By Clay Thompson | Reporter
After watching the first season of the Amazon Prime original series “The Legend of Vox Machina,” I am still struggling to form a complete concrete opinion on it. It’s based on Critical Role, a Dungeons and Dragons campaign party, whose first streamed campaign is the basis for the first season of the show, according to CNBC.
The show’s rating, despite the animation, is not for children. It contains bloody violence, language and some sexual material. Don’t let the adult themes fool you — beyond the mature themes of the show, it is able to show great character development, story arcs and create a new animated familial group that fans can rally behind.
One of the things I found frustrating about the show is it often seemed like the mature content didn’t have any meaning other than to just be crude. For example, a nice bonding moment between characters in the show was ruined, in my opinion, when another character suddenly started spouting obscenities and interrupted the conversation. It felt like the crudeness was not only meaningless, but could sometimes detract from some of what made the show great, and that was something I didn’t enjoy about it.
Other than that, with such a large ensemble of seven main characters, I thought the show did a great job characterizing them all, as well as exploring the various different kinds of relationships they had with each other. I did feel like they could have explored that a bit more, but I was definitely satisfied with the characterization and development I got as a viewer throughout the show’s 12-episode run.
I did think the plot of the season was intriguing enough, with a few twists and turns to it that kept the story fresh and provided one of the main characters to shine through. I hope possible future seasons will continue a focus on one character of the party to give them specific attention and grow them throughout the show’s lifetime.
While I really did enjoy this first season of “The Legend of Vox Machina,” despite some major hiccups, I look forward to its future and hope it can overcome its freshman outing to become even better than before.
