(I’ve returned from another year of NaNoWriMo, friends! I successfully cleared the 50,000 word bar for the challenge, though admittedly the story itself isn’t done yet. It’s a longer one, so it’ll still take me a while to actually complete it. I’m happy with everything I’ve accomplished with it so far, though!)
After a long three years, the second (and final) season of Arcane has finally been released. One of the most critically acclaimed television shows of all time (not just in the realm of animated series, as it’s ranked #25 of all tv shows on IMDB), Arcane has been beloved by a great many people, myself included. I’ve been eagerly anticipating this bombastic concluding season, and hastily devoured each arc of three episodes as they released. Now they’ve all come out, the season and the show are both done, and as the dust settles…is season two good? Is Arcane still my favorite show of all time?
Uh…yeah, obviously! A profound ‘YES‘ to both!
I mean, Arcane‘s first season alone was a masterpiece, so the second season really would have had to have been spectacularly awful to truly make a stain on this show’s legacy. Obviously, we’ve seen some crazy fumbles like that before (most notably with Game of Thrones), but it was still a high bar (or should that be ‘low bar’) of failure to clear.
Thankfully for all of us, Arcane‘s second season is absolutely fantastic. And while it might not hit the highs of season one in an area or two, it effortlessly surpasses its freshman season in many other ways, bringing this show to a close as one of the all-time greatest television shows ever created, a masterpiece.
But, though I could just leave this article off here, let’s go a little more in-depth.
We last left off the universe of Arcane at a pretty pivotal moment. Unable to get through to her sister, Vi (and Caitlyn) could only watch as Jinx’s bomb blew apart the city council chambers. Season Two begins mere minutes later, and shows the dramatic aftermath of the bomb, and then the much more drastic ramifications of how the city responds in the following weeks to Jinx’s attack. Unlike the first season’s gradual build-up, Season Two is the payoff, and is thusly much more fast-paced and frantic…not to say there aren’t touching slow moments or chances to breathe or laugh a bit. Arcane is good at balancing tone.
The story and writing continue to be a highlight of Arcane, thankfully. After the masterclass that was the first season, it might’ve been easy to assume/fear that season two wouldn’t live up to those heights. Thankfully, it still excels in this area. The characters continue to be fantastically nuanced and the worldbuilding richly-detailed. There’s no such thing as Black-and-White with regards to morality in the world of Arcane, and everyone feels delightfully human in this enthralling sci-fi/fantasy hybrid universe.
Jinx and Vi are still the stars, as they should be. I foolishly feared that Season Two would potentially sideline them, so I’m happy to announce they are still the leads. Alongside them stand Caitlyn, who gets a significantly boosted focus and goes some very interesting places in terms of her character development. All of our other major players each get their moments to shine and develop, and it all comes together fantastically in the grand finale, a finale which had me on the edge of my seat for the entire time!
Season Two introduces a few new characters too, and they definitely play their roles well. Jinx runs into a spunky little girl in the Undercity named Isha, and she’s a delight. Up in the topside, a few new enforcers join the crew tasked with hunting down Jinx. Of said crew, Maddie stands out the most, and I quite like her (maybe it’s just the Scottish accent). All told, though, this season really focuses on further refining the cast from Season One rather than getting distracted with new players, which I think was a smart choice.
Perhaps the biggest positive about this second season has to do with the animation, if you can believe it. Season One was already, in my opinion, the best looking animated project ever, and miraculously Season Two tops even that. It’s at the point now where Arcane is almost uncontestably the most beautiful and engrossing animation ever. Season Two especially flexes its chops with some divergent animation styles in specific scenes, like a beautiful charcoal-painted funeral scene, and a breathtaking montage animated in a watercolor style. Did you even know you could animate watercolor?
Just like the last season, Season Two often pairs its unforgettable visuals with fantastic musical selections. Like last time, the creators contracted a multitude of professional musical artists to create songs specifically for the show. Unlike other shows or movies haphazardly licensing pop songs for scenes, Arcane specifically has its artists produce songs specific for a character or plot beat. It creates this wonderful harmony where the song stands up on its own in a vacuum, intensifies the enjoyment of the scene viewed in the context of the show, and also doesn’t jarringly break viewer immersion because of how well the music was created to fit.
