A campaign in Dungeons & Dragons, played by a group of people famous for their voices. Another campaign, on Kickstarter, to turn that idea into an animated series with those characters. A multimedia phenomenon that has generated comics, books, hype and quarrels, but above all hundreds of millions of views. Welcome to the world of Critical Role and The Legend of Vox Machina , the animated fantasy series coming to Amazon Prime Video in a few days, January 28th. But to understand how this show came about, we need to take a step back.
DOUBLES & DRAGONS
It is 2015 when the first episode of Critical Role debuts on the Net . A web-series broadcast on Twitch and YouTube in which a group of professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons . Among the people involved, Matthew Mercer , who in the English-speaking market has lent his voice to Levi / Rivaille from Attack of the Giants and many other famous anime characters, the actress and voice actress Ashley Johnson , and a large group of colleagues.
Seven years later, albeit with a few pauses, the format has reached almost three hundred episodes and three game campaigns, has ground up some crazy numbers and has generated a company (The Critical Role company) and various side projects, including a podcast version , a prequel comic (Critical Role: Vox Machina – The Origins, published in America by Dark Horse and in Italy by Edizioni BD), novels, miniatures and, indeed, an animated series. Whose funding on kickstarter made, well, a bang.
THE MULTIPLICATION OF THE COURT
Despite some dropouts and some missteps (for example an episode sponsored by a well-known fast food chain and then removed as a VOD, because fans didn’t like it), the show’s monstrous success and huge following immediately created exceptional interest. for the crowdfunding campaign linked to the animated series. A fantasy cartoon in which to bring the characters from the first Critical Role campaign to life . And so the goal of scrapping $ 750k for a single 22-minute animated short has expanded progressively, like Fantozzi’s office at the casino with the ficus plants, as the campaign forged ahead. In an hour, it was already over a million dollars. In the end, the millions were nearly twelve.
It was therefore decided to make a series of ten episodes. At that point Amazon came forward, which took over everything to bring it to Prime Video, adding two episodes to the first season (now there are twelve) and, in fact, an entire second season, with another dozen episodes.
YES, VAX (AND VEX)
The atmosphere in the world of Critical Role is that of playing a fantasy RPG with friends. So a lot of damage points, arrows and knives planted everywhere, but also foul-mouthed bards, pop quotes to accompany a spell, and all the self-awareness in the world for its characters. And a lot of messing around, of course. The story is set at the beginning of the first campaign, and we have already seen the first adventures of this heterogeneous party of heroes elsewhere, for example in the aforementioned prequel comic. But whether you know the background or not, I guess it doesn’t matter: The Legend of Vox Machina should be perfectly enjoyable even for those who had never heard of Critical Role and its world until a minute ago.
The first reviews, in the USA, speak of a well-animated series and able to best condense the tens of hours that each subplot took away in those long D&D games. The characters are obviously voiced by their respective interpreters in Critical Role, since they are of the trade, and retain their characteristics. Scanlan Shorthalt is a vulgar gnome bard who loves sexual innuendo, Grog Strongjaw is a very strong barbarian and not exactly a top, the twins Vex and Vax are two half-elves who weigh their lives, the shape-shifting druid Keyleth is as powerful as naive, and so Street. It is played on fantasy stereotypes, in a very amused atmosphere, before any others
Yes, it sounds interesting. And yes, let’s talk about it again soon.
