Season Review: The Legend of Vox Machina Season One

 

The fables say that a group of voice actors and friends once decided to try their hands at a rousing game of tabletop role-playing. Their chemistry and mastery of the world’s most popular role-playing game, Dungeons and Dragons, led this unique party to stream their campaign live on Twitch and YouTube. Amassing a global following, Critical Role became a sensation that has made the party synonymous with the sword and sorcery game.

Critical Role is headed by Dungeon Master and D&D icon Matt Mercer. You may recognize Mercer from English Dubbings of popular anime such as Attack on Titan, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and Naruto: Shippuden. Needless to say, with his animation performances and tabletop status, Mercer is considered royalty in the kingdom of nerds.

Joining the creative and ambitious Dungeon Master is Mercer’s wife, Marisha Ray, and their close friends Ashley Johnson, Liam O’Brien, Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham. This founding core is the party known worldwide as Critical Role.

With hundreds of hours of content and a team loaded with professional voice actors, the only logical step for Critical Role was to build an animated series. Crowdsourcing the funds, Critical Role’s Kickstarter campaign is a legend of itself. Within the first day, more than $4.3 million were raised, well surpassing the team’s goal of $750,000. By the conclusion of the 45-day crowdsourcing campaign, Critical Role had amassed over $11 million, becoming the highest-funded Kickstarter run for film and television.

The story doesn’t even end there.

After developing the first season of The Legend of Vox Machina with production company Titmouse Inc., the series quickly sold. Amazon Studios announced their series purchase in November 2019 for streaming platform Prime Video. Further, Amazon Studios would bolster the funds, commissioning 14 more episodes to top up season one and add another 12-episode season.

That catches us up to now. With all twelve episodes of the first season now wholly released. And it would be a classic fantasy tragedy to say that this was the end of the story. In fact, considering the reputation of other Dungeons and Dragons adaptations, it wouldn’t be that surprising to say that the new series followed suit with the 1980s children’s cartoon and 2000 blockbuster film.

Thankfully, this is a story of heroes triumphing time and time again.

The Legend of Vox Machina shook up the animation world when it premiered the first three episodes on January 28, 2022. The first two offer a complete mini-adventure featuring this ragtag group of misfits defeating a mighty dragon. And with the reach and popularity of streaming television, the rest of the world witnessed the chemistry, charm, and charisma that Critical Role had to offer.

Easily one of the most exciting and interesting aspects of The Legend of Vox Machina is its separation from other fantasy epics. The voices were not straining to sound noble and dominant with an accent of old English. The action never failed to look away from the blood and gore, completely annihilating a party of heroes in the first scene. Swearing was commonplace where other fantasies would deem inappropriate. And then there is Scanlan. A gnome bard with a rock star attitude and a sex addiction fulfilled by prostitutes and nearly everything else that walks by. It was apparent from the jump, The Legend of Vox Machina is not your typical fantasy epic, and there will be no apologies for it.

From here, the story gets bigger and heavier as the episodes are released. The tone is one thing, but the character development and unique plot make Critical Role and The Legend of Vox Machina stand out.

This season puts Percy on centre stage as he seeks his own form of revenge on the people who murdered his family and captured his homeland. He develops through the torturous events of facing himself and his enemies while being twisted and turned by the revelation that his sister lives. In the end, the true villain is within Percy, making for a conclusion unlike anything seen in fantasy before.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party makes out in their own fashion. Fan-favourite Keyleth has the significant payoff of going from an insecure druid to one of the most dominant forces on the team. And little Pike Trickfoot levels up in her own adventure that separates her from the story for most of the season. All the while, the remainder of the party work their way along, fighting zombies and demons as they reach new heights.

The Legend of Vox Machina develops a habit of breaking the mould throughout the 12-episode first season. Each new edition added depth to the story and lore in an approachable way for all audiences. Yet, they still manage to squeeze in a good bit of action, even when the episode itself is slower. And the way things develop towards the conclusion takes a unique path. At the same time, it finishes with three bigger and bolder finales.

This level of theme ingenuity is reminiscent of another Prime Video hit animated series, Invincible. Much like Invincible flipped the superhero genre upside down and injected a good dollop of gore, The Legend of Vox Machina did the same for fantasy. Add these two animated shows to Prime Video’s 2019 Undone, and the streaming service is separating itself as a source of high-quality original animation that does something different from the competitors.

Two different schools watched The Legend of Vox Machina. There is the Critical Role fandom who helped build this series with dedication and, in many cases, financial investment. Then there was a collection of viewers who had no idea what they were in for. Somehow the series managed the impossible and pleased both parties, for the most part. Honestly, it was doubtful that the popular franchise could land this balancing act. But we should have known better, as this is the legendary party of Critical Role we are talking about.

The wait begins for the second season. But do not be surprised if the viewership of the classic Critical Role goes up. A whole slew of new audiences will now be paying attention to the unique approach to role-playing and fantasy storytelling.