The really interesting thing about Piltover and Zaun, for me at least, is the fact that in the game’s lore, Zaun actually came first. Zaun was a trading city since it has a channel that allows for easier trading routes, but the people in charge got a bit too greedy and wanted to expand the channel, so they used explosives, which of course went pretty badly and unleashed some gas I believe. So the rich people rebuilty their new part of the city higher and left Zaun below with the poor people who cannot afford to rebuild above. Which is how Piltover got it’s name, since the river is named Pilt and they are over it, hence Piltover.
[NO SPOILER] About the animation... Me personally, was most impressed by peoples facial expressions. It's not as flashy as the transporting magic, or the mentioned future fight scene... but it's what made me forget I was watching an animation several times. The facial expressions can be subtle and needed, just an eye flicking and a muscle twitching, or over the top.
I also love that any freeze frame can look like a gorgeously rendered concept art/digital painting - that's something spiderverse as well as klaus have been pushing towards, using digital paintings not as a guide to creating photorealistic scenes, but as a gorgeous artstyle to aspire to achieve in motion. There have been examples before, but it is rare and deserves to be explored more. But combined with what you say, even more than spiderverse, Arcane has shown that stylized visuals could be used to enhance powerful and subtle emotional moments.
I loved watching Silco on my second viewing. Something about how they framed him made it so I was always looking at the scarred side of his face first time through. But when I paid attention to the other side of his face I saw how much artistry went into his expression, and how many emotions crosses his face during the series that I missed because of the scar.
When I was watching Arcane I did think the style would fit with Mistborn perfectly. After Arcane and after this Kickstarter I wouldn't be surprised if a studio was willing to throw crazy money at an animated Sanderson adaptation.
Same! I’ve gotten my entire family to read Mistborn (even my dad, who hasn’t read a fantasy book since… maybe ever lmao) series and everyone’s first thought was this style ish would be the perfect way to showcase Mistborn! (Possibly Stormlight as well, but I haven’t had the chance to read past the first book, so I’m not entirely sure). I’m so glad to see others comment this!
@@charles3840 This day and age any two men sharing 5 seconds of screentime will inevitably be shipped together regardless of if you give the shippers a reason to or not... and sometimes they will be shipped even if they share 0 screentime 😂
Jayce/Viktor fans get shit on constantly but the fact that Sanderson came to that conclusion all by himself is so funny it feels pretty vindicating, it means that the way their dynamic is framed in act 1 can allow for that sort of interpretation easily, it’s not a reach it’s fine the story doesn’t go that direction but some people get so defensive and angry that the ship just exists
@@turtleduck5118 I feel they sort of brought it upon themselves really. I'm not denying that there's a ton of homophobia in the fandom, and it's absolutely not ok when that's the sole reason to dislike the pairing, but there are a lot of toxic shippers tied to this pairing in particular. I've seen one too many shippers invading other ships' spaces (particularly MelJay spaces, obviously), antagonising them, mocking the canon relationship, villainising the characters involved etc. It's just kinda frustrating to be an enjoyer of the canon pairing and constantly being forced to defend it instead of being allowed to enjoy what you do in peace. It's a pretty similar situation as with some ships in the Marvel fandom. The shipping wars are a plague upon the fandom imo.
OOh I'm so excited! Brandon and Dan are talking about ARCANE! Wait, first I have to sit through 25 minutes of you talking about steak?? Well.. at least it that gives me the accurate representation about your podcast.. so here's that.
Arcane is one of those shows that its better to go into blind than have any knowledge of it before hand. Makes it that much more tense and gripping IMO. I look forward to more discussions of this wonderful show.
The original premise of league (which has been written out) was all about "Summoner's" Rift. The players are magic users who summon champions to fight on the rift, as a means to settle disputes between nations. The summoning spell is what allows champions to fight and kill without anyone actually dying, and the length of respawn timers corresponded to the summoners getting tired during long matches!
Funny they think Runeterra is steampunk when there is so much more than that. I hope future seasons get to show the other parts of the world because there is a region for every kind of fiction you like ^^ And most of the lore has advanced a lot thanks to the card game too. Is amazing, probably my favorite world after the Cosmere.
Arcane had 2 "showrunners" one of them is literally the one who directed the music videos the production company did for Riot before, that's why the music fits so well into everything
I'm a big league of legends lore nerd Idk if you guys read these comments but I can tell you league players are mostly thrilled with the show. There are some changes from the established lore that are minor- like ekko is usually shown to be younger than powder instead of about the same age. But I think the love of the world and the quality of the show is so evident that no one can be mad about changes made. Also, there's a ton of world building that's been done for the league world, lots of backgrounds and short stories and art etc. But not much long form storytelling until now. I'd say the piltover in arcane feels very faithful to the world building done before. Also the world is not all steampunk... as different locations give you different flavors of fantasy. So IE if the show had been set in bilgewater instead of piltover, it would be like a Pirates of the Caribbean show. Or demacia is high fantasy, shurima is like Egyptian mythology, etc etc etc And no there's no race of robot people lol
The fact that Arcane has launched TH-cam careers based on examining details, storytelling tropes and the many different connections that it makes, should tell anybody how beloved and well done the series is The ending alone pushes it to a 10
@@rvantong Vi is holding the Silco team on the bridge while Mylo is freeing Vander. Mylo pops the screws one by one, that's the count - and he needs to be done with them all before Vi gets overwhelmed. The progression in the fight isn't how many thugs Vi puts down, it's how many screws Mylo pops.
