I'm rarely at such a minority position as far as taste in media goes

Hmm. Okay. Having watched Arcane season 1 now finally after bouncing off of it on my initial attempt...

I don't think this show is very good. At the very least it's very overrated, and the people who talk about it being peak television and one of the best written animated shows of all time are damning it with faint praise at best, revealing how little they know about animation as a medium at worst.

The first two episodes of the show gave me very little to get actually invested in, and the pace felt plodding and inconsequential. The first "good" scene of the show, Powder's meltdown, was halfway through episode 3 of 8, and while the show is never as bad as the first episode, that scene was directly preceded by the worst scene in the whole show in Vander's and Silco's chat. There's critical pacing issues and character establishment issues, there's a ton of plot and almost no story, and when there is finally story it's actively competing for air with the plot, rendering both of them kind of just frustrating to watch.

And the extremely mid writing only accentuates that despite the art style being genuinely striking and the character performances ranging from good to genuinely phenomenal, the actual animation has a floaty, over-eased feel to it. Like, once you spot the way characters seem to glide into place for their cues, it's really hard to unsee it, and even after the animation gains more pop and edge, it just becomes comical how often it happens. I also really don't like the way character is conveyed through animated performance on this show -- it's very theatrical, and looks overacted with a shot composition more typical of modern action movies.

And the art style... I do think it's great, but it's not enough. The shot compositions do have moments of Going Hard, I overall think the palette is good and interesting to look at, even occasionally really cool! The production design of this thing is stunning, it's committing hard to a difficult art style and for the most part produces things that aren't boring to look at with it.

But it's not enough to make me not constantly aware of how stupid the plot is, how after eight episodes I feel like I'm missing critical information, how the conveyance sucks ass and is confusing and how the show seems to expect I just care without giving me reasons to care. It's comical how people's names will just get said with a firm gravitas like I'm supposed to know who any of these people are and then the show never fucking explains why I should care, too busy to deliver plot to me like it's going out of style.