Arcane finally got a Chinese song, with League of Legends’ strong presence in China, the only surprising thing about this is that it took so long.
Editors Note: This article contains minor spoilers for the second season of Arcane.
Arcane Chinese Song
As the end credit’s role following the tense final moments of Arcane: League of Legends Season 2 Episode 6, viewers are treated to这样很好 (Isha’s Song).
It seemed a fitting song for the moment, with its sad tone and lyrics. Sung in Mandarin, it is about the mute character Isha. The majority of the audience for the hit English-language Netflix show won’t understand the Mandarin-language song.
The Chinese title 这样很好can be translated as ‘This is good’. While the similar final line 我这样就很好 is ‘I’m fine the way I am’.
Lyrics include the lines ‘孩子别怕荆棘’ (Child don’t be afraid of the thorns) and ‘吹散乌云’.
It is sung by Eason Chan. He is a Hong Kong singer and actor, as well as one of the most influence figures in both cantopop and mandopop.
Arcane and League of Legends
Arcane is a two-season animated show that tells the backstory of several characters from the LoL game.
It is released Globally by Netflix and also within China by Tencent Video.
LoL was developed by Riot Games in 2009. It features two teams of 5 characters battling to destroy the opponent’s base. In 2011 Chinese company Tencent bought 93% of Riot Games for $400 million, and in 2015 then bought the remaining 7%.
Within China, the game is massive. In 2022 the game had over 150 million players globally, almost half in China. To put it in perspective, there are 29 China-based servers for the game, compared to just one in North America.
When the 2019 LoL World Championship was held in China, it was hosted at the Beijing National Stadium – the Birds Nest stadium from the 2008 Olympics – with seating for 80,000 people.
For fans of League of Legends or who know a bit of background to the game, it would also have not been surprising. It is hard to exaggerate LoL’s popularity in China. The only question is why did it take 15 episodes for there to be a Chinese language song?
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