series, hence why Vander is abandonned by his comrade in profit of Silco.
@@LadCarmichael well I do see Mel's mother as a big bad too.
They all feel like actual people.
It's frustrating how so many people haven't understood that Vi didn't mean to abandon Powder. Vi was just a kid too. Albeit older than Powder, but still just a kid. She needed to process what she just witnessed. Tragic
that’s exactly what i always think about - they were both kids, and both had so much pressure put on them because of what world they got to live in
To me it seemed more like she felt ashamed for what she did, that she wanted to hide her face from her sister whom she promised to protect but ended up hurting.
@T Dub But she wasn't going to leave her there.
@T Dub we dont need too look at the definition of being abandoned, looking at the bigger picture would be much more jsut here, Vi had just seen her entire family getting killed at the fragile age of 16, (13)?
if i was Vi, let me just say i wouldnt have stopped at just one punch. And i certainly wouldnt have gone back for her. But Vi did, honestly, considering her age and current trauma she handled the situation better than anyone else would
Well, she kind of did intend to abandon Powder. Not in that moment, to be sure, but keep in mind that Vi's original intention was to give herself over to the enforcers, which would mean abandoning Powder.
Which makes me wonder, if Vi's plan had gone through, and Vander and Silco hadn't intervened, would Powder have still developed issues related to abandonment?
One thing I really love about the first act of Arcane is that basically sets up a three trial act for Powder. Her first trial was looting Jayces home, which she ended up failing by blowing it up. The second trial, was getting the bag safely to The Last Drop. She failed that by dropping the bag into the river. Now In most shows they set it up where the protagonists fails two times, and succeeds on the third time to prove themselves. And that’s what I was completely expecting with Powder. When I saw Vi losing against the monster I figured that was when Powder would swoop in and save the rest of the characters. But then we see the characters about to escape without her help, and that’s when you know everything’s about to go wrong. Instead of the third trial being Powders success, it’s her greatest failure and transformation to her character. And what’s great about it is that it’s not just subversive, it genuinely takes the story to more interesting places. You get the conflict with Vi and Jinx, you see Jinx’s mental struggles, and Silco becomes infinitely more compelling by seeing his parental role with Jinx. Arcane is just so damn good, I’m seriously excited to see more of it
The show is written to make you think Powder is gonna save them, the girl who escapes and comes help anyways, the intense moment where she finally could make a bomb work and help her sister, it's written to play with your expectations from tropes
This is a great take
@@MrLebruleur There is beautiful irony in that scene - she finally succeeds, only to fail everything completely. As OP said, the story is setup in such a way (the three-step-trial) that the audience expects Jinx to finally succeed in what she failed before. And she does - the bomb works! But her success simultaneously destroys everything she loves.
The setup is really what makes this scene so tragic. When the audience is put into the mindset that Jinx will succeed, the tragedy of the final failure becomes that more relatable to the audience. The one time she was supposed to succeed, everything is ruined because of her.
This beautifully establishes Jinx's conflict in the future Arcs: will she ever succeed in anything if everything she creates only destroys things. This conflict combined with her need of acceptance make Jinx such an interesting character. This emotional void left by the tragedy is also the perfect space for Silco to step in and fill with his parenting and manipulation.
The story in this show is so well crafted, it's really a joy to watch.
What can ya say, she is a jinx afterall lol
OMG! I just realized one thing: it is true Powder failed three times as a child. But when she is Jinx she succeed three time. She succeed to take the hex stabilised crystal at Jayce lab killing enforcers, secondly she succeed to get the hex crystal near water (instead of throwing the bag) and secondly she succeed to explode the Council (same when she killed Mylo and Claygor). It s like she lives once again her childhood
Just saying, re: Vicktor and Jayce
I realized that Jayce is on the bottom of the totem pole of Piltover(noble family but a smaller/weaker one), while Viktor is the top of the top heap for the undercity(rose to live in Piltover). It gives them alternative perspectives unique to their origin places and let's them contrast further, especially with how they take advancement
Viktor is much more pragmatic when it comes to advancement, willing to destroy the hexcore after he sees what it can do, but at the same time, regarding humans, is much more idealistic; willing to reach out for peace, understands the nuances of the undercity and how it could benefit from hextech
Jayce is more idealistic when it comes to hextech, rambling about what it could do in the future and advertising it to his poltilca friends, but is much more pragmatic; he has to, he's a politician
Both of them being brilliant, hard-working scientists only benefits this contrast. When two characters have alike traits, their differences stand out more
I like this one.
I also find interesting how Viktor is much more likely to take risks. From breaking into Heimerdinger's office to experimenting on himself. When he and Jayce are working together for the first time Jayce asks him if he knows what he's doing and he just shrugs. When working on the hexcore he's asked if he's sure it's safe and he answears "of course not". It makes a lot of sense when you consider his background. If you want to survive in Zaun you have to take any chances you are given. Not to mention his disability and how, despite all odds, he managed to get to the top. He's used to taking risks. It is pretty similar to how Singed pushes forward no matter the costs, as opposed to Heimer.
well said fam
@@alien5520 Everyone from Zaun is a chad.
Victor is one of the best downward arcs in modern cinema
This show messed me up man. Can't stop thinking about how innocent Powder was... to the point where she didn't even realize what she'd done. She was just happy her little contraption worked. And her realization (and the ultra realistic facial expressions) was very hard to watch.
One thing in that Arcane animators shone and nobody talks about it is the "ugly cry" faces. Damn that's heartbreaking
The thing I find so fascinating about Arcane is its ability to make its characters likeable, even in this morally grey dystopia. Most characters in Arcane are just legitimately trying to protect and help the ones they love, but they're navigating the world which is designed to set them against each other. Usually in shows like this, say, Game of Thrones, most characters end up looking like complete jerks, but here I actually find myself loving the characters and understanding their motivations, even when they sometimes do terrible things.
It sounds so simple, but this really is a huge part of what made the show work for me. I didn't hate anyone, even when I hated the results of their actions. There was no simplistic deranged psycho like Ramsay Bolton who existed for viewers to wish death upon. Every single character was complex and empathetic.
Even Jayce was handled pretty well, and I kinda see how he became who he is in the in-game lore, full of ego. He wants to leave his mark in the world by pumping out new inventions that will help both cities, mostly Piltover. In his childhood, he wanted to become a hero(when looking at a child drawing of a buff man, wielding a hammer), protecting people, especially those who are dear to him, like Caitlyn and Viktor.
