Arcane and Anti-utopia

Arcane, unfortunately associated with the game League of Legends, is one of the most successful animated TV series of recent years and boasts an immensely high audience rating per episode. While its second season is not without some writing issues (readily discussed in numerous reviews and video essays, and not the purpose of this article), I want to talk about the show’s exploration of anti-utopia through the alternate universes presented in episode seven.

Anti-utopia is distinguished from dystopia. An anti-utopia is: a non-existent society contemporary to the reader, used as a criticism of utopianism or of some other particular utopia (Sargen, 9) whereas a dystopia is often described as a society so oppressive that it is inconceivable. A utopia is described as so desirable that it is considered unachievable - thus reflecting the extremes of human hopes and fears. This article aims to make clear the compelling case episode 7 makes in support of the human need for struggle, by presenting the audience with an undesirable anti-utopia.

Picture this: the world as you know it has ended. All around you lies rubble and odd, statue-esque figures that move eerily quickly. There is an absence of nature as you knew it in this place, the plant life that struggles through growth looks sickly, infected with bright colours like broken pixels, mutating their form. This is the reality Jayce becomes familiar with, trapped in this alternate world. He survives, climbing out of a pit in what was before the under-city with a broken leg (a symbolic echoing of Viktor’s climb from the poverty of the undercity to a career in Piltover) and sets out to discover what became of the world he now inhabits. He finds himself, (not figuratively) distorted into a statue similar to the ones haunting the abandoned and destroyed Piltover, clutching his hammer at the summit of what was once the council building. Whatever attempts were made by himself to alter the path of this world clearly failed. 

At the precipice of the citadel, Jayce is faced with his greatest future failing, and the stinging acknowledgement that it was his work that catalysed this end. Yet there is a beautiful message emerging from the rubble of his denouement. His former partner turned wizard-healer-messiah, Viktor, reveals to him the futility of their shared struggle of ‘fixing’ the world. 

“But when every equation was solved, all that remained were fields of dreamless solitude. There is no prize to perfection, only an end to pursuit.” (Arcane, Season 2 Episode 7)

The message here is simple and etched throughout the struggles of humanity. Struggle breeds innovation. To exist in dreamless solitude is to be content to the point of lifelessness. This goal of contentment, of a world without struggles - personal or wider - is admirable, but misguided. We at our best crave fairness and justice; we desire a world where each person is truly equal and able to pursue their desires (and that their desires do not impede anyone else’s). The unfortunate truth is that in a truly ‘perfect’ world, such as the one Viktor creates for his subjects, there is nothing to strive for, nor to desire. There is nothing to do but rest. I do not mean to say here that in a world where there is significantly lessened struggles that there would be no desires, but the show makes a point of driving home that the conflicts and difficulties we navigate shape our desires and understandings. The show depicts succinctly the shaping of character based on personal circumstances, and presents us with endless examples within their cast. Vi’s season one character (we do not talk about season 2) was driven almost solely by fury at the upper-class Piltover society and directly at the Enforcers, responsible for the death of her parents and the force that perpetuates the divide.

Most compelling of an example, in my opinion, is the lack of contentment Viktor faces with the world he has created. Viktor completes trials of futility, attempting to change the outcome of alternate worlds, so that a world can go on in which more possibilities are explorable. We see the repercussions of his ‘androidisation’ of the people of Piltover; he eradicated their sorrows and pain, and now they want for nothing, but they are left inhumanly content. Viktor, through his efforts, becomes the reason Jayce obsesses over magic and he attempts to create a world in which Jayce can win against him before he ‘solves every equation’. It is Viktor’s tireless struggle, which is itself an exercise of futility attempting to defeat his former self, that moves me the most. Our understanding is that an end to suffering that strips individuality from the individual is imperfect; yet Viktor’s fight remains one fight with utopian ideals: he wishes to help people, to lessen suffering and to improve society. Beyond that, Viktor maintains the hope that Jayce will be able to defeat him, no matter how many times over he will lose in alternate worlds. Once Viktor regains a hope, a desire, he becomes more human than during season 2’s finale, where he builds a form for himself representative more of a machine than a man.

Arcane challenges us to criticise utopian ideals while encouraging the fight in favour of them. 

"Humanity, our very essence, is inescapable. Our emotions, rage, compassion, hate. Two sides of the same coin, intractably bound. That which inspires us to our greatest good is also the cause of our greatest evil.” (Arcane, Season 2 Episode 7)