Arcane has got to be one of the best animated shows I’ve ever seen.
I didn’t know the show existed until one of my friends mentioned it to me. We ended up binge-watching the entire season in a week, and I enjoyed every single minute of it. I enjoyed Arcane so much that I ended up watching it two more times. There’s just something about the way the show draws you into its world of inventors, survivors, and tension between two cities. It’ll have you rooting for characters or praying for their downfall but also understand both sides of the story.
Arcane is a story-driven show that mainly follows a cast of characters whose lives intertwine and involve the cause of tensions between the two cities, Pitover and Zaun. In one city, technology known as Hextech is being made to have people be able to control magic. In the underground city, a shimmer substance is injected into humans to turn them into monsters.
One of the things that really drew me into Arcane was its phenomenal storytelling. Whoever the writer honestly needs an award. The way everything is paced, the tension builds up each episode, and the character development makes this show unique and stands out. I personally don’t watch many animated shows, especially adult animation, with this quality of writing and effort. It could very much be a turning point in adult animation because there are not many adult animated shows like Arcane, and many of them recycle the same sort of ideas that quickly becomes stale and mundane to watch. Just from watching the first episode, anyone could see this show had a lot of effort, time, and dedication put into it. A show like Arcane is hard to pull off. It’s hard to pull off well.
Its incredible art style is another feature that drew me into the show. It instantly reminded me of Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse. It has this perfect 2D and 3D look that gives it a comic book feel. It gives the show a unique style. Especially with the way the characters are drawn. Many of the characters express different ranges and mixtures of emotions and small details that make the characters more realistic and appealing to watch on screen. Take Jinx, for example; after causing most of her family to be killed, Jinx suffers from heavy trauma. That trauma is shown through many colorful and chaotic visuals with the way Jinx talks to herself shows how her mentality has depleted over the years. To me, details like that make the show all the better, and it honestly makes me love and appreciates Arcane more.
Lastly, the characters are what really makes this show shine. The main cast involves people from both the topside and the underground city, so essentially we get to see two sides of the battle that’s going on between them. What Arcane does really well indicates that not all people are truly good, and not all bad people are truly bad. All of the characters in the show seem to be in this grey area. They all have their own motives and reasons for making certain decisions, whether it’s fighting for independence, proving your worth, or enhancing technology. But what makes them human is the struggles they go through. The fears, doubts, regrets, wants and needs all have characters and people. This is how interesting dynamics play out between characters. It creates interesting It just goes to show how much thought and care the writers put into making these characters come to life.
Overall, Arcane is one of the best adult animated shows out there. It got great characters, plot, and art style that have you sitting on the edge of your seat. I highly recommend watching it especially if you’re looking for shows to watch.