The Legend of Vox Machina S01E01: The Terror of Tal'Dorei – Part 1 Review

The Legend of Vox Machina S01E01: The Terror of Tal'Dorei – Part 1 Review

Medium: Television

Release date: 1/28/2022

Review date: 6/9/2024

Score: 5/10

It feels weird to hold a show's swearing against it so much, especially considering my own fondness for profanity and the viewer age the show is aiming for, but that was my main takeaway from Episode 1 of “The Legend of Vox Machina” - the swearing in the dialogue felt like it was written by thirteen year-olds for thirteen year-olds, and really takes away from the whole product. I hope it gets toned down in future episodes, because right now it seems like every character currently swears every other word they speak.

Anyways, with that out of the way, “The Legend of Vox Machina” is the animated adaptation of the first season of the Critical Role D&D live play role playing podcast. I have always personally struggled to get into recordings of other people playing tabletop role playing games: I myself like TTRPGs, but listening to others play them feels a bit like listening to other people play make believe. However, Critical Role is incredibly popular and well liked, spawning other media adaptations of its campaigns like official D&D sourcebooks, comics, and this show, so I decided that an adult animated adaptation would be my best entry point into the lore and mythos built around the Critical Role empire and its campaigns.

Tonally the series is more “Rat Queens” or “Order of the Stick” than, say, “Drizzt,” and seems to want to both take and not take its world and stakes seriously, though the episode does attempt some leg work to make that dichotomy seem at least plausible by the end of the episode, however forced it may be. I had always assumed Critical Role was a lot more straight-faced and straight-edged than this, so the irreverence and immaturity was a surprise, but not entirely unwelcome. A lot of the character and story beats in the episode felt rushed and perfunctory, like the show was checking off a list of elements that needed to be included in the premiere to help establish and differentiate the party characters, while failing to establish or differentiate any of the individual members of the adventuring party, so hopefully that gets slowed down and improved in later episodes. Overall I wanted a fun, D&D inspired adult animated show, and while this episode certainly thought it was and tried to be that, it more so came across as a kinda embarrassing juvenile animated fantasy show, which is a bit of a disappointment but certainly an OK starting place to build up from. My future knowledge that this show has at least three seasons at the time of writing seems to (maybe) indicate that the show (maybe) manages to get enough of these issues on track later on (maybe), and at the moment I have no problem watching further to get there.