Pixel Herald

It all started in November 2021. During a light workout I was looking through my YouTube subs, for something to watch on the side, when I stumbled across a review from Robert Hofmann, one of my favourite German-speaking influencers. The review was for an animated Netflix show I have never heard of before. Arcane. I didn‘t expect much from the video, yet the thumbnail intrigued me. It showed Robert‘s face, pleasantly surprised. And that was enough for me to start the video.

Robert talked about the show, based on League of Legends. Despite me being a big gaming enthusiast, I only slightly brushed with the game before. The gameplay and overall design never caught my interest. But Robert only had good things to stay and ended with an astounding rating, 9 out of 10. That‘s when I decided to give Arcane a try, the show based on a video game I couldn‘t care less about, because I trusted in a YouTuber‘s opinion. And oh boy, I was in for the ride of my life.

The first thing that grabbed my attention was the art style. Something so refreshing and unique, it quite literally brought a smile to my face. You can – and I still stand by this opinion – pause the show at any moment and frame that picture on a wall. No one would notice, because art should be displayed.

I also have to give credit to how the show didn‘t shove exposition down your throat, but left you in the dark, wondering. And it definitely did the trick, made me more interested than any explanation could. In the same breath it‘s just amazing how Arcane delivers on of the greatest strength of any show or movie, the visual part. Show, don‘t tell. That‘s one of the most important rules in audiovisual storytelling. Yet so many projects seem to ignore it. I don’t reckon it’s done out of ignorance, but out of the difficulty of achieving the perfect moment, that speaks for itself. Arcane excels in this discipline. The storytelling and amount of emotion the show conveys without saying a single word, without being bound by a language, universally comprehensive, is still beyond my grasp.

Next to these factors and the show’s incredible music, there are two things that lift Arcane above every other show out there: the characters supported by this amazing story. This keeps me coming back. This keeps me thinking about this animated show at university, keeps me awake when I should sleep and makes me write something like this in the middle of the night. What these characters go through is immensely entertaining and resonates with me on so many levels. The stories of Vander, Isha, Caitly, Jayce, Ekko. Of Piltover and Zaun.

Yet, something lies beneath these great characters, something that burned itself deep into my heart: the story of two sisters being separated and trying to reunite. As someone who has an older brother as well as a younger sister and has very strong bonds to them, the story hits too close to home, too many times. Seeing the fear of losing a sibling come true, broke me. Seeing them do everything in their power to reunite and rooting for them every second of it, just for them to realize they changed too much, filled me with a deep sadness. Three years later, with season two, I didn’t expect the sisters to bury the hatchet, it didn’t seem like it, but somehow they managed. And that’s what makes having a sibling so special for me. This person is there nearly all your life. You may fight, and that quite often, yet you always make up in the end, always support each other when it’s necessary. Because you don’t just have a sibling, you have a friend for life. Someone I couldn’t live without and I wouldn’t have survived without.

I’m probably never going to say these things out loud to my siblings. Unluckily I‘m not the kind of guy to say things like that, even though I should. I don‘t appreciate them as much as I should and I rarely tell them that. Also, my siblings would mock me for this till the end of my days. But that’s the special thing about works of art like Arcane. They make you feel something. They make you understand deeper truths about yourself, about others and about life in general. Doing all of this while being entertained, is just a gift too good to be true.

Maybe, one day, I can convince my brother and my sister to watch this masterpiece. Maybe then they will know how I feel.