The Technique That Makes Arcane so Good...
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- Опубліковано 17 вер 2024
- In this video, we look at the powerful tool Arcane uses to drive these and narratives home. Foreshadowing is the secret sauce that keeps people anticipating more. We take a look at it as well as why Riot Games' Arcane (2021) is one of the best series out on Netflix.
Music: Karl Casey @WhiteBatAudio
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Arcane review
Video Essay
Arcane jinx Scene
Arcane Jayce Scene
Caitlyn
Vi vs Sekiva
Jinx vs Ekko
Jayce saved by Wizard
One of my favourite moments of foreshadowing is in act 1 where ekko talks about jayce buying the display objects in benzos shop- ekko says "he didn't even haggle!". Later on in act 3 silco says this same phrase to vander's statue- "the boy didn't even haggle".
that line is so brilliant. The act of not haggling shows that Jayce sees everything in black and white. He's virtually unable to find middle ground; to haggle and compromise. It's very US vs. THEM for him, very GOOD vs BAD, PILTOVER vs ZAUN. Characters like Viktor, Mel and Cait try to make him be more flexible, and he is, in the end, with the deal. But even then...he does not haggle. Which is brilliant. Really reflects his character arc
Went right over my head
Oh man the best scene we noticed for foreshadowing/connections was Viktor being unable to catch up to the toy boat as a kid, but when he gets the augmented leg he is running faster than the boats in the background. SO GOOD
Also shows that his invention gets away from him and leaves him unable to walk while leading him to a dark place where survival requires difficult choices.
I love the scene where Silco confronts the guild. He doesn’t use violence, he doesn’t even poison them, he just exposes them to the polluted Zaun air. They’re so used to clean Piltover air they can barely breathe, but he’s completely unaffected
they are not used to the clean piltover air, they are used to the clean air that only the very rich zaunite people can afford, they live in zaun in a type of capsules that have fresh air
@@Tiago_Ferrari What? They are on the surface level of Zaun. You know, the collection of buildings seen on the other side of the bridge from Piltover? Silco still lives in the "fissure".
Because P&Z are a literal representation of the rich living above the poor.
@@creativecredence850 and whats wrong in my comment?, that's what I said, they don't live in piltover, they live in Zaun in some fresh air capsules that only the rich people on zaun can pay...
@@Tiago_Ferrari That if the air on the surface of Zaun was toxic, it would also effect Piltover. So surface level Zaun has clean air, they don't need capsules.
@@creativecredence850 there's no Zaun in the surface, it stats when you go down, where vi and Cait went down doing parkour or when the song " playground" starts to sound in the series'
One thing I'd like to point out, the bit with Viktor and the cards. It's not that he was dealt a bad hand, those are tarot cards. People often associate the Death card with literal death, but it actually represents change and new begginings, while the Magician stands for tapping into your potential and bringing your desires into reality. Together, they're foreshadowing Viktor's future with the glorious evolution
another paralell i noticed on a rewatch was jinx on the bridge shooting an enforcer on the ground while humming the song from the beginning when an enforcer shot an undercity rebel on the ground
Damn! When rewatching I catched a lot of these but not this one
This isn't foreshadowing, this is just narrative cohesion. It's been a part of filmmaking since the black-and-white days and it's even be a part of theater since Greek plays. One or two things you mentioned were foreshadowing. Like, the Magician card. Tho, most of everything here is just typical consistent theming. Arcade does it very well, but this is been apart of Storytelling since we could write.
Thanks, I was looking for the correct term
I believe consistencies like these are known as motifs, recurring visual symbols representing the story’s themes. Rain is definitely a motif with Caitlyn, drowning and water with Silco, etc.
where was the magican card? i don't rmb that in the show
@@papasscooperiaworker3649 Sevika throws it down before taking VI’s knee to the face.
@@broadwaybroad wasn't it death and magician?
