Noxluxe
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Post by Noxluxe on Jan 9, 2022 22:46:05 GMT
I recently came across the Den of Geek article ranking the 25 best shows from 2021 and was surprised to see Arcane absent except as one among many honorable mentions. It doesn't seem like a site that would neglect that kind of show, and there is already animation on the list i.e. Invincible, which is pretty good as well, but Arcane's animation blows Invincible's out of the water. This kind of confirms an impression I have gotten from elsewhere, that Arcane is a bizarrely more obscure than I'd expect it to be, particularly since those who have watched it have overwhelmingly good things to say about it. Is it because it's an animated show that has nothing to do with superheroes? Because it's (nominally) a video game adaptation? Or because it's based on League of Legends of all things, specifically? It's curious. The promotional materials emphasize the female leads, who have brightly colored hair, side-cuts, tattoos and piercings, and focus on these women fighting and having existential crises about who they are vs who others expect them to be, and it released in late 2021. My first thought is that maybe those elements aren't quite as widely appealing or relatable as some creators and those who actually do enjoy that kind of thing imagine they are, or think they should be, so it might have been the marketing that shot itself in the foot by pushing that pedal to the floor. It was very, very easy for me to dismiss it as being a certain kind of product with a certain kind of attitude and little else to recommend it like so much else that's been coming out the past few years, and those high-profile reviewers who praised it as doing so for reasons other than because it's actually good, before word of mouth got me to give it another look. And it's the same thing I've heard from everyone else I've recommended it to since. That it just looks like a creatively empty woke animated femfest at first glance, and nobody needs that in their life. Whether that'd be likely to disqualify it from that list I couldn't say, those kinds of rankings have never gelled with my own tastes in anything at all, so I don't give them much thought. But yeah, when I've had to convince someone to see it because I knew they'd love it it's either been the presentation, or that they don't like League of Legends, or that they don't like Jinx specifically in League of Legends and can't imagine that a show about her would be particularly deep. (And based on the one clip I've seen of her game persona, I can't blame them.) It's definitely my best show of 2021 though, animated or otherwise. It's so rare these days to find something where it feels like they went the extra mile on every single metric, so you just end up feeling spoiled and grateful in addition to thoroughly entertained. A shining example that genuine creativity and sensitivity and tasteful investment will make anything enjoyable, no matter what biases people have going in. If it had come out earlier in the year and there'd been more time for word to get out to all the people who would, and eventually likely will, love it to death, I'm sure it would have been on that list. I wish they'd make a live-action series of my favourite Fantasy novels, "The Night Angel Trilogy" by Brent Weeks. Or even his follow-up series "Lightbringer" There's some fan-made stuff on youtube that actually looks like it could be professionally done....But an actual Pro job would be preferred. I'm with you, but pretty sure any creator who tried to adapt The Night Angel and do it anything resembling justice would be burnt at the stake these days. You're right that this series' tone would be perfect for it though.
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Heimdall
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Post by Heimdall on Jan 9, 2022 23:24:43 GMT
I only have one friend who’s really willing to watch animated shows like this and it was a hard sell. It being League based and the art style from the promo was a real sticking point. I told him to give the first three episodes a chance and that worked.
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Post by Gwydden on Jan 10, 2022 1:33:34 GMT
The promotional materials emphasize the female leads, who have brightly colored hair, side-cuts, tattoos and piercings, and focus on these women fighting and having existential crises about who they are vs who others expect them to be, and it released in late 2021. Honestly, that stuff didn't register for me at all. Strangely colored hair is pretty common in animation, presumably because it makes it easier to tell characters apart—and because it's animation, so what the heck. Tattoos are really fashionable nowadays, at least where I live... and earrings are technically piercings and no one complains about those I first heard of the show from a history blog I follow, of all places, where it was praised to high heaven. Then I got reminded of it when a friend who's a big fan of League mentioned it. Good despite the SJW stuff, he said. I'm still not sure what he meant, though your post gives me some ideas. A little later I came across the trailer on Netflix and decided that sure, I'll give it a shot. I only have one friend who’s really willing to watch animated shows like this and it was a hard sell. It being League based and the art style from the promo was a real sticking point. I told him to give the first three episodes a chance and that worked. Haven't played League in my life. Don't think I've even seen gameplay footage outside of a few unskippable ads on YouTube. All I know is it's a MOBA and that my brother hates it despite never playing either since he's a DotA 2 partisan. Guess how much luck I've had convincing him to watch it. I honestly don't get the reticence; it got recommended to me twice (both times with the disclaimer that it had little to do with the game) and I never thought it being based on LoL mattered much either way. Noxluxe is right that rankings and such should be taken with a grain of salt, but I find it interesting to consider what stuff becomes popular (or not) and why.