Zaun is across the river from Piltover. It is like Budapest, where Buda and Pest and separated by the river. The thing is that in Zaun there are regions of huge cracks of the Earth called The Fissures, but that is not the whole of Zaun. That is why Silco talks about "uniting not only The Lanes. The nation of Zaun". At least that is my understanding.
tiny spoilers for ep 4 to 5: The more confusing bit is when a character parkours down into Zaun in episode 4 or 5. They look like they go from Piltover down into Zaun without crossing any bridge.
@@charles3840 Zaun is both the part of the city on the other side of the bridge and the part sunken in the ravines. So, yes, it is possible to just parkour down from piltover into zaun.
Y'all have gotten me interested in food heists, so I went down a Google rabbit hole. I found a saffron heist from a few years ago. Since saffron is worth more than its weight in gold, this one made off with 22lbs and it was worth a bonkers amount of money. Mid six figures, if I remember correctly.
I've accidentally done steaks well-done before, and actually made them good. But we're talking slow roast barbecue, which makes them very tender. Well-done steak isn't usually tender.
As a longtime aficionado of Riot Games, both their games and their media (short form cinematics, music videos, and live shows at eSports events), I didn’t have huge expectations for Arcane, which is weird because I pretty much have liked almost everything they’ve done. However, I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. They were very good at telling the character stories and getting the characters to a point where they’re recognizable as the heroes you play in the game, and they did a good job building out the settings that only existed in lore or in short videos. I don’t know many people who are fans of League of Legends who disliked Arcane at all, and a lot of what I’ve seen from that group is very positive, and that is saying something since the League of Legends community is notoriously difficult to please.
I mean, who's to say that Brandon doesn't ALREADY have a salt-based magic system? The people on Taldain may believe Sand Mastery uses water, but for all we know the dehydration might come from salt being burned up, instead.
About champions vs original characters, as another person going in blind regarding the lore, I was truly surprised that a number of prominent characters, or just flashy designs, weren't actuaklly champions from the game, which shows that they had amazing artists and tons of creative freedom, cause a bunch of them are WILD (notably a certain gangster with a great love for bling). And on top of that, they managed to give cohesion to a bunch of designs that were originally very archetypal and disparate. Regarding the visual style, it is really a visual language that is indeed somewhere between borderlands, dishonored 1, and spiderman into the spiderverse, so while this style doesn't come out of nowhere, those are all still fairly unique designs and have never been used for a series before. I mean you gets similar stuff in a few episodes of love death and robots, in spiderverse, and that's it. I really hope that leads production companies to up their game when it comes to animation, cause some parts of invincible were rough to look at, and there are countless artists who are not given the opportunity to show their best work.
I worked on a construction site with a certain roofer at one point who would ALWAYS have steaks, or ribs, as his lunch. We're talking the big 2" thick cuts, $50 steaks. When we finally asked him how he always ate so well, with the cost of steak being what it is, he told us basically, his uncle always had steaks if we wanted any. $5 a steak. When we asked him how that could be, he told us that his uncle would never say. So yes, there are fences for shoplifted meat products right now in Southern Ontario Canada.
Yes, yes! Omg! You are literally the first people I have heard talk about this! The thumbnails we're so spoilers! I assume they were autogenerated but man. I'd get to the end of the episode and, before I could skip it, is be confronted with a still from the right scene which was the dramatic climax to the cliffhanger from the episode I just watched. It was super annoying!
Woohoo! Brandon, I'm glad you liked the first three episodes and look forward to hearing your take on the rest. And I highly, HIGHLY encourage both you and Dan to check out the TH-cam channel by Schnee, who does tremendously insightful breakdowns of all manner of elements in the show -- story, characters, plot, action, etc.
@@charles3840 mm 9 episodes wouldnt be enough, probably 13, or maybe 10 of 1 hour. Lets take SAO Alicization for example: ~750k words for 47 episodes of 20 mins and still cut stuff. Stormlight books are 380k-450k, this equals to 12-14 episodes of 40 mins (Mistborn era 1 would be 6-8 episodes), or a little more if they try to include as much content as possible. Arcane quality and style would be FANTASTIC, but it is very unlikely to keep it up for several years/seasons. Avatar The Legend of Korra, or Voltron: The Legendary Defender quality is also great and more achievable
@@august4471 i certainly wouldn't exactly be disappointed if studio Mir was to animate stormlight, but if Ufotable did it... Hehe. Making Ufotable agree into producing anything would be a monumental task though, even if their animation is cheap. They're probably being bombarded by thousands of requests on a daily basis and most likely wouldn't care about a random western book author. Sad life.
I loved Arcane! I didn't realize the budget was so high. The episodes are about twice as long as a typical anime, but still the best anime are around $150k per episode so way more per minute. And Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen look amazing on those budgets. If Stormlight or Mistborn was on that level it would be good, doesn't have to be millions per episode. Arcane was just honored at the Annie Awards for animation. They got many of the TV category awards including best TV/media -general audience, best fx, character design, direction, production design, storyboarding, voice acting (voice of Jinx), and writing. Funny thing, I just looked at who won at Critics Choice Awards and Arcane wasn't even nominated... So Marvel's 'What If?' won. It will be interesting to hear Brandon's thoughts after he finishes all of the first season
One of the reasons that makes it so expansive (or at same level as Hollywood studios) is, that they made real 24 FPS handdrawn (besides the common CGI, the producing of music with stars and whole orchestras, voice acting with stars, exceptional sound editing/sound effects [very good 5.1 with surround effects] etc.). All other animes do have many passages with stills (only the mouth or the camera is moving), stuttering 10 FPS to reduce the costs. Even Spiderverse does have such "low cost" passages. Only full 3D animation does have a constantly high frame rate.