Seriously. I can't watch a lot of shows because I just hate all the characters. Arcane's characters remaining as relatable people throughout kept it enjoyable
Vi didn't abandon Powder, I hate it when people can't even pick up on that. She left Powder to go cool down so that she didn't hurt Powder anymore, she had no intention of leaving and just needed a few minutes. Powder thinks Vi left her because an enforcer took her while she was going back. It's what makes this whole scene hurt the absolute most and you didn't even get that.
I think people are o lying saying that because of Powder's reaction to stepping away from her. VI knew she needed to cool herself down to not hurt her only family she has, but in Powder's mind the only person she looks up to and wants to show she can stand on her own is Vi. The fact that the writers wrote it that Vi basically gets taken away as Silco starts to take Powder under his wing was really smart showing her start into the decent of her madness.
People also aren't picking up that Powder showed mental instability from episode one Vi was her anchor.
Stop gatekeeping morality. Vi definitely did in a way "leave her behind". Ofc she intended to come back after cooling off, but in my opinion the whole situation is purely one of sorrow and not of anger, which is why it's bad enough that Vi hit her and then left her in a place that was still full of danger. I personally feel that the way the show had their cake and ate it too by making Vi both leave Powder and try and come back to be the good guy, weakened the scene. I think the scene would have been stronger if Vi actually left her there by choice and not through shenanigans.
@@lukasmedici31415 would've hit pretty hard, sure. but it makes no sense story and character wise- Vi was angry at Powder, but she still loved her. If they made her leave by her own choice it'd be purely for the show's benefit which is NOT at all how good shows are made. They follow what the character would do given their personality.
Personally it hits harder that Powder thinks Vi abandoned her solely because she didn't see her trying to come back.
@@tobenamed610I think what happened in the show already went against Vi's character since she's so far been portrayed as someone with great empathy and moral righteousness. You are right however that my idea would go against her character even more.
To fix my issue I think Vi's character would have to be changed from the ground up or the whole situation in which the tragedy happened would have to be changed in a way for things to make more sense.
I love so much of the show with intensity that it just hurts me that there are some scenes that keep it from being a masterpiece in my eyes.
I like how despite making us empathize with both sides, the show still makes it mostly clear where the problem stems from. There isn't and there can be no reconciliation while the interests are not aligned.
Not when some are worried about maintaining status and luxury while others are in locked in a violent and self-destructive struggle to survive. And those wounds can only get deeper with time.
You say the show makes it clear, but I can't help but feel this video just "both sides"d the situation.
The steward of progress oversaw the institution of terrible inequality. The enforcers enforce laws like the worst assumptions of what cops are. The oligarchs are rich but it is never established how and by what cost they achieve that. (Trading what? Selling to whom?). In Zaun we see addiction and gang skirmishesand pollution but it is under developed as to why people aren't/can't do anything about it.
Anyway just my thoughts.
Jayce geniunely cares about Piltover's future and its people, that's why he went ahead and proposed the independence of Zaun. If they went to war with the Undercity, countless of bodies will drop, from both sides. I get why he wants power and fame, so that he could have a voice in important decisions within the Council. If he stayed a scientist like Viktor, the Councilors won't give a shit about him.
@@carnivoriousleaf I don't think stating that both sides have issues mutually excludes stating that one of the sides is the source of most of the problems. Like in that moment when Caitlyn asks if Piltover is to blame for everything and Vi just responds with "not everything".
That being said, I do agree that the political and economical explanations for that are underdeveloped in the show, but I'm already surprised with what we got, considering it's funded by a multibillion corporation. I just wish they had dedicated a couple minutes to explaining the general history of the cities at least since the days of the Shuriman Empire.
I feel like we're left to infer that the reasons for that are the same as in our world, something along the lines of inequality generating more inequality and violence (both between the cities, and inside of Zaun). Piltover is set on the path of progress while Zaun is struggling to survive against itself while immersed in toxic fumes.
@@eduardoserpa1682
So first off I think we have pretty similar views and opinions. I hear what you are saying in that we are left to infer. I just also feel that inference leaves Silco as a higher villain to the oligarchs of Piltover. The status quo is murderous and I don't think the show takes that seriously enough. Work was made into making the vibe of a suffering underclass, but the Zaunish people are dying due to the inequality.
A part that really sticks with me is the show seems to show the Piltover council agrees to give up power to a new Zaun authority and it all happens off screen. To me it breaks my suspension of disbelief.
anyway thanks for talking.
@@carnivoriousleaf think it happens off screen as its things we already know like if Jinx isn't handed over a key part of the peace deal Zaun has access to all of Piltover's trade secrets a key for their success. they are agreeing to indenpence as at the same time shimmer are major economic driver has to halted and Jinx who cracked their secrets has to be stopped its like saying your free but you have to cut your leg and arm off at the same time. council is agreeing because they have to not because of any moral reason.
I think Silco is the perfect example of how to make a villain multi-layered without necessarily making them sympathetic or subtracting from their villainy. He's a violent drug lord, essentially, an idealist who doesn't live up to his promises (he basically takes charge of the Undercity, but still can't established the nation of Zaun he envisioned), but he also IS an idealist at all. He wants his people to be free of the oppression they've faced and he is a loving father figure to Jinx, even if still a toxic one (he uses her for personal gain a lot of the time and doesn't fully empathize with her mental issues, and they both kind of bring out the worst in each other). He feels like a real person without ever feeling like a good person. He's just... A whole fucked up person and that's so cool to me.
I think what arcane did most diferent from other game adaptations is that it isn’t trying to be an adaptation it’s trying to tell a good story.
That’s why it’s perfectly understandable for people who have never played the game or read about the characters.
Add to that, great writing, great animation and soundtrack
I thought the same about Silco, being a manipulative kingpin who adopts Powder to change her into Jynx fueled by her anger at his sister but in the end with his last act it made me doubt about his character but it was beautiful in a way, even in his wicked state of mind i wanted him to achieve his goal, his Nation of Zaun, to see if he could run it the same way he did in the underworld but he paid the ultimate price for it long ago when he saved Jynx from dying by taking her to Singed and in his last moment of emotional breakdown which he encouraged with his speeches, he died by the hand of his own "daughter" without knowing what could have been of Zaun, even for an antagonist it was poetically tragic.
That's why Silco it's my favorite character from Arcane and i can't believe how well designed it was.