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Noxluxe
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Post by Noxluxe on Jan 10, 2022 2:27:59 GMT
Honestly, that stuff didn't register for me at all. Strangely colored hair is pretty common in animation, presumably because it makes it easier to tell characters apart—and because it's animation, so what the heck. Tattoos are really fashionable nowadays, at least where I live... and earrings are technically piercings and no one complains about those I first heard of the show from a history blog I follow, of all places, where it was praised to high heaven. Then I got reminded of it when a friend who's a big fan of League mentioned it. Good despite the SJW stuff, he said. I'm still not sure what he meant, though your post gives me some ideas. A little later I came across the trailer on Netflix and decided that sure, I'll give it a shot. See, when you have to explain three extraordinary elements of a single character's appearance away as each totally being 'pretty common' under three different particular circumstances, using terms like "technically", "at least where I live", and "so what the heck", that's an indication that they're styled a particular way and you're just trying not to see it. I just had a buddy over and let him loose on my Netflix looking for something to entertain us while I tended to the prototype pork roast I was using him as a guinea pig for before Christmas, and he decided that I needed to see it. Which kind of knocked the feet out from under my preconceptions, because League of Legends fan or not, he's the one in my friend circle I'd least expect to tolerate woke garbage. I mean, that guy hates Spiderman: Into The Multiverse because he resents a black Spiderman, and the fact that it's an awesomely woven movie makes no difference to him compared to that. And I was tempted to roll my eyes a few times in the first and second episode, but after the third it was clear that each almost-eyeroll was outnumbered ten to one by moments of getting sucked completely into the scene. Powder stopped being a potential Mary Sue when she completely fell apart at being left behind, way beyond any normal reaction, making it perfectly clear that she there was an underlying instability to her that wasn't just charming snowflake eccentricity, and Vi stopped being a potential Mary Sue when Vander saw her sobbing and bleeding on the floor after the whole world blew up in her face, needing his protection. Although their conversation about responsibility after the heist and her seemingly taking his words to heart laid a lot of groundwork there too. That was seriously how long it took me to get past the female character writing tendencies we've been seeing everywhere for years and start trusting that someone was actually trying to write these girls like human beings.
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Post by Gwydden on Jan 10, 2022 15:06:48 GMT
See, when you have to explain three extraordinary elements of a single character's appearance away as each totally being 'pretty common' under three different particular circumstances, using terms like "technically", "at least where I live", and "so what the heck", that's an indication that they're styled a particular way and you're just trying not to see it. My point is that they're not extraordinary, though. It's American animation—yes, I know Fortiche is French, but Riot and the showrunners are American. The animation part accounts for the brightly colored hair. The American part (i.e., where I live) explains the rest. Tattoos and piercings are fashionable here; Vi doesn't wear them because she is countercultural (she isn't; her sidekick is a cop!) but for the same reason she wears a hoodie: in the United States, that's shorthand for cool, badass, and streetwise. Most of these fashion choices don't really come in until three episodes in and I didn't notice them in the trailer I saw, so they couldn't have factored into my decision to watch it to begin with. It's interesting that, looking at the other Zaun characters, Vander's look is pretty conventional (kinda looks like space cowboy Jim Raynor), and Silco dresses like it's 1886, while Sevika is cosplaying Clint Eastwood with her poncho. I'm pretty sure that showing the generational divide is another reason why adult Vi, Powder, and Ekko dress the way they do. Well, like I told my friend, the worldview that sees sinister "SJW" influence everywhere strikes me as a bit paranoid. There are plenty of trends in modern media I don't care for, but I'm not about to see the divide between popular fiction and my personal taste as the result of some ideological conspiracy, rather than different strokes for different folks. Coincidentally, my friend also refused to watch Into the Spiderverse despite my recommendation, although the reason he gave was that he didn't like animation. Yes, that doesn't seem terribly consistent, and I poked fun at him by asking whether he was aware that those MCU movies he likes so much are mostly animated.