@@mullwormyeah Arcane is a whole new level of animation on TV quality... I am thinking if they did Cosmere animated, it would be more like the Castlevania series. Which I think is also very good, and was estimated to be 200-400k per episode
Of COURSE brandon picked up on all of the jayvik subtext............ that was an unbelievably funny bit, but he's right!!! Even the production team had some Opinions on what went unspoken between these two. Now if only Riot listened and gave us something like leona/diana....
As someone who is deep enough in the League of Legends fandom, I can definitely say that Arcane was a roaring success. It hit all of the notes that we wanted from a 9 episode series and it showed the lore that we cared about the characters involved. It expands on different threads that are alluded to in the game, but not really fleshed out anywhere else. More people actually appreciate the show more than the game now, in addition to pulling in newer fans. We are highly anticipating more media like Arcane in the future.
My eyes are so attracted to movement I find myself spending 40 minutes watching Brandon write his signature and now, due to pareidolia, it will forever be a ninja fish...
There is actually a podcast about animation with one of the people that spearheaded the animation in which he says that the budget itself wasn't that much higher than any other piece of animation, but that the whole studio, including the bosses, were animators first and foremost and knew how to make the most out of the budget they had (and also, most likely the 6 years in the making helped)
To be fair, Riot baited us all into this one, and I believe it was on purpose. I assume they chose to nope out of it (in heartbreaking fashion, with Jayce having straight sex right when Viktor gets sick) because *two* gay romances would have been too much, I guess.
I'm hoping the other probable romance is not a fake out. It's still a nasty trope where people are really "just buds" and the writers lead people on, especially the LGBT viewership.
@@charles3840 nope, you can't blame in on em that we don't have the same view of love as them. Kinda like, now you can't show brotherhood or bromance because it is taken as LGBT view? Worse, while would be bad seeing that person's need to discover what they like as the way goes.
@@charles3840 Everyone is hoping for that - it's the main question for season 2, honestly. And unfortunately, the answer depends on how much Riot wants Arcane to be broadcast in more conservative parts of the world - China, in particular. It would be nice if they had the cojones to make the main romance as explicit as they made the secondary one. (In my headcanon, Jayce is bi, and him and Viktor *were* indeed a couple - Jayce just fell for Mel's charm and cunning, both of which she definitely has aplenty. This makes the scene more tragic, it happening just when Viktor needs him the most.)
48:25 Well, that's a stretch. League has a lot of worldbuilding, that you can explore outside of the game (cinematics, comics, biographys, stories etc.). Also, Arcane universe technically isn't even canon, it's definitely more of MCU approach, than what GoT did.
Completely agree, however it's fair to say that the main characters of Arcane's story had quite old lore compared to many of the other regions or new characters so they were pretty bland and unidimensional in the original lore. They did an awesome job changing it and at the same time respecting the base of it.
Uh...not even close. Briefly touched on episode 7 fight animation but spoiled absolutely nothing about the plot of those episodes. Even his confirmation of Brandon's guesses was like you got a good view of things while being wrong about so many key things. He confirmed certain characters and hinted at relationships with people who haven't shown up but not who they are with. If Brandon manages to pick the C/V relationship out of that mention of 2 characters he's seen are a thing then I'd be damn impressed. All he really did was confirm who was and wasn't a character in the game...something any LoL player would know going in and discussed the events of 1-3 and the animation and writing. Brandon left a wide open invitation for him to mention that 4 is mostly about J/V when Brandon was discussing how much he liked the magic side story. He chose not to spoil anything there. At the moment, Brandon still thinks V grows up to be C from the credits. Not even sure it is possible to spoil Arcane because the VA, music, animation and writing is so top-notch. There is always more to see on rewatch, parallels that are only noticed later, and several scenes still hit so hard even knowing they are coming and having seen them. Giving any detail about something is not the same as spoiling it. If it were, back covers of books and dust jackets would have spoiled virtually every book ever written.
Interestingly lots of research has shown that expensive steaks are more enjoyable and taste better in part because of the comparatively high price. Resolution of cognitive dissonance likely at play among other psychological mechanisms
it's so interesting to see people coming to Arcane fresh and calling League a "steampunk world." It's like... yes, it is, but it's also every other fantasy genre. Arcane is focused in tightly on the Steampunk area but that's one of like 15 very distinct settings within the world. It'll be really interesting to see how much they choose to introduce over the course of more seasons or separate shows/movies/whatever
Best steaks are when you are invited to a Cattlemen's Association steak fry. They have raised the beef and all have their own secret spices/sauces that they take to their graves.
In regards to the Renata League of Legends thing, you guys should look into the weird coincidences around Alistair Reynold's Revelation Space series and Bioware's Mass Effect. There are enough similarities in the lore of both and even some names of locations/organizations shared that lead me to think that someone at Bioware definitely read the series when developing the lore for Mass Effect.
I can realize that some people like and prefer very cooked meat. I can accept that. I can not stop calling your meat a hockey puck/lump o' coal/rock or any other potentially hard/burnt/ dark thing. Especially if I cook it.
Maybe but live action might be cheaper and would definitely reach a larger audience. Even with Arcane being a global success and winning 9 Annie's, there are still a ton of people who will simply never watch it because it's animated. Barely managed to get my Dad to watch it and he's the only one in my family who even gave it a shot (and not even a fair one at that since he went in with a lot of biases against it). As long as the story/characters are maintained and the CGI is closer to Dune than Green Lantern, live action would work great.
@@Resticon Mistborn live action? maybe it could work (Though i still prefer it was animated). The Stormlight Archive live action? nah, i don't think it would work very well.
