Vixen Season 1 Review

Vixen, Season 1

I knew Vixen existed, this little animated web-cartoon project that was set in around the timeline of Arrow's third season and Flash's first season (possibly before the time Oliver joined the League), featuring the introduction of DC C-lister hero Vixen, done in animation a la the DC movies as opposed to live-action. Except that Vixen's coming to Arrow in live-action mode soon, so I guess I should check it out. Vixen runs for six episodes, each lasting a scant five minutes... I'm honestly kinda confused why they didn't just make it a 30-minute mini-movie/episode instead of releasing it in this piecemeal format, but eh, whatever works. It's kinda weird calling something that's shorter than a regular TV or cartoon episode a 'season'... but if that's what the showmakers are calling it, well. We're getting a second season of this relatively soon.

Honestly the biggest thing that Vixen has going against it is its extremely short duration. All six episodes strung together barely reach thirty minutes, and episodes one and four repeat an almost identical sequence of Vixen fighting the Arrow and the Flash, with the one from episode one just serving as a 'this action scene that makes no sense so we're going to rewind time after this' prologue. Considering how in thirty minutes they have to introduce Vixen herself as a character, introduce her background, her powers, her backstory, a customary villain to beat and have her interact with Arrow and Flash, well, thirty minutes isn't quite adequate time to work around with.

Thankfully the show writers did it well. While I am still honestly kinda irked why they had to repeat the same action scene in episode four -- surely we could just cut away to the action starting, and then to Vixen falling, going all "that's how we got here" and flying back up -- the opener gives us a decent look at Vixen's range of powers, namely manifesting the powers of animal spirits through her totem. Of course being a bit of a DC geek I'm already familiar with Vixen's powers and character, and know the rough edges of her backstory, but it's still quite well done.

The earlier episodes focus more on Vixen -- or rather, her alter ego Mari McCabe -- as a person. She has a bit of a strenuous relationship with her foster father Chuck. Chuck really tries hard to be a good daddy and most of the time Mari is quite polite to him, if rather cold -- though she notes that this might be an effect of the death of Mari's foster mother. Also the fact that Mari's soul-searching for her real parents and her real parentage, apparently her status as being adopted bothering her quite a fair bit. We also get hints that she has an interest outside her soul-searching, namely searching for a career in fashion design. She also stabs some douchebag in the hand for trying to get a 'job' from her if you know what I mean.

Then, of course, the mysterious family heirloom totem grants her animal powers, and we have Mari get her feet wet relatively quickly. Meanwhile, Barry and Cisco (who look awesome in animated form) realize what's happening and mobilize. I honestly find it rather hard to believe that a single metahuman would cause Barry to call for backup when comparatively larger threats like Reverse-Flash or Zoom never made him call Oliver... but eh, crossovers. Arrow and Flash battle Vixen for a bit, which is cool, but they quickly establish that Vixen isn't a metahuman and her powers come from somewhere else -- Oliver is quick to accept magic, and as we see in season four of Arrow, for good reason. Also, Vixen isn't remotely interested in this whole superhero/supervillain thing. 

Mari went to a nice historian doctor ask information about the Anansi totem necklace (and we get an introdump on) and we get a legend about a shapeshifting trickster god from African lore... and the doctor sells Vixen over to this mysterious African lady Kuasa who knocks Mari out and brings her to the Zambesi Village. Kuasa herself is not named in the show, mind you, other than the credits. Anyway, Kuasa reveals herself to be Mari's biological sister, removes the clingy totem forcibly with the poison of a certain spider... but Mufasa the animal spirits talk to Mari, she accepts her role as the totem's guardian, and she beats Kuasa up even without the power of the totem. Now the climax could've been handled better, with Kuasa bringing Mari all the way to Africa just to tell her a story and leave her for dead being quite strange when Kuasa had the chance to kill Mari when she was unconscious all the way during the flight from Detroit to Zambesi. We also don't really get much follow up on what Mari did to Kuasa, or the cultists worshiping Kuasa -- implied to be part of a ritual after Kuasa received some powers from 'darker sources'. The Rising Darkness from Constantine? I doubt Vixen was created before the decision to fold Constantine into CW was made, but eh.

Then Vixen talk a bit to Arrow and the Flash, and ends up parting on friendly terms with them and becoming the heroine of Detroit. As cool as it is to hear the Arrow and the Flash show up as stylized animated versions voiced by their real actors (also to a lesser extent Cisco Ramon and Felicity Smoak), delivering some of the funniest lines in the entirety of CW lore, I am honestly quite unconvinced that their presence needed to be so major. Mari went from distrusting the two capes to... befriending them... after the whole Zambesi conflict? I thought that was just odd, and it might've been better if they initially parted on friendlier terms. Vixen outrunning Flash also ended up being kind of an odd way to build Vixen up as super-awesome, but honestly we've seen Flash outrun missiles and jets, and a cheetah can't be faster than that. I suppose it's Vixen jumping all around the cityscape that slows Flash down. But still, the presence of Oliver and Barry (who are definitely in there for marketing) isn't a minus in my books, and honestly the story still functions quite well even with the big distraction of two other superheroes in it. So yeah.

Overall, though, it's certainly a solid addition to the ever-growing CW universe, and I can see why they went with a web-animation to introduce Vixen. All those crazy special effects with summoning elephant and rhinoceros auras would be damned difficult to replicate in live-action... though since Vixen's going to actually show up in Arrow soon (played by her voice actress) I guess it's just budget constraints versus actually introducing the character? Or something? It's a nice introduction of a wider range of superpowers and magic into the CW-verse, and it's an actually pretty solid little mini-movie on its own. It's an origin story to one of DC's most unique characters in both her status as a female black superhero, as well as her origin story and concept in general, and in my opinion it's done quite well.