Without jinx he couldnt achive much
Honestly, I was prety sold on him being unwilling to give up Jinx and loving her as a daughter when he had his moment at the statue of Vander. Silco could not understand why Vander would give up on the dream of a free Zaun, until he was told to choose between his dream and Jinx. It was at that moment that Silco finally realized why Vander did what he did, and why he would do the same.
Vi is the one who change Powder to Jinx... even Jinx herself said that... What Vi did after heard Vander's last words was the beginning. Silco is the one who actually save Jinx soul and keeping her from going completely insane.
You see, i disagree that he adopted her to make her into Jinx. Silco was a man driven by two goals. Revenge for Vanders betrayal and to gave Zaun's independence. And while he is very much in the school of "the ends justify the means" he is not absent emotions. I think when Powder clang to him and spoke of how she was abandoned, it rang with him. Reminded him of his own pain at Vanders betrayal and he genuinely whatd to help. As for making her a weapon i would add a slight caveat. You raise your children to be able to survive your environment. Silco saw Zaun as being as war, and in such a situation you teach your children to fight.
He truly was one of the best characters of the show and he ended up realizing he having more in common with Vander at the end than he realized. He was willing to give up his dream for his family. But its also worth questioning whether Silco wanted to gain respect for Piltover was truly through diplomatic means since he supported the riot in the past with Vander, utilized shimmer-induced minions, and pushed Jinx to create the mega death rocket. While the end goal might have been for Zaun to be its own independent nation with Piltover's respect, I feel Silco would be just as happy with giving Piltover elites the middle finger, via rocket missile.
a part that i love about the show is the scene with the rocket travelling to the council window. it's long enough to understand many things. how everything changes. the relationships between vi and jinx, caitlyn and jinx, probably jayce with viktor. the little tidbits into future characters and who will come back. but the most important thing you realize there is how close everyone was to peace. the decision had been made for zaun to become it's own country, in light of how much the two citites had drifted ideologically and how piltover, through neglect or greed, could not help zaun. but as the rocket flew through the sky, you could see that one moment of true peace die out.
*Spoilers for Metro 2033/34 games*
Now that you lay it out like that, it reminds me of the "bad" ending in the "Metro" games, where you are just a few words away from peace and a chance at a new start on the destroyed surface of the earth but decide to shoot a nuclear missle at the "nest" of mutants that all this time tried to communicate with you and help humankind emerge from the tunnel system they made their home...
@@Srynan the difference is the player has control there and depending on what they want it may weigh less or more on them.
in the case of the show beyond it being out of our control, it's kind of beyond everyones control. no one was there that could stop the rocket. silco, dead, vi and cait, injured and vander, a long dead ghost. peace was a hopeless ploy all along, all because of the existence of a girl that was a jinx and would ruin it all.
p.s. i just realized the irony of jinx jinxing the peace between piltover and zaun. what a lovely show
and with jinx firing the shark, she jinxed it all over again
They were close to peace sure but the council or jayce more like, wanted jinx to pay for the crimes. That was the price of peace which silco wasn't gonna pay. So I don't think there was gonna be any peace between them.
I feel like you kinda missed the point
It was too little too late
Peace was impossible
Vi did NOT abandon jinx. She was about to run in and suicide for her when she saw Silco but got taken away. To call that abandonment is so viscerally wrong
She didnt abandon her, but that's how it looks from the perspective of Silco and Powder, and based on that perspective its how their relationship begins, two little brothers abandoned by their big bros
im fairly sure Vi stepped away to control her own feelings, so she would refrain from hurting Powder again. She was most likely about to go back to Powder before Silco showed up.
@@El-de6nj yes, thats def what happened but when people say that vi abandoned jinx, i think they are talking specifically about jinx's perspective. at the end of the day, even if these weren't vi's intentions, this is what happened
While it's true Vi didn't really abandon her, from the perspective of Powder she did.
Functionally speaking she did.
Jinx believed she did. For years.
As far as anyone in a position to be affected could understand, Vi left Powder.
What I also like about Singed's character is he doesn't need to lie and manipulate people. He is needed, he shows what he truly believe and explains the consequences without any sugar coating.
YES. I mean, Imagine if we could all just be our true selves. The good, the bad, the ugly. Imagine if we could just bare it all.
"the show starts with a lighter tone"
The first scene; orphans on a bridge covered in bodies draped in tear gas and darth vadar breathing.
I'm still impressed at how they managed to pack the theme *everywhere,* whether in the characters, the setting, but also items and parallel events, such as the hex crystals.
In Piltover, the first succesful contraption using the crystals literally made two scientists fly.
At the same time, in the undercity, that same crystal was used to make a bomb that killed two children and ripped a woman's arm.
I realize this's well written after episode 3. This's kind of show you just watch for fun or because arts are beautiful but it delivered more than you excepted. And I love it. They should take as much time as they want for writing and shouldn't push to be fast. I want to see season 2 but I can also wait for good writings and fascinating arts it can deliver. As a person whose dream is to be a story teller and an animator, this show influenced me a lot. Thanks riot team.
To me it was difficult on several fronts. The pacing was not well done, some character decisions in terms of psychology were completely nonsensical. Dialogue/writing was college level at best. plenty of 4/10 scenes in the season, but overall I give it a 5-6 out of 10. I had a tough time making it all the way thru and had to force myself.
Same I’m just brainstorming my story but this show inspired me to consider more substance when creating or expanding my characters. Is just really well written narrative
@@fettmaneiii4439 ??? Did we watch the same show? I guess not.
@@fettmaneiii4439 got me a little confused since after watching hours of analysis videos i continue to adore the show. why do you think the was pacing bad? why do you think that way in general about the show? i’m curious.
The theme of duality is expressed in many places in Arcane. Perhaps my favorite one is described through a line from Viktor, "In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good." Good or noble intentions, with terrible or tragic results. Everyone is doing things with what they view as noble intentions, improving a city, advancing technology, creating a new nation, being a father. But it all goes tragically wrong, either due to their own misguided actions and mistakes, or due to factors largely out of their control. Sometimes things just don't work out, regardless of your intentions or even your best efforts. You can do everything right, but due to something as simple as random chance, it still might not work out.
