Arcane Review

Every frame is worked. The studio paints textures directly onto three dimensional models, so the result looks like moving illustration rather than rendered plastic, and the fight choreography, the smoke, the way light falls through the undercity's grates, are all doing character work rather than showing off. The story is even better. Vi and Powder are separated by a catastrophe that is nobody's fault and everybody's, and the series follows both of them for years without ever choosing a villain, so the eventual collision between a topside enforcer and the wreckage her sister became is genuinely tragic.

Hailee Steinfeld and Ella Purnell are excellent, and Jinx's unravelling is written with real understanding of what untreated psychosis actually looks like. The supporting cast, particularly Silco and Jayce, are given the arguments rather than the speeches. Its one weakness is the second season, which compresses a great deal of plot into nine episodes, introduces a cosmic dimension the grounded story did not need, and resolves two relationships in less time than it spent building them.