The Legend of Vox Machina 1-3 (Spoiler-Free) Review
The Legend of Vox Machina is… well, do you not know what it is? Doesn’t everyone know what it is, by now? In case you don’t, I suppose I’ll summarize as quickly as I can so that I can dive into the review. This show is an animated adaptation of the first campaign in Critical Role’s live-play Dungeons and Dragons show. It’s an attempt at adapting months upon months of live storytelling among friends into a concise, cohesive animated story. I’m a fan of Critical Role, have been since campaign one, so I knew that trying to adapt the Briarwood arc—the one that they’re focusing on in this show—was going to be a significant undertaking. With only a few twenty or thirty-minute episodes at their disposal, this is a lot to condense… so, how’d they do?
Hey there I’m T. L. Bainter and I review stories (and just talk about them in general)! I’m a dungeon master every other Saturday (and all the days between, let’s be honest), so I love tabletop roleplaying games! Critical Role is something I’ve loved for a few years now. In this spoiler-free review, we’ll dive into the new animated series from Critical Role, specifically their first three episodes. This will be completely free of spoilers, so read with peace of mind! You can check this show out on Amazon Prime. If you don’t have that, you can use the link below to get a free trial for thirty days!
The Story
I can’t imagine how hard it is to adapt such a massive story. The amount of work that would go into figuring this out is insane. It sounds like they had a lot of fun doing it, which I think is the most important part. The result, too, is surprisingly solid! The story is sound and easy to follow, with every minute of each episode’s runtime being used to the greatest possible effect.
We spend the first two episodes in a questline that can be completed within that time frame. It feels a little rushed, and that’s because it is—the point of it wasn’t to tell an incredibly compelling and powerful story, it was to introduce us to our core cast and set them up for what’s to come for the rest of this season. I think that it accomplishes this surprisingly well. Those first two episodes were fast-paced, action-packed, loaded with humor and easter eggs, and were just enjoyable to experience overall. Yeah, the storyline itself is kind of weak due to how rushed it is, but I think that these episodes succeed in what they wanted to do: introduce us to the characters.
I’ll note as well that the first episode of the show did something that I really appreciate and personally believe is a choice every show should make: it put the content rating front and center. After the first two minutes, you know what you’re going to be in for… lots of gore, lots of swearing, and some nudity thanks to everyone’s favorite bard. It was a bit shocking at first just how aggressive the show was with some of that, but it calmed down after just a couple of minutes, and I’m glad they did it this way. If you see things in the first two minutes that you can’t handle, you know that this isn’t the show for you, rather than getting invested for two episodes and finding out in the third that they’re going to draw some naked people now and then.
The third episode in this batch is really what introduces us to the story and is what kicks off the events of season one. In this season, we’re following the Briarwood Arc from the first campaign of Critical Role, which is a fan-favorite arc (with good reason). It’s the point at which Taliesen became a favorite player of mine, and I love that this means we’re going to be giving Percy (and, by extension, Taliesen) the spotlight. He was an incredibly compelling and well-written character, and Taliesen is performing his heart out in the scenes featuring Percy once the third episode hits. I love it.
We also see some incredibly critical and memorable moments from the campaign take place in the third episode—moments that were simply unforgettable and that stuck in the minds of many viewers, myself included. This is a wonderful start to the arc and I am excited to see where the rest of the season takes us. If the other episodes are as good as this one is, I think I’m going to love this season more than I initially expected.
The Appearance
This is an animated show, so naturally, I have to touch on the animation and overall art. I was really excited to see what this show would look like, and I have to be honest about my overall thoughts on it. It’s… okay. There’s some choppiness to the animation from substantial quantities of skipped frames. The static scenes, though, are gorgeous. I love the sets, backgrounds, and parts when no one is really moving all that much. Those are much easier to watch without feeling like my Internet connection is lagging.
I think that the part of these episodes I found to be the weirdest in terms of animation choice was the beast. The beast that the party is facing off against appears to be a 3D model that has filters applied to make it appear 2D. I have no problems with this, and wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's used for much of the show (I noticed the effect a few other times, too). It can have some really cool results, as it does here! The beast looks amazing, and I understand why they wanted to do it this way… but it wasn't done in a way that led to the beast looking like it really belongs in the show. The beast stands out in a bad way, and it really takes me out of the experience of watching the episodes in which it’s featured. It looks awesome, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t look like it belongs in The Legend of Vox Machina. The animation and art style for the beast in comparison to the rest of the show makes it seem a tad uncanny.
I will point out that by episode three, some of the jarring animation styles seemed to either be less noticeable or I just got used to them. Especially in combat or other intense scenes, I found the animation to be substantially improved over the first couple of episodes in the season. This leads me to believe that we might see the show’s art style improve over time, which I’m hoping is the case.
Final Thoughts
So the show improves over time. Episodes one and two did a sound job of introducing us to the cast but suffered from some poor animation and uncanny art choices, as well as a rushed plotline. The third episode was outstanding by comparison, and showed us the tone of the show and just what it’s capable of. It was incredibly well-performed, especially by Taliesen, and got me excited for what we’re going to see in the episodes to come. I cannot wait for the next batch of episodes to be released.
With all of that considered, here are my star ratings for each of these three episodes:
Episode One
Episode Two
Episode Three
Conclusion
Thanks so much for taking the time to check out this review of the first three episodes of The Legend of Vox Machina on Amazon Prime Video! If you haven’t already had the chance to watch it and you don’t have an Amazon Prime subscription, you can get a 30-Day trial for 3$ with this link! Doing so also supports me, so hey, two birds with one stone. Nice!
I hope that you’ve enjoyed my review; I’ll be reviewing each batch of episodes both in blog and video form! If you’d like to make sure you see my spoiler-free reviews when they appear, the best way to do so right now is to subscribe to my YouTube channel or follow me on social media; I’m @TLBainter on most social media platforms, and I’ll have links for all of those profiles at the bottom of this post.
Until next time… bye!