After Hunter × Hunter fans had been making a fuss for two straight days...
On Sunday, Arcane fans finally sprang into action.
Last week’s episode, where Jayce shot and killed his brother Viktor, had caused Jayce’s reputation to plumt straight to rock bottom.
In Japan’s ani world, hateful villains were nothing new. But a character like Jayce, soone who clearly wasn’t written as a villain, receiving this level of collective vitriol?
That was unprecedented.
Starting in the afternoon, Ion TV Station’s ratings began to climb steadily.
By 7:30 p.m., even though only comrcials were airing, viewership was already approaching 5%.
With ten minutes remaining before the episode began, the ratings hit 5.56%.
Fan expectations were clearly maxed out.
Viktor’s death, Vander’s madness as a result. And the chain reaction that led to Isha sacrificing herself to save Jinx.
"Jayce must die this week!" had beco the dominant sentint online.
A table piled high with snacks and barbecue sat in front of Isamu.
Tonight’s episode had thoroughly whetted his appetite.
He closed the fan-group chats on his phone, ssages refreshing too fast to read, and fixed his eyes on the living room TV.
Finally...
8:00 p.m.
The familiar, passionate opening the,"Enemy", rang out.
But instead of continuing from Episode 6’s ending, where Ambessa led her forces to invade Zaun...
The perspective shifted.
To Ekko.
"Huh?"
"Ekko? Didn’t he get sucked into the singularity triggered by the hextech runes?" Isamu leaned forward. "Are they showing what happened after that?"
Clean streets. Neat clothing.
And beside Ekko, a girl, smiling brightly and cheerfully.
Jinx.
Isamu had never seen Jinx smile so vividly, so purely, in this entire series.
’Where... was this?’
This Japan didn’t have Marvel movies or comics.
So for most ani viewers, the concept of a multiverse didn’t imdiately co to mind.
Fans from Rei’s previous world might understand within seconds what had happened to Heirdinger, Jayce, and Ekko after the singularity.
But Isamu could only stare at the seemingly nonsensical developnt.
Ekko pulled out a knife, threatening Jinx not to co closer.
Jinx looked utterly confused, asking why he was acting this way.
Piltover and Zaun were at peace. Ekko and Jinx were attending university together.
Ekko’s foster father, Benzo, was still alive.
Vander and Silco were drinking together at the bar, like genuine old friends.
Until, Heirdinger appeared.
Heirdinger, who had also fallen into this tiline due to the singularity, had entered it only a second later than Ekko, yet arrived several years earlier.
And during that ti, he had already figured everything out.
They were in a different tiline.
A branch of the multiverse.
A... perfect tiline.
To return ho, they needed a hextech crystal manufactured by the Jayce of this world, and a device capable of traveling between tilines.
Isamu’s eyes widened.
Encountering the multiverse concept for the first ti, his brain felt genuinely shaken.
"This... this is insane."
"Can an animation even be written like this?"
The perspective shifted again.
This ti to Jayce.
Jayce had also been pulled into another tiline.
But unlike Ekko’s, this was the worst possible one.
Piltover and Zaun lay in ruins, destroyed by an unknown force. The terrain and buildings were warped and twisted.
Everyone had been drained of life, reduced to withered husks.
Jayce was the only living person left.
His leg was broken.
And he had fallen into the deepest fissure beneath Zaun.
A truly disastrous starting point.
Isamu burst out laughing.
Now he roughly understood why Episode 6 had unfolded the way it did.
Episodes 6 and 7 were structured in reverse order.
Episode 7 showed what happened after Jayce was thrown into the parallel world.
Episode 6 showed his return, and why he chose to kill Viktor without hesitation.
The reason was right here.
A long stretch of the episode focused on Jayce’s struggle to survive.
With a shattered leg, he could only stay alive by eating mutated creatures.
To uncover the truth, to return ho, he had to drag his broken body forward.
And crawl.
Literally crawl.
’Wasn’t this deliberate contrast?’
Viktor had once crawled his way up from the bottom.
Now Jayce, desperate to return and understand everything, had to crawl as well.
Several full minutes were devoted to Jayce’s suffering.
Isamu found it both physically and emotionally satisfying to watch.
The perspective shifted once more, back to Ekko’s tiline.
Here, Ekko and Jinx were incredibly close.
So close that unspoken romantic feelings had begun to form.
The crucial difference in this tiline?
Back when Vi, Jinx, and the others attempted to steal the hextech crystal.
The explosion killed Vi.