Loved the talk, but Brandon you can't even realise how big and diverse in themes LoL lore is, it is like the a whole cosmere in the same world, Demacia, Noxus, Bilgewater, Shurima, The Shadow Lands, Mount Targon, Freljord, Ionia all those regions are vastly different with each other and have deep and interesting stories around the characters.
I've been cautious about Arcane since I know literally nothing about LOL and isn't interested in the game as a game (tried it once and realized imminently it wasn't for me), but hearing how much Brandon enjoyed it without knowing much about the game sold me on it. I'll at least give it a chance.
I'm a Big DOTA 2 fan, and have nothing but contempt for League of Legends after playing it for a couple of years and losing faith in Riot's game developing ability. Arcane is the best animated show I have seen since Avatar. Riot knocked it out of the park. Even an embittered DOTA 2 fan can recognize and enjoy Arcane's greatness.
I believe the charred on the outside style of cooking steak is called a Pittsburgh. Good steakhouses will let you ask for the the steak to be cooked Pittsburgh and rare on the inside.
It’s wrong, but actually surprisingly easy to steal and get away. These people who basically stare at the camera and are stealing from a place that knows them … it’s nuts
My family (except my dad and me) have the same thing! We think it's tied to their perfect blood pressure, that they actually have consistent low blood pressure and their body compensates with salt cravings.
Magic man is not a character from the game. There's been speculation he's Ryze. However the mage in Arcane is not purple skinned, he uses a staff which Ryze uses a scroll, and the body decorations are completely different.
yeah... you should totally watch Avatar. 4 seasons of 20 episodes of 20 mins each vs 1 season (so far) of 9 episodes of 1 hour each. The difference isn't as big as you're making it
Now I want Streak in the worst way. Medium Well for me, please. Used to hit a place called Timberlodge, great ambiance, always got the food right, and the appetizer was little fresh-baked loaves of bread on a cutting board with a tub of butter. Heavenly.
Brandon, I here you about the cost of a TV show, however Counterpoint. One Punch Man S1 and Demon Slayer S2 both had a budget of about 1-1.5 Mil per season. If you have seen them, you will know, that a lot of that budget did not go into the animation, but rather the time and raw passion the artists had to bring that work to life. This is a thing that in animation is far, far more important than the budget. Budget is important of course, but passion and love of a work will trump it every single time.
Yes, he finally watched it.
you here?
didnt expect that
Cats for kobe
A wild travis
Do another hot tub stream already.
FINALLY!
Brandon Sanderson reviewing Arcane? Is this a crossover episode of my only interests?
If they discuss Breaking Bad with the writers of Arcane as guests then it would encompass all of my core interests. :P
Lol I was thinking the same thing
The really interesting thing about Piltover and Zaun, for me at least, is the fact that in the game’s lore, Zaun actually came first. Zaun was a trading city since it has a channel that allows for easier trading routes, but the people in charge got a bit too greedy and wanted to expand the channel, so they used explosives, which of course went pretty badly and unleashed some gas I believe. So the rich people rebuilty their new part of the city higher and left Zaun below with the poor people who cannot afford to rebuild above. Which is how Piltover got it’s name, since the river is named Pilt and they are over it, hence Piltover.
They start talking about riot a bit at 19:45 and arcane at 25:30
Youre a prophet
Not all heroes wear capes.
thanks
[NO SPOILER] About the animation... Me personally, was most impressed by peoples facial expressions. It's not as flashy as the transporting magic, or the mentioned future fight scene... but it's what made me forget I was watching an animation several times. The facial expressions can be subtle and needed, just an eye flicking and a muscle twitching, or over the top.
I also love that any freeze frame can look like a gorgeously rendered concept art/digital painting - that's something spiderverse as well as klaus have been pushing towards, using digital paintings not as a guide to creating photorealistic scenes, but as a gorgeous artstyle to aspire to achieve in motion. There have been examples before, but it is rare and deserves to be explored more. But combined with what you say, even more than spiderverse, Arcane has shown that stylized visuals could be used to enhance powerful and subtle emotional moments.
I loved watching Silco on my second viewing. Something about how they framed him made it so I was always looking at the scarred side of his face first time through.
But when I paid attention to the other side of his face I saw how much artistry went into his expression, and how many emotions crosses his face during the series that I missed because of the scar.
When I was watching Arcane I did think the style would fit with Mistborn perfectly. After Arcane and after this Kickstarter I wouldn't be surprised if a studio was willing to throw crazy money at an animated Sanderson adaptation.
Same! I’ve gotten my entire family to read Mistborn (even my dad, who hasn’t read a fantasy book since… maybe ever lmao) series and everyone’s first thought was this style ish would be the perfect way to showcase Mistborn! (Possibly Stormlight as well, but I haven’t had the chance to read past the first book, so I’m not entirely sure). I’m so glad to see others comment this!
@@TriggerBud I was in the middle of reading rythem of war when I watched aracane and I totally think it's artstyle can be made to fit stormlight
Brandon, idk if you know this, but the history of Salt is FASCINATING. It’s like one of the worlds coolest commodities
I love how Dan keeps smirking, when Brandon keeps theory crafting, when he knows what will happen. 🤣
Sanderson shipping Jayce and Viktor had me laughing so hard.
I like how he came up with it completely independent as well. Didn't need to look at forums, he could just tell it was a possibility.
