I started watching this on the recommendation of Jordan Calhoun, who runs a newsletter at The Atlantic and heavily recommended this.
I started watching after returning from the RISE - DLD-50 meeting in collaboration with Lupin at J W Marriott, completely exhausted. With some whiskey to help, I started the first episode and was completely drawn in. It is a fantasy saga, based on a video game, but the characters, the animation and the direction are so good.
I finished the first three episodes back-to-back and then stopped because I had other things to do. By then we have the two sisters Powder and Violet going their separate ways, Vander dead, Silco pickup up Powder and Jayce in the Upper town with his friend Viktor having figured out how to conjure up magic using the blue crystals that Violet used to create devastation at Silco’s.
The next two episodes (04 and 05) take a time jump. By this time, Jayce’s technology has made Piltower reach, he is moving into politics, his girlfriend Caitlyn is now investigating murders in the underground, Powder is a pyropsychomaniac and Vi has been in jail…Cait gets her out from there to help in her investigations of the underground. It keeps getting better and better.
The next one (06) moves the story ahead and it turns out that the Firefighters are actually headed by Ekko. There is a showdown between Ekko and Jinx on the bridge in 07, which is beautifully done. Topside also sees a lot of action with Viktor having his own thing going.
Three more episodes take this forward. Jayce goes from wanting to arm and go to war, to brokering peace with Silco, though not knowing at the end that Silco is dead and Jinx has shot a missile into their tower, completely deranged, using the same Hextech technology, which Vi and Cait have not been able to stop. Viktor has lost his assistant, but will likely be an integral part and Heimerdinger and Ekko are in their safe zone. Clearly season 2 has a lot to offer, but will be in 2023.
I didn’t know, but this is a prequel to the League of Legends, each of these characters, a champion that a player can adopt - this is a multiplayer game. I have no idea, since I don’t play any of these online games, but this is all very interesting. Nevertheless, Arcane stands on its own.