The Legend of Vox Machina Rolls Well, If Not Quite Critical
The first three episodes of the Prime Video (don’t call it Amazon Prime, please, the marketers requested) series The Legend of Vox Machina drop in a block all at once this Friday, Jan. 28. That odd release strategy will continue for four weeks as the 12-episode first season gets released in 3-episode chunks every Friday. I was lucky enough to get access to the first three episodes early for review purposes, and a spoiler-free review is what you will get below.
Not that anyone reading this probably needs me to tell them, but the animated series The Legend of Vox Machina is based on the first campaign played in the web series Critical Role, in which a group of voice actors who are friends got together to play a Dungeons and Dragons-based tabletop role playing game. Eventually they were asked to put those sessions online. The first campaign featured the characters in the mercenary team known as Vox Machina. The animated series tells canon stories of the adventures of the team before the Critical Role web series began, when the group of voice actors were just playing the game for fun.
The animated series keeps all of the voice actors from the web series who played the game online as the voice actors for their own characters — Ashley Johnson as Pike, Travis Willingham as Grog, Laura Bailey as Vex, Liam O’Brien as Vax, Taliesin Jaffe as Percy, Marisha Ray as Keyleth, and Sam Riegel as Scanlan. The DM Matthew Mercer, who voiced all the NPC voices in the web series, just handles one in the first season, Sylas Briarwood. But what a cast they assembled to help him out.
Additional voice actors include Khary Payton, Indira Varma, Grey Griffin, Tony Hale, Felicia Day and even David Tennant. And among all the other strong elements in The Legend of Vox Machina, the voice acting is the best. It makes sense that a series based on what a bunch of voice actors do in their downtime would draw other excellent voice actors.
The animation, by animation studio Titmouse, is very good. The character designs look a bit like The Legend of Korra characters, as does the animation — although Titmouse had nothing to do with that series. There is some CG animation, but it is integrated fairly well. Not as clean as, say, the anime Godzilla: Singular Point or Demon Slayer, but better than most. I know Titmouse mostly from the series Metalocalypse, so I was surprised to find they also are animating the current shows Star Trek: Lower Decks on Paramount+ and Big Mouth on Netflix. Talk about range.
The show has some very affecting emotional moments, which the voice actors sell completely, but it is the action and the humor that dominates the series. And that humor is both the strength and the biggest weakness of The Legend of Vox Machina. Usually, the humor hits solidly and is a natural outgrowth of the characters and their situation. Sometimes though it is just cringe-inducing — just like in a D&D campaign when that one player thinks he can do something funny while the rest of the table just avoids looking at him (I’m not saying I’ve been that one player, but I’m glad some of my college friends likely won’t read this).
Since the story is aimed squarely at adults, the series is violent and gory, with crude language and some cartoon nudity. I couldn’t recommend this for young teens or younger kids who are getting into D&D, but your mileage may vary. I can, however, strongly recommend it for adults who are into fun, exciting and very well-acted fantasy stories. Mercer’s kingdom of Tal’Dorei, and world of Exandria, are excellent fantasy settings with deep lore.
Right now, Prime Video has ordered two 12-episode seasons, but there is enough content from just the first campaign of Critical Role for many seasons. And the web series started its third campaign this past October, so there are years of content to mine, should Prime’s daddy Amazon wish to continue paying for episodes after the second season.
I give the first three episodes of The Legend of Vox Machina (Prime Video, Mature, 30 minutes per episode) an 8 out of 10. The Red Band trailer is below; watch with caution as it is very much NSFW.
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