@@charles3840 This day and age any two men sharing 5 seconds of screentime will inevitably be shipped together regardless of if you give the shippers a reason to or not... and sometimes they will be shipped even if they share 0 screentime 😂
Jayce/Viktor fans get shit on constantly but the fact that Sanderson came to that conclusion all by himself is so funny
it feels pretty vindicating, it means that the way their dynamic is framed in act 1 can allow for that sort of interpretation easily, it’s not a reach
it’s fine the story doesn’t go that direction but some people get so defensive and angry that the ship just exists
@@turtleduck5118 I feel they sort of brought it upon themselves really. I'm not denying that there's a ton of homophobia in the fandom, and it's absolutely not ok when that's the sole reason to dislike the pairing, but there are a lot of toxic shippers tied to this pairing in particular. I've seen one too many shippers invading other ships' spaces (particularly MelJay spaces, obviously), antagonising them, mocking the canon relationship, villainising the characters involved etc. It's just kinda frustrating to be an enjoyer of the canon pairing and constantly being forced to defend it instead of being allowed to enjoy what you do in peace. It's a pretty similar situation as with some ships in the Marvel fandom. The shipping wars are a plague upon the fandom imo.
TASTE
OOh I'm so excited! Brandon and Dan are talking about ARCANE!
Wait, first I have to sit through 25 minutes of you talking about steak??
Well.. at least it that gives me the accurate representation about your podcast.. so here's that.
Dan: A group of thieves has stolen 20 crates of red bull from my local supermarket. I don’t know how these people sleep at night.
Primo dad joke
Arcane is one of those shows that its better to go into blind than have any knowledge of it before hand. Makes it that much more tense and gripping IMO.
I look forward to more discussions of this wonderful show.
The original premise of league (which has been written out) was all about "Summoner's" Rift. The players are magic users who summon champions to fight on the rift, as a means to settle disputes between nations. The summoning spell is what allows champions to fight and kill without anyone actually dying, and the length of respawn timers corresponded to the summoners getting tired during long matches!
Funny they think Runeterra is steampunk when there is so much more than that. I hope future seasons get to show the other parts of the world because there is a region for every kind of fiction you like ^^
And most of the lore has advanced a lot thanks to the card game too. Is amazing, probably my favorite world after the Cosmere.
28:00 mins Joke's on you Dan! I skipped to the first mention of Arcane! muhahaha
Thanks my guy!!
Thank you!
Arcane had 2 "showrunners" one of them is literally the one who directed the music videos the production company did for Riot before, that's why the music fits so well into everything
The fact that Dan had a glowing green eyeball staring at him while he was sleeping throughout his college years really explains a lot.
I'm a big league of legends lore nerd
Idk if you guys read these comments but I can tell you league players are mostly thrilled with the show. There are some changes from the established lore that are minor- like ekko is usually shown to be younger than powder instead of about the same age. But I think the love of the world and the quality of the show is so evident that no one can be mad about changes made.
Also, there's a ton of world building that's been done for the league world, lots of backgrounds and short stories and art etc. But not much long form storytelling until now. I'd say the piltover in arcane feels very faithful to the world building done before.
Also the world is not all steampunk... as different locations give you different flavors of fantasy. So IE if the show had been set in bilgewater instead of piltover, it would be like a Pirates of the Caribbean show. Or demacia is high fantasy, shurima is like Egyptian mythology, etc etc etc
And no there's no race of robot people lol
The fact that Arcane has launched TH-cam careers based on examining details, storytelling tropes and the many different connections that it makes, should tell anybody how beloved and well done the series is
The ending alone pushes it to a 10
Yeah. It's very crazy how much deep analyzing of the show is on yt.
Episode 3 of Arcane reminded me of Sanderson when he talked about making fight scenes exciting by counting something (Vander's cuffs) in his lectures
What do you mean, counting something?
@@rvantong Vi is holding the Silco team on the bridge while Mylo is freeing Vander. Mylo pops the screws one by one, that's the count - and he needs to be done with them all before Vi gets overwhelmed. The progression in the fight isn't how many thugs Vi puts down, it's how many screws Mylo pops.
@@laurentbercot3465 Thanks. Do you know in which lecture Brandon talks about this?
Zaun is across the river from Piltover. It is like Budapest, where Buda and Pest and separated by the river.
The thing is that in Zaun there are regions of huge cracks of the Earth called The Fissures, but that is not the whole of Zaun. That is why Silco talks about "uniting not only The Lanes. The nation of Zaun".
At least that is my understanding.
tiny spoilers for ep 4 to 5:
The more confusing bit is when a character parkours down into Zaun in episode 4 or 5. They look like they go from Piltover down into Zaun without crossing any bridge.
@@charles3840 Zaun is both the part of the city on the other side of the bridge and the part sunken in the ravines. So, yes, it is possible to just parkour down from piltover into zaun.
Y'all have gotten me interested in food heists, so I went down a Google rabbit hole. I found a saffron heist from a few years ago. Since saffron is worth more than its weight in gold, this one made off with 22lbs and it was worth a bonkers amount of money. Mid six figures, if I remember correctly.
Food heists are the single greatest category of news stories.
"There's no one willing to give me 10 million per episode to make a Cosmere animation"
Well he could make three episodes now ^^
I've accidentally done steaks well-done before, and actually made them good. But we're talking slow roast barbecue, which makes them very tender. Well-done steak isn't usually tender.
As a longtime aficionado of Riot Games, both their games and their media (short form cinematics, music videos, and live shows at eSports events), I didn’t have huge expectations for Arcane, which is weird because I pretty much have liked almost everything they’ve done. However, I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. They were very good at telling the character stories and getting the characters to a point where they’re recognizable as the heroes you play in the game, and they did a good job building out the settings that only existed in lore or in short videos. I don’t know many people who are fans of League of Legends who disliked Arcane at all, and a lot of what I’ve seen from that group is very positive, and that is saying something since the League of Legends community is notoriously difficult to please.
