Arcane Season 2 was explosive, to say the least.
After a stunning display of superb animation and storytelling during the premiere of its first season back in 2021, the Netflix animated series based on the online computer game “League of Legends” came back for its second season this November.
When I first discovered Arcane, I didn’t think I would be attached to the story and its characters this much.
Don’t get me wrong, I love watching animated series. But Arcane was based on an online battle arena game that’s mainly about winning and defeating enemies. So for me, it made Arcane seem like just another action animated series with a plain story consisting of men killing other men.
Fortunately, I was proven wrong as soon as I started watching it.
Arcane isn’t just about punches and kicking and blood. Instead, it proved itself to be a profound story intertwining the complicated threads connecting multiple characters existing in a world filled with political intrigue and magic.
From its first season until the current, it told a Shakespearean way of epic storytelling that sets it apart from other modern action-filled series that came out at the time.
It has everything. Not just action. It has family drama, political alliances, betrayal, societal issues… and my most favorite: the romance! I could probably write a whole other article just focusing on the romantic tensions between certain characters in this series. It’s too good.
But what I’m basically saying is it absolutely makes sense why everyone came to love this show.
And I still concur the majority of critical and audience reviews that came out during the first season. It is perfect — or close to it.
For this second season, however, it teeters into a different direction. From being called perfect, mixed reviews began appearing as the episodes started coming in. It’s a little sad that I concur with some of them, too.
Writing the continuation of a story that has been deemed as perfect is a great task to fulfill after all. Not to mention the fact that the studio had six years to prepare for the first season, and only had three years to make the next.
So it didn’t surprise me that Arcane’s Season 2 showed some faults. After all, if expectations are set so high, there’d be so much more room to fall.
The most glaring of these flaws is the show’s pacing. The story of the second season of Arcane runs fast. Or at least, faster than the previous one. Which is ironic since it has one more episode compared to season one’s eight episodes.
This time, we get many milestone moments for different characters but we barely get any time to breathe. As soon as a heavy and emotionally built up scene comes in, we immediately move on to the next.
I’m just a human after all, I have my favorites. So sometimes, it irks me when a character who’s a favorite of mine will get their shining moment, then gets shrugged off pretty soon afterwards.
That is the burden of telling a story of many characters in a big world. You have no choice but to multitask and to tell the story of multiple characters at the same time.
There’s also the new format of streaming that limits many series to less than ten episodes. And for a story like Arcane, this is barely enough.
Yes, the writers and animators have that talent and skill to write an epic story that fits in that limited number, but the presence of these faults especially in pacing shows that it was held back as well because of this characteristic of it.
A story can be plot-driven or character-driven, it can also be both at the same time — which I believe Arcane is. However, in each respective season of the show, we see one being prioritized over the other.
In Season 1, everything is so character-driven. Every motivation and decision of the characters were because of their own personal histories and idiosyncrasies.
When Season 2 began, there was a shift. Aside from the story running fast, it became more plot-driven somehow. Many of the scenes which could have been explained or built up more felt rushed. Instead, they were just there to function as a way to drive the plot.
Even then, I still enjoyed it. The animation is still beyond incredible, I don’t know how the animators have surpassed the standard they set from last season, but they did. I was visually awe-struck all throughout the whole show.
I’m not going to deny that it has become a confusing journey, especially in the last few episodes of the season. But there were still scenes that made me genuinely root for the characters.
The connections between each individual in the story still never failed to make me grip the arm of my chair while watching. You can’t deny that these characters feel so human, despite being drawn faces and shapes in our TV screens.
The fact that I spotted the fundamental faults I mentioned before is still proof that they were able to write characters that made me emotionally attached and hanging on to what the end will be like.
Because it means I care about this series, these characters. That is why I also happened to care about these faults, too. I’m concerned about the story being rushed because I’ve grown to care about the characters living in it.
Each episode still had my jaw dropped in awe because of how explosively massive the writing is. Even though I criticize it for the same reason, I respect the team behind it for being ambitious.
Arcane was a chaotic amalgamation of big hits and misses. But for me, the one thing that remains the same and makes it the way it is never faded away.
It’s that Arcane is one wild ride.
And Season 2 is worth it to watch… but still leaves you craving for more. For better or for worse.