This video deserves more views, so many good use of repetition and foreshadowing in Arcane's scenes, and of course the consistency. Rain with caitlyn (even in the shower scene and the twice encounter (and reoccurring compostion) with jinx and the same graffiti when caitlyn is targeted, and the lack of air, a consistent drowning with silco as a few examples of what you pointed out. Awesome video, keep up the good work.
Thanks
Yes, this is the only one that really analyzes these aspects of Arcane. It deserves a ton more recognition because it goes deeper than anyone else’s video essay I’ve seen.
That connection to Viktor being dealt a bad hand is crazy..
Though I guess he at least gets a hand out of it
No you did not lmfao 😭
"It's like poetry... it rhymes" no, seriously, this is how it should be when done by competent hands.
I like the painting Mel did after seeing Jayce. It doesn’t make any sense then but after a few episodes we know about her backstory and there’s a line where she says she want to “paint the city in gold”. After that her mother visit, at the end of that arc you can see her painting (which I’m assuming is her home country), is now painted in gold. The foreshadowing in this film is amazing.
it is her home country.
it's the Unbreakable Bastion of Noxus
One thing I noticed on repeated rewatches (it is more of an easter egg than direct foreshadowing, since it's so easy to miss) but in the scene when Ekko is spying on Vander, Benzo, Grayson, and Marcus, his periscope that descends from the roof is hidden in the eye of a mask on Benzo's shelf. It's the same mask that Ekko will later wear as the leader of the Firelights, just slightly modified by the time we see him again in Episode 4.
The ‘Rain Over Her’ Metaphor for Caitlyn is even more significant when you consider that, in the scene before it, Cailtyn’s mother actually gives Caitlyn like the go ahead to follow Vi, showing that she finally trusts her own daughter enough and has seen that she’s very capable and is now letting her make her own decisions.
In ep 3 jayce was slightly sliced by a glass on his cheeks. and in ep 6 when he was fighting with the chemtank, he was sliced at the same place.
and after the timeskip if you look closely you can see that he still has a tiny scar from it
I think my favorite thing about Arcane is that there are no filler episodes. Every detail is used and connected, with no open strings left to tie.
“Is there anything more undoing than a daughter.” -Silco
When it cuts to Jinx behind Vander it echos the scent in the opening credits, where we see Vi in the place where Vander is, and an older and more twisted Jinx where Powder is.
I’m sure this was pointed out somewhere (and probably in the comments, but that just occurred to me.)
I also love how Arcane was able to convey how strong emotions can mar reality. We see normal Caitlyn's face and how Jinx sees it as a devil who will steal her sister.
I never noticed that she had two prosthetic fingers. Neither did I pay attention to the fact that her fingers were frostbitin in that scene. Kinda cool how they gave that additional detail
Here’s another foreshadowing that stood out to me: when Silco was hugging Powder, she looked at the fire and her blue eyes (mixed with the red light of the fire) turned purple.
Damn what an analysis. Finally an analysis video where it's straight to the point and didn't repeat stuff tons of channels already said. I was shocked with your observation on Caitlyn with the rain and umbrella, really really smart.
The foreshadowing is one part that I absolutely love about Arcane!
I think your argument with the Chemtech Dragon is a reach, but Rio is a Little Legend in TFT.
Another scene I love is in Episode 6, when Silco builds a card house with the daughter of Marcus and at the end he "accidentally" (totally on purpose) drops one card on top which makes it all fall down (also mirroring the title of the episode "When These Walls Come Tumbling Down"), symbolising how big plans can be ruined by one mistake or unexpected event. Like when Silco almost achieved his dream of an independent Zaun, but he couldn't give up Jinx.
This is also consistent with Jinx/Powder's relationship with the Arcane. In the beginning when she was Powder the ending of Act 1 parallels with her growth to Jinx in Act 3 the Arcane Crystal was a huge part of that. Act 1-3 ended in tragedy but in different ways. When she first harnessed the arcane it was intentionally for good but it went terribly, this was the day Jinx was born. Powder dies in act three and now reborn as Jinx this time harnessing the power intentionally this time for bad. There's also the fact that Powder used an unstable arcane gem but Jinx used the stable one and both are used for chaos but with different intentions.