I mean, who's to say that Brandon doesn't ALREADY have a salt-based magic system? The people on Taldain may believe Sand Mastery uses water, but for all we know the dehydration might come from salt being burned up, instead.
About champions vs original characters, as another person going in blind regarding the lore, I was truly surprised that a number of prominent characters, or just flashy designs, weren't actuaklly champions from the game, which shows that they had amazing artists and tons of creative freedom, cause a bunch of them are WILD (notably a certain gangster with a great love for bling). And on top of that, they managed to give cohesion to a bunch of designs that were originally very archetypal and disparate.
Regarding the visual style, it is really a visual language that is indeed somewhere between borderlands, dishonored 1, and spiderman into the spiderverse, so while this style doesn't come out of nowhere, those are all still fairly unique designs and have never been used for a series before. I mean you gets similar stuff in a few episodes of love death and robots, in spiderverse, and that's it. I really hope that leads production companies to up their game when it comes to animation, cause some parts of invincible were rough to look at, and there are countless artists who are not given the opportunity to show their best work.
I can’t wait to hear his thoughts on the entire season. :) SUCH a tremendous show!!
Came for Arcane, stayed for the steaks.
I worked on a construction site with a certain roofer at one point who would ALWAYS have steaks, or ribs, as his lunch. We're talking the big 2" thick cuts, $50 steaks. When we finally asked him how he always ate so well, with the cost of steak being what it is, he told us basically, his uncle always had steaks if we wanted any. $5 a steak. When we asked him how that could be, he told us that his uncle would never say.
So yes, there are fences for shoplifted meat products right now in Southern Ontario Canada.
Dan said quite a few spoilers for someone who didn't want to spoil anything
Yes, yes! Omg! You are literally the first people I have heard talk about this! The thumbnails we're so spoilers! I assume they were autogenerated but man. I'd get to the end of the episode and, before I could skip it, is be confronted with a still from the right scene which was the dramatic climax to the cliffhanger from the episode I just watched. It was super annoying!
Woohoo! Brandon, I'm glad you liked the first three episodes and look forward to hearing your take on the rest. And I highly, HIGHLY encourage both you and Dan to check out the TH-cam channel by Schnee, who does tremendously insightful breakdowns of all manner of elements in the show -- story, characters, plot, action, etc.
Brandon should just do another fundraiser, he’s already raised the budget of the first 3 episodes of Arcane with the Kickstarter lol
I could see a storm light book fitting into about nine episodes, if they had the same amount of time to storyboard the season.
@@charles3840 mm 9 episodes wouldnt be enough, probably 13, or maybe 10 of 1 hour.
Lets take SAO Alicization for example: ~750k words for 47 episodes of 20 mins and still cut stuff.
Stormlight books are 380k-450k, this equals to 12-14 episodes of 40 mins (Mistborn era 1 would be 6-8 episodes), or a little more if they try to include as much content as possible.
Arcane quality and style would be FANTASTIC, but it is very unlikely to keep it up for several years/seasons. Avatar The Legend of Korra, or Voltron: The Legendary Defender quality is also great and more achievable
I would fund 100% for them to make Mistborn era 1 or Stormlight, specially the first one which is closer in looks to Zaun would be gorgeous.
@@august4471 i certainly wouldn't exactly be disappointed if studio Mir was to animate stormlight, but if Ufotable did it... Hehe.
Making Ufotable agree into producing anything would be a monumental task though, even if their animation is cheap. They're probably being bombarded by thousands of requests on a daily basis and most likely wouldn't care about a random western book author. Sad life.
@@Dual_Ralle agreed, it could be done if the task is divided by two or more studios
I loved Arcane! I didn't realize the budget was so high. The episodes are about twice as long as a typical anime, but still the best anime are around $150k per episode so way more per minute. And Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen look amazing on those budgets. If Stormlight or Mistborn was on that level it would be good, doesn't have to be millions per episode. Arcane was just honored at the Annie Awards for animation. They got many of the TV category awards including best TV/media -general audience, best fx, character design, direction, production design, storyboarding, voice acting (voice of Jinx), and writing. Funny thing, I just looked at who won at Critics Choice Awards and Arcane wasn't even nominated... So Marvel's 'What If?' won. It will be interesting to hear Brandon's thoughts after he finishes all of the first season
One of the reasons that makes it so expansive (or at same level as Hollywood studios) is, that they made real 24 FPS handdrawn (besides the common CGI, the producing of music with stars and whole orchestras, voice acting with stars, exceptional sound editing/sound effects [very good 5.1 with surround effects] etc.). All other animes do have many passages with stills (only the mouth or the camera is moving), stuttering 10 FPS to reduce the costs. Even Spiderverse does have such "low cost" passages.
Only full 3D animation does have a constantly high frame rate.
@@mullwormyeah Arcane is a whole new level of animation on TV quality... I am thinking if they did Cosmere animated, it would be more like the Castlevania series. Which I think is also very good, and was estimated to be 200-400k per episode
I am excited for them to talk about the next acts mostly because it'll be really funny if Brandon can't remember Vi's name.
I need this popcorn magic system, and the salt one in the same book!
COWBOY BEBOP EIN SHIRT! You are gonna carry that weight Brandon...
Brandon Sanderson discussing ARCANE?
Damn.. Didn't expect it.
Haha holy shit the Renata Glasc thing is super fascinating and I didn't know Riot offered Sanderson to make a character for their game too...
FINALLY TALKING ABOUT ARCANE?!
