A group of warriors must save the land of Yuria from the Death Adder. Mike McMahan (Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites, Star Trek: Lower Decks) and Joe Chandler (American Dad!) join me