★★★½
“For fox’s sake..”
Having dipped my toe into the animated DC World with their 2009 version of Wonder Woman, I thought I’d scope out this more recent entry. It collects together both seasons of the Vixen web series, as well as new footage. The series began in 2015, with six five-minute episodes under Tucker, and six more followed the following year, directed by Geda. It’s a cross-over from the “Arrowverse”, with appearances from the Flash, Green Arrow and Black Canary, among others – some of the voices here are done by the same actors as the live-action TV shows.
The focus, however, is on Mari McCabe (Echikunwoke), a orphan from Africa who was brought up in Detroit by a foster family. Virtually all she has linking Mari to her original roots is a necklace, and this is no ordinary trinket. The totem allows the wearer to tap into animal spirits and gives them their powers, e.g. strength of a gorilla, speed of a cheetah, etc. This comes as a bit of a shock, not only to Mari, but also to the rest of the Arrowverse, who were under the impression superpowers were only the result of exposure to intense radiation.
Regardless, several problems result for Mari from this. Firstly, she has to try and figure out how to control and harness the potential abilities. Secondly, her older sister, Kuasa (Rose), feels the totem belongs to her, and their struggle for control forms the focus of season one. In the second series, we discover it is just one of five elemental artifacts, and when the “fire” totem is discovered, former general Benatu Eshu arrives in Detroit, intent on acquiring it, for… the usual reasons power-hungry former generals want to get their hands on relics of great import, I guess.
While more or less your standard superhero origin story, there is an underlying awareness, occasionally bordering on self-mockery. This certainly helps, given I’m no real fan of the superhero genre in general, so seeing this poke fun at itself – albeit gently – basically beat me to the punch. Some of the background characters were occasionally an issue for a novice like me, who is almost entirely unaware of the Arrowverse. I imagine most viewers will not be in that boat, but I felt it worked better when concentrating directly on McCabe, and exploring her background and development.
The animation seems cut from the same cloth as Wonder Woman, which means it makes for nicely fluid action. Although in some of the more talky sequences, I was occasionally distracted by the absence of movement anywhere except the lips. They do a good job of crafting a feature out of something episodic, even if the join between the two seasons is fairly obvious. Fans of Arrow should stick around for the post-credits sequence which (I’m informed!) ties into Echikunwoke’s subsequently appearance in a guest role as Vixen in Arrow. Yet even for someone like me, outside that group, this was a character I liked, and wouldn’t mind seeing more of – whether in animation or live-action.
Dir: James Tucker + Curt Geda
Star: Megalyn Echikunwoke, Anika Noni Rose, Neil Flynn, Sean Patrick Thomas