ARCANE: Brilliant Steampunk Fantasy, Simply Excellent

It can probably be safely said by now that Arcane has stormed the hearts of both fans of the game it is based on and completely new viewers. Week after week, the world commented more and more loudly and frequently on the story divided into three acts (what a brilliant idea!). However, let us not get ahead of ourselves. How did this approach to adapting video games turn out?

Vi and Powder are two sisters, orphans taken in by the leader of Zaun’s underworld and a tough guy with a heart of gold, Vander. They lead a relatively safe, though certainly not law-abiding, life, engaging in petty thefts and scams. At least until the moment when, along with their gang, they decide to venture into the upper city and rob a local inventor. Piltover, as the aforementioned town resembling a Victorian metropolis is called, differs from Zaun not only in its level of affluence or location but also in its approach to the threat of crime.

What is an inseparable part of the survival chain down below becomes, up above, a pretext to tighten security regulations. Especially when it turns out that what was stolen is nothing less than the latest discovery of a rising star of technology, Jayce. Civil war between the cities hangs in the air, the until-now anonymous sisters suddenly become public enemies, and, to make matters worse, breakthroughs in the development of modern technologies are taking place in the background. The situation is getting really hot.

It is worth noting that although technically speaking Arcane is an adaptation of the computer game League of Legends, in practice it is based on the lore of the world presented in it, not directly on the events of the game. The game itself focuses on online battles, where the backstories of individual heroes serve only as a pretext for successive skirmishes. That said, prior knowledge of them is not necessary to fully understand the story presented in the series. It not only tells us about things that have (so far) not been explained in materials about the universe, but it has also been written in such a way as to introduce us to its basic elements.

Thanks to this, although players will certainly catch numerous references or clear foreshadowing of certain characters, this additional knowledge is optional and does not directly affect the positive reception of the series. All the more so because even when it comes to the personalities of well-known characters, there have been some – mostly subtle, but still – reshuffles. Powder/Jinx is no longer just a reprint of comic-book Harley Quinn but a full-fledged, complex character whose transformation at the turn of the first and second acts stems from an ambiguous tragedy.

Meanwhile, the relationship between Jayce and Viktor, in the original reduced to rivalry and hostility, here quickly develops in the direction of a bromance and remains touching with the friendship of two inventors right until the end. Caitlyn, too, who in the game is a steampunk fantasy of the ideal woman, gains a separate plotline in the series. The bond quickly forming between her and Vi is as much an answer to fan theories as it is a meaty, equal relationship, laced with romantically charged teasing following the principle The more you bicker, the more you like each other (with cupcake in the lead).

It is hard for me to hide my admiration for how maturely the creators approached the source material. Taking archetypal characters and – after all – a clichéd story as their starting point, they carved out an emotionally moving tale about morally shattering social inequalities and the path of technological progress leading to violence. They stripped the depicted world of banal solutions and presented it primarily in shades of gray, thanks to which all the characters – including the antagonists (the way Silco transforms from the ruthless father of a bloody revolution into an internally conflicted father figure for a lost girl deserves a bow of recognition) – are not unambiguously good or evil, do not make only one kind of decision or another, but, caught in a spiral of hatred and death, simply try to remain faithful to their values.

And since these are constantly being questioned, in practice it turns out that survival in this place will sooner or later plunge their hands into blood. It does not matter whether we are talking about a street fighter who solves problems with her fists, an idealistic policewoman who is involuntarily part of a corrupt organization, or an inventor who has until now held tools in his hands, not weapons. At the same time, emphasis was placed on giving each of the sequences crucial to the development of events its own audiovisual identity.

From the explosion in Silco’s laboratory shown from several different perspectives, through Jinx’s bombings realized in the convention of a dense psychological thriller, to Ekko’s fight that for a time changes the animation style to something resembling graffiti. The authors made sure that we remember these fragments both for the narrative twists and for the way they were presented. And speaking of presentation – the series looks downright otherworldly. I have not seen such a combination of quality and unusual style since Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

The juxtaposition of objects that look hand-painted with expressive, detail-packed faces of the characters creates an amazing effect, causing the proverbial jaw-drop from the very first moments. All the more so because the artists responsible for the visuals do not limit themselves to a single convention, every now and then – as I just mentioned – making a complete change of style. Perhaps the most prominent in this respect are Jinx’s psychotic episodes, whose subjective perception of the world looks as if it were ripped straight out of Satoshi Kon’s films.

The work is completed by phenomenal voice actors. And while in the review of the first act I was still able to point out my favorites, by the end of the broadcast I cannot choose the best ones – they are all at the same, highest level. I will allow myself, however, to highlight Ella Purnell as Jinx, who has simply outdone herself, flawlessly embodying the character of a psychopathic terrorist constantly in extreme emotional states. The amount of sensitivity she found in this deadly dangerous killer deserves all possible awards. She is phenomenal especially in the scenes with her on-screen sister, played by Hailee Steinfeld, when she can bring out elements of Powder while still keeping the shell of Jinx.

But does the first season of the series form a separate story? Can it already at this point be considered a complete tale? The answer to that question is no, and I must admit that this is my biggest problem with the reception of this installment. Even though each of the presented characters goes through a full journey and ends the series in a different place than they started, the cliffhanger finale would not stand on its own if it were not for the fact that we already know a second season is coming. It is clear that the creators’ ambitions go beyond a few episodes, especially since in the final act a certain militaristic state (Noxus) enters the stage, and the conflict between the two cities spreads beyond the immediate area.

Fortunately, this does not affect thematic coherence, and all the presented chapters focus on the motifs outlined in the introduction: the sisterly relationship, social inequalities, the price of technological development, and whether the characters will be able to sacrifice their loved ones for the greater good. And, most importantly, the answer to none of the above issues comes easily to them.

The creators do not spare the characters and repeatedly confront them with heart-wrenching moral dilemmas, thanks to which every minute of the series serves their development and, above all, does not bore. This is a work with excellent pacing, keeping you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end, quickly bonding you with the characters, and on top of that standing at the highest technical level. Fans of League of Legends should be delighted. Other viewers as well. They did it – they proved that these worlds can meet on friendly terms. Now we just have to wait for the continuation.