Arcane

Our Review

The best video game adaptation ever made, and one of the best animated series of all time, period. Riot Games and Fortiche’s painterly 2D/3D hybrid adapts League of Legends lore into a class-war tragedy: sisters Vi and Powder/Jinx, orphaned in Zaun’s undercity, torn apart by a heist gone wrong — and the cities above and below (Piltover’s gleaming progress built on Zaun’s chemical misery) grinding them into legend. Season 1 is a perfect act structure, and the rooftop transformation of Powder into Jinx — scored to a needle-drop that owns the moment — is the best single episode of animated TV this century.

The writing gives every character a real case (the councilors, the chem-barons, Jayce and Viktor’s idealism curdling into compromise), and the fight choreography is staged with more dynamism than most live-action. Watch it even if you’ve never touched the game. Especially then.

Verdict: Essential. The ceiling of what animated TV can be.