Harkens back to Heimerdinger saying if the arcane goes into the wrong hands and the havoc it can wreak. There's so many things that tie each narrative together into one cohesive whole. The writing on this show is just phenomenal.
I’ve never played league. So not until a rewatch did I catch most of these. So good. Not many shows pull this off.
Not many shows are willing to trust their audience enough to even try to pull it off. Yeah, so good.
@@procrastinator99 true. Also cause half the audience is complaining and whining that it was too confusing cause they couldn’t be bothered to open their minds a bit or get off their phones
You haven't played league? Please, stay that way. Don't ever touch that game and run for your life.
@@TheJordanK That's the sad life of being a normie with zero capacity for critical thinking. They're the same idiots who think every new MCU film is a masterpiece. Lol
after rewatching arcane, i noticed something with the kid that jayce accidentally killed: his red hair. it's clever because the only other character we see with naturally red hair (that features a role, anyway) is the woman on silco's guild, who ended up being the kid's mom. it's a small detail, but it links together that part of the story very cleanly, which adds to the autheticity of arcane's writing
let's hope season two is tied together just as well as the first 🥂
He's also the same age and hair color as Marcus' daughter who Silco threatened. In the end it was Jayce, not Silco who ends up killing an innocent kid subverting our expectations about the two leaders of opposing cities.
@@Pizvo also, both of those characters are called a version of the name renata (little ren and renni) .. and wouldnt you know, one of the last characters riot released is a chembaroness with ties to piltover names renata glasc :D
"Once you see how many poses are repeated--"
Me, totally not thinking about how when Viktor told Jayce his name, he was standing in the _same exact way_ as Mel did right before she kissed Jayce...
He was SMOLDERING.
One thing you got a bit wrong tho, is the interaction between Cait and her mother, regarding the rain theme:
I agree with you that Coats mom was overprotective of her and that the Umbrella represents that, but it is not Caitlyn “breaking free” against her mother’s will, it is her mother letting her go. In a Short Moment just before Caitlyn leaves the court room, there is a short interchange of looks between her and her mom. Caitlyns pleading Look that says “I know you disapprove of her but I need to do this, PLEASE” and the gentle, understanding nod of her mother that says, “I trust in your judgment, and even if I don’t approve of it, I respect you decision. Go get her!”. This moment means so much because her mother was able to see she cannot shield her forever, and shortly after that Caitlyn is standing in the rain with Vi, and the rain simultaneously symbolizes Caitlyn released from her mother’s protection and being fully exposed to the world, as well as the sadness of a mother when her child takes flight and leaves the nest, realizing that she will now find her own family. And this is very important because before that, every interaction between them was her mother disapproving and in turn belittling Caitlyn, and in this moment her mom finally treats her as an equal.
a funny little tidbit that I noticed in episode two is that Silco said something along the lines of:
" ...one of them [of the four kids] is running circles around piltover's finest"
On the surface, this is likely in reference to Vi in particular evading even the best of the enforcers
However, this could be a reference to how Jinx remains elusive from Vi and Caitlyn as they try to find her. And for those of you who don't know, "Piltover's Finest" is the ship name for Vi and Caitlyn
SPOILERS (kinda)
I’ve seen the recurrence of the statues faces we see on the bridge, the ones overlooking the death of vi’s and powder’s parents in the first scene of the first episode, we see them a bit later while Vi and the gang are fleeing from the inforcers in piltover. Then we see them in episode 2 when Vi and Vander have their talk about the price of war. The last time I can think of is in episode 7 where we see jinx standing on one of the head of the statue, it’s a bit subtle but it’s there. I think the statues relate to how Vi and Jinx relate to violence, showing the different relation they have toward it but I’m not sure, if you could look into it, that would be awesome
Wow, Arcane is much deper than I had originally thought and it was already deep in my mind ! Simply amazing, thanks for another great analysis!
Great video! The amount of hidden stuff packed into this show is insane, I love it.
