The first season of The Legend of Vox Machina is twelve episodes long. It is an adult animation based off the first campaign of the Dungeons & Dragons web series Critical Role. Targeting the adult audience, this means that it’s full of swearing, nudity, stylized blood and gore. These are all superficial and thankfully doesn’t detract from the experience and just how good the show is.
This is a fantasy show, following the mercenary band Vox Machina. It takes the approach of them being a lowly rowdy bunch that may work themselves up, rather than a perfect idealistic party. As a result, their main priority is getting money so that they can survive another day, rather than fight for justice and all that. They are a eight character party, and it’s filled with the expected roles from a melee specialist to a healer to a magic user to a thief and ranged attacker. They are adamant that despite being a team, they don’t work together as one all that well.
At least the show doesn’t go for an extreme dark tone where the world is a bleak place. It still has its highlights and fun, as well as many dangers. The mercenary team find themselves ending up helping the kingdom on tackling an unknown powerful monster that’s currently razing the farms outside the main city. It’s a story arc that spans two episodes and this is where it immediately sucks you in with its solid humor, and fantastic action, although there are a times where the animation feels a bit choppy.
Despite the characters’ own comments, they work well together as a party, and there are plenty of situations where they show it off. Sure, they bicker like mad, and they don’t fully known each other, but there is implicit trust between them. It’s a bit cliched in terms of party composition and personalities. There is a physical attack being a brute forcer with a simple mind, a smooth talking dwarf who’s out looking for pleasure, a stealthy thief, the ranged archer, an intellectual, an offensive magic user and a defensive magic user. It’s pretty much perfectly balanced for any scenario.
The first arc is short as it only serves to quickly introduce the party, the world, and their miniscule role in it. Then the second arc begins proper which ends up spanning the rest of the season. It dives in the backstory of some of the characters. It has an uneven focus on each character though. This first season has a heavier emphasis on two or three characters, diving really deep into their backstories. Their situation forces the entire party to go along for the ride and helping out a friend.
One thing’s for sure, the party is constantly thrown again and again against an enemy that’s out of their league. Despite not being your typical hero team, they are honor bound enough, and good enough, that they still fit the classic hero template. So while they will get hurt, they are effectively invincible and will prevail against whatever they are fight. Sometimes through luck, but a lot of times through ingenuity and snap decisions.
The animation and action sequences improves as the season progresses. It captures the feel of the epic fantasy genre but is light enough so that it doesn’t get too dark and depressing. It’s helped by the constant humor. Scanlan is the dwarf with a penchant for dirty jokes. He’s an annoying character in the beginning as it feels like he is trying too hard. However, he soon becomes genuinely funny and loveable, and the rest of the characters plays off him quite well.
The show doesn’t shy away from showing off some cruel or gory scenes but due to being an animation, it’s not as uncomfortable to watch as compared to a show with real-life actors. It quite successfully tugs at your emotions, or builds up to a scene to drop the big revelation. However, by the end of the season, there are some characters that we still don’t know too well. We have a general idea of their powers and limitations, but all too often, they will pull out a small extension of their power that we haven’t seen before. It’s not too the point where you roll your eyes as they’re pulling it out of nowhere, but it’s close.
The pacing doesn’t let up in the second half of the season. The final two episodes were excellent with the big build up and satisfying conclusion. Although it wasn’t quite as large scaled as it was initially alluding to, the brought a character arc to a solid end and more importantly, it leaves you craving for more. The finale had the scenes where the team worked together at their peak, utilizing their powers to eventually overcome the enemy. The season ends up on a big sequel hook though which is just enough to dampen the mood a bit.
Overall, the first season of The Legend of Vox Machina is great. Go in with no expectations and you will be blown away. Go in with expectations and they’ll still be met. It’s a fun show to watch without it being too serious or heavy. It doesn’t try to jam too much into its season, so it sticks to the basics and it works extremely well here. The only slight issues is how the season is so obviously split into two stories, the short two episode arc, and then the longer 10 episode arc that spans the rest of the season. They’re both distinctive enough that it clashes it feels too separated but otherwise, it’s a great show.
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