I was so upset when Silco died. I thought his and Jinx's relationship was really interesting and complex, and fatherly to the max. Like, Silco loving Jinx was the epitome of unconditional love. He adopted her, he saw her strengths when she didn't, and fostered them, and even when she messed up he defended her, and in the end he even said he would never sell her out to anyone, that everyone always abandoned them but he would not abandon her. AND it was when she had FATALLED WOUNDED him he said this. He still loved her and accepted her how she was, and didn't blame her, even though she was the reason for his death. I just. Amazing. I loved their relationship.
Best dynamic of the series and development on Silco's side. An excellent call to do that whole sub plot.
That’s why he made such a good foil to vander.
Plus just like vander we all know he’s not gone and will be back in season two. The only difference is that vander is in a tortured and monsterous state. Silco is in jinx mind as one of the voices to her tortured and monsterous mind.
His love for Jinx was toxic. It was the love of an enabler of ones worst vices. Beautiful yes, but tragically misguided and in many ways, he destroyed Powder for the worse both for herself and her ability to connect with others
who knew that in a year with movies like Dune and shows like squid game in the end everyone would just be mourning the loss of Silco and feeling for Jinx, a LoL champion
Sigh….
He loved her. He empathized with her. He protected her, even nurtured and stood by her. But he is the reason why she is so traumatized. People seem to gloss over that he tried to murder 3 children, and then Powder till he realized she was abandoned.
He raised her on his own bitter and cynical worldview, to the point where her own beliefs about her past, Vi’s love and Ekko’s friendship, which were still there, were constantly plagued by self doubt. Her talent and obvious instability was turned into violence for a criminal empire that created who knows how many thousands of addicts and enshrined a drug lord oligarchy as the rulers of the Undercity. She is what, 14 years old and totally comfortable with murdering other people, including teens like her.
She has deep insecurities and fears that he takes advantage of, whether he knows it or not. Every time he talks to her when she’s coming apart, it always ends with him saying that she can trust only him and no one else.
This is incredibly toxic and self destructive for the both of them. The tragedy is not his death but the hell Jinx has fallen into because of misunderstandings, trauma and violence. Seeing it as a wholly wholesome relationship is such a fucked up thing. It’s a toxic relationship, and just because you sympathize with him or it’s not a typical abusive/ neglectful relationship doesn’t make it any less toxic. Pablo Escobar was a great Dad and he ordered the deaths of thousands of innocents, targeted children and flooded his community with drugs and crime, under the guise of a Robinhood figure. It’s human contradiction.
The entire series just dumps on the characters but it feels so real: The show is a string of bad luck, misunderstandings and bad decisions on everyone’s part, that’s what makes it so gut wrenching I think. These characters feel like actual people.
A great example of all of them is Vi and Powder’s relationship and what makes it all the more tragic is that Vi and Powder never reconcile, there’s an underlying hope throughout the show that they will but they simply don’t get the chance too as every time they meet up something else happens:
the first time they meet up is interrupted by Caitlyn and the Firelights, the second time is before the fight with Ekko (which was just a tense situation as Jinx just killed several people not a good place to have a heart to heart), and finally the “Tea Party” (which was made worse by Silco being there). It’s amazing how things could’ve turned out if things were only slightly different.
Weren’t you on another video saying the same thing or am I crazy?
And that all feed to that final line in the song at the end, ‘what could have been’
I think that is the greatest strength of Arcane, in every action and moment you see what could have been in different circumstances, if a different choice was made. So in the end you can see what could have been, and that makes it all the more tragic
@@CrackedPropane you’re not crazy, sorry if it comes off as repetitive.
saw this on another video and im not gonna write a whole essay again but the way this show teases you with Powder and Vi being close again only to rip it away from you is painful
@@tobenamed610 it is yes.
I haven't made it through Arcane yet, but I'm so delighted to hear reviewers/critiques/essayists I respect say it's amazing! I've waited so long for League to put its universe in show form and I'm so glad they seem to have hit gold. Can't wait to watch this in a few days!
They found gold and polished it to a mirror finish
Please come back and tell us your option here!!! Would be so stoked to hear it!
Arcane is the best animated show I've ever seen. The story is extremely impressive, but the part not mentioned above is, the artwork. Every single scene is a painting, moving and evolving to tell the visual story.
@@zzasserzz I second this! Replying to get notified :)
Yes! Let us know what you think! 😊
MY favorite part of Arcane is not just that there exists so many foils and dualities but how often the plight of one inevitably is the exact same decision the other must make in some way. This is especially highlighted for Vander and Silco. Both were in positions of immense power and when faced with a deal which would protect their people and their city the cost that must be paid was their daughter. And neither was willing to make that trade. That moment when Silco is at the statue of Vander hit me harder than most any other scene in the show. Whether they were true brothers or as the theme of the show suggests simply family by association they shared the same burden and met the same fate despite their opposing methods.
It only makes sense that a show based on a video game where people get so attached to characters should focus so heavily on the relationships and dualities between so many sets of those characters and their loved ones. This show blows me away every day when I think more about it.
Everyone says that Vi left Powder for what she did and I'm just sitting here like, No, she left because she broke down at the actions of Powder and needed to compose herself before she did anything worse than slap Powder, and as a result, that accidentally became the worst thing that happened to Powder. It wasn't actively her choice to leave Powder, that was out of her control.
It's a reoccurring event throughout the show where Vi is interrupted by something else or never able to support Powder/Jinx when she needed it the most, and because of that, JInx comes to her own conclusions that fit the perception of her reality that's slowly been built up over the 6 years she's been separated from Vi.
Powder final action is saving Vi and because of all the little things that built up to that moment, that's when Jinx is solidified. The writing justifies her turn, and it also shows "what could have been" in every instance that got interrupted.
In Jinx's mind Vi left her three different times.
But for Vi, she only truly left her once when she left with Caitlyn on the Bridge. The other two times, was because she was distracted trying to get back to Powder.
I think the show will somehow reconcile the sister's broken relationship after something big or major happens. The theme is duality but throughout the whole season 1, both vi and jinx have always had the mentality to never give up on each other. You could argue that jinx is way past it but somehow inside there, there's still a person longing to reunite with her sister.
Look at vi and jinx when they first met after being separated, the eyes and animated drawn is different than any other scenes that you'd see after episode 3. The eye and face jinx made was genuinely the same powder whereas the puppy eye she makes in other scenes were literally jinx smirking sad face. Even the fight with ekko, the puppy eye she gave was a jinx face.
