Awesome / Arcane

Vi stands for violence!

Episode 1 - Welcome to the Playground

• Vi's gang gets ambushed for their loot, after they just ran for their lives from the Enforcers. They then proceed to demolish their opponents. At the end, Deckard won't even stab Vi when he has a knife and she's unarmed. She even impresses upon him what a bad idea trying to use it would be.
  Vi: You wanna see how that ends?
  • Claggor uses his strength, weight, and fighting prowess to take down not one but two of Deckard's goons.
  • While Mylo may have needed help with taking down his respective opponent, he still gets a mention for two reasons: First, he lands a few good blows on his said opponent, showing he's not just all talk. Second, tying into the first reason, one would assume that someone as braggy and jerkass as Mylo would just act like a Dirty Coward, but he doesn't. He stays to help his siblings against the opposing gang. He may be something of an asshole, but he is not a coward.
• Vander establishing his credentials as the man who runs the Last Drop. When a pair of crooks try to stiff Huck, then threaten violence when he refuses the new price, Vander casually strolls over and sets them straight without so much as raising his voice.
  Vander: Bit of advice: don't threaten the man who pours the drinks.
  [Cut to the entirety of the Last Drop, silently shooting a Death Glare at the thugs.]
• After Mylo complains about Powder one time too many, Vi shuts him up by pointing out the mistakes he made during the heist, like picking fights with the group when they needed to focus and telling a passerby that they had a nice haul, and tells him that he needs to learn when to shut the hell up. Big Sister Instinct in action!

Episode 2 - Some Mysteries Are Better Left Unsolved

• The opening scene, with the mysterious mage saving a younger Jayce and his mother during a violent blizzard by teleporting them to safety. This marks the moment when Jayce becomes fascinated with magic, and it's easy to see why.
• Vi beating her own high score on the arcade sparring robot, demonstrating her genuine skill at boxing, both offensively and defensively. Even better? Of the top 10 spots, she holds the top 8, with Claggor having the other two.
• In the same vein, Powder absolutely crushes Mylo at the target shooting game, scoring at least 20 perfect shots in a row. And this is after Mylo insulted her again about being a liability on jobs.

Episode 3 - The Base Violence Necessary For Change

• Viktor and Jayce finishing their experiments and proving that hextech is viable.
• With Vander locked in a chair, Mylo busy getting him out, and Claggor busy digging through the wall, it falls to Vi to Hold the Line of a narrow catwalk. She puts on Vander's gauntlets (which are too big for her) and then proceeds to kick the asses of a dozen experienced adults. She even makes a decent showing against Deckard on the Super Serum, though he does beat her in the end.
  • Credit where it's due, Mylo gets the cuffs off of Vander and Claggor smashes a hole in a wall. They all contributed their skills to rescuing Vander.
• The detonation of Powder's hex-crystal bomb might be a horrific tragedy, but damn if it isn't awe-inspiring.
  • Adding to this is that she's just a pre-teen girl - and yet she was able to figure out what had happened to cause the earlier explosion and create a near-perfect delivery method in just a matter of minutes. If only this was acknowledged by Vi and her family beforehand, they would've freed Vander - and more!
• Sevika knocks Silco out of the way of the Hextech explosion, trying to save her employer at the risk of her own life and ultimately costing her an arm.
• After the explosion, Vander defends Vi against everyone else, with even less than she had, and almost takes down Deckard... until Silco stabs him in the back. Vander still almost chokes him to death.
  Silco: I knew you still had it in you.
• Silco made one mistake with Vander: He tossed him over the side, onto the vials of Super Serum. Vander jumps back up, three times his size, and snaps Deckard's neck like a twig. The only reason Silco survives is because Vander has to choose between killing him and saving Vi.

