Riot brings back LoL's magical anime troupe, fans go bananas

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Star Guardian is big news.

Riot has announced that it's bringing the Star Guardian theme back to League of Legends, which a colleague explained to me thus: "a line of skins that’s basically ‘What if LoL characters were in a Sailor Moon-style magical girl anime?’" Clearly this appeals enormously to elements of LoL's playerbase, because the reaction to this skin collection is somewhat over-the-top euphoria.

But what do I know: particular excitement coalesces around the idea of Star Guardian Seraphine. The news was announced with a fetching trailer, which you can see above.

One has to admit, that's a hell of a pretty trailer: It was produced by Sun Creature Studio. A common request for the Star Guardian universe is, naturally enough, Riot spends some of its megabucks on making it into an actual show. Which given the wild success of Arcane (and the fact Riot subsequently bought a stake in the studio), isn't out of the question.

"I'm literally so excited for y'all to see what we've been workin on," writes Riot concept artist Vlad Bacescu. "You have no idea."

The end of the trailer shows logos for League of Legends, Wild Rift, and Legends of Runeterra. So apologies to all the Valorant-loving weebs: not this time. The Star Guardian event will kick off on July 14.

Elsewhere in LoL-land, Riot's said it's looking to "slow the pace of combat" in the game, and also recently announced that all League champions and Valorant agents will be included with a Game Pass subscription.

Rich Stanton
Rich Stanton
Senior Editor

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."

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