Even outside of the licensed music, Arcane continues to have an excellent grasp of its own in-house soundtrack and audio mixing. Leitmotifs from the first season return for our major characters, alongside a bevy of new tracks that hit just right. The audio mixing is stellar too, really enhancing a lot of the action scenes in particular. Some of those sound effects are visceral and punchy in all the best ways, but the science/magic is also mixed really well. Arcane‘s got a soundscape all its own, and doesn’t feel generic in any way.
Speaking of sound, I’d be remiss if I glossed over the voice acting. It’s no secret I adore voice actors (and also do some own silly voice acting as a hobby). Season One’s voice acting was undeniably fantastic, and I’m pleased to say that Season Two might even edge it out a little bit more. There are so many raw emotional moments in Season Two that are sold so well by its cast, but also plenty of lighter moments that are handled with aplomb as well. Obviously, Ella Purnell is still the highlight as Jinx, but everyone is fantastic in this show.
The action scenes deserve their own shout-out too. The fights and explosive set-pieces were already phenomenal in the first season, but there’s many in this second season that manage to eclipse even those. The huge confrontation at the end of this season’s Act One is a real highlight, as is the nearly episode-long multi-part showdown during the finale that feels ripped right out of the bombastic huge-scale battles from stories like Lord of the Rings. And yet, of course, Arcane never loses sight of the intimacy of its match-ups, so even when the visuals and audio are popping off, there’s still a clear, engaging story being told, and it’s not just wild punches being thrown for the sake of it.
I also have to give credit to the unfathomable level of detail included in the animation. Obviously, the animation overall is stellar, but the little details are the star of the show. You could watch these episodes five times in a row, and catch something new every single time. I can’t get into too many specifics without spoiling things, but just know that a single viewing of this season is simply not enough to grasp the full scale of everything on display. Never before has there been a talented team of animators so passionate about pushing every single facet of the animation medium to its absolute limit.
Now, of course, nothing in the universe is perfect, and Arcane‘s second season is the same. Honestly, wouldn’t it be boring if everything was perfect? Critique and improvement are two of the biggest things for inspiring creativity. In fact, there’s a really solid line from this season that resonates with me quite a bit, and it goes ‘There is no prize to perfection, only an end to pursuit‘. Regardless, yeah, there’s a few tiny things that don’t quite reach the heights that they could.
One of the weird little things that stuck out to me (perhaps because of my experience as a writer) is the overuse of ‘dialogue callbacks‘. You know, where Person A says ‘it can’t get much worse than this‘ at the start of the episode, then when everything goes off the rails later on, Person B sarcastically says ‘it can’t get much worse than this, huh?‘. It’s a common enough trope of dialogue writing, and a pretty harmless one. The slight issue is that Arcane‘s second season overuses this technique to a staggering degree. I’m pretty sure every single episode has two-to-three uses of this trope, and while all of them more-or-less work, it honestly gets to a point where it’s mildly immersion-breaking simply because of how often the writers utilize it and how often I noticed it.
There have also been a plethora of complaints online about this season struggling with pacing. Truthfully, I don’t agree that the pace of the season negatively impacts it in any way, but I can see how the pace is pretty fast, and I can see how, theoretically, certain moments or character beats might’ve hit harder if they’d had the slightest more room to breathe. Again, in my eyes, it’s a relatively minor issue, but it’s one that other people take umbrage with, so your mileage may very.
I also think that, to the itty-bittiest degree, the writing is a notch lower quality than the first season. It isn’t bad, by any means, as Arcane still remains one of the best written television shows of all time. However, I think if you combed through the entire season with a meticulous eye for detail and a focus on writing strength, it’d come up a hair short compared to the first season.
But, again, these are the most minor of minor complaints. I’ve watched this season through multiple times now, and it still blows me away with how amazing it is. The storytelling, the characters, the world, the soundtrack, the audio design, the action, and BY GOLLY the animation…it’s all superb. Phenomenal. As close to perfect as you can feasibly get.
I am immensely relieved to say that Arcane still is a masterpiece.
10/10
But hey, that’s just my opinion!
The Contrarian Corner 