GUYS ITS HAPPENING
Of COURSE brandon picked up on all of the jayvik subtext............ that was an unbelievably funny bit, but he's right!!! Even the production team had some Opinions on what went unspoken between these two. Now if only Riot listened and gave us something like leona/diana....
As someone who is deep enough in the League of Legends fandom, I can definitely say that Arcane was a roaring success. It hit all of the notes that we wanted from a 9 episode series and it showed the lore that we cared about the characters involved. It expands on different threads that are alluded to in the game, but not really fleshed out anywhere else. More people actually appreciate the show more than the game now, in addition to pulling in newer fans. We are highly anticipating more media like Arcane in the future.
My eyes are so attracted to movement I find myself spending 40 minutes watching Brandon write his signature and now, due to pareidolia, it will forever be a ninja fish...
Well, I learned a new word today. I did not know there was a name for that.
On the topic of "Robot man" fairly certain he mentions that his 'race' no longer exists as a consequence of magic gone wrong.
Loved this discussion and I am really looking forward to them discussing the next couple of episodes.
yesss, Brandon sees the Jayce-Viktor ship
There is actually a podcast about animation with one of the people that spearheaded the animation in which he says that the budget itself wasn't that much higher than any other piece of animation, but that the whole studio, including the bosses, were animators first and foremost and knew how to make the most out of the budget they had (and also, most likely the 6 years in the making helped)
42:03 Even Brandon thought Jayce and Viktor would be a couple. Lol
To be fair, Riot baited us all into this one, and I believe it was on purpose. I assume they chose to nope out of it (in heartbreaking fashion, with Jayce having straight sex right when Viktor gets sick) because *two* gay romances would have been too much, I guess.
Wait. They werent ? Though his love scenes happened out of the screen
I'm hoping the other probable romance is not a fake out. It's still a nasty trope where people are really "just buds" and the writers lead people on, especially the LGBT viewership.
@@charles3840 nope, you can't blame in on em that we don't have the same view of love as them. Kinda like, now you can't show brotherhood or bromance because it is taken as LGBT view? Worse, while would be bad seeing that person's need to discover what they like as the way goes.
@@charles3840 Everyone is hoping for that - it's the main question for season 2, honestly. And unfortunately, the answer depends on how much Riot wants Arcane to be broadcast in more conservative parts of the world - China, in particular. It would be nice if they had the cojones to make the main romance as explicit as they made the secondary one.
(In my headcanon, Jayce is bi, and him and Viktor *were* indeed a couple - Jayce just fell for Mel's charm and cunning, both of which she definitely has aplenty. This makes the scene more tragic, it happening just when Viktor needs him the most.)
"We're going to put Arcane in the title so people will sit through 25 minutes of us talking about steak" I feel called out
Lol for someone who is phenomenal at names in his stories it's funny to see Brandon having no idea who to call who or who to call what in Arcane XD.
FINALLY. I've been waiting for you to watch it
48:25 Well, that's a stretch. League has a lot of worldbuilding, that you can explore outside of the game (cinematics, comics, biographys, stories etc.). Also, Arcane universe technically isn't even canon, it's definitely more of MCU approach, than what GoT did.
Completely agree, however it's fair to say that the main characters of Arcane's story had quite old lore compared to many of the other regions or new characters so they were pretty bland and unidimensional in the original lore. They did an awesome job changing it and at the same time respecting the base of it.
I think dan himself has an out with the fact that he specified GAME prior, and if you just count the game and not side stuff yeah i think i agree
I'm reading Final Empire for the first time (also my first Sanderson novel), and I keep picturing Vin like Vi.
God imagine a Brandon Sanderson created champ, like goddamn I’d main them immediately
Dan: "I won't give you spoliers"
*proceeds to spoil the shit out of the show*
Uh...not even close. Briefly touched on episode 7 fight animation but spoiled absolutely nothing about the plot of those episodes. Even his confirmation of Brandon's guesses was like you got a good view of things while being wrong about so many key things. He confirmed certain characters and hinted at relationships with people who haven't shown up but not who they are with. If Brandon manages to pick the C/V relationship out of that mention of 2 characters he's seen are a thing then I'd be damn impressed. All he really did was confirm who was and wasn't a character in the game...something any LoL player would know going in and discussed the events of 1-3 and the animation and writing. Brandon left a wide open invitation for him to mention that 4 is mostly about J/V when Brandon was discussing how much he liked the magic side story. He chose not to spoil anything there. At the moment, Brandon still thinks V grows up to be C from the credits. Not even sure it is possible to spoil Arcane because the VA, music, animation and writing is so top-notch. There is always more to see on rewatch, parallels that are only noticed later, and several scenes still hit so hard even knowing they are coming and having seen them. Giving any detail about something is not the same as spoiling it. If it were, back covers of books and dust jackets would have spoiled virtually every book ever written.
I just finished mr monster this morning. I was so disturbed, but I couldn't stop reading.
I just need Brandon to know that while Jayce and Viktor might not be a couple, that doesn't stop us from shipping them and he is welcome to join us.
43:28
It's midgar and the slums, although the "Midgar" here is technically a series of plates.
Interestingly lots of research has shown that expensive steaks are more enjoyable and taste better in part because of the comparatively high price. Resolution of cognitive dissonance likely at play among other psychological mechanisms
Tbh, the steak tangents are pretty good, and I didn't even notice that this is an Arcane episode.
Oho! Now if we could JUST get him to squeeze in Avatar someday we could all die happily ever after!
it's so interesting to see people coming to Arcane fresh and calling League a "steampunk world." It's like... yes, it is, but it's also every other fantasy genre. Arcane is focused in tightly on the Steampunk area but that's one of like 15 very distinct settings within the world. It'll be really interesting to see how much they choose to introduce over the course of more seasons or separate shows/movies/whatever
The biggest reason I got hooked on Arcane was the animation style. So cool and different!