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Noxluxe
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Post by Noxluxe on Jan 11, 2022 4:57:10 GMT
My point is that they're not extraordinary, though. It's American animation—yes, I know Fortiche is French, but Riot and the showrunners are American. The animation part accounts for the brightly colored hair. The American part (i.e., where I live) explains the rest. Tattoos and piercings are fashionable here; Vi doesn't wear them because she is countercultural (she isn't; her sidekick is a cop!) but for the same reason she wears a hoodie: in the United States, that's shorthand for cool, badass, and streetwise. Most of these fashion choices don't really come in until three episodes in and I didn't notice them in the trailer I saw, so they couldn't have factored into my decision to watch it to begin with. It's interesting that, looking at the other Zaun characters, Vander's look is pretty conventional (kinda looks like space cowboy Jim Raynor), and Silco dresses like it's 1886, while Sevika is cosplaying Clint Eastwood with her poncho. I'm pretty sure that showing the generational divide is another reason why adult Vi, Powder, and Ekko dress the way they do. Sure, and my point is that if you have to "account" separately for multiple different unlikely factors in order to then be able to consider the confluence of them likely and probable and therefore not worth noting as a conscious decision made by someone then it sounds like you're doing more work not to notice that than I'm doing to notice it. I don't know where you live, and if your impression there is that colored hair, tattoos, facial piercings and tough guy street getups all together are totally normal and not countercultural or indicative of any kind of attitude or attempt to signal then... uhm... okay? Fun neighborhood? But then that likely says more about you and where you live than it necessarily does about Vi or Jinx or the intent behind their designs, or how others might perceive them. And I was talking about the promotional materials, which do focus on the characters in the "grown-up" stage of the story, and which will have been most people's first brush with the series even just in the form of the ambient trailer running in the background when scrolling over it on Netflix, and not the first few episodes. If you're watching the first few episodes then you've obviously already decided to give the show a chance, and will obviously continue to be hooked because it's awesome. The vast majority of the characters are fairly conservative in their designs, particularly foregoing that animation hair you're talking about, not just Vander, Sevika and Silco. But they're not exactly the ones the trailers center around. Well, like I told my friend, the worldview that sees sinister "SJW" influence everywhere strikes me as a bit paranoid. There are plenty of trends in modern media I don't care for, but I'm not about to see the divide between popular fiction and my personal taste as the result of some ideological conspiracy, rather than different strokes for different folks. Coincidentally, my friend also refused to watch Into the Spiderverse despite my recommendation, although the reason he gave was that he didn't like animation. Yes, that doesn't seem terribly consistent, and I poked fun at him by asking whether he was aware that those MCU movies he likes so much are mostly animated. I'm liable to agree with you, insofar as I just see lazy, dumb and misguided writing and marketing tendencies steadily eroding and dumbing down that pesky old storytelling tradition in human culture that I'm fairly attached to rather than widespread sinister influences, and do find it tedious when people talk as if there's a grand conspiracy at work. By the same token though, I also find it fairly nauseating when people talk around or pretend that those tendencies don't exist or can't at least be discussed objectively just because admitting to them might be to lend credence to the paranoid anti-sjw types, which is just as intellectually dishonest. "Different strokes for different folks" is still just a cop-out if someone is actually trying to discuss the media people are trying to sell to each other, where it's coming from and what it implies on behalf of both creators and consumers, without pretending to force anything on anyone or even discourage them from enjoying whatever they want.
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azarhal
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Post by azarhal on Jan 11, 2022 14:34:17 GMT
Noxluxe is right that rankings and such should be taken with a grain of salt, but I find it interesting to consider what stuff becomes popular (or not) and why. Arcane is popular outside of the geek circle. The TV show journalists in my local newspapers/newwebsites mentioned it along Emily in Paris and a bunch of other popular shows on Amazon/HBO/etc in their "must watch of the year" in December. It was the only anime on those lists. Also, the only thing that qualify as scifi or fantasy outside of The Mandolarian which shouldn't even be on that list because the last season was in 2020.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 19, 2022 4:50:49 GMT
Couple pictures with some interesting design details I saw on Reddit.
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