The Legend of Vox Machina: Captain Kaye's First Impressions

Roll for initiative! The new Amazon Prime series “The Legend of Vox Machina“ has just released, thanks to the Critical Role guys, and Captain Kaye has his thoughts on the first few episodes!

The Legend of Vox Machina is an adult animated fantasy series produced by Critical Roles Productions, Titmouse, Inc., and Amazon Studios that is now streaming on Prime Video. It adapts Critical Role’s first Dungeons & Dragons campaign, which follows the titular Vox Machina, a party of seven to eight adventurers traveling across the continent of Tal’Dorei. These are just my quick thoughts on the first three episodes.

Full disclosure, I went into this show without being too familiar with the original Critical Role webseries. While I may have dabbled in tabletop roleplaying in high school, I am no longer as invested in that culture. However, my interest in the series began after hearing about the Kickstarter campaign that raised the funds for it back in 2019, which became one of the fastest in the website’s history, especially for film and TV projects.

What’s cool about The Legend of Vox Machina is how easily accessible it is to both the hardcore Critical Role fans, as well as newcomers. For the main cast, everyone from the original campaign reprises their respective roles, including Laura Bailey as Vex’ahlia “Vex” Vessar, Taliesin Jaffe as Percival" “Percy” Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III, Ashley Johnson as Pike Trickfoot, and Sam Riegal as Scanlan Shorthalt.

The easiest point of comparison for recent adult animated adaptations would be Arcane, at least in terms of accessibility. The only major difference outside of having two distinct art styles is that Vox Machina is a more straightforward adaptation of its source material, at least for the most part. The first two episodes, titled “The Terror of Tal’Dorei” acts as a prequel to the webseries, as the team embarks on their first “grown-up mission.” This is a perfect way to introduce these characters and establish the tone for the rest of the series.

So far, my favorite thing about this series is how well it captures the wild and off-the-cuff spontaneity of your typical D&D campaign, while still ultimately telling a very compelling narrative. This certainly feels like Matthew Mercer’s passion project, and everyone in the cast brings their A- game to the material. Coming off the heels of Amazon’s previous animated series Invincible, I was expecting something similar in tone, but even I wasn’t prepared for some of the dark directions this story takes.

I only have one real nitpick, and that’s with the animation. For the most part, I think it looks great. I like the character designs, and the action choreography is solid, but there are a few instances where the CG aesthetic doesn’t blend as smoothly with the traditional animation.

However, that’s only in one episode so far. Because this is only the beginning of the story, there isn’t too much I can comment on, but what I will say is that the end of Episode 3 has me very much looking forward to where things progress from here.

Episodes' 4, 5, and 6 release on February 4th, 2022 on Amazon Prime! What do you guys think of The Legend of Vox Machina so far? Comment below, and stay tuned for a full series review on a future Renegade Animation podcast!