I foresee the two sisters having been fighting out for some time and towards the end they choose to reconcile their difference but it would probably be too late cause both of them dies and the story ends. They are literally the start and end to the story. But they died remaining as sisters
I think Vi leaving Jinx on the bridge mirrors her decision as a kid to step away to think after hitting Powder. Vi stepped away on the bridge to find a new approach to get to her, which she resolved as taking down Silco who was confirmed to have a grip on her
Arcane is a case study for storytelling. It did such a good job of exceeding the expectations of the audience by actually being a great story on its own, not tied to the game to narrate it... I want more of this
As a Jinx main, I'm ecstatic to finally have her backstory and it being so good!
Just like watching Arcane, I was glued to my screen without interruption until the end. Great video, I appreciate the way you were able to concisely explain so much about why the season excelled.
It blows my mind how good this show was. And that it was immediately universally praised on just about every front.
For an adaptation.
Based on league.
Mind blowing.
Arcane in the 2020s is akin to what happened with Star Wars in the 1970s... A new standard of excellence for a genre. There's no going back!
This is the new Avatar TLA/Korra, calling it
I love it but I hope it doesn't trick people into playing League of Legends
It probably will. And that fighting game got announced too
No but maybe project L
I stopped playing LoL 3 years ago and Arcane made me play it again. My friend so started playing LoL after watching it. Arcane did its job.
I am more inclined to read the lore than playing the game 😂
This is one of the few games were the fanbase bad rep actually makes me not playing. And I know for a fact I would freak out in multiplayer, reason why all games I play are solo 👌
It’s…. Too late for me gents… GO ON WITHOUT ME
I love Arcane. Its so well written. My favourite was Silco as they made an Antagonist who is a human at heart and does not fall into tropes. He loved Jinx because he had fatherly feelings towards her without abusing her as an instrument or have sexual motives like many other shows did.
I recommanded it to friends and family who did know nothing about LoL and they loved it.
This so much, when he took Jinx in ep 3 I was ready for the show to jump the shark on abuse and playing him as a comically evil villain who just uses her as a weapon. Instead we get a genuine father figure who loved his daughter despite all her flaws, and believed in her until the very end. The circustances of his death were singlehandely the most heartbreaking moment of the seires for me.
I love the way silco is straight up absolutely ruthless when it comes to keeping those around him in check except for jinx. The scene when she's stabbing him with the injector for example, or when she bombs piltover to steal the hex gem. Anyone else silco would have ended immediately but he loves and understands jinx to a degree that she becomes his main weakness. As for jinx they show her affection for him by her setting up fireworks for presenting a gift, on silco's desk there's a mug and ashtray doodled on by jinx as gifts. Even fishbone's jinx's rocket launcher which silco asked her to make for him she made in the fashion of something she knew he loved, sea monsters. She even added a black scar on its eye so he would know it was for him. It's the tiniest of details for me that elevate these relationships to such a believable level that you cannot help but feel something for them.
@@smiley4842 Amazing. I did not realised that details about fishbone. That is a rather cute little detail.
Love the channel, love the video. But Arcane slapped me with its dark tone right from the get-go when it shows the enforcer gun down a person who clearly, at that moment, was a shell-shocked non-threat. This is quickly followed up by showing all the casualties of the (riot? Protest?) and the the fact that these two kids we see are now orphans.
Only after that does it time-skip to rooftop hijinks.
So dark tone established in minute one.
Just finished this series and have been looking for something to summarize this topic. The way tragedy was written was amazing. The concept of these characters outgrowing each other - coupled with the huge misunderstandings and preventable situations - add so much to the tragic aspect. This series is amazing.
I think it’s all cemented through the way as an audience we can see what could have been, we see the misunderstandings, and how close somethings come to a kind of resolution, just to see it all ripped away again. It’s so heartbreaking
@@JelleBeans I definitely agree! The characters being more than caricatures controlled by the plot are what contribute as well; the narrative is developed not solely through external forces, but by the consequences of the characters actions; Vi constantly telling Powder she was ready when she clearly isn’t, Mylo reiterating the idea that Powder is a Jinx, Silco’s actions led to Vi and co. nearly dying in an attempt to free Vander, leading to Powder using three hex cores in her bomb to prove her worth because Vi basically proved that she believed powder to be a jinx (solidifying her unstable mental health), causing her and Vi’s family to die… Vi finally saying Powder was a jinx. And, you know the rest. Not only does it further pull the interest of the viewers into the characters, but it develops the story in a realistic way.
Everyone talking about how great arcane is but I just wanna say that this video is also great. Loved how it broke down and explained the key things that make arcane a good show. Great job man
I don't play the game, but I'm glad this story was as good as it was. We need way more stories like this. There are parts of the story I would have elaborated on, some of the flashbacks felt out of place but maybe cause I watched all of them consecutively. Either way it's neat getting an insight on something like this and comparing it to my own story and what I can play around with to make the story better.
Some of the flashback wouldn't make sense probably because you're not familiar with the lore. Although they're not that important some of them are crucial for the understanding of the background of both of the city. But i think they did what they can with the amount of time needed for the story.
Pretty sure almost all of the flashbacks were placed at the beginning of the episode before the opening. They didn't feel out of place to me as they'd already established a consistent theme there.
I was curious if they were going to discuss where the hex crystals come from and how they were suddenly obtained. Have they always been easy to access but nobody touched them because they are unstable? Did Jayce find them himself? In Benzo's shop? If so Where did Benzo come across it - we know he has a sort of collectable shop. I really wanted more, but at the same time considereding how dense those 9 episodes were I'd understand if there wasn't time to delve into a few of the more finer details. All around though I went in expecting to have a good time and I left blown away from this show.
I think Arcane might have the single best art style of any animated tv show i’ve ever seen!!
@17:45 You just summarized perfectly why exactly I fell in love with this show. I am no gamer and have no interest in LoL. It was the one thing that almost drove me away from the series. But I am so glad I watched this. As a writer who has lost my spark for a while, the writing and depth and emotional core of Arcane made me pick up my pen again. Love this video!! Excellent analysis!
"That wasn't just a good Superhero Movie, that was a good Movie"
- Hi-Top Film's, quoting someone
His dad on Spider-Man 2
@@_Quzey_ yes, thank you, friend
@@TechNinjaSigma Anytime
One of the best animated series and series in general I’ve ever seen
With respect: if you know of any better animated series, please disclose them. I’d be interested in looking into them.
This is the first time I noticed that powder placed a bunch of crystals inside the monkey and that’s why the explosion was so much bigger than in episode one. They really thought of everything.