On topic of Viktor, I firmly believe Riot are playing quite a long con to set him up as a villain in season 2 or 3.
KIND OF A SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
In ep. 2 Viktor grabs Jayce's journal just when Heimerdinger says in the distance "Magic is too dangerous when put in the wrong hands", as if implying that Viktor's hands are, indeed, 'wrong'.
Then, in ep. 7, when Jayce tells him that people from the Undercity are dangerous, Viktor replies with "I AM from the Undercity". Normally it'd non-verbally raise the question "Am I dangerous too now?", but every League player knows "Damn right he is".
Jesus fucking christ
How deep can this show get??
@@gabbyn.3049 It is like every scene is foreshadowing.
@@Mayurbhedru Attack on Titan on steroids
Thing is, Viktor isn’t really a villain His voice lines in League are extremely outdated and in the lore, he’s pretty much just a super smart scientist who happens to be a transhumanist.
No evil. Only glorious evolution.
(And seriously I really fucking hope they don't make him a villain. It's so refreshing to see a lanky genius scientist with Slavic accent NOT being evil. Tho, yeah he will probably be hated by public that dont understand his research, just as Singe said. My poor boi.)
3:37 no, the mother nods at Caitlyn in approval right before she runs out into the rain after Vi.
Very good analysis. Not overly complex at all, simplified yet detailed enough to show to the viewer the amazing genius behind the making of Arcane.
I appreciate the video! I learned more than I'd expect from this as a young writer. Thank you
Nice theme with saying 'hammer certain points' and then showing a clip of jayce 😉
I love how in 4:52 Viktor steps on the shimmer flower what foreshadows how he will repair his disability
Wow, I didn't notice that Jayce's mom had metal fingers.
Also, Viktor whipping out the Hex claw had me going "BRUH" lmao.
This is why this show is so rewatchable, nicely done video ;)
“Nothing is there to fill space”
Vi beating up Sevika for no reason:
they needed to get rid of her gauntlets somehow before jinx gets her
i love how all the departments in riot for league of legends are so good exept the one that is responsible for the actual game itself
It quickly became to me how well crafted this show is, because they didn't settle for making one or two scenes per episode well thought out. No literally every shot has so much care put into it, from blocking, to composition, light color, and of course animation. I haven't been this impressed since Spider-verse.
There is so much to this show I gotta rewatch it all over again in order to appreciate and to understand it. Also seeing stuff like this makes me so excited for see Season 2. Great video and explanation!
Great video dude, I really enjoy hearing your opinions and insight
Thanks :)
This show is sooo well done. The stories the animation the details and Easter eggs the cinematography!
Very good interpretation! Excellent work
Whoa great video this show is so layered.
YES!!! THANK YOU. I've been looking for a video that did a deep dive into the brilliant writing and this one is by far the absolute best I've seen. I hope you're able to explore it even more
My favourite mirror scene is when Powder does something horrible she gets confronted by Vi who calls her Jinx and abadons her. When Jinx shoots Silko he calls her perfect and tells her he would never give her to Piltover. The same situation but resolved in a bad way by a good character and in a good way by a villain. I'm still not even mentioning Silko following Vander with his actions. I fucking love this character
Also he says "Jinx is perfect" when drowning her in the river. When he tells her "Don't cry, you are perfect" he literally says "You are Jinx" just like Vi but this time it has different meaning
Don’t forget the hammer that Jayce never showed to the viewers when he was in private with Mel
That one scene where Jayce is walking up on stage, and he completely blocks out Viktor with a his coffee mug. Overshadows the man both literally and figuratively and if I had been the person who did the storyboard for that scene, I would have been patting myself in the back for days!
It feels good when I come across UA-camrs that will have 1M+ followers before they hit 5K.
These videos are SO helpful. I'm teaching myself 2d drawn animation, and these videos explaining all this is helping how I'm going to structure and animate the videos. thank you 😊
Oh also the scene where Mel received a letter from her mother the entire atmosphere/sky is cast in a red glow.
The timing is perfect.
