'Arcane' is Perfectly Genius.

My Netflix subscription is expiring on October 30th, and so I decided to do what I had to do: I watched The School for Good and Evil (which was mediocre enough that it’s not getting its own review), and, more to the point of this review, Arcane: League of Legends.

To preface this review, let me say that I have never played LOL. I knew of it, of course, because I’m Gen Z and we all have nothing better to do than play video games with hyper-sexualized female characters (I’m not a gamer, can you tell). But I had never had much interest in the lore nor the game itself. However, I saw some reviews for this show, and decided that it sounded interesting enough and didn’t require any background information on my part. I also really wanted to watch something animated, so I clicked Arcane and sat back.

And wow. Absolutely, wow.

I had no idea what to expect, first of all, because all Wikipedia told me was that this is a story of two sisters. So in fact, in the beginning of the first episode, I was slightly confused. Who is this red head, who is this blue head, why is this happening, and what the heck is topside?

The beauty of Arcane, though, is that it draws you into a world that somehow makes complete sense while being completely foreign. You recognize the bits of the world that are relevant to our own, and you recognize the people who run the world. You recognize the ideology. People in charge who don’t care about their citizens? Are we talking about America? People from the bottom of the ladder who want to change the world? Hello, almost all activists. People who have huge dreams and then slowly watch their dreams change as they become more and more powerful? Yeah, sounds like my future.

Arcane is literally full of scenes that I could go on about. The subtle drop of sweat down Jace’s face when Mel’s mom threatens him? Iconic. The scratching animation to represent Jinx’s mental instability? Aesthetically the best thing in the world. The flash of gold on Mel’s back? Don’t get me started on the importance of color in this show. But something else that I really have to talk about, that I think is probably the most worth talking about, is the way Arcane writes villains. Or rather, because villain isn’t really the right word to describe any of the characters in this story, let’s say the way Arcane describes antagonists.

I want to talk about three antagonists in particular: Marcus, Jinx, and Silco. I want to distinguish Jinx from Powder here right now, because I consider them to be two characters trapped in one body.

First, we have Marcus. Marcus is what I would consider a smaller antagonist. In fact, in the grander scheme of things, he barely matters. But what I find interesting about him is that he is changed. He goes from being the small officer who wanted nothing more than to get rid of the under-city to being a person who works with the lord of the under-city, and though it seems, on paper like the relationship between Grayson and Vandar, it is nothing like it in practice. Silco is the one who is in charge. I find him interesting because he’s so… Realistic, I suppose is the word. He feels like a person you know, because we all know a person, heck we might be that person, who wants the better things in life and is willing to do certain things to achieve it, only to realize that you’ve made a deal with the devil and the devil isn’t so easily controlled.

Then we have Jinx, who I would say is arguably the most interesting character in the series. Her chaos is so attractive because unlike the craziness of Harley Quinn or sociopathic characters like Lisa from Girl, Interrupted, she is a victim of her life. And yet the show runners understand how insanity works, so she is shown from a young age to have attachment issues, to be made to feel less then. She is not a natural monster, but she has the circumstances, biological or not, to become a so-called “monster.” I can’t say much on Jinx that someone else hasn’t already said, but I highly recommend the YouTube channel schnee for anyone who wants to learn more about how Jinx’s character works.

Finally, let’s talk about Silco. The thing that drew me the most to him was the way that he was the main antagonist for our protagonist, Vi, but he wasn’t what we would call “cartoonishly” evil. What I love about him is that he is completely and utterly ambiguous to the audience. He hates Vandar, sure, but when he says he forgave Vandar at the end, he gives the audience no reason to disbelieve him. He literally sits at the foot of his statue to mourn him towards the end of the season. And yet his hyper-fixation on drowning when Vandar pushed him speaks to a deeply held grudge. He also seems to be more faintly contemplative towards death than afraid of it, the way most people are. He never seems to think of his near-death experience in terms of what he could have lost: he thinks of it only as losing someone he held as dear as a brother. On that note, I also want to mention the parallels between Vandar/Silco and Vi/Jinx’s dynamics. Both call each other siblings and both were once on the same side. The only difference is, Silco is organized chaos, while Jinx is complete and utter chaos personified. I wonder if the sisters’ dynamic will make the change Silco’s and Vandar’s did.

The way Silco loves Jinx is also interesting to me. Adopting a girl who came out of nowhere doesn’t make sense when you’re about to go to war. Loving the girl and being willing to trade in your dream of a lifetime (the nation of Zaun) doesn’t make sense either. Yet Silco does both. There is even ambiguity in the end: did he truly love Jinx, or was he merely just using her? Was he lying when he said to Jinx that he would never have traded her? But why would he lie when he was about to die? But then why would he not give up Jinx for his ultimate dream?

I think he loves her, and I think he loves her in the way he loves his dream of Zaun: he loves everything that Jinx is, all of her flaws and what other would see as imperfections. It’s why, after all, he tells her she is perfect, even after she killed him.

Silco is Vi’s main enemy, and yet through the ambiguity with which they paint this character, the creators of the show make him a character that you sympathize with, that you try to understand. Humans don’t like to understand what is repulsive to us, so forcing us to try and decipher why he does what he does, at the same time, endears him to us.

The rest of the stories and the characters are all stunningly created, animated, and their stories are told in a way that makes each and everyone of them compelling. No character is evil, no character is good, because just like in life, people are a combination of both. Everything has a reason, somewhere behind it, and Arcane does a beautiful job of creating a story that balances humor, satire, and intrigue perfectly. I would honestly call this one of the best TV shows ever for me, and one that I think I will return to again and again. I can’t wait for season 2. I hope it doesn’t disappoint.

Happy Monday!!