Piltover and Zaun: The Aftermath in HD
A (Mostly) Spoiler-Free Review of "Arcane" Season 2, Part 1

Two characters from Arcane embrace while facing a red sky

I love the show “Arcane.” I was so excited when they announced the second season. However, years passed, and I may have forgotten to check up on it. I missed a ton that break. Then a leak happened that I did not expect!! I didn’t even know it was coming out this year! Despite how behind I have been, I caught up just in the nick of time to review it for you wonderful readers. And, boy, does it not disappoint.

First of all, disclaimer: As of writing this, only the first three episodes have been released since it seems to follow a similar three-arc structure as the last season. As of reading this, I think the entire season has been out, so don’t laugh if I say something absurd. I’m doing my best here. 

I was genuinely surprised the show started right after the previous season. I thought there was going to be another time skip, and everything would be completely different. I like the choice they made, though. It continues the momentum from the end of the first season and is a visceral example of how things can change so quickly. The first episode only spans a few days, and already, the characters seem more worn and cynical from dealing with the aftermath of the last season, which is honestly kind of impressive. And the hits just keep on coming. Instead of a release of tension, the aftermath continues to escalate both in action and emotion. It highlights how the end of the first season was really just the beginning of something much larger. 

There were a couple of stand-out moments of storytelling for me. There are several points in both the recap and the episodes where the chronology has been spliced together to build tension in a truly masterful way. (I love the Victor and Jace scene at the beginning. It was almost haunting to me.) The timeline, in general, is a bit hard to pin down. Like in the first season, the scenes cut between Piltover and Zaun. However, there’s very little character crossover between the settings in these episodes, so it’s difficult to place what happened when. I think this is deliberate, as it obscures the motivations of some of the characters. It’s not always clear what the characters are reacting to, especially in the scenes set in Zaun. It was a little confusing, but the overall storyline was no more difficult to follow than in the first season. That is to say, crazy complicated, but in a way that ties everything together instead of leaving hanging threads. 

Of course, I would be remiss not to talk about the art. The artists of this season decided that they really enjoy lowering the frames-per-second in the background with important characters moving through them at higher frames-per-second. 1 They did this twice. First with Vi and Caitlyn in a black and white sketch background to frame emotion. Next with Jinx to show what happened in Zaun after the end of last season. Both scenes were very cool, though they seemed a bit out of place. 

These changes in art styles highlighted something to me. In certain ways, the artists are very limited in what they can do. (Hides behind the couch as rotten fruit gets thrown my way.) Don’t get me wrong. I love the style and visuals. However, there’s so much attention to detail in both the scenery and characters that there’s no room for exaggeration to display emotion or for backgrounds to fade away and focus on a character moment. No blush lines. No flower backgrounds. Jinx’s POV is the only real time that the viewer isn’t sure that what is happening is what’s happening. That’s why the two scenes struck me as odd. Even though one of them was Jinx’s POV, it wasn’t in her style, so I was confused if she had a new style or if something else was going on. The overall design choice, while done exceptionally well, seems really restrictive and monstrously difficult. It’s almost a shame because it ignores a lot of things that set cartoons and anime apart from live-action, that they can change focus and highlight emotions easily that even trained actors struggle with conveying. 

Uhhhh… I didn’t mean for this to turn into an art critique, especially since I like the art of the show. Just so you don’t think I hate the show, I’m gonna leave some final notes. TL;DR, the show builds on themes of the first season and maintains its moral and emotional complexity. The pacing increases the tension in a way that has me on the edge of my seat. The artwork continues to be beautiful. I can’t wait for what happens next!

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