The subreddit got 50k users within two weeks, it is most watched in some Netflix regions and contains a lot of "steampunk"(?) elements, but remains lib in a lot of places.
If we are the first to condense a critique of it, it might get some traction.
Picture exemplifies part of the userbase.
In the end BIG SPOILER and CW:
The trope evil dissociative identity disorder antihero does an 9/11 against a "liberal" company council that just voted for peace and giving away half their land to 'The Nation of Zuon' - links to the nation of Ziom are completely random.
Link to a wiki with short episode description
Sandwhich Powder, quite well done to link food (and food insecurity) to youthful joy. In a workshop filled with wealth that is what makes Powder most excited.
The trope evil dissociative identity disorder antihero does an 9/11 against a “liberal” company council that just voted for peace and giving away half their land to ‘The Nation of Zuon’ - links to the nation of Ziom are completely random.
Voting too little and too late for the independence when the motherfuckers in the lanes needed reparations and the ability to build an entire society away from Piltover. Jayce helps maintain a fucking cartel over distribution networks and supplies. The whole city needs to burn lol.
Silco definitely did some things wrong; but Jinx is the most tragic character I've seen in a while and her breakdown after being left behind rend my soul in two.
Yeah, I was shocked by how good this show was in general, I knew It was going to be animated brilliantly and sound good, but it was actually written well on top of that.
The good and fun of the show made the ideology more painful to me. Pitlover is the liberal techbros dream of a rational society guided by ideas and good speeches (if a charismatic strong independent leader who wants the good pushes for them at least).
There were quite a few good scenes, arches and teary eyes for me, though it isn't materialist or Marxist in the end.
Imagine how amazing shows could be with that budget if it wasn't bound so much to a profit oriented company.
Also the fact that the MAIN character is a queer person is really cool honestly, Cait and Vi's relationship doesnt feel queer baity to me, it just feels queer, even though we don't have any explicit sex scenes or anything, the show males it very clear what is going on there, so much so that even my boomer dad picked up on it almost immediately.
that the MAIN character is a queer person is really cool honestly
Yes, like in Ghost in the Shell and Matrix.
I think it is important to understand that Riot's brainworms tend towards the liberal "NUANCE" variety, rather than the idealization of any given faction. Runeterra isn't really supposed to have "good" factions who are purely thus from my reading. Rather, the appearance of good is generally a strong indicator of the presence of evil, whether well-intended or not (we find the standard-issue liberal "road to hell" dialog here, at least implicitly).
Demacia is a deeply authoritarian state that persecutes magic users and maintains an autocracy on par with the supposedly "barbaric" brutality of fascist Noxus (and for all Noxus' flaws, unlike Demacia, there is at least some class mobility in Noxus). P/Z are supposed to be a bit of a dialectic (not that you'd ever find that term in their faction details) about progress, control, and liberalism. It isn't an accident that Zaun takes on both some of the worst elements of libertarianism and an unavoidable form of "class" consciousness (sublimated into nationalism, of course, because liberal ideology cannot tolerate a class formation that is purely thus) and resistance to the progressive technocracy of Piltover. The understanding of that dialectic is, because it is infected with liberalism, fundamentally flawed. Idealism is elevated above an understanding of the material interests of the contending classes, but it doesn't ignore the reality that progressive technocracy leaves a fuckload of people behind in building its "utopia". It just both-sides it to the point of inscrutability.
I haven't seen Arcane (too poor to pay for Netflix in order to watch the three or four shows I'd ever want to watch on it), but what I've read in terms of plot-summaries indicates to me that the audience is exposed to Piltover through some of its most sympathetic faces (Jayce, Caitlin - Vi, to an extent) and their personal stories mean that they elide the darker elements of Piltover. It is worth remembering that Piltover also employs monsters like Camille to "maintain the balance".
I leech Netflix, too. But in time there will be high quality files available.
it was alright. the ideology is pretty brainfucked. also did a small racism by making ekko 'the poc more in touch with nature' trope
what really took it away was that buff noxus lady's effeminate servant lmao. show can be trash that shit made me happy
That was a quite well constructed moment. Of course the guilt was neither on Vi nor Powder. A society in which the individuals are on their own and have to be heroic to even scrape by is on its own already evil and has to be thrown over. A thirteen year old ought not to weigh the future of another child on their shoulders.
This is just a small part of Silco and Jinx's dynamic but it really stood out to me and endured me to his character. When they are all at the "dinner party" Vi is calling Jinx Powder, lying about how she will just leave with her and go back to how things were, triggering painful memories by shouting about "remembering people who care about you" who are actually just the demons who haunt her, then as soon as Jinx takes of Silco's gag he immediately yells out to Vi that "Her name is Jinx!" and actually consoles her instead of making her worse. I know Silco is far from perfect as a political leader and a father, but I found him and his arc with Jinx extremely interesting, nuanced, and weirdly heartwarming. In a strange way the most "evil" thing he does is NOT give up jinx for the nation of Zaun (wich he is totally in the right to fight for), its not often you will see a villan's downfall be thier unconditional love for somebody.
the thing that was most bewildering to me is that one of the drug kingpins had their own child working in the child labor factory? maybe silco required it? or maybe just all the old people are so diseased and messed up from chemicals that only kids are really able to work on anything.
also i dislike how shimmer is coded as bad, it is legit a very useful med. combined with hextech it gave viktor the ability to walk and singed fucking resurrected jinx
It looked like the kid was just hanging around in the upper levels of the factory, probably because his mother is the one who supervises/owns it, and yeah, shimmer is only "bad" because of the socioeconomic conditions surrounding it and it's usage. As far as Viktor is concerned, despite having the aesthetics of "evil robot man" even in his established League lore his usage of the hexcore to augment and cure himself and others and wage a war of liberation against Jayce and Piltover is just unequivocally good. Riot does this thing of giving people like Sylas and Viktor, and even Silco the astetics of "evil" while writing them as the good guys, while giving institutions like Piltover and Demacia the aesthetics of "good" despite very explicitly making them support institutional and political evil. I would like to thing this is intentional as a way for the artists and writers to tell stories about the good guys using justified violence for liberation against the established powers while also sneaking it past the big wig idiots who aren't able to read between the lines and pick up on anything deeper than what looks like the "good guys" and "bad guys".
I haven't watched it but this thread has convinced me to ig. Tbh I'm just really happy to be seeing the trend of stale animation styles kinda ending. With this, into the spiderverse (and the new other sony movie), and some others there are actually some big budget animations with unique interesting styles.
Ik that awesome animation has always existed in the art space but it seemed like for a while big budget stuff was just completely not going to look different again.
The trope evil dissociative identity disorder antihero"
Could you explain how well you think they portrayed this type of character (Im assuming its Jinx) in detail? I've hardly seen anyone I would trust to judge that even mention it.
Called it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/arcane/comments/r0cle7/comment/hlsn97m/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=6