I can't get over how great this show was. All other shows and movies seem pale after watching it.
Agreed.
Uh-huh! I remember watching Hawkeye a few days ago (and I like the MCU) and was just like... but it's not arcane. Riot/Fortiche pushed the bar to the sky with this one!
I actually feel the same way, it's strange, I've never felt this way after a show before.
RIGHT
Arcane just might be the best animated show ever,I can't say it enough.
Every single last character not only matters, but their motives make sense.
There's no can't do any wrong protagonist or mustache twirling antagonist who's evil for the sake of it,just ideals of circumstance.
Everything from the smallest changes in facial expressions to the weaving in fights feels alive.
The punches have weight,the voices have life,the world building is vast,etc.
Brilliance man,fxxking Brilliance!!!!!
Yay, so glad you made a video Arcane, the storytelling is by one of the most interesting stories, while it follows a lot of tropes it also innovates on top of it and doesn't waste time in unnecessary dialogue or exposition.
This show just made the the Production company, Fortiche, millions and millions of $$$. They are set for life now. The demand for their work is guaranteed for the next 10-20yrs. They deserve every cent, because they made an absolute masterpiece here !!
I was in love with the show by the end of episode 2 and episode 3 had me convinced I was watching a masterpiece. I don't know anything about the game so I had no idea who Jinx was. I just knew Powder. What a ride. Great video!
Also you missed Marcus' character development. At the start he wants to totally control the undercity and stamp out all crime, but by the second act he's become sheriff and has disgracefully realised that deals have to be cut in order to keep the peace between the two cities
More stuff on Arcane would be awesome.
I’m a small writer who currently works on a series called SeiKU. I often take inspiration from successful TV shows,movies, and story etc. I got So hooked onto movies that my writing often feels like one.
But bad 😢
Your point about familial bonds fleshing out the characters and enhancing the tragedy definitely extends beyond mere familial bonds. As your own editting touches on you see similar aspects with say, Ekko and Jinx during their fight on the bridge- two childhood friends who may, in another life, have been more, at eachother's throats and despite his own doomsaying about Jinx to Vi, Ekko finds himself unable to stop Jinx by dealing a final blow, leading to him nearly losing his life and losing the gemstone. The mentor-student relationship between Jayce and Heim enhances how much it hurts to see Jayce motion to remove him from the council, and you see how much it hurts Heim especially. The sort of warped version of Jayce and Heim's relationship seen between Singed and Viktor similarly fleshes out exactly what kind of person Viktor is, and why he latched onto Jayce's Hextech dreams in the first place and was willing to break the law despite Heim's warnings. I feel like something could be said about Caitlyn and Vi as well but I'm coming up blank.
'Don't Cry, You're Perfect'
Im still crying T_T
What I really like in the first act, as someone who knew nothing of LOL and therefore nothing about Jinx, is how they lull us into believing Powder IS gonna help. They set the whole narrative of how her inventions never work, she feels useless, she just wants to help, and we expect the trope to payoff as the usual >> struggling protagonist finally succeeds when the need arises.
But that doesn't happen. Instead, they make us realize how unreasonable the concept is in the first place, that a child would solve an issue even adults would fold under; that a child with highly unstable explosives would be anything but a danger to everyone involved BECAUSE they are a damn KID, how could he expect them to know how to properly judge their power and handle them?
I love how I went from "cmon Powder!!" to "YES!" then immediately to "oh", as the realization sunk in. And after I cant even be mad that I was "tricked", it's a good "plot twist" because in retrospective how could I have expected anything else? Explosions are messy. You hand a ten year old a dynamite and expect anything but disaster?
It's so cool how Riot managed to be consistent for like 8 years now. They wrote Jinx and Vi a decade ago but threw out hints and interactions here and there that the community got confused and excited about.
I will never sleep the same after knowing I was spoiled about a show i liked 8 years ago
Your opening is what finally got me to watch the show, months ago. Rewatched it today so had to come watch this video again
Loved Arcane, I was genuinely excited to clic that "watch next episode" button every time it showed up. That's not a feeling I get very often these days. I came into it with low expectations, and it blew me away.
Arcane is arguably one of the best pieces of media ever created, and if you haven't seen it yet you definitely should. Its absolutely incredible, even if you don't know a thing about the game it's based on.
The writing, animation, plot, characters, fight scenes, original songs, the background music, etc.
It just Does. Not. Miss.
Yes, Arcane is absolutely amazing. One of my favorite shows now, and I barely play the game. Arcane is Avatar: The Last Airbender levels of good. And it's hard to come close to being that good.
That's a bit of a stretch.
Don't forget to mention the excellent work done by the voice actors. They brought the characters to live brilliantly.
Talking about themes, I love that arcane doesn't shy away from Drama and Dark themes despite being a colorful looking show
Coming from marvels "I lost my entire family but here is a joke about gamers" is refreshing to see a show actually care for once
It depend. GOTG 2 sometimes joke about Yondu and Peter relationship. But when it needs to be serious, like when Yondu confess to Rocket or when he sacrifice, they do treat it seriously
The brilliance in their application of foils is how characters *can have more than one foil, because they're complex characters.* We see how different characters in different scenarios bounce off each other in interesting ways as the story develops. First encountering Caitlyn, we see her compared/contrasted with upper city characters, but then see whole new elements of her with her working with Vi, then some of that even going the other way when Vi, usually contrasted with lower city characters, working with Jayce.
I love how this show handles violence - it's brutal, all of the action scenes look amazing, and some of them look like music videos, but all of them come at a cost.
Echo Vs Jinx is really stylised and you get glimpses of them as children play fighting, only now they're not playing anymore and you see that as the scene ends. They're both ready to kill a person they once cared about and eventually, Echo realises this and falters.
Even just before this, Jinx's attack on the bridge with the green bugs is visually stunning but the deaths caused aren't faceless. Marcus dies and you know he has a daughter he wanted to live for.
You're initially fed the scene with Vi and Jayce in the undercity as them taking action against shimmer production - it looks badass and then a child dies and you realise innocent people (that they're ultimately trying to protect) have been hurt with barely any gain.
It's just really refreshing to see the consequences of violence carry so much weight in the show in comparison to a lot of other media that have disposable bad guy armies for the protagonist to take down in a visually pleasing manner, while keeping them on a moral high ground with their actions unquestioned.
