Into the Arcane

Studio Fortiche released Arcane on November 6, 2021. Arcane is an animated series that is adapted from the popular video game League of Legends created by Riot Games.

Arcane’s main characters are sisters Vi and Powder who grew up orphans in the Undercity and are later separated as young adults who both take different paths. Growing up, Powder goes under a significant change, becoming Jinx, the adopted daughter of the biggest drug lord in the Undercity while Vi is locked up.

Arcane is separated into three different acts released exactly a week from each other. In these different acts more champions have appeared from League of Legends such as Jayce, Viktor, Caitlin, Heimerdinger, Teemo, Singed, Warwick, and Ekko.

Although there are many references towards the game, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be a fan of League of Legends in order to enjoy Arcane. The spectacular animation, worldbuilding, action scenes and storytelling makes Arcane a great watch even if you haven’t played League of Legends.

“Even though I never played League of Legends, I liked Arcane because of the animation and how cool the characters were. My favorite character was Jinx because of how psychotic she was,” states Thao-My Nguyen (‘25).

Arcane was my favorite show of the year due to the spectacular storytelling of just part of the League of Legends universe, fantastic animation by Studio Fortiche and Arcane had musicians such as Imagine Dragons Or JID perform.. Arcane did a great job of bringing the universe to a show and proved it with their ratings.

Arcane has set records for being the highest rated series on Netflix, with a 4.9/5 average audience rating, and a shocking 100% from Rotten Tomatoes. It even passed popular show Squid Game in viewership in the first three days of its release and is now being viewed in 38 different countries.

One of the really big things that hyped up Arcane has been the marketing of Riot Games, the company’s advertising brought them to lighting up the Burj Khalifa in order to place a teaser trailer on it.