Arcane (Season 2)
Summary
Arcane (Season 2) is the final season of Riot Games’ animated epic, based off of their international hit video game League of Legends. In it, conflict is brewing between the upper city of Piltover and the disarrayed Zaun as various factions and individuals struggle for power and control of the Arcane.
Assessment
Arcane (Season 2) matches the first season flawlessly in terms of animation quality and production, however, it fails utterly in writing and character motivations. Important plots of the story have to share time with fanservice, muddling the overarching tale and dragging characters along in ways that feel unnatural and forced. Additionally, it includes a wildly inappropriate sex scene that is not suitable for any audience, causing the entire second season to feel like an uncoordinated cross between the artistic excellence of the first season and bad fanfiction from the bowels of the Internet.
Light-o-Meter
Writing: 2 out of 7 Little Lights
Animation: 7 out of 7 Little Lights (Voided)
Acting: 7 out of 7 Little Lights (Voided)
Cleanliness: 1 out of 7 Little Lights (relatively graphic sex scene that barely cuts to black in time)
Theological Message: N/A
Overall: 1 of 7 Little Lights
Talk
I knew the second season of Arcane was going to give me issues the moment I finished Season 1. There was too much hinting towards LGBTQ themes and barely fade-to-black sex scenes for it to maintain its innocence through Season 2. This, coupled with how much mainstream storytelling culture has shifted in the few years meant this season was probably going to involve some storylines I was not going to be fond of. And my concerns were completely validated. And I am very salty about it as both a huge fan of S1 and a writer.
The LGBTQ hints and themes in S1 morphed into quite obvious romantic subplots and one explicit sex scene. While I could excuse the plots as another one of those situations where, yes, it’s a sin, but Christians can follow their own convictions to determine if they want to watch it, the sex scene was essentially soft porn. It was egregious enough that even if it had been a straight couple, it would be far too much for me to be comfortable writing a good review. To that end, I wholeheartedly do not recommend the second season of Arcane.
“It’s just one scene, just tell us where it is and then we can skip it!”
I genuinely thought about that at first because the rest of the season is pretty good — where it’s not forcing a romantic plot — and the animation is still beautiful and high-quality. However, I think that one, single scene is more than enough to warrant a boycott from the Christian audience. While every single piece of media made by human hands is tainted by sin, sometimes the sin is like a bug in dry rice, just pluck it out and move on with your recipe, and sometimes its poop in ice cream, where the only thing to do is throw out the entire batch. This is a definitely poop in ice cream situation.
(Also: hat tip to my mom for the ice cream analogy. It is both incredibly effective and super disgusting.)
This is infuriating for me because S2 had so much potential to match or exceed S1. The showrunners had built such a fantastic foundation in the first season to expand into an epic, action-packed, and exciting final season and they threw it completely away to weave in a thread of fanservice. The romantic subplot unraveled so many character motivations and caused a couple of major plot points to make zero sense within the rest of the show’s context. The focus shifted from themes of loyalty, platonic and familial love, to sexual attraction which, in all honesty, is a really cheap way to generate false sense of emotional depth. The story went from exploring a wide spectrum of human emotion where you don’t truly know how each character is going to react to the very flat “ah, look at that, they’re having sex.” Much more interesting and relevant to the rest of the show relationship between these two characters would have been sisterly affection, especially given what one of the characters had gone through with her own, biological sister.
Now, the next question would be do Season 2’s failures warrant avoiding Season 1? In my opinion, that is entirely up to you and your convictions. If you want to avoid S1 because you know how they mess up S2, go for it. If you want to avoid S1 because you know you’ll be tempted to watch S2 and know that's a really bad idea for yourself, absolutely do so. For myself, I am still contemplating and praying over it, but currently I still see merit in the first season. It told such a wonderful story with immaculate animation that I’d like to study it further as a writer and someone who works in the animation industry. I also wouldn’t mind playing the meta game of watching S1, but not S2 to drive the numbers up and signal Netflix “hey, this is a really great story…until you mucked it up.” Will they be paying much attention? Probably not.
In a not-unrelated topic, I will be trying to source a gallon of potent brain bleach. If anyone has any brands they particularly like, let me know.
Wrap-up
Arcane, Season 2 attempted to follow in the masterful footsteps of Season 1 and fell flat on its face with the inclusion of borderline pornographic fanservice and a romantic subplot that did not make sense.
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