BRANDON THE JAYCE AND VIKTOR SHIPPER WE LOVE TO SEE IT
The 5 minutes straight of steak talk has me so hungry right now
Actually, from what I understand they are turning Silco into a character in the games so they might actually bring other people into the games as well
42:00 it's my understanding that they never date or marry but DO get extremely divorced
They were released in three episode batches. Each being called an "act" so act 1 was ep 1-3 and there's act 2 and act 3
Dessert towers were torn down a few years back, but that's where I spent my freshman year too.
Best steaks are when you are invited to a Cattlemen's Association steak fry. They have raised the beef and all have their own secret spices/sauces that they take to their graves.
In regards to the Renata League of Legends thing, you guys should look into the weird coincidences around Alistair Reynold's Revelation Space series and Bioware's Mass Effect. There are enough similarities in the lore of both and even some names of locations/organizations shared that lead me to think that someone at Bioware definitely read the series when developing the lore for Mass Effect.
I can realize that some people like and prefer very cooked meat. I can accept that.
I can not stop calling your meat a hockey puck/lump o' coal/rock or any other potentially hard/burnt/ dark thing. Especially if I cook it.
glad to hear I'm not the only one who thought Jayce and Viktor would get together after the time skip
I feel like Brandon’s series are more animation oriented with the physics defying attacks. But live action could work.
Maybe but live action might be cheaper and would definitely reach a larger audience. Even with Arcane being a global success and winning 9 Annie's, there are still a ton of people who will simply never watch it because it's animated. Barely managed to get my Dad to watch it and he's the only one in my family who even gave it a shot (and not even a fair one at that since he went in with a lot of biases against it). As long as the story/characters are maintained and the CGI is closer to Dune than Green Lantern, live action would work great.
I feel like breaking that mold is why more people should invest in animated adaptions
@@Resticon Mistborn live action? maybe it could work (Though i still prefer it was animated). The Stormlight Archive live action? nah, i don't think it would work very well.
Him talking about dbd makes me love these humans
Loved the talk, but Brandon you can't even realise how big and diverse in themes LoL lore is, it is like the a whole cosmere in the same world, Demacia, Noxus, Bilgewater, Shurima, The Shadow Lands, Mount Targon, Freljord, Ionia all those regions are vastly different with each other and have deep and interesting stories around the characters.
I've been cautious about Arcane since I know literally nothing about LOL and isn't interested in the game as a game (tried it once and realized imminently it wasn't for me), but hearing how much Brandon enjoyed it without knowing much about the game sold me on it. I'll at least give it a chance.
Other authors: wine tasting.
BYU authors: popcorn tasting.
I'm a Big DOTA 2 fan, and have nothing but contempt for League of Legends after playing it for a couple of years and losing faith in Riot's game developing ability. Arcane is the best animated show I have seen since Avatar. Riot knocked it out of the park. Even an embittered DOTA 2 fan can recognize and enjoy Arcane's greatness.
Pretty sure it has been mentioned. A large amount of heisted food goes into hotels or back into service industry.
I believe the charred on the outside style of cooking steak is called a Pittsburgh. Good steakhouses will let you ask for the the steak to be cooked Pittsburgh and rare on the inside.
I hope for a Demacia season with Lux and Garen.
Dan, I must say-your lack of research into that food heist was a gigantic missed-steak.
It’s wrong, but actually surprisingly easy to steal and get away. These people who basically stare at the camera and are stealing from a place that knows them … it’s nuts
25:22 for Arcane talk
My family (except my dad and me) have the same thing! We think it's tied to their perfect blood pressure, that they actually have consistent low blood pressure and their body compensates with salt cravings.
Magic man is not a character from the game. There's been speculation he's Ryze. However the mage in Arcane is not purple skinned, he uses a staff which Ryze uses a scroll, and the body decorations are completely different.
yeah... you should totally watch Avatar. 4 seasons of 20 episodes of 20 mins each vs 1 season (so far) of 9 episodes of 1 hour each. The difference isn't as big as you're making it
ATLA is 3 seasons, not 4. Someone tell him
Now I want Streak in the worst way. Medium Well for me, please. Used to hit a place called Timberlodge, great ambiance, always got the food right, and the appetizer was little fresh-baked loaves of bread on a cutting board with a tub of butter. Heavenly.
I can't believe we live in the timeline where Brandon did NOT create a League champion. Is it too late T T
Rainbow pop corn mix & lady fingers are excellent. Amish popcorn is excellent. Many varieties.
Going out in style is pretty good.
Wait, has Brandon seen Attack on Titan?? It would be awesome to have him analyse "magic system" of AoT
Brandon, I here you about the cost of a TV show, however Counterpoint. One Punch Man S1 and Demon Slayer S2 both had a budget of about 1-1.5 Mil per season.
If you have seen them, you will know, that a lot of that budget did not go into the animation, but rather the time and raw passion the artists had to bring that work to life. This is a thing that in animation is far, far more important than the budget.
Budget is important of course, but passion and love of a work will trump it every single time.
Waiting for Godot food heist. Yes. Thank you, Dan.
Dan denying that a race of robot people exist had me upset and lobbying on behalf of Blitzcrank and Oriana. 👿
Magic man who saved Jayce is not confirmed to be a character from the game. There are theories who that is but there is nothing definitive
Adoooonalsiiiiium
"Are the two pretty boys who find magic a couple?" questions that make tumblr users kiss you and league players try to hit your vitals