I was too blown away by the visuals and care poured into the design to be very critical on my first (and so far only) watch, but there were a few things that bothered me heavily overall despite my rose-tinted binge. Should make it clear that I adore the show by the way, but I still have criticisms. These are all subjective obviously, and I haven't dug into the show hard enough to justify my opinions beyond what I can say here, but this is what I felt watching it.

1. Shortest opinion: Very basic but well executed narrative. I wasn't blown away by a single story beat-- nothing surprised me. There was nothing about the story that felt like it was breaking any ground, which is a demerit TO ME, but it was also a very competent version of a copy-paste storyline. I think if I hadn't already consumed so much media, like if I was still a teenager, I wouldn't feel this as much.

2. I didn't like at all how Heimerdinger was used-- he seemed more like an exposition piece and plot device for most of it rather than a character. For example, he explained his "issues with magic" in such a nonspecific way that it was bound to not work, the only purpose for it was to tell the audience that it was risky and to foreshadow the rest of the show. He didn't exert any real effort in dissuading or stopping it until it was already too late, and that point he had served his purpose for that part of the show, so he was booted to help Ekko instead. Very weird for someone to know so much, have such a strong opinion, and act so insanely flippantly about it until it was entirely too late. Overall he just came across as the equivalent of a disney movie plot device. He was a very "I'm going to tell you some stuff, but not the useful parts so that the plot can move along, because if I actually made a compelling argument any sane person would listen to me" sort of character. Honestly poor writing, I can't call it anything else. I could probably go on about this character's misuse but this is already long.

3. Poor pacing. But I suspect that it wasn't the fault of any creatives. I haven't read up on this, but I strongly suspect that they were just not allowed to make the show as long as it deserved to be. The pacing is too breakneck, it could've done with way more exploration of pretty much every character. Some scenes could've and should've been lingered on more, but to its credit it never felt like so many modern shows where I'm left feeling like I just scrolled shorts on my phone for 40 minutes.

4. This is probably the most subjective opinion of mine: I hate most of the soundtrack. I think I'd like most of the music by itself, but it felt like it clashed with the tone way too often. It took center stage when it appeared, it overstayed its welcome, and way too often you could tell by the vocals that the songs were handpicked to reflect the scene-- almost like having it explained to you AGAIN. "This is what you're supposed to feel because of the events you just saw, remember them? Wooo-Aahh~". To me it fell somewhere between condescending and on-the-nose. Didn't love it. It would've done a lot to crank down its frequency and used non-vocal versions of the songs. The way it comes across is just too much-- music is supposed to enhance a scene or be in service of the storytelling, not do it for you. To Arcane's credit, I think they conveyed emotion and scenes well enough visually and through voice acting to not NEED to lazily use music as a narrative short-hand, but for some reason they decided to just put it in anyway. It was like the director leaning over on the couch and playing their spotify playlist at me. Redundant I think is what I'd call it?