The Legend of Vox Machina. Episode 2: The terror of Tal'Dorei Part 2 Review

I'll go.

Once again the Vox Machina shows appears to offer itself as a bridge to people who are interested in Fantasy but perhaps not completely up-to-date and on-the-ball about every snippet of Dungeons and Dragon's specific lore. How this will then go on to translate to people with only the slightest of wisp of a care? Well that is the question I really want to explore as I look into the boons and benefits of the new animated series based on the D&D series, Vox Machina. My forced perspective will try to be from the eyes of someone with minimal knowledge as to who these people are or what the world they live in will be like, and my thesis is that by looking through these eyes I might be able to see how viable shows in this vein can be when hosted on massive streaming services like HBO Max. Because that might be the 'Game of Thrones'/'New Lord of the Rings' homehub, but make no mistake, a lot of those series' fans are very much still normies. There were people watching GOT just because it was popular back when it was still good, the kind who got confused about basic plotlines and allegiances whilst the show was still going! I understand that perspective now, it was a lifetime ago, but during? What was their brain doing for the entire duration of the show? So that's the kind of mainstream audience this series ideally needs to break with. Needless to say, that's an uphill struggle.

First off I'd like to say that it very much appears I was wrong based on my limited experience with the show of Critical Role. Back when I was still watching the show, I'd just gotten through the saga of rescuing Lady Kima from the Mindflayers (that would have been very cool to see recreated) and was between major story arcs. Thus I didn't recognise any of what was going on in Vox Machina episode 1, although I should have known that wouldn't be grounds enough assume this show was running on it's own fumes. Maybe it actually is for the moment, but it clearly won't be for long. Spotting the Briarwoods as a tease for this series, a huge plot piece that was being seeded throughout the early Critical Role episodes, tells me that this is more shaping up to be a stylised cliff-notes of the Vox Machina story (with one obvious character exception) which actually frustrates little ol' me. And I mean only me, because it seems I'm going to spoiling some key moments in the adventure by watching this show. But meh, I've committed so there's no backing out now.

Firstly I want to talk about the dialogue and writing, because it's something I've been most on-the-fence about with this show. This is an aspect that couldn't just be lifted whole-sale from the live shows for several reasons, most key of which being that all those live-streams were off-the-cuff and natural, so it wouldn't work just parroting jokes and quips in a more organised setting. Now with this second part of the first episode, I'm starting to see the characters hit their stride and see them beginning the process becoming endearing. Grog is just on that cusp of being the lovable stupid strong oaf, Scalan seems a touch less relentlessly eccentric than I remember but I think they've left adequate room just in case he goes off on any truly wild capers in the near future. Vex and Vax, look I still don't know which is which, teeter nicely between 'sarcastic' and 'straight man', (even if Laura Bailey's chosen voice makes me wince on some of her more drawn out syllables) and Pike and Keyleth are... there. They'll get their chances to shine, I'm sure. Pike has the potential to be the key component of this group mechanic and I want to see that bought to life.

And now I want to talk about something I absolutely adored from this episode, and something which I don't think even the most curmudgeonly fantasy-hating viewer could deny; this action in this show looks incredible. There were some fighting scenes in the first episode, but that bar brawl was very busy and the battle at the end of the episode was more of a teaser; Part 2 is where we get the main course. Seeing the animation team go all out, with the movement of the characters, mixing one giant 3D monster in a 2D world, the cohesiveness of choreography, the satisfaction of impact, the cleanness of action- this is all beyond what I ever expected. This honestly looks to rival some of the more action-heavy Anime's out there with it's mastery of mostly traditional animation, and the effect is that these fights feel great to watch. There might not be anything excessively clever in the writing for these set pieces, but the eye-candy covers that ground admirably enough on it's own.

To my surprise, this Episode actually saw a resolution to the set-up from the intro, which I found quite surprising given the very real potential this plotline had to last the whole series. I mean, part of me is grateful for how heavily the show tipped it's hand in this storyline from the first episode, it would have been torture to see that dragged out for an 8 episode stretch, but the scale of the threat, and even the staging of that final fight, really felt like it could have been material for a half decent finale. That they didn't go that direction is both interesting and concerning. Because now Vox Machina has set the bar they need to top with the series bow-out in order to make that worthy of closing out the show, or else this series might end up feeling like a string of disparate plotlines. (Which they might end up actually going for, it's hard to tell at this point.)

In terms of supporting cast I think the surrounding talent did decently, and have to put my hands together warmly for a Felicia Day cameo; can't do anything nerd-culture related without her involvement. I just wished for a lot more from (spoilers, I guess) my main man David. You had an iconic English actor in your show and you wasted him on an a two episode bad guy? I don't even think we got to hear his voice in Dragon-form, which is bizarre because I'm almost certain that D&D dragons can talk... yeah, there were some really chatty ones in Baldur's Gate 2! I don't know what I have left to look forward to in the supporting cast of thi- wait a second, why did I instantly get chills when I heard Lady Brairwood's voice? That can't be- oh my god, it's Grey DeLisle! They got Azula up in this show? Okay, sins forgiven, I'm absolutely all in.