Episode 4 - Happy Progress Day

• Jayce and Viktor have not grown complacent with merely proving Hextech can work. Since the timeskip, Hexgates have been created that can make airships travel across the world at accelerated speed. And on Progress Day, they show Heimerdinger that the once dangerously unstable magic crystals have since been stabilized; Jayce confidently swings a hammer down on a now smooth, polished Gemstone and all that happens is a harmless flash of light. And the two have gone on to design Atlas Gauntlets and the Hex Claw with this technology.
• Jinx's reintroduction to the story is impressive both for her and the Firelights:
  • On the Firelights' side, they swoop into a smuggle of Shimmer with hoverboards and effortlessly restrain all of Silco's thugs on deck, including Sevika, with grenades that trap them briefly in crystals. And they do it all with serious style.
  • As for Jinx, two Firelights head down into the cargo to look for more Shimmer. The door locks behind them with familiar graffiti, and what they find is a swing saying "BOOM". Next thing you know, the poor guys have grenades sticking to them, an explosion sounds out, and the door pops open to release all of the smoke. And guess who saunters out of the cloud, nonchalantly blowing a strand of hair away from her eye?
    Jinx: Hi.
• Despite her mother conspiring with the sheriff to keep her out of harm's way, Caitlyn proves to be an excellent detective, expertly canvassing the scene and finding the criminal hiding belowdecks. Later, she is shown to have a conspiracy board that has almost zeroed in on Silco.
• When Jayce's perfected hextech crystal is stolen, he immediately suggests shutting down all hextech in order to keep the criminals contained and make sure everything is resolved as quickly as possible. He decides that his life's work and livelihood is less important than the safety of the people. The council is so impressed that they add a new seat just for him so that he'll have a vote in the future.
• Vi's re-introduction to the plot. Caitlyn wants to talk to the prisoner she discovered in the aftermath of the Firelight raid, but is informed there was an altercation. Vi got in a fight with a man twice her size and broke his jaw. Given said man is one of the more prominent surviving members of Silco's gang from that ill-fated fight at the Cannery, and Vi kicked his ass back then when she was just a teenager, now she's older and stronger the rematch is implied to be even more one-sided in her favour. Even better, since Marcus obscured Vi's survival, all the members of Silco's gang think she's dead, giving the poor sod the fright of his life when she sees what is basically a pissed-off vengeful ghost from the past bearing down on him from out of nowhere, and the look in his eyes shows he knows he's screwed. When Caitlyn goes to look for who beat up her prisoner, she finds Vi exercising by punching the stone wall of her cell.

Episode 5 - Everyone Wants To Be My Enemy

• Caitlyn wins a shooting contest when she was younger, only she figures out during the celebration that her opponent, officer Grayson, had let her claim the last shot. She confronts the older woman about it, assuming her parents had bribed her, but Grayson explains to the girl that, no, there wasn't any payoff and she'd simply been impressed enough that she decided Caitlyn had earned the win. Impressive for both women.
• Vi's casual decision to re-introduce herself to Zaun and the Lanes by taking an acrobatic Le Parkour free-run across rooftops and catwalks, leaping over gaps and sliding down ladders at breakneck speed, glorying in being alive and free to move about again.
  • An Offscreen Moment of Awesome for Powder as well. When Caitlyn complains that trying to follow Vi "almost got [her] killed," Vi casually dismisses her with "My little sister could do that when she was seven." For all that Powder may have been the least valuable member of Vi's team, she is still a true denizen of Zaun.
• Jinx going up against the sparring robot and managing to get on the leaderboard. This is sadly soured by her placing second below Vi, but still, considering that Vi's a natural boxer and had 8 out of the top 10 spots, it definitely deserves to be mentioned. And this is before she gets injected with shimmer, mind you.
• Vi and Sevika have a good ol'-fashioned slobberknocker after Vi tracks her down, punching and throwing each other all over an allyway and leaving both of them pretty banged up. Even with Sevika's Shimmer-enhanced robot arm, Vi still ultimately kicks her ass.
  • Of particular note is Vi's opening shot - in which she catches Sevika completely off-guard with a flying knee to her cheek, sending her sprawling to the floor while the other card players wisely scatter.
  • Though Vi gets the first shot, Sevika turns the tide when she hurls her shawl off (In slow motion, no less, to emphasize how badass it is) and reveals a mechanical arm. She then starts tossing Vi around, sending her flying into the wall with a single abdominal punch and performing an effortless Neck Lift. Even when Vi puts her on all fours, Sevika doses herself with a bit of Shimmer and keeps control, showing shocking intelligence by lifting a barrel with one arm and sending it flying toward Vi.
  • Then when Sevika stabs her in the stomach and prepares to finish her off, the ampule of Shimmer, about the size of a test tube, is blown apart by one accurate shot from Caitlyn. She fires twice more at the retreating Sevika and hits the same spot on her mechanical shoulder.
    Vi: You're an alright shot.
    Caitlyn: I'm an excellent shot.