You're given a chance to understand both sides of the conflict and the motivations that caused the conflict to arise but ultimately, "nobody wins in war" - Vander
Marvelous video essay, my friend! Well done!
It's funny you're talking about narrative foils, because this theme of duality is actually prevalent, not just in Piltover and Zaun, but also throughout all of Runeterra. Every region has its own issues and some, if not most, of those issues are represented through two or more champions/characters that represent one ideal vs another.
Ashe vs Sejuani - Civility vs Barbarism
Ornn vs Volibear - Same deal but they're both deities, so the disagreement's a lot messier
Shen vs Zed - Pacifism vs Violence
Yasuo vs Yone - Fucking around vs Taking shit seriously
Azir vs Xerath - Priviliged royalty vs Slavery
Nasus vs Renekton - Brains vs Brawn
Xayah vs Rakan - Hard vs soft diplomacy
Diana vs Leona - Skepticism vs Faith
Vastayans vs Humans - Nature vs......Us
If they follow the lore, not only will new foils be introduced but the ones that already exist will be intensified until.....
*creepy swingset*..........BOOM
dont forget about Garen vs Sylas in demacia
I'd argue Shen and Zed is more Passive vs Action
@@kiyoegg I'd also argue Garen vs Lux or even Garen vs Jarvan IV. Like Savage Books mentioned, characters can serve as foils to several other characters simultaneously and I feel Garen's a perfect example of that. Though most of his foils are laced with the same theme: his relationship to magic and people who use it
@@crablord7934 That makes sense
@@kiyoegg correction, it's Sylas vs Demacia.
I never expected Riot to portray the cycle of violence and how it effects the deeply rooted bonds between people so well but here we are. Proof that they actually DO know how to produce quality.
It was produced by French animation studio Fortiche and written by Christian Linke
Alex Yee. Riot just gave them the rights to do it.
@@elewis9180 Both Linke and Yee are longtime employees at Riot as creative directors. They pretty much been crafting the lore for the past decade.
Duality is so deep in this series, savage even missed the duality between the nature of the superpowers of the too side and bottom side, with topside having hex-tech which seems primarily technological in nature but is interestingly coloured blue which is often a colour associated with peace and purity, whereas the under-city uses shimmer which is primarily biological in nature (Although it is sometimes used to power machinery as well) and uses the colour purple which often is used alongside green to depict corruption, toxicity, violence and greed, which becomes especially interesting when you look at the hex core and how its appearance evolves when Victor's blood is incorporated into it, as it devolves from its pure blue hue to look more like shimmer with it's toxic purple as if the combination of technology and biology is an abomination and that this duality will always create conflict as once combined, the hex core starts to become more aggressive and violent in nature. God I love this show.
I don't care how many time I say this on how many videos, but if anything deserves the title of Masterpiece, it is Arcane. I've watched this series 4 times now and it gets more powerful with each watching...absolutely breathtaking.
That was really great thanks! I have been waiting for someone to do this, I could not believe how great Arcane was
I am grateful for your videos. I know how to fix the issues with my book.
Thank you for putting it into words! I've recommended the show to a couple of people but couldn't tell them anything other than Arcane was awesome. 😅
I can't believe I waited so long to watch this. My favorite video by far. I learned a lot and I didn't think it possible, but I have even more respect for the creators of this show.
I think good stories need to have a simple core. A family feud is always a good one. It doesn’t matter the scale of the actual conflict, from Star Wars to Arcane to the infinity saga, it’s all about families fighting and reconciling or not.
Another aspect of Arcane that explores "Duality" are the internal struggles of the characters.
Silco with having to choose his dreams or his daughter.
Vi & Jinx with having to choose weither to believe that powder can comeback or accept that she is now Jinx.(hell even Ekko is struggling with this.)
Jayce with weaponizing Hextech or follow his friend's advice which is to destroy those.
Silco is my single favorite character to ever exist in any show, EVER. And here is why. The intricacies of how truly fucked up and horrible he is, and the fact that he cares so much for Jinx is the most human thing I have ever seen. So many of us would totally kill and doom a whole city just to save that one person that we love the most. Parents do horrible things for their children. Lovers do horrible things for their lovers. We literally see Silco go from horrible bad guy, to loving father back to back. It's so jarring but depicts the true human nature. We are all bad and good. Good people do bad things, and bad people can do good things. There is no one person on this earth that is 100% good. We all have monsters that lie within, and we all have angels that lie within. Some of us just have our monsters closer to the surface. Characters like Silco show you that even in the worst of humans, there is a speckle of good to find. And characters like Jayce show you that even in the best-intentioned people, there is a devil within. I am fucking obsessed with Silco.
This was an amazing analysis.
Amazing video. The only thing I would add is the phenomenal use of archetypes. The reason why a lot of modern(not necessarily modern but more frequently modern) stories and shows fail imo is they try way too hard to create more original stories-something we've never seen before. Arcane uses archetypes. The reason why soo many people like Star Wars is because it uses simple but beautiful archetypes of good and evil and puts them against each other. 'Good vs is evil' is something we all love for its beautiful simplicity, even tho we've seen it a million times. Archetypes like this give the show purity, make them feel elevated and absent of vulgarity. Arcane uses them perfectly. We have Jayce-a symbol of a young, naive, good man who lacks experience and constantly has doubts, because sometimes we have to choose between doing the best thing for ourselves and for the rest of the world. We have the conflict of two siblings(Silco-Vander,Vi-Jinx) which you explained, it's one of the most famous conflicts in literature. We have the undercity-Zaun, a dark slum where people resort to crime due to deep issues present in the society... There are way too many to count. I apologise for my poor english, also some of the terms i probably straight-up butchered and used innapropriately as I'm not educated in literature or storywriting.
Great essay! 8 days ago i didn't know the name of this show and was 'tricked' into watching the first ep. I finished it yesterday and now i look forward to re-watching it, for all the reasons you detail; it is truly a great show, a piece of entertainment art. I'm staggered that this is the writers first screen play!
At the end of S1, Why Jinx has to shot rocket at Piltover..? What is her motivation..!? Jinx want Vi to feel the same way she felt right then. She want her to feel suffer and hopeless. It's a revenge for Silco. Vi is trying to manipulate Jink to become Powder and that's action cost life of Silco. In Jinx mind, Vi is the one who killed her father. Duality.... as Powder is the one who killed Vander, Vi father.
Arcane is gold, grateful that you covered it! I hope you make more videos on it in future!
