THE LEGEND OF VOX MACHINA Is Worth Watching For Fans Of Adult Animated Fantasy
The entire first season of The Legend of Vox Machina is now out on Amazon Prime Video and though it had a bit of a rocky start for me, it turned out to be a show well worth watching. Based on the popular Dungeons & Dragons live stream show, Critical Role, the show managed to take hours worth of story and content and bring it down to a short and sweet twelve episodes. Spoilers ahead so stop now if you haven’t had a chance to watch it yet.
For me, the first two episodes were the weakest ones. We get introduced to the Vox Machina team of mercenaries and rush our way through a dragon story line. It was an important set up, but I felt like a less dire story maybe would have been better. Or, ideally for me anyway, they should have spent an entire season showing us the group dynamic so that later moments had more emotional weight behind them. For example, there is a moment where Percy shoots the fingers off an innocent coachman which based on earlier in the episode is very uncharacteristic. But if we had gotten more time to get to know the normally very level headed Percy this would have carried a little more weight. Despite that, it is a good introduction of what to expect tone wise from the rest of the show. Irreverent, bloody, and very much not for children this show is set up as adults only in the first scene, which is great. I like a show that tells you what it’s going to be like right away so that you don’t get surprised later at something.
The third episode is where things start getting better as we begin the main storyline of liberating Whitestone from the Briarwoods. Things get darker and darker as moments from the live stream that were easy to not imagine if you didn’t want to are impossible to avoid now. The moment with seeing the human effigies of the group hung from the sun tree, including two children meant to represent the gnomes Scanlon and Pike, was a moment I almost had to stop watching. The showrunners did a really good job at bringing the true horror of that moment and the general misery of Whitestone in general. From the ever present threat of zombie giants to the evil overlords of the city, it’s kind of amazing that anyone was alive in Whitestone at all.
The moment things really start to finally stop getting darker is when Pike returns. After a really beautiful moment with her deity that led to her being reconnected to her divine powers, Pike comes blasting her way to the battlefield and destroys all the undead in a huge radius around her. The ensuing fights are all really terrific, it’s fun to see the way various spells are visualized and who doesn’t love to watch Grog in his barbaric element? The final three episodes seriously make the rest of the season completely worth it. The final battle with the Briarwoods is intense as Percy’s sister and Vax have been charmed and forced to fight their friends. The confrontation between Percy and the demon manipulating him to get his vengeance was so cool to watch. I loved the art direction they took for the demon with its jagged beak and how it would take over Percy at times. The moment we see names of Vox Machina’s members appear on his gun which is his kill list similar to Arya Stark in Game of Thrones was an excellent touch to show how much control that demon was taking. The final resolution was satisfying and well earned. The cliffhanger at the very end was incredibly mean and now I need to know when season 2 is coming out.
I really enjoyed seeing the evolution of the relationships across the episodes, especially Vex and Keyleth. Vex is the very world weary ranger while Keyleth is a somewhat naive and timid druid destined to become a leader for her people. Vax, Vex’s twin brother, is in love with Keyleth and we see the tension between the three as Vex does not want to be so emotionally involved with anyone that she can’t easily walk away and she projects this desire onto her brother. So she definitely sees Keyleth as a threat to the close knit relationship between Vex and Vax. Keyleth is too timid to really confront Vex about all this, but as the show wears on and Keyleth’s confidence grows we see Vex slowly warming up to her until the final climatic moment in the final fight with Delilah Briarwood when Keyleth throws herself in front of a dark spell to save Vex. It’s this moment that Vex really understands that there are other people who are willing to sacrifice for each other and maybe there are people other than Vax who are willing to put everything on the line to save her. In the resolution we see Vex put more faith in Keyleth and her abilities. It’s just a beautiful friendship to watch evolve. I also really like that when Vax tells Keyleth he is in love with her she doesn’t immediately swoon but rather realizes there are more important things to her right now than a relationship.
While this story had Percy at the center, Pike is actually the storyline I enjoyed the most. She spends a good portion seeking reconnection with her deity and divine powers. The moment she finally talks to her God and they tell her that any path she is on can be a virtuous one as long as she is honest about who she is was a powerful moment. There are many people I think who can relate to this who feel like they aren’t living up to expectations they perceive to be on them. To hear that who you really are is enough can be a powerful message and one that I appreciated having in here.
The art was really well done in this show. The fights were intense and incredibly gory, but it helped add tension to fights that fans knew exactly how they would turn out. Seeing how easily simple guards or civilians were killed by foes added to how tough our heroes are, but seeing them get seriously wounded helped us see how they aren’t invincible either. The character design in general was really good, outside of the main cast I really enjoyed Dr. Anna Ripley and the Briarwoods designs. Also all the undead, it was nice to have a variety between the undead giants who still had flesh to the long buried undead who were visibly dried up corpses.
As we all knew it would be, the voice acting was spot on. The main cast are always incredible, but I have to hand it to Travis Willingham for always having the best laugh out loud moments as Grog. I know most people really go for Scanlon for humor, and his songs are great, but Grog is one of my favorites. The supporting cast were incredible too. Grey Griffin has the perfect villain voice that can go from irredeemable villain to I actually feel sorry for this person in an instant. Kahry Payton I loved as Sovereign Uriel, he was so authoritative but not in a fearful way. The way he was portrayed it was obvious he is a good leader and Payton was able to bring that to life. I could go on, but suffice to say everyone was perfect for their role.
Overall, I wasn’t in love with the show after the first three episodes, but on the whole I really enjoyed it. Once I got used to the tone of the show I found it to be well done. I also have listened to the stream for this story line, so I’d be interested to hear from those who are going in completely blind if they also liked it or if they felt like they didn’t get to know the characters enough. All that being said, if you cannot handle gore, language, and sex in your shows, do not watch this one. I haven’t seen all of it, but the level of gore and language reminded me of the animated Harley Quinn show, so it definitely earned it’s 18+ age rating. I would give this show an 8/10, while not perfect it ended up being better than the first few episodes made me think it would be.
