The Legend of Vox Machina by 6IXSTRINGJACK

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

The Legend of Vox Machina

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Monday, June 26, 2023 10:49
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VIEWED: 1506
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Wednesday, November 16, 2022 9:00 PM

In a desperate attempt to pay off a mounting bar tab, a band of misfits end up on a quest to save the realm of Exandria from dark, magical forces.

The story is great, the characters are fleshed out, the animation is gorgeous and the voice acting is done by a very talented cast (You won't see any household names here, but if you check out their IMDB profiles and are a fan of non-mainstream animation, Anime dubs or video games from the early 2000's until now, chances are you've heard most of them before).

It can be a bit vulgar and crude, but none of the heroes would ever claim they were saints. Particularly not the healer. It takes itself very seriously when it wants too, but isn't afraid of mixing in a little levity when things are getting really dark.

If I had only one complaint about it so far, it's that even though it was earned, I felt they made a name for themselves too quickly and the creators could have taken a little while longer to let these characters evolve into the "good guys" instead of falling right into it like it was their destiny. While none of them were particularly "bad" in the beginning (think Firefly crew), and their motivations for doing the right thing don't come off as empty (think how much the Firefly crew cared about each other like a family), I feel an opportunity was missed here. Not only that, but it makes me wonder if the characters can be as compelling as they were in a second season as they were in the first. It will take some great writing to make that happen, but with this being my only gripe in the first season I think that they can do it.

I wouldn't have recommended it yet without verifying that there will be another season, but I just checked and back in October they announced there will be and the 2nd season trailers are already out on YouTube.

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Tuesday, November 22, 2022 8:34 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

I watched it but stopped watching, maybe vulgar or some nerdy fanatsy culture thing I didn't get and crude was what did it or maybe it was missing a 'message' but I might return to it again.

didn't love it but liked it. Animation, voice acting, sound and colors are all great though.

It was fan funded on the interweb, got its first wave of cash by bitcoin dollar donation via a Kickstarter campaign.

Based of the Board game the Dungeons & Dragons culture which I am only casually familiar with.

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Tuesday, November 22, 2022 4:14 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
I watched it but stopped watching, maybe vulgar or some nerdy fanatsy culture thing I didn't get and crude was what did it or maybe it was missing a 'message' but I might return to it again.

didn't love it but liked it. Animation, voice acting, sound and colors are all great though.

It was fan funded on the interweb, got its first wave of cash by bitcoin dollar donation via a Kickstarter campaign.

Based of the Board game the Dungeons & Dragons culture which I am only casually familiar with.

Yeah. I did mention that it was pretty vulgar and crude and might not be for everybody. I think it's important for me to say though that this does take a backseat as the story progresses. It's always there to some degree, but those first few episodes had the bulk of it. I think that was necessary to show you how the lead characters weren't cut-and-paste white-knight heroes. And like I said, I kind of wish they took more time to show the characters develop and gave them more time to grow. They're by no means perfect by the end of the show, and I felt the transition was earned, but I think the first two episodes are in some ways a completely different show than the rest of the season because of this.

Not only that, but now that you've at least given it a chance I will mention that there actually is a fair amount of wokism in it, and not all of it makes sense.

Obviously, the shopkeeper is a cross dresser and a homosexual. At first you think that Vax is gay as well... and maybe he is into dudes at some level, but by the end of the season that doesn't seem to be the case and it may have been a bargaining tactic on his part to not offend the keeper when he was being come on to.

I don't really get the need to throw every race into a show where it doesn't really make sense though. If you had multiple races living together in small towns like these, why would generations up on generations have gone by and they're not all one brown color? The black king and his black family (clearly modeled off of the Obama family). The black priestess later in the show? Nameless poor black townsfolk intermingled with the nameless poor white townsfolk. When you force things like this into places that it doesn't make any sense, all it really does is lead to questions like how much racism exists in the backstory that generations can go by and the different races still exist, or it will just remind you of the pervasive agenda that is in all media today and take you out of the story if you allow it to.

But it was all tolerable to me. I liked the story. I loved the animation and voice acting. That's the difference between using Woke as a selling point and just simply having woke elements in a story that could just as easily stand on its own without it.

This goes hand in hand with the fact that I've never heard of it until my Brother and Dad had me watch it when I visited last week. If I had heard about it, it would be because it was a complete failure because it was downright terrible and the media was claiming that it failed because of ista-sexa-phobia.

I'm looking forward to season 2. I hope they can keep the high bar they set for the first season.

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Saturday, June 24, 2023 4:57 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

I just got around to watching Season 2 with my dad and brother and it was not disappointing.

My favorite character from the show takes a huge backseat in the second season, but I wasn't surprised since his redemption arc was such a huge focal point of the first season. My only complaint about Season 2 was that he was pretty ineffective and didn't have a lot of dialogue and that I hope they find something for him to do in Season 3.

But they did a great job telling the back-story of some of the other great characters which give you more insight into their own dysfunctions in current-day and give more meaning to their own redemption arcs.

The artwork is as gorgeous as ever, the storytelling is at least on par with Season 1 if not an improvement, and the voice acting cast is still excellent.

Very much looking forward to Season 3!!!

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Monday, June 26, 2023 10:49 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

I figured that Critical Role was just the production company behind Vox Machina. I just found out that they were a group of voice actors that would regularly get together to play Dungeons and Dragons for live video streams on YT and Twitch and were playing the same characters from the show as early as 2015. I guess they've got several hundred of these play sessions that appear to be several hours each.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Role

Certainly not my thing and nothing I'd go back and watch from the beginning, but I thought it was an interesting bit of trivia about the genesis of the show.

The Critical Role name on the cover artwork actually refers to the production studio that they made and own.

At the time they raised the money to fund the show on Kickstarter, it was the most quickly funded Kickstarter in history, and the highest funded Kickstarter for TV and Film projects. They had initially sought a goal of $750,000 for one single 22 minute animated special, which they had set a 45 day time-frame for, and within one hour they had already raised $1 Million. They started adding stretch goals from there and by April 19th, 2019, 45 days after they started the campaign, they had raised $11,385,449 with 88,887 backers.

They sold the streaming rights to Amazon who gave them the most flexibility with the show, saying that other streaming services wanted them to tone everything down and make it a children's cartoon, or they wanted it to be politically heavy and be more like Game of Thrones. Amazon as part of the streaming deal commissioned 14 additional episodes (2 for the 1st season, and 12 for the 2nd season).

I hope it did well for Amazon and they continue it.

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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