What I’ve noticed in Arcane is that they use a lot of very basic narrative techniques, but they use it so skillfully and so masterfully.
omg you nailed it because episode 3 was like the ultimate revelation of the tone--I totally didn't expect all of that to happen so I was just total hands over my mouth, jaw-dropped
Hahaha. Whenever I tell people to watch Arcane they're like "is it good?" and I always answer, "It has NO business being as good as it is."
Arcane is one of those shows that you really need to watch multiple times to truly appreciate how fantastic it is. Seeing all the tiny details build up as you watch knowing the the result in the end really shows just how much effort and love was put into this show
Savage book: The death of these children shifted the tone of the show from a lighter one to one without mercy
Me: I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! They were too important to stay alive and not be league characters!
On the topic of duality, the 1st act is a perfect show for the characters in said act (act is the bundle of 3 episodes). Jayce’s story ends with him not only achieving his dream, but also gaining allies while Vi’s story ends with her losing most of those close to her and her dream a now impossible goal.
its funny, because for those who read the league of legends lore (comics, short stories, etc) it wasnt a surprise the writing in arcane, hell even the dialoges of characters from 4 o 5 years ago (Swain and Warwick) reference what happens in arcane. just you wait till this come to Jonia and the tragedy that... well... Noxus is a dick.
You know what i love about this video? is that the theme of the show is duality and this video starts as a calm and collected analysis, while at the end is a poetic and passionate love, so the theme and the tone of the video are the same as Arcane
Been waiting for this one
The best analysis video on Arcane I have yet seen.
Clear, concise and sharp observations on what may be the top animated show of all time. A true favorite and intelligently made show.
Described what made it so good at a story and writing level.
My only concern with both sides storytelling is that while there is never a truly pure good vs a truly pure evil one should not mistake this for meaning that all sides are equal. Taking Arcane as an example, Piltover is clearly the side most in the wrong. Piltover's exploitation of Zaun is what caused this whole mess and the greatest tragedy of the show is that the leaders of Piltover only realised this, and took steps to fix it, when it was already far too late. I'm worried that the show will be ruined by milquetoast liberal moralizing saying that, while the oppression and exploitation of Piltover are bad, the Zaunites fighting back with violence makes them as bad or worse. It's the sort of "moderate" centrism that MLK decried in his letter from the Birmingham jail. The attitude that would lead someone from Pultover to say "while I sympathize with your plight, I think you are moving too quickly" to a person from Zaun fighting to have air that dosnt actively kill the people breathing it. While there may be no good guys in this show, one side is still clearly worse than the other, and I hope the writers dont shoot themselves in the foot like marvel did with Falcom and the Winter Soldier.
The CCP was born out of a violent revolution intended to do good. Fighting back with violence doesn't solve problems, it just makes more of them. 🤣
The only real way to change the world is the control of information. Hearts and minds and all that shit.
@@JohnDoe-ry8sr slavery in the US was ended through a violent civil war. It was violence by Zionists that caused the british to leave their mandate in Israel and Palestine. Violence is the reason why Vietnam is no longer a french colony. And even if peacefull means were always the better option (I'm sure pacifism would have worked great against the Axis in WWII) one cannot then consider the victims of oppression to be equivalent to the perpetrators just because they too resort to violence. Maybe it's an ineffective strategy, but violently fighting back against oppression is justified.
@@volodymyrboitchouk Revolutions that ended for the better wasn't just achieved through violence. it was sparked by the patriotic or progressive ideals of the revolutionary leaders and the public.
Even if violence ended slavery, without popular public opinion slavery would have returned to the US eventually.
The Axis may have won WWII by world pacifism but it would have crumbled just as quickly without worldwide majority indoctrination to the Nazi ideology. Something that would just be impossible without a fast chain of information control like what the CCP uses to keep it's territorial residents in line.
Silco was willing to corrupt and enslave his own people he's trying to help just so he can have his dream while the councilors didn't give a damn as long as they got their money.
That's why Ekko built his own community for he saw the two sides were just the same.
@@JohnDoe-ry8sr you do realize most americans didnt support abolition until late in the war. In fact, the emancipation proclamation was largely seen as a military strategy, which is why it didnt get much attention in the north. It was only after the end of the war that the republicans were strong enough to push for the true end of slavery. It also helped that the south were sore losers and gave the north plenty of reasons to be more punishing. Voting rights for black people and the 13th and 15th ammendments were largely a response to southern grand standing post war, meant to pit white southerners back on their place. It was violence and war that ended slavery, not "hearts and minds".
Also, fascism loosing in the long run even if the rest of the world decided to be pacifists isnt some great gotya. Had it not been for the violent opposition to the Axis we might not have any European Jews left. Hell, we might not even have any Slavs or Roma. Sometimes violence is in fact the best and only option. And even when it's not, violence in opposition to oppression is never equivalent to oppression itself. Anybody who would use violence as an excuse to stay "neutral" in the face of oppression is clearly not all that interested in ending injustice in the first place.
based
i really love the way you distinguish theme and tone!! i find people so often explore "themes," when it is clear what they are describing about what they like in a story is based more on the tone. Despite being different funtions in a story, with the way one affects the other, it can be hard sometimes to tear them apart enough to really see the inner workings! great vid as always
League of Legends is a game that I tried to desperately to get into but ultimately the incredible characters and lore weren’t enough to make up for the toxicity of the game itself. I don’t think I’ll try playing it again for a long time but at least Arcane allows me to stay connected to the parts of the franchise I adore.
masterfully done!
This show was good enough to make me want to play league of legends again
I got back to the game for the show xDD Couldn't help myself, every bit of Jinx's dialogue hits different now.
I love the passion for writing in these videos.
I could probably watch some of these videos three times over again, because the passion is so apparent and matches mine.
I really hope this doesent get buried... You mentioned in the video that killing a child can be done cheaply to set a tone. Well what exsamples do you have that it is done cheaply, what makes it that way, and how do you avoid it?
In a sea of pop video essayists, you demonstrate true understanding and skill when it comes to writing-this was a fantastic video, and I look forward to more from you!
FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE SAID THAT ARCANE HAS NO RIGHT BEING AS GOOD AS IT IS! THAT IS EXACTLY HOW I DESCRIBE IT TO PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T SEEN IT
I so like how you pointed out the tragedy of children killing children. It's what made Lizzie and Micah so important to Carol's development in the Walking Dead