This month’s featured show is The Legend of Vox Machina, an animated fantasy series produced by Critical Role, Titmouse, and Amazon Studios, which is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. It is based on Critical Role’s first Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) campaign. D&D is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game in which players assume the roles of wildly unique characters, and go on adventures and quests sprouting all from their own imaginations and directed by the Dungeon Master (DM). Critical Role is now a multimedia entertainment company, but it started off as a group of voice actors streaming their D&D sessions on the internet. The Legend of Vox Machina is the story of eight unlikely heroes, banding together to save the realm from dark magical forces.
The show is set in the fictional fantasy world of Exandria, which was created by Matthew Mercer, the DM for Critical Role. The actual campaign spans more than 100 episodes, each about 5 hours long. So it needed to be reduced significantly to fit into the new, 25-minute episode format. This fast, hard-hitting pace works in the show’s favor, giving you a bite-sized introduction to the world of Exandria and D&D as a whole. The show does have a rocky start, with the first episode feeling rushed and overbearing, particularly in its mature humor. But, it is understandable, and even expected, that a show which needs to establish a whole new world and introduce over a dozen characters will have a rough beginning. After the first two episodes, which are dedicated to a small-scale conflict and primarily concerned with fleshing out the world and characters, the show moves on to the campaign’s Briarwood arc, which is widely recognized by Critical Role fans as the point that the campaign really got good. Overall, the show embraces a weird style that is refreshing, but sometimes comes on a bit too strongly.
The characters are, put it simply, charming as hell. They begin as pretty run of the mill caricatures, but then as they develop, you learn that each has an intricate personality and complex relationships with the others. For example, Pike is a gnome cleric, devoted to her god the Everlight, but she’s also a ride or die heavy drinker who is fiercely loyal and best friends with the half-giant barbarian, Grog. Vex is your obligatory femme fatale, who is untrusting and guarded around everyone except her brother, but she’s also deeply emotional and would die for her friends. The story arcs and subversions are simple but effective, which really sums up the show itself quite well.
This is a fantasy story about a group taking the hero’s journey, growing as individuals and vanquishing evil. It’s not some masterpiece, but a tale as old as time, meaning that if you’re looking for some innovative, new plot, this is not the show for you. It is a show that very much understands its audience and strengths and plays to those to the best of its ability. The best parts of this show are the interactions between the characters, the way that their own stories unfold and surprise the viewers, and seeing them come into their own at the end of the season. Every single arc is executed excellently, unfolding in a satisfying way as the plot ramps up and gets better and better. The penultimate episode is especially noteworthy, balancing multiple high-stakes battles with absurd character drama. The audiovisual presentation is also excellent, with beautiful and engaging animation, and grandiose, epic soundtrack befitting the fantasy adventure. If you are a fan of fantasy or just clashes between the forces of good and evil presented through intriguing characters and settings, The Legend of Vox Machina is a refreshing and thoroughly entertaining watch.
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