Episode 6 - When These Walls Come Tumbling Down

• Despite having only just recovered from her wound and being severely outnumbered, Vi has nothing but angry defiance for Silco. She then brings her childhood home crashing down on the Zaunite crime lord and his Shimmer-enhanced thugs just by punching the right pillar, giving her and Caitlyn enough time to beat a hasty retreat. Her stunt even causes the normally cold and composed Silco to fly into a full-on rage afterward.
• Similarly, Sevika takes no shit from Jinx despite having been knocked out and tied up for some interrogation, and even smashes hard on her Trauma Button in her own intimidation attempt.
• Vi and Jinx take on the Firelights back-to-back. And in a sort of tragic way, Vi sees for herself just how dangerous her little sister has become in their time apart.
  • To be fair to the Firelights, they don't make the fight an easy one.

Episode 7 - The Boy Savior

• Silco goes topside to meet with the other crime lords, who have gathered to chew him out over how recent events have cut into their profits. His response is to cut the ventilation and start flooding the room with the gas from Zaun's mines. While they start coughing and suffocating, he calmly reminds them of the conditions he lifted them out from and how living above Zaun has made them soft and complacent in their comforts while he passes out gas masks. Even when he does take a breath through the mask, it comes across as more mocking than necessary.
• Jinx launches an attack on the bridge checkpoint by releasing a huge swarm of mechanical firelights. Nobody realizes that these are bombs until they detonate.
• It's a quick moment, but when Jinx fire on Vi and Caitlyn, the first instinct they have is to protect each other.
• Ekko manages to beat Jinx with a melee weapon against her pistol despite having to rush across a bridge with no cover. He's shown having lost this sort of thing when it was just a fun game as a kid, only highlighting how much he's grown.
  • The visual representation of their younger selves playing the 'same game' only for younger Ekko to lose and then time 'rewinding' back to their future selves in the starting position is similar to Ekko's Time Rewind Mechanic from the games, only its being done with Ekko's acute visualization of Powder's shooting habits. It's implied that Ekko intentionally recreated the setup for their childhood activity so he could trick Jinx into adopting a shooting posture he was familiar with and could predict the trajectory of her bullets, allowing him to win where he failed before. It shows that Ekko doesn't need to manipulate time to be a Time Master.

Episode 8 - Oil and Water

• Caitlyn blasting her mother for the entire city council's indifference toward the people of the Undercity.
  Mrs. Kiramman: You're a Councillor's daughter. Your actions reflect on the entire body.
  Caitlyn: My actions? You know what else reflects on the Council? Its citizens living on the streets! Being poisoned! Having to choose between a kingpin who exploits them and a government that doesn't give a shit!
  • Her mother gets a pretty cool (and funny) moment just before this: when Vi and Caitlyn sneak into the latter's room via the window, the Councillor kicks open the door and trains a rifle at them. Even Vi looks impressed.
• Vi takes time to look at Caitlyn's crime board from Episode 4, impressed that Cupcake was able make as much progress on the case as she did before setting foot in Zaun.
• Viktor, who's spent most of his life unable to walk without a cane, running with his newly augmented leg for the first time. He drops his cane, starts walking without it, and gradually breaks into a sprint; the fact that he does this down at the harbor and is able to run past the boats mirrors his childhood flashback in Episode 6 where he couldn't even keep up with the toy boat he made. The yell he lets out as he runs is likely just as cathartic for him as it is for the audience.
• After a surprise visit from Vi, Jayce takes the Lanes girl and a squad of enforcers to bust a Shimmer production plant. It goes well, until one of the young workers summons the guards- a pack of Turbo Chemtanks that tear through the Enforcers like wet tissue paper. However, when Vi and Jayce face off, newly armed with Atlas Gauntlets and a Hextech Hammer, they absolutely wipe the floor with the Chemtanks, with them being unable to stand up to the sheer speed and viciousness of Vi and the raw power of Jayce’s hammer. However, this gets horribly subverted once Jayce accidentally kills a child worker.

Episode 9 - The Monster You Created

• Sevika, having apparently accepted Finn's offer to turn on Silco for his loyalty to Jinx above anything else, attends a meeting with Silco, Finn, and Renni. During the meeting, Silco espouses the ideals of loyalty, all while Sevika silently extends the blade of her mechanical arm, seeming to set up an ironic betrayal. However, when Sevika does strike, it's to clinically slit Finn's throat from where she's standing behind Silco's chair. Sevika's loyalty to Silco is dramatically reinforced, Silco is proven right, and the kill itself is cool, all in one go.
  • Adding to this, Silco's reaction was genuinely one of shocked relief - he didn't know for sure which way Sevika was going to go. So while he's a Magnificent Bastard, he's not an omniscient one with a plan for every contingency.
  • One has to give Silco credit for the absolutely brutal shutdown he gives the treacherous Renni, whose reason for betraying him is because her son got killed during the raid.
  Silco: I would have had your son killed for this. Although I suppose we're ahead on that account. Get out.
  • This is compounded if you consider the possibility that, contrary to what she said, Sevika hadn't made up her mind about who she was going to kill yet, and it was Silco's speech about loyalty that swayed her to his side. He wasn't just talking to make a point to Finn and Renni, he was literally arguing for his own life- and it worked.
• Vi and Sevika have a rematch that's flashier but just as brutal as their first fight, if not more so. After a proper Bar Brawl, Vi gets laid out on the floor, almost KO'd, as Sevika readies for the kill. One quick pep talk by a vision of Vander, however, and Vi gets back up to go again. Aided by her gauntlets, Vi ends up ripping Sevika's mechanical arm right off her shoulder and throwing her across the bar into a jukebox, in which she gets stuck.
• The Caitlyn death fake-out is one for the show itself. As this is a prequel, it's obvious that Jinx didn't really kill her, but the cinematography, music, and both Jinx and Vi during it makes you forget that for a moment.
• While it's tragically undercut by Jinx's rocket hitting the Council Chambers, Mel's final action of the season is to remove her Medarda ring and voting in favor of an unfavorable peace with Zaun. She is abandoning everything her family and homeland represent in favor of her own ideals. Further symbolized by Ambessa finding her daughter's painting of the Immortal Bastion, with the red of Noxus, painted over with the gold of Piltover.
• Caitlyn managing to untie herself via a broken dinner glass, getting Jinx's mini-gun, and threatening her with it. Yes, it ends with her getting knocked out by Jinx but kudos on her ingenuity.
• Similarly, Silco being able to loosen his bonds and grab Jinx's gun via sheer determination. This is also the first time we see him use a firearm onscreen, and he still manages to shoot Vi in the shoulder a second after being riddled with holes.

Miscellaneous

• The entire series itself is awesome on multiple levels; the animation, the art style, the voice acting, cinematography, music, the plot, the characters themselves. The fact it broke the curse of Video Game Movies Suck and managed to get a rare 100 percent approval on Rotten Tomatoes speaks for itself.
• The portrayal of Jinx's mental instability is up there with BoJack Horseman in terms of realism, with great attention paid to minor details and helping portray just how frightening it would be to deal with them on a daily basis.
• The fact that the first season of an unproven show was willing to end on that kind of cliffhanger is monumental.
• The show got nominated for nine individual achievement categories in the Annie Awards and won every single one of them.
  • It also became the first animated streaming series to win an Emmy award.