Because of that, there was no later hostility between Piltover and Zaun.
Vander and Silco eventually reconciled and worked together to heal the rift between the two cities.
This was the best tiline.
The only flaw was, Vi was dead.
Isamu stared in shock.
Especially when Ekko, apologizing to Jinx for his earlier harsh words about Vi, personally painted a portrait of what her sister might have looked like as an adult, and gave it to her.
By that point, Isamu felt sothing was off.
"What happened to the action-packed episode we were promised?"
"Why is this... so sentintal?"
Ekko and Jinx, mortal enemies in the main tiline, looked like they could genuinely beco a couple here.
Soft music began to play.
Jinx joined Ekko and Heirdinger in researching the Z-Drive, the key device needed to return to their original world.
Although Jinx didn’t fully understand the device’s function, the mont Ekko asked for her help, she agreed without hesitation.
She trusted him, unconditionally.
A gentle, almost sweet scientific atmosphere spread between the three of them.
And at last, their research succeeded.
A machine capable of reversing the flow of ti, as long as it was powered by a hextech crystal, appeared before them.
A device that could loop ti.
"H-Hey... Shirogane-sensei, don’t do this," Isamu muttered under his breath. "You know my brain can’t keep up. Don’t throw out settings this advanced."
He didn’t even dare blink.
The plot had already twisted into sothing dangerously mind-bending.
And yet, an overwhelming curiosity forced him to keep watching.
Then;
The banquet.
One of the most touching segnts of the entire season unfolded.
At the ball, Jinx appeared radiant, confident, charming, dazzling in a way Isamu had never seen before. She danced with Ekko, their gazes locked.
Rei had recreated that aesthetic perfectly, an ambiguous, romantic, almost suffocating sweetness that seed ready to spill out of the screen.
Only then did Isamu rember...
Shirogane had originally debuted with romance manga.
His previous works lacked romance not because he couldn’t write it.
But because he chose not to.
After the ball ca the night scene.
Jinx and Ekko sat side by side on the steps.
Jinx, cheeks flushed, chatted with Ekko about all sorts of trivial things.
Then she gently rested her head against his chest.
Isamu’s fists clenched unconsciously.
"I want to say... thank you," Ekko said quietly.
"Thank you for everything you’ve done. The Undercity in my imagination was as beautiful as it is now. But at so point, all I could see was its ugliness. I gave up on it, and I gave up on you."
"I’ve never seen you give up on anything, Ekko," Jinx replied softly.
"Is there a mont, when ti can stop?"
Ekko hugged her.
Isamu stopped breathing.
Sweetness and sorrow intertwined, spreading slowly through the scene.
This was the best tiline.
And yet, it was a tiline that didn’t belong to this Ekko.
All of this beauty was sothing Ekko had once dread of.
But it was never ant to be his.
"Sotis," Jinx whispered, "taking a step forward ans, having to give sothing up."
"I’ll never forget this mont."
Jinx stood up, t Ekko’s gaze, and leaned forward to kiss him.
Ekko instinctively dodged.
Then he realized what he’d done.
"Can we rewind ti," he said hurriedly, "and pretend nothing just happened?"
The next shot...
The two of them kissing beneath the night sky.
Isamu’s expression softened completely. The sweetness surged, almost unbearable.
And then, the background music gradually shifted, growing gentle... and painfully sorrowful.
The mont the lody began, Isamu’s heart sank.
Sothing was wrong.
The perspective shifted again.
In another tiline, Jayce had crawled his way back to Piltover and learned the truth.
The episode didn’t reveal what he saw.
But from his expression alone, it was clear, the truth was devastating.
Elsewhere, Ekko stood up and picked up the Z-Drive Jinx had helped him complete.
He looked at her.
Then at the night view.
Then at this peaceful Piltover and Zaun.
Ekko had found the perfect tiline.
It just wasn’t his.
He looked at the girl beside him, still confused, still smiling, the girl who had just kissed him.
And pressed the button.
The singularity appeared once more.
Accompanied by that sorrowful, fate-laden music, the tiline rewound.
Ekko gave up the world where Benzo still lived, where Piltover and Zaun coexisted peacefully, where Vander and Silco had reconciled.
Where he and Jinx had beco lovers.
He chose to return.
Because no matter how perfect this world was, it belonged to the Ekko of this tiline.
And he still had his own ho to save.
The ending song played.
Isamu stared blankly at the screen.
His chest felt unbearably tight.
"This..." he murmured, voice hollow, "how is this even more heartbreaking than last week?"
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