Amazon's Vox Machina Starts Off Light and Then Gets Heavier...But Not Too Heavy

 Despite Michael Offutt's efforts, I have not gotten into Dungeons & Dragons.  I never really was a big fan.  I played some of the video games in the early 90s, but that was it.  The reason is mostly that I'm lazy and except for the computer games it seems like so much work with the maps and character sheets and dice.  Plus you need to know other local people who play it, which is also a hassle.  Playing Empires & Puzzles on my phone is close enough for me.

But I still know enough about that stuff that I could enjoy watching The Legend of Vox Machina on Amazon Prime.  The first two episodes are basically the pilot that establish the characters.  Something has been killing people and all the parties sent to stop it have been obliterated.  The ragtag mercenary team of Vox Machina take the case because they're desperate for money while the king lets them because they're expendable.

The team is made up of different races like humans, elves, gnomes, and maybe a troll or something who have different skills so most of the classes from D&D and the like are represented.  They don't really have a strong leader or plans and basically just do whatever works and hope for the best.

• Here's the roster:
• Vex & Vax are half-elf twins.  Vex is the female who is the closest to a leader the group has.  Vax is the male twin who is good at picking locks and sneaking around--and is bisexual. (They have longer names I'm not looking up.)
• Scanlan is a gnome who plays a lute and when he does, it creates a sort of Green Lantern-like effect, usually a purple hand that he can float around on.  He also considers himself a ladies (and mens) man.
• Pyke is also a gnome or some other short race, but she has healing power through a deity called "Everlight."  When the Everlight stops working, she has to go to a temple and then beams a projection of herself across the land like Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi.
• Grog might be a troll or something.  He's a big blue dude with an ax who's really stupid but also fearless.  Pyke is his best friend who often has to use her power to heal him.
• Percival used to be part of the royal family of Whitestone until they were overthrown and he escaped.  With a little mystical help he made a crude sort of revolver.
• Keylith is my favorite character because she's a cute redhead.  She's a mage who mostly can control plants, summon light, and change into an animal form sort of like Beast Boy in Titans.  She could probably do more if she actually knew what she was doing.

Needless to say their first attempt to stop the menace does not go well, but they survive and eventually find the source of the trouble:  a blue dragon that takes the form of a prominent human.  You can kind of use the Law & Order logic they pointed out in Family Guy to figure out who it is by looking for the biggest name guest star.  (One who was on a very popular British sci-fi series and then in one of Marvel's Netflix shows.)

After the first two episodes I thought this was going to be kind of a D&D/LOTR-flavored Lower Decks thing where it's parodying the property with these lovable losers.  But the third episode starts a longer arc where shit starts getting real.  Years ago a pair of vampires called the Blackwoods took over the kingdom of Whitestone and killed the ruling family--or so they thought.  One named Percival got away and eventually joined Vox Machina as their sort of steampunk guy who has a gun.  After running into the vampires at a royal banquet, Vox Machina sets out to liberate Whitestone.

The Whitestone arc takes up the rest of the season as the team fights vampires, zombies, giants, and a demon.  There are a lot of twists and turns as they try to liberate the kingdom, destroy the Blackwoods, and then free Percival of a demon curse.  It gets kind of dark sometimes with characters seeming like they might die, but none of the main ones actually do.

The show keeps its potty-mouth humor and for the most part Vox Machina are still a bunch of dumbasses, but there's also some drama.  And some grisly murders.  This isn't really for kids because there's a lot of un-bleeped cursing, graphic violence, gore, and some nudity and sex.  Kind of like if the writers of The Orville wrote an episode of Game of Thrones and had it animated by the people who did Comedy Central's Moonbeam City.

So at times it can get kind of heavy, but it doesn't get too heavy that it's not fun to watch even if you're not a huge D&D nerd.

(Fun Facts:  Besides the British guy I mentioned, Arrested Development's Tony Hale appears in the first episodes; Stephen Root of Office Space, King of the Hill, and Book of Boba Fett plays an evil professor in Whitestone; and the new MST3K's Felicia Day has a small part as a captain of the royal army.  Unless you're into video games, none of the main characters is played by anyone famous.  The feature on Amazon Prime Video that lets you see the cast is always kind of neat for stuff like that.  Most original shows on Amazon they release one episode a week or they'll do a couple episodes the first week and then one a week after.  For this series they did 3 episodes a week, maybe because they're only about 30 minutes.  Anyway, the 12 episodes is actually more than a lot of shows these days.)