It might just be my echo chamber of a Twitter feed, but a lot of people are talking about the Netflix series, Arcane (2021). ‘Wow, I’d never heard of this but it’s amazing’, ‘who knew animation could be this good’, ‘why isn’t other television as good as Arcane?’. As someone who has worked a bit in TV, and has always watched a lot of animation across a spectrum of target audiences, I feel like I might have an answer. It’s a pretty simple one. The real reason why Arcane is so good is that they were able to tell the story they wanted to tell.
See, I told you it was simple, but allow me to explain further.
Across my career working on live-action television dramas (two made, the others, well, RIP) during the early development stages, I have only had a few instances where I was able to get a peek behind the curtain and understand what it is television broadcasters are looking for. In the UK live-action drama, at least, there is a desire for “new” voices. “New” is in quotations because there’s a caveat—the new needs to be familiar. Seems contradictory, right? Think of it this way: a TV broadcaster is a lot like a business with returning customers. Common business practice dictates giving customers consistent service and product to ensure repeat custom. And, of course, to make sure things don’t get stale, a new product is introduced every so often. TV works a lot the same way.
A broadcaster that’s known for true-crime dramas isn’t suddenly going to turn around and make a science-fiction show, or a character-led slice-of-life. Rolex isn’t going to start selling necklaces in case people might get bored of their watches. They might, as a one-off, but they wouldn’t make it a permanent addition. When television decides to sell necklaces, they don’t do it unless they know it’s something special, and often it’s successful because of some important factors—the series is distinct and it reaches an audience outside of the U.K. For example, let’s look at two series that are both similar and vastly different in many ways: Fleabag (2016) and I Hate Suzie (2020).
Fleabag came out on BBC 3, online, in July before coming to Amazon Prime three months later in September. Landscape-wise, Fleabag was distinct, not only for its unapologetic suite of characters but in its foray into international VOD content. Remember, in 2016, to reach a global audience meant that there were really only two options: Amazon and Netflix. Not to bash on BBC 3, but I’d be surprised if the number of people who watched Fleabag for the first time did so on iPlayer, as opposed to Amazon Prime, even in the UK. I Hate Suzie, another excellent foray into unique, broken people, didn’t have the same level of success. At least, not on a cultural scale to Fleabag (and this “measurement” of “success” is wholly arbitrary to articulating my point). Why? Well, because it came out in a “post”-Fleabag world, so its distinctiveness was lessened, and also because it didn’t come to as wide-reaching of an international audience. Fleabag, and its subsequent second season (in 2019, so I Hate Suzie was still very much in its shadow), came out on Amazon Prime, meaning once it’s on there, it’s everywhere, for everyone. I Hate Suzie, though, was split between Sky Atlantic (UK) and HBO Max (US – Only). Plus, it didn’t even come to HBO Max until four months after its UK debut. In media cycle terms, that’s a lifetime. So, with two shows that strove out to do something new, and I Hate Suzie was a departure from the more crime-ridden darkness and YA-ness of Sky Atlantic’s other offerings of the time (Temple (2019-), Bulletproof (2018-2020), and A Discovery of Witches (2019-2022)), the results will likely speak for themselves when asking the question, which one do you remember?
Arcane, both visually and narratively, checks both of these boxes. More importantly, as an adult-targeted Netflix animation, there were no expectations as to what it needed to be. When we think about making something new and familiar, that expectation is significantly more pressed upon live-action shows than on animation. In animation and specifically adult-targeted streaming-animation, a screenwriter doesn’t have to think about hitting a cliffhanger at the end of act 2 before the commercial break. The forms and structures that television formats had, and have, to adhere to are no longer there and the story can just be told at its own pace to fit the pace of the characters.
Often, those expectations fuel formats that work best around that structure. A cop show or medical-drama benefits from the commercial break, allowing them to build towards a particular next “clue” to solve the mystery. Arcane is not bound by any of that, which allows for their characters to drive the story. The series is structured around ensuring that characters are properly motivated, and have a satisfying arc throughout the series, all the while building a cohesive and interesting fantasy world. By being able to concentrate on the characters and world-building, the series can introduce its unique world while ensuring that audiences build strong connections—good or bad—to even the smallest of characters.
