Arcane
Cast & Key People
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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 flesh and blood. Watch it even if you’ve never touched the game. Especially then.
Verdict: Essential. The ceiling of what animated TV can be.
