Champion Lore, wiki stories, cinematics, League comics and in universe events (which generally include both cinematics and stories). Most of those can be access from the game launcher when they are new / ongoing.
You might be surprised at the number of fans who can recite an impressive amount of lore, story beats and interpersonal relationships between various characters. And those also tend to be reflected in through voiced lines that only trigger when 2 characters interact in-game.
The lore is known and understood well enough that a recent events was widely decried by the fans because it went against what the characters had previously been established to stand for and believe. There is quite a bit conclusively known about characters for those who enjoy digging for it. And when their motivations change inexplicably, the lore fans take notice.
It’s all fascinating, especially for someone like me who generally only watches the eSports side of things.
Fwiw, I’m in the same boat regarding experience with the game and complete lack of interest in the MOBA genre. I kept passing over the show as Netflix was shoving it into my face, but finally relented in a moment of boredom. I’m quite happy I did!
Going to point out again how great this Jinx/Ekko scene is, the storytelling, artistic expression, and emotion in 2 minutes or so, I’m just still super impressed
Summary
As someone who knew nothing about LoL pre-Arcane, I’m wondering if you’d be willing to break down what’s different? Or point me to a resource that has?
I keep listening to that song on the excellent version of the Arcane soundtrack that isn’t just the instrumental parts. It’s called Dynasties and Dystopia. So good.
Thanks Armando, that’s exactly the kind of things I was wondering about.
Oh those recent lore issues have nothing to do with Arcane. League fans are very positive about the series. Arcane is doing it right by all accounts.
So feel free to skip the details below. But in case you are interested…
The event that created a lot of ire is called Sentinels of Light and ran this summer. It angered fans not only because of the lore, but because of how grindy and nonsensical its in-game manifestation was.
The champions involved in that part of the lore are different from those you saw in Arcane. They are: Viego, Senna, Vex, Yorick, Maokai, Thresh, Kalista, …
And if you Google “Sentinels of Light issues”, you will find articles that point to both the way the event was run and the lore.
This post on Reddit caught my attention at the time, because it shows how much some fans know about the stories told in the lore:
As you can see from the replies the author is not alone.
There is also this article that talks about the running of the event itself, and then explores issues with the lore in the “What happened to the champions of the Shadow Isles?” section.
That was Riot leaving a ton of fans disappointed. They got a lot of goodwill back with Arcane.
You can read some of the comics online or buy then in comics shops. For instance, here is a story about Ashe, one of the og champions:
Saw IGN finally reviewed the full series and gave it a 10/10. It’s interesting how un-reviewed the show has been, Metacritic has just two critic reviews on it (not including that IGN which will probably be added). For comparison Marvel’s What If got 15, The Witcher 17. What makes this really standout though is it has a 98% user RT and a 9.4 IMDB rating with 52k votes. I have to imagine it being an animated show and game tie in lead a lot of critics to just giving it a pass up front. I wonder if the incredible audience scores will have some more critics take an actual look at it now that the season is complete.
I hope you like it. I’d encourage you to watch the entire first episode (or even two) before passing judgment, as I think it gets steadily better. I was a bit disoriented at first, as I know only a bit of the lore – just what I’ve gleaned from playing the LoL card game, Legends of Runeterra.
The six year production that Riot is willing to invest with this studio to make and polish a season of animation probably is why the show feels so crafted. Now they need a year or two to finish season 2, I guess that’s plenty time to build on this winning formula.
We just finished watching the 9th episode, the final show of act 3 and season 1. We thoroughly enjoyed it! I liked the first act best, but all three acts were engaging and, occasionally, moving. The artwork is spectacular. So many memorable shots, such gorgeous lighting, so much bold color. The animation is good too. Once in a blue moon I’d catch something a bit off – a wooden applause animation, say – but those missteps were rare. The studio should be proud of this series. It’s a work of art.
Just finished episode 3 and I’m hooked. Holy shit what an incredible experience this show has been so far, I can’t wait to hit ep 4 but I’m doing a “1 per day” thing to sort of prolong the experience. It’s absolutely one of the most incredible looking anything I’ve ever seen, but I’m super invested in the story and what is going on here, and I have absolutely no idea outside of the show anything about these characters (I bounced off DOTA stuff at every attempt to get into it, so I don’t even believe I ever played League of Legends).
It’s just so fuckin gorgeous. Thinking I’m gonna go through it again on the TV while I’m recovering this month.
And it’s crazy affecting, as well. The end of Ep3 hits like a mack truck.
If there wasn’t an Arcane, the wait for the new Spiderverse would be insufferable.
My wife and I finished it at the weekend (we took our time to spread out the experience) and loved every minute of it. The end of each trio of episodes was especially well done.
I loved that we could empathise with pretty much all main protagonists. They all had their own reasons for what they were doing.
And yes, we are now left wondering what will happen next. Well be there to find out when season 2 comes out!
The quality of the animation, soundtrack, voiceovers and storytelling were up there. It’s gorgeous. Can’t think of another animation series from 2021 that would top this one for us.
For me you can go back further - I can’t remember being this constantly impressed by each frame with any animation I’ve seen in a very long time. This might be peak animation for me. That includes the gorgeous Into the Spider-verse.
I’m still savoring this, I have two episodes left and my intention is to watch them both back to back after work tonight.
I’d be hugely interested in a “making of” video or series for this show. In particular, I’d love to know more about how the animation is generated. I read it was 3d models that have “hand painted” textures. Given some of the fluidity of the motion, I’d love to know if there are simulation aspects (AKA: hair physics!) or motion capture mapped onto the 3d models.
You can go back in time and watch expert animators go over scenes from anime like Akira, and analyze exactly how scenes are composed and animated, how many times each frame is new vs repeated (which really changes the sense of “speed” in motion), how light and reflection was used, etc. Akira is an entirely hand-drawn effort. Arcane is an entirely different methodology.
I haven’t watched this yet, but it was on my YouTube front page the other day.
