arcane spends the first season highlighting how brutal and unforgiving the piltover occupation of zaun is its objectively and cartoonishly evil there are almost no redeeming qualties for it but it all shifts when jinx does the piltover equivalent of 9/11 and the messaging shifts from brutal occupation and conflict to the characters not being able to cope with trauma so they now commit facism
jinx and zaun are constantly shunned by the show while caitlyn and piltover are so quick to be forgiven
but in the end its okay because they find a common enemy and obviously the biggest enemy is collectivisim
the show is so hilariously amercian and lib it is not even funny
caitlyn gets to win the girl but jinx gets so guilty that she tries killing herself multiple times and ends up faking her own death and escaping her only family
i am genuinely so fucking pissed
It was all over the place, without the steady escalating tempo of the original. Even the fight scenes were clipped and visually abbreviated - switching to these dramatic vinettes in a bunch of the Warwick and Vi combat scenes.
S2 had some interesting and clever movements… but yeah. It was 2-3 seasons crammed into one, and it showed.
I don’t even not like the “Perfection isn’t something you attain, it’s something you pursue” moral at the end of the show. But season 1 felt so dialectical. You had these historical moments building on themselves to a stunning climax.
Season 2 was handed this dramatic historical pivot, kinda-sorta looked like it was going to grapple with the fundamentals appeals and consequences of fascism, but then stumbled back down into “Everything gets solved when the Special People duke it out”.
The fundamental plight of Zaun, the cost of pollution and the failure of equitable distribution, is lost in the race to fight Evil Foreigners and Fifth Columnist Traitors. A real squandered opportunity.