The medium of animation allows Arcane to take plenty of risks with its aesthetics, too. Throughout the series, there’s a mixture of 2D and 3D animation, blending seamlessly with anime influences to ensure scenes can maintain momentum even in quieter moments. Further storytelling tools are even more available to animation, with things feeling less uncanny thanks to the consistencies of visuals when temporal and spatial differences are created. For example, in the later part of the series (no spoilers), there is a fight scene between two characters. During it, their history is conveyed, their relationship understood, all through a visual feast. A similar sequence exists in the live-action The Flash series. While that sequence is successful in its own right, the actual visual execution is significantly better in Arcane’s animation. The visuals and cuts between moments feel more grounded and consistent to the world, and it also benefits Arcane that one character in particular during the fight already has a disjointed sense of time and space (internally, not literally).
Animation is always improving, and nowhere less than in its storytelling. Amazon’s Invincible (2021) has been turning heads (for better or worse) and Netflix’s Kippo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (2020) smashes the post-apocalyptic genre with that of a musical, and it’s amazing. Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005), and the subsequent The Legend of Korra (2012), have proved for a long time that animated storytelling can be amazing, along with She-Ra (2018), Kevin Smith’s He-Man (2021) continuation, Adventure Time (2010), Steven Universe (2013), Rick and Morty (2013), and more that I’m surely forgetting—but let’s not forget where it all started, with Batman: The Animated Series (1992), and Warner Brothers Animations’ follow up of Justice League (2001) and Justice League: Unlimited (2004). These latter examples, focused entirely on TV as animation has always had a respectable place in film (thanks Pixar), were animated creations telling adult stories while using the medium of animation to go beyond what live-action could do. Now, it’s where the real “new” stories are being told. What crime drama didn’t follow the broken-detective-can’t-abide-by-their-difficult-past cliché in the past five years? The most original crime drama in that time that I can think of is Vigil (2021), but that only gets points for being on a submarine (a very under-utilized dramatic setting in this humble writer’s opinion). But I would give extra credit to Baghdad Central (2020) if anyone besides me had watched it—an honest look at an American occupied Iraq under the guise of a crime-drama.
Still, to take a postmodernist approach to things, it’s not fair to say that any of the animations I mentioned were really “new”, except maybe Kippo, Avatar, Adventure Time, Rick and Morty, and Steven Universe. However, I think it’s important to disclose that at least to me, Arcane was “new”. I know absolutely nothing about the video game that Arcane is based on, League of Legends (2009), except that a lot of people played it. But I am not one of those people, and I loved Arcane all the same. And from what I’ve read online, I’m not in the minority on that position. Often, when something is “new” in live-action, it’s more likely than not to be based on a book or a play, and even in the case of Netflix’s Cowboy Beebop (2021), based on an animation.
I find myself more often than not excited for animation productions over live-action. When it comes to television, whenever I get a recommendation to watch something I very rarely find myself rushing to go see it. I’ve even fallen off keeping up with season 3 of Succession (2018), and I went to the European premiere of the pilot and second episode (admittedly I have since caught up). But when rumblings of a new animated series happen, or comes out and gets critical buzz, I’m tripping over myself or staying up late just to check it out.
Perhaps it’s just my taste, having grown up in America on ‘90s anime and the Warner Brother’s offerings of the early ‘00s, or maybe I’m just bored with the onslaught of cop shows and true-crime stories flooding the landscape of drama and want something different. Arcane seems to be the best of both worlds—a nostalgia trip for a new fantasy world while pushing adult animation even further. Sure, Rick and Morty made it “cool” to like animation again, but comedy and animation have always gone hand and hand in terms of cultural adult-acceptability thanks to Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and Seth McFarland. Even those creators, though, have succumbed to the unavoidable tiring of genre, the gross-out un-PC comedies seemingly attracting fewer viewership each year. The only news coming from them often being from The Simpsons (1989) crying out “we’re STILL here!”.
Arcane, then, is in a privileged position, grabbing at the public consciousness like no other animation since Rick and Morty, and hopefully ushering in a new golden-age for animated-drama. Regardless, if you take away anything from this, it should be that Arcane is really good. You should watch it, and why not give more animations a try? I’m here if you want some recommendations.
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