Tekkonkinkreet vs. Arcane

Yesterday I watched a movie called “Tekkonkinkreet”, and I couldn’t help but notice some parallels to Arcane. For context the movie is about two orphan children, Black and White, defending their island home from yakuza who want to gentrify it into an amusement park.

I think it touches on a lot of the same themes, and there really are some similarities between the brothers in the movie and the sisters in Arcane. Mainly how both sets of siblings are emotionally dependent on each other to a destructive degree.

Black, the older brother in Tekkonkinkreet, at one point reluctantly allows White to be taken in to police custody after he nearly dies while trying to escape a yakuza. He lies to White and tells him it’s because he’s weak and holding him back. Black eventually goes insane without his brother, developing an alter ego called “the Minotaur” and really unleashing his darker nature. There’s an extended sequence at the end where, after killing some yakuza goons, Black has an internal dialogue with the Minotaur. He encourages him to fully embrace the darkness and give up the idea of being reunited with White. Black ends up rejecting the Minotaur, but a small part of the darkness remains in him. The movie ends with the brothers being reunited.

Early on in the movie I thought there was a fairly 1-to-1 similarity between Vi and Powder and Black and White. The older brawler sibling and the slightly childish younger one. But as it went on I realized it wasn’t as clear cut and the similarities were really more thematic than literal. The movie’s setting reminded me of Zaun in a way as well. The island, called Treasure Town, is in the middle of this hyper-urbanized city filled with casinos, strip clubs, food stalls etc. The art style is gorgeous and there is surrealist bent in it as well.

I don’t know if anyone else here has seen Tekkonkinkreet, or read the manga it’s based on, but I mainly wanted to share my observations on this great movie with other Arcane fans who are just as brain-rotted as me lol.