Season 1 of Arcane easily gets an A+. It was so good that my wife and I watched it again before watching season 2. But, it didn’t help us follow the story because in season 2 the plot and character motivations are all over the map. In the end I stopped trying to figure out who wanted what from who and just went with it. Even if the story has become unhinged, the animation style is still some of the best I’ve ever seen. I’d rate this animation better than the Spiderman animations.
I feel that the writers tried to do too much in this season. If they had simplified and focused on one or two threads, then this could have been a great season. There were certainly some interesting ideas presented, but what each character wanted was sometimes unclear to me.
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Acting
In animations, we usually talk about how good the voice acting is, which by the way, is exceptional in Arcane, but that’s nothing compared to the animation acting. In every episode, there are a handful of scenes with great dialog and characters who resist verbal responses but instead rely on facial expressions or gesticulations. There were number of times that I rewatched a scene to see how one character delivered their dialog, while the other character simply raised their eyebrow in the right way to say everything we needed to know. Sometimes it’s even funny. The writers got so good at it that they created a character who couldn’t speak and only relied on expressions.
In a world where good writing is in short supply, I applaud the writers for the dialog in this show. There may be problems with the plot, but they make up for it with great dialog. It seems like every episode, either my wife or I say, “Wow, great line.”
My only advice to the writers would be to simplify and add focus in season 3 of Arcane, and you’ll be back on track.
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