Coulda, shoulda, woulda
Arcane, Riot’s new Netflix show based on the lore of the League of Legends universe, has been nothing short of a hit since its release a few weeks ago. It’s garnered nearly universal praise across the internet, and is currently sitting with a 9.5 on Metacritic. Just when we thought we had heard everyone’s take on the show, though, none other than famed game developer Hideo Kojima took to Twitter to let us know about his feelings on Arcane.
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I've watched four episodes of "Arcane". This is awesome! It's great! I was invited to a preview before it was released, and I'm sorry I turned it down. pic.twitter.com/Grm0mTTIMz— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) November 28, 2021
There’s certainly nothing ambiguous about saying “This is awesome! It’s great!” At this point, Kojima is best known as one of the greatest storytellers in games, so this is tremendously high praise coming from him. I just know the folks over at Riot have to be stoked to see this.
The real kicker from this tweet, though, is that Kojima didn’t just let us in on his opinion of the show — he also divulged the fact that he was invited to a preview of Arcane before it aired, but decided to pass on it at the time, and now regrets that decision. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was just too busy to go, but I’m sure the positive attention the show has gotten on social media helped bring it to Kojima’s attention.
In another tweet in the same thread, he goes on to call the show a “digital video achievement between realism and art,” likening it to other animated shows and movies such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Love, Death & Robots, and Witness.
I can’t help but agree with Kojima here, not only because I am also a proponent of highly stylized animation, but also because I was reluctant to try Arcane and ended up really, really enjoying it. My own hesitancy came from the fact that I had only ever played League of Legends once and wasn’t familiar with any of the lore, so I assumed that I wouldn’t be interested in the world of the show. There’s no way to know what Kojima’s reasoning was for not turning up to that preview, but I’m glad we were both able to overcome our reluctance and give the show a fair shot.