It's sunset and a common theme with Mel is GOLD. The sun aka the embodiment of gold (also note the solari details) is setting/going down while the entire sky is bathed in dominating red which foreshadows her Noxian mother from coming (as you know noxus color is RED).
It's the true turning point of Mel's character because of her mother serving as a catalyst.
1:38 exactly. exactly. im not even being bias at all just cause i play league, Arcane really is subarashi chef's kiss. everything. the animation, the concept art, the voice actors, the emotion and music. everything is chef's kiss. people who we're part of Arcane's production should be very proud of themselves.
My favorite for shadowing is crows and implying that fiddlestics are comming close or around
I don't think we will see fiddlesticks in the next season but it could be cool
They even set up foreshadowing across seasons with Vander's moniker, "The Hound of the Underground".
Powder’s first working grenade ever was tinker chimp toy. Time skip Jinx puts a chimp faces on her explosives and draws them to make her presence known without showing herself, the chimp plainly represents ‘surprise’.
the raven Jinx shot down was standing on the shooting range game, but it's a real gun and a real target now for Jinx, then she go to the boxing machine. the Raven then being turned into the pen she used to study hextech, and her "Jinx chair"
I believe the principle here is set up and pay off. No set up to a pay off things feel random. No pay off to a setup and things feel empty and unsatisfying. If you can make every element part of such a set up and pay off cycle every moment will feel placed with purpose. Beware that too heavy handed set ups (foreshadowing) can ruin a twist/a reveal - or make one.
Very well done observations, much respect
I’m kinda surprised at how much of the show people didn’t notice at first…
Brilliant observations. 100% agree that everyone involved with this series, from writers, animators, voice actors, and direction, should get Emmy awards at minimum.
A lot of this can be traced back to the fact that this is animation: every picture, every photons on screen has to be built and designed, that makes it by default very very deliberate in comparison to most live-action.
Couldn't agree more, this show is something else, there's a lot of humanity showing in almost every stroke of the brush that made this art a reality.
the fact that jayce uses a hammer is not a forshadowing but more a logical destination because of his family
So it’s basically a either a giant knot or a nicely woven tapestry of foreshadowing
Victor running made me cry.
I have a theory that Victor is the magician who saved Jayce and his mom to ensure that Jayce will be alive to pursue magic so that it will keep Victor alive and the cycle of the time travelling timeline continues
5:05 About the cards, I believe that those are tarot cards (as well as "the truth" in Caitlyn's investigation)
Death represents change and The Magician is raw creative energy and is at the beginning of the Major Arcana Cycle.
The fact that The Magician card is depicted as Viktor, with death next to it, I am almost certain this is a Glorious Evolution hint.
'The Truth' is Silco, look at the card. Brilliant.
This is the first animated series I've enjoyed in a while. Thanks for giving some insight into what made it great 👏👏👏
I knew that accent sounded familiar, Good luck dude! It's great to see such high quality content from a South African creator.
If you see me out @ Comic con say hi
Now Riot just needs to put the same amount of work into their balancing team
In short: the team behind Arcane, all of them, are competent storytellers. At the bare minimum.
Ekko says to vie, that she still blocks with her face, at first i thought thats a funny comeback, but in vie's fight with sevica we see her block for the first time. So Ekko's comment is really about how vie is fighting.
You have to keep in mind they made Arcane for a general audience, not JUST for League nerds. The doom of many a game-based movie is assuming the audience knows too much, or using too much exposition to teach it.
Oh another one: in Ep 1 (I think) Vi is telling Powder that she too can fight, and she says: "I have these" (her fists), "you have this" (her monkey bombs). Powder says, "But they never work" and Vi says: *"They will."*
Wow, how did I not notice that Jayce's mother had two metal fingers replacing her frostbitten fingers until now???
Wow. I didn’t even notice how great the foreshadowing was until now. It’s so refreshing to find a series that doesn’t feel like it’s beating you over the head with the foreshadowing. It feels natural compared to other series released that same year.
I didn't know I would need your videos till I saw them. Thx UA-cam algorithm
i imagine these details were so thought through because of just how long the team was working on the story - i heard it was in production for about 6 years? i hope that the same attention to detail will be given to season 2 despite the the forecasted release date in 2023. it's so good.
I think ppl give RIOT too much credit, when most of the outstanding features of the series comes from the studio (Fortiche) behind the production for the most part. The animations Riot has published over the years vary greatly both in therms of visual quality and storytelling depending on the studio making them, Fortiche´s works always standing out. Which leads me to believe that the studios commisioned with animations and trailers have quite the creative freedom, and Riot just approving their ideas or not, but them not being involved much with the works itself. Riot has the money, yes, but not the brains. Everything you (and me) love about the show, the animations, the visuals, the storytelling, the directing, all the small details, all of this is most likel the work of those immensely talented artists at Fortiche. Any other studio and the show wouldnt have ended up half as good imo. Or very different at least.
Go read the endless amount of stories on Riot's website and the animations on the League YT and tell us again about them not having brains.
ekko watch in the scene against jinx my friends and I doubt if he used the time travel or not, really good foreshadowing for those that dont know the characters of league
The biggest hint that Jayce was gonna use a hammer was in the Intro Lmao. Even if you didn't play LoL you would know he was gonna use a Hammer because it shows in the intro. And that thing's damn near unskippable.
I skipped the intro every time after the first because Imagine Dragons ruins it. Just doesn't suit the type of show and setting to have Imagine Dragons in the intro. Purley commercial decision
Woah never caught the magician card good call
The characters and events are real, they are experienced and are caused by tangiable factors that are made aware to the viewer, us. We understand *why* the characters do what they do and act out in the fashion that they did. We understand that they are distinct yet very human, malleable and fragile and thus formed by their experiences. They follow a realistic pattern of behavior that matches up with their personality, which is become consequences of what we see in the show. It's all brilliantly crafted. It makes sense. We understand why they fail to be ideal and we comprehend their imperfectons. It's not really a hero-villan type of story where there's "the bad side" and "the good side". There's just fear, loss, hatred, basic humans emotions that we relate to. Their actions aren't caused by some fundamental, immutable law or rule that you just have to accept like you have to in "evil vs good" stories. No, you understand why they are the way they are. That's what makes them real. And that's what made it into the masterpiece that it is.
Also, the artstyle is absolutely stunning. That also played a huge part lol, some of the atmospheric shots of the environment, the facial expressions and the fight scenes, let's just say that they got me perceiving more than surface level emotions. They made my heart switch off of "power-saving mode". Hopefully they stick with the concept, don't change things around too much and in a couple of years we'll be receiving yet another banger.
I love story parallels
Good work very interesting . Keep it up.
Great analysis.
When Poppy finds Jayce
Great great great great great video
Great Great Great Comment :)
The scene were marcus gets bitten bye jinx her shooting target ep1 or 2 don't remember, connects to the scene where he lost his arm due to jinx her butterfly bomb
All the crows in season 1 maybe foreshadowes Swain as the main villain in season 2?
1:12 Amogus
I'm sorry
also when Vi was trying to rescue vander from silco she was fighting with metal gauntlets just like her weapon in league
As a dota player and an anime fan...
Arcane is AMAZING, one of the most visually pleasing peaces of media ive ever seen combined with very good story
Excellent breakdown of Arcane. And yeah this movie is mad dope.
I don't think that I have seen anyone interpret the tarot cards correctly so far. It's not about a choice between life as a new person or death... mostly because Death doesn’t mean death in tarot. It's about regrowth from the ashes. Both cards spell a transformation in Viktor not him making a choice. The path is set and he has no control over it anymore. He will fall and rise from the ashes.
Thanks for this, Top comment
@@internetloy wow thanks! I hope what I said didn't come off as rude. I liked the video a lot.
Keep these up dude. A+
After killing a kid Jayce got hammered, too.
What i liked about arcane is that it stays in the lol universe without needing knowledge of that universe before watching
Arcane remind me Dishonored
With style art