From Piltover to Zaun: A Deep Dive into Arcane Season 2

Arcane is an Emmy-winning animated series on Netflix, co-created by Christian Linke and Alex Yee, with the French animation studio Fortiche Production in partnership with Riot Games, the developers of the multiplayer battle game League of Legends, on which Arcane is based. Their budget was $250 million, and its second season was met with critical acclaim for its visuals, writing, worldbuilding, soundtrack, and voice acting. The story takes place in Runeterra, which is a planet inhabited by mainly humans, but other races and species also reside on that planet. The two main districts of the series are Zaun, a large, undercity district below the pristine, progressive city of Piltover.

Arcane is likely to be one of the most influential animatedanimation series in recent years, with its distinctive 2D paint-like art style, reminiscent of vivid oil paintings with a modern twist – some art styles and movements included in this animation are steampunk, art nouveau, art deco, and even some punk elements in Jinx’s scenes. Animators used Autodesk Maya, an animation software to create the textures seen in the series. The character design and backdrop art style are heavy with contrast and personality - yet all have similarly sharp, darkly defined features as part of the art style. Depending on the district, the characters will show traits associating them with their city, such as Piltover having a more symmetrical, sleek, and steampunk design. Each character’s personality shines through heavily in the design, even the practicality of their outfit is considered with fighting techniques within the story. For example, Vi is a close-combat fighter, therefore she is bulkier, has more muscle on her upper body, and has short hair and fingernails to minimize the risk of breaking a nail or hair-pulling in close-range combat. Meanwhile, Jinx is a long-range fighter, her fingernails are long, a stylistic choice because she doesn’t need to use her hands to fight, she only needs to pull the trigger of her bazooka or explosives. She has long, braided hair because she is at no risk of it being used against her from far away. The story itself is relatively simple, yet the attention to detail is executed extremely well at no cost to audience engagement. The real spotlight of this series is on its characters, manipulating facial features and actions in a way that emphasizes the nuance in real human interactions, artistically resembling realism while still adopting movements seen in other modern animated shows with larger, expressive cartoonish gestures.

The entire cast of characters is entirely compelling, heavy with nuance, and no specific central character roles like antagonist and protagonist – each character works towards their own goals, often with a mixed moral compass. In one scene, Jinx releases a swarm of robot bugs that kill soldiers for an oppressive regime in Piltover. This can leave viewers to ponder the morality of the situation and why the developers of the series portrayed characters not necessarily to be entirely likable in the traditional sense. The voice acting and character movements are created via character rigging on animation software – no motion capture or real actors were used for character movement. However, animators did an immaculate job with character rigging to express emotion and represent the actors' voices without the use of real human movement.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Some of my personal favorites elements of this animatedanimation series are the cultural inclusivity and diversity of the cast of characters, the multilingual soundtrack, and the beautiful cinematography and composition. I greatlyheavily appreciated that French, Korean, Chinese and English musical artists were represented in their native languages. One of the band members of Rage Against the Machine also collaborated with Stray Kids on a song for the soundtrack. Some of my personal favorites are: “Paint the Town Blue” by Ashnikko, “Fantastic” by King Princess and 《这样很好》 (Isha’s Song) by Eason Chan. Additionally, I noticed there were many allusions to certain themes and symbols throughout Arcane, such as gold associated with Mel, and blue smoke symbolizing Jinx’s desire for her sister to come save her – there are also many fan theories, such as Jinx surviving the fall in the Arcane season 2 finale because of a pink trail of light seen in one of the frames of the scene. Some fans have noticed that there are also smaller secret scenes embedded into the intro scene in different episodes of season 2, foreshadowing future events in the series.

To recap, the release of Arcane’s season 2 has set a new standard in the animation and film industry, breaking barriers with its creatively beautiful art style and storytelling. While filled with lots of complicated character backstories and histories, Arcane is enchanting and blocks the story in a way that reveals “aha” moments and plot twists at relevant points in the story. Three3 years of dedication and hard work have created a novel, groundbreaking artistic masterpiece that has a special place in the hearts of fans across many subcultures and genres of art.