One character I'm on the fence about right now, and it starts from his design and bleeds into the characterisation just a tiny bit; is Percy. (Which you may have realised after I totally forgot to mention him in my role call earlier.) There's an obvious anime-style inspiration in the characters for this show, with very thin athletic body-shapes, sharp-faces and even sharper hair, but there's still something of the animator's own thrown in there to keep it feeling 'fantasy' in the more European medieval sense that D&D is based on. Design elements here, hairstyles and elf ears. Except for Percy; he just looks like a stereotypical anime heartthrob snuck out from some action-focused Butler-themed Shonen. It's a small, almost unnoticeable, design clash that throws me out of the moment everytime he's centre screen. And then there's Percy's personality, being the refined-one, angrily embarrassed by his peers, which feeds into that 'uptight British Butler' stereotype perfectly. I know that Percy is due to get some more indepth characterisation, we're doing the Briarwoods afterall, but damned if I'm not going to frown in frustration everytime I see our resident gunslinger go to work.

In summary, I found this episode to be a more complete thesis on everything this show could be and I really liked what I saw. Gripes with certain character designs here and the occasionally flat joke there aside, the raw animation talent going to work on this show is absolutely incredible and on the backs of their work alone this has the opportunity to be a simply great animated action series. If the dialogue can slip out of it's comfort zone going forward I could really start seeing this as truly top-tier entertainment, which is more than I ever imagined a lowly D&D show could become. Ultimately I'm going to have to give-in to the excitement I'm still buzzing from over that stellar action scene and just bump this episode's grade up to a solid A, I'm eager to watch more and hope that somewhere ahead of us we'll have that extra little something waiting to shift this show into 6th gear. I have high hopes. Higher than I do for that live action D&D project that's floating around, what are Wizards thinking? We've been down that road before, it ends... poorly.

The Legend of Vox Machina. Episode 1: The terror of Tal'Dorei Review

 Faintly,

As far as gaming related TV shows go I'd rate this as one of the most important new releases of the year, even more so than that upcoming Halo show with the Human-looking Cortana and the basic Season 1 plot outline that every Halo fan knows is going to make the entire first series redundant by the end. ("We need to find the Halo to survive The Covenant- oops nevermind, this was a terrible idea!") And that's because this show here, The Legend of Vox Machina, crosses so many Venn circles of nerd culture that it's failure or success has the chance to help further legitimise at least three underrepresented sectors of fandom at once. For one it's a straight High Fantasy tale, which is actually a subgenre that has been slowly building up since the meteoric rise, then catastrophic fall, of Game of Thrones, (I wonder if that's worth a blog? Game of Thrones? Nah? Okay.) it's also born from the world of Dungeons and Dragons (Insane to think one group's campaign would become so famous that it warrants it's own TV show. Granted, that campaign was hosted by seasoned actors.) and finally it represents adult animation, which is a subgenre that still isn't widely celebrated in the animation world. (People still think animation is only for kids. If I could show those people just a fraction of the things I've seen animators create, >shudder<.) With all that riding on it's sinewy shoulders, I just had to get looking into this show for my blog. Duty demands it!

Firstly, yes this is an adaptation of the Vox Machina campaign from the Matt Mercer DM'ed D&D show, Critical Role. Now I'm only slightly familiar with this actual campaign myself, having watched the first twenty-to-thirty episodes (I know, I need to get back into it), but that doesn't matter so much because this is a show that doesn't appear to be based on any specific moment from that journey and is more a neutral adaptation of those characters in a setting that can be approachable to newcomers. And since I think the 'newcomer' audience is the essential ingredient here, what with this being a show on Amazon Prime, that is the perspective I'm going to try and look at this show from and constantly circle back around to; as if this show can introduce me to characters and a world I don't already know nearly as successfully as Peacemaker does, then we'll have a real chance of this show succeeding numerically where it's already succeeded critically.

One of the first things I've noticed about this show, and it seems very strange picking this up only now after having watched the actual early CR episodes, is the fact that the adventuring party at the heart of this series, our main characters so-to-speak, doesn't have itself a clear-cut leader. Keyleth seems like the most approachable with her fairly recognisable 'I'm on a journey to discover and achieve my purpose' schtick, Pike is the glue that seems to hold everyone together (they may not always like each other but they all respect Pike) but the others... they seem almost disparate to the group mechanic. Vex and Vax are a team by themselves, Grog is a dumb idiot strongman, Percy has the 'sophisticate loner' thing going on and Scanlan is just trying to bang everything. Now of course, for a D&D party this is exactly what you want, with no one player getting too much attention over the others, but for a TV show this is actually fairly atypical.

Most media, even the ensemble ones, tend to have that one character who serves as the audience's looking glass into this world; especially in fantasy settings. Think Starlord in The Guardian's of the Galaxy, the movie is technically about all of them, but Peter Quill is undeniably the main character. Keyleth kinda serves that function in her moral neutrality, but she's not exactly leader material, and I think that already stands out through the first episode. Of course, this could be a point of making it hard for newcomers to relate to the team because they don't have that easy-to-attach character who gently carries them into the wider plot, but I think it also speaks to an authenticity behind the development of this show that might just make it stand-out against the other flotsam in the rivers of entertainment. We'll just have to wait to find out on that one.

Oh, and I already have my first point of contention, and it's an odd one, but I think the bar fight at the beginning might have been a bit too much. (Again, I'm looking at this from new audience's perspective) It was actually really well animated and had solid movement and choreography to it, the physical comedy was decent and it served as a natural and intuitive way to introduce the cast and what they could do in a low stakes environment where their abilities and competence could take center stage. All that was fine. I just wonder if the spectacle of the fight was a little bit too-much-too-fast. Just think about it- they fight every kind of wild D&D creature in that bar brawl from wild Beastmen to a giant eye-patched cat man and a fair few orcs. And there was the bartender who was... something, I don't even know. As someone who is familiar a little bit of D&D from the Baldur's Gate series, I was totally overwhelmed by the onslaught of visuals and races that the show doesn't even focus too much on, and I wonder if that might have been enough to turn a new face around. I'm not certain of this, but I can just sense a presumption of "Woah, I don't understand a lot of this. I'm not welcome here." potentially cropping up, but then maybe I'm just underestimating the general audience.

As someone who watched the original Critical Role show, albeit briefly, it's actually a bit weird to see all of these characters being as witty as they are, without the occasionally awkward downtime or natural delivery of an adlibbed show happening in real time. It's a wholly professional feeling from the quality of the voice cast (and the now-consistency of character accents) to the snappy dialogue, although with that upgrade comes a new metric of measurement. Whilst I'd never have compared the two in the past, now I find myself looking at the curated, pre-written, snappy adult wit of Vox Machina and comparing it to other current shows in a similar humour-focused vein. Try on for size, Peacemaker or on the less mainstream but still adult-animated side of the world, Helluva Boss. Even at it's best, this show's dialogue writing isn't holding a candle to either of them just yet, although this is the introductory episode and the writing did have a lot of ground to cover with introductions, set-ups and playing a long game of "Hey, I remember that!" with veterans of the D&D show.

Now from within the world of the show itself, and spoilers for the first episode, I wonder (as I often do in shows like these) at the competence of the team we're following and how believable it is for the setting. And the reason I bring this up is just for the whole 'hunt' aspect of this story. So we have a mysterious creature that is teased in the beginning, appears to be burning down villages and who seems able to 'fly' over the tree tops, and not once does the team ever even jokingly guess it might be a Dragon. How is that not your first compunction? I thought it was so obvious that the show was setting us up for a bait-and-switch it would end up being a much deeper cut monster from D&D lore, but nope- it's a Dragon. Of course there's a little extra mystery wrapped up there, but if the show is this blatant at tipping it's hand I probably have a decent idea where that's going too, what with the obvious clues laid out in the first thirty minutes alone. It's a small gripe but it just tugs that bit at my immersion of this fantastical magical world that it makes me question basic things such as how common knowledge of monsters should feasibly be for travelled adventures. (Especially given that two of them have a specific history with Dragons). At least it's not bad as Netflix's Dragon's Dogma, wherein every other second Ethan is seeing the most mundane damn monster of all time and going "Forsooth! What manner strange and wild beast be this? Prithee, Olivia, I beseech you, introduce us!"

Yet all of those are just my nitpicks. I think the animation looks gorgeous, the characters have been neatly laid out, the motivations sufficiently set and I'm ready to be swept away by the grand adventure. I only hope that David Tennant gets some solid screentime because, holy crap: this show has David Tennant! For the introduction to a show I think that Legend of Vox Machina did everything it needed to adequately and though the humour was a little obvious at times, honestly when the show looks this good and is animated this smoothly; I don't need it to be a laugh riot. Also, I spotted the little Matt cameo they threw in there and hope he manages to sneak in through the back door in a bunch of episodes like that- be that fun little meta joke for those in-the-know. Overall I'll give this first episode of the Legend of Vox Machina a B Grade for a job well done on introductions, but I know I want to see this show soar going forward, free from the constraints of the necessary meet-and-greets to sell everything that a Vox Machina show could and should be. I can't wait.