There's been some discussion of this on anime forums (as they usually talk about all kinds of animation, not just japanese, as well as a lot of related live action stuff), and in a few other places, just not as much as I would expect. Anyway, that's not really important. What is important is that I'm more than half convinced that we don't need live action any more.
Arcane is better. Thesis follows.
I haven't found any anime that I could really get into for years, now - I think the last one may have been
Gundam Thunderbolt. I discovered Arcane about two weeks ago, binged it immediately, then binged it a second time. Then I watched the 5-part making of video
Bridging the Rift. Yesterday I started watching Arcane for the third time.
There may be spoilers below, though I hope everyone in the world has watched this at least once by now.
I think there's an almost-perfect storm at work to make it so good. Okay, I'm an anime - and animation - fan, so from the start that has me more hyped than other viewers. Watching Bridging the Rift makes it clear that the show makers were all doing it for love, to the extent that they could admit when they couldn't handle something so they went and found someone who could. The talent thrown at this is just amazing, starting with the French animation studio
Fortiche and then going on to great writing, editing, music, arrangement, and all that other stuff. And for a change the management did what they were there for - keeping the production on track, telling them when they had to be better, and backing the team all the way (once the team had convinced them of their dream). There are too many good things in the show to list even a tenth of them.
The animation is amazing. No motion capture just 3D animation, digitally overpainted. As they said, motion-capture gives you realistic movement, and nothing else. The movements and expressions are perfect, subtle and understated or extravagant as needed. The
parkour scenes are some of my favourites. The level of detail in the backgrounds is beautiful, and unlike most animation the quality of finish in the moving elements is up to the same standard. I'm still discovering cool Easter eggs in the backgrounds, if I knew anything about League of Legends the game (I don't) I bet there are a ton of them I haven't even noticed. I laughed when they asked one of the French animators how they achieved the painterly effect, and she answered, "We paint!"
The voice acting is flawless, they really got very good matches for the characters. None of the dialogue is tongue-in-cheek, everything is done straight and seriously in spite of the (frankly rather silly) magic-steampunk game setting so I never broke immersion at any point. In fact there are some really pretty tough, emotional scenes that so far only get more powerful with re-watching.
The music is mind-blowing, though it makes sense once you know that the main brains behind the show is a musician. The songs written for the show are like music videos right there in the episodes. The sound is also very deep and layered, the more I watch it the more I'm picking up on thematic elements whenever Hextech is on screen, or Shimmer, or particular characters. Everything has its own background sound. And there's a stack of AMVs out there where people are cutting together scenes from the show, some of which have rather spiffing timing (
Rasputin is one of my top picks).
The visual storytelling is masterful. So much nuance conveyed without exposition. The opening scene - with no dialogue at all other than Powder singing - reminded me of something out of Alan Moore's Watchmen graphic novel, where the original Niteowl mentions some writing advice he was given on getting the readers invested right away:
"Start with the saddest thing you can think of". My favourite scene is the fight on the bridge between Ekko/Littleman and Jinx/Powder, where their whole relationship background was made clear in just a few seconds of animation switching back-and-forth between their younger selves and the present. And the show is full of that sort of thing, of which we non-players are probably 80% unaware.
I hope the anime industry is watching this closely, because IMO Japan has just lost the crown to France.
