When I speak of television and video games in the same breath, I almost exclusively see the relation as a one way street of bad shows and cinema being created following a successful game’s pitter patter into the halls of fame. This rule, obviously, has its exceptions. But it also holds up pretty well, all the same. World of Warcraft, Doom, Mortal Kombat, I mean the list does go on, and I hope to god you don’t try to look these films up. Honestly, the WoW one is considered relatively one of the better movies made after a video game and its still pretty trash, sad to say.

But recently, something has given me a tad bit of reason to become skeptical of this trend’s strength holding up in the near future. First, it was Riot Games’ announcement of Arcane, a League of Legends anime. Following shortly was Valve’s announcement of Dragon’s Blood, a Dota Anime series.

And no, I won’t pretend like this shit isn’t the funniest / most obvious form of competition between two companies I’ve ever seen. It is. It really, really is. Dota 2 and League of Legends are main competitors and top dogs in the MOBA genre, and the fact that they both just happen to be creating two separate tv shows and the exact same time in the exact same anime-esque style makes it hard to not snicker at the prospect of these companies pretending to not see each other’s work as they start moving to get a leg up on one another. But I’ll digress from this point. What really matters is the potential of the shows at hand.

For the First time in Probably Forever

We have not one, but two companies with enough talent, funds, and customer interest to pull off an incredible piece of television based off of their video game. To boot, they have each other’s relationship as hardcore competitors to serve as motivation to really put their show into as high of quality as they can be.

For someone like me, this is incredible luck. I mean, a while back I wrote about Riot Games’ character design in League and how I felt it’s mostly lazy, cringy, and ultimately average at best. This criticism, as I mentioned, flooded into worry about what might happen with Arcane. I can handle mediocre writing in a video game that doesn’t require voice acting at all, right? But an anime? Believe me when I say that average-at-best anime is objectively worse than average-at-best live action television. There’s just too much of it going around, and they all look the damn same. In Arcane‘s case, it just needs to make sure it doesn’t sound the same.

But here comes Valve with their announcement of Dragon’s Blood and just like that, my worries have dissipated. The art style is a bit more standard, but the fact that it exists at all increases the odds that at least one of these two shows will be decent by about, say, roughly 100%.

I love everything about it. Dota 2 is a great game developed by talented people with a love for the world they create and maintain. League is a great game developed by talented people with a love for the world they create and maintain. And now, these two entities are digging deep to create more art and stories for meeee, the consumerrrrr.

MEEEEEEEE, THE CONSUMERRRR. More art, more T.V., more things to write about, more things to criticize and, if we’re all lucky, more things to fall in love with. There’s literally nothing to not love here.

Unless they both suck, then there’s some things to not love. In which case, I’ll just be forced to watch The Last Airbender for the 20th time. Oh noooooo.

GLHF,
-E