The history of video adaptations isn’t exactly respectable, and the transition from game to movies has rarely been smooth. No matter how compelling and addictive the gameplay might be, it’s a mammoth task to adapt multiple hours of gameplay into a condensed form, while also crafting a compelling narrative with believable, fleshed-out characters.
Thankfully, then, showrunners Chrisrian Linke and Alex Yee have taken the wise decision to bring League of Legends to the small screen, allowing time for some spectacular worldbuilding that’s benefitted by great voice acting, not to mention a stellar animation style by French studio Fortiche that blends two-dimensional and three-dimensional modelling to create a dynamic and compelling style that allows for some amazing fight scenes and exceptional landscapes. The steampunk underworld of Zaun, while wearing influences from The Matrix, Hellboy and Blade Runner 2049 on its shoulder (one of the goons is named Deckard, presumably in reference to Ridley Scott’s gruff antihero), is exceptional in its apocalyptic details.
Zaun is where we first find orphaned sisters Violet and Powder trying to survive with adoptive father Vander, until an unintended tragedy leads to the sisters’ estrangement amidst the threat of war between Zaun and the prosperous higher city of Piltower, where emerging talent Jayce Talis teams up with inventor Viktor to experiment with the potential powers of arcane technologies. It’s an impressive feat to pull off compelling narratives from a video game that many viewers like myself have no prior knowledge of or interest in. I’ve been invested in the Mario games from a young age, but let’s face it, there’s not much going on there story-wise. Props to Super Mario Bros directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel for trying to do something different with the worldbuilding on that front, but an aged Mario and a gangster Bowser (among many other things) just don’t gel.
Admittedly, it did take me a while to get used to the radical animation style, but that’s more a fault of my own since I haven’t watched an animated film in a while, and my knowledge of anime is fairly limited. The design seems like an eclectic mix of Waltz with Bashir and The Mitchells vs The Machines, both films I’ve really enjoyed in the past, as well as a bit of the spellbinding designs from Bioshock: Infinite added in. With season 2 on its way, Arcane: League of Legends easily takes the spot of the best video game adaptation so far.