WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Legend of Vox Machina, now streaming on Prime Video.
It comes as little surprise that an adventure anime like The Legend of Vox Machina would imperil its characters. But in drawing from the Critical Role campaign of Dungeons & Dragons, the series enjoys a level of excitement and danger seldom seen in the genre. Any action series pits its heroes against overwhelming odds and immense danger, yet Vox Machina feels different for just how constant and heightened that danger is.
Looking back over the story thus far this may be one of the main strengths of its action. Part of the fun in Dungeons & Dragons is the threat of the heroes dying if the odds don't go in their favor, and Vox Machina captures that magic to the viewer's thrill.
Establishing stakes and making them feel real is integral to the dramatic involvement of any action series. Most of the time an audience knows the hero will triumph in the end, so the quality of a conflict comes in making that triumph seem almost impossible. Yet for the heroes of Vox Machina, first introduced as a ragtag group of beginning adventurers far from the mythic legends their world of Tal'Dorei needs, the odds seem to constantly be stacked against them. Indeed, even their first adventure against a massive blue dragon decimating the kingdom proved a nigh-impossible task.
Yet somehow the stakes have only gone up from there. Despite only narrowly prevailing over Krieg, that is not even the closest Vox Machina came to dying throughout the story. Further battles saw Vax stranded alone with the immensely powerful Briarwoods, shadowy wraiths the team could not even touch nearly killed the whole team, and the silver tongue of Professor Anders turned the team against itself so they could not hurt their enemy without harming themselves. Each battle seemed to present an impossible scenario, a narrow escape from the jaws of defeat, and riveting action for viewers who could not be so sure they would survive.
There is a reason for that. While the adventure genre on television may make such lethal threats a rote occurrence where the audience can be sure the heroes will make it out alive, the chaos of Dungeons & Dragons means character death is a very real possibility at every turn. In the source material of Critical Role, fans were on the edge of their seats when Vax separated from the rest of the party, only to face the series' main villains by himself precisely because he really could have been killed off. Clever thinking and fortuitous roles were the only thing saving him, and that tension bleeds into the Amazon adaptation all the same.
For those unfamiliar with the source material, they should not rest so easy thinking all their favorite heroes are certain to make it through their adventures alive. Though events like Pike's astrophysical arrival to the battlefield in "The Tide of the Bone" seem like a typical deus ex machina as is the team's namesake, such moments are only part of a limited set of plans that the original Game Master, Matt Mercer, could create. The players were always free to make the decisions they wished, and when they chose wrong they could be punished.
The stakes ramp up higher as Vox Machina prepares for its final showdown with the Briarwoods, and the excitement building up to that feels altogether different than a faceoff against the typical big bad. Whether it's The Avengers or Justice League or whatever other action-oriented series built around a team of heroes, there is a certain amount of predictability and certainty that makes it all the harder to feel concerned for the heroes' survival.
There is little that's predictable about The Legend of Vox Machina. As with Dungeons & Dragons, this is part of the fun, and seeing it come to life in animation is a uniquely enjoyable experience for fans both new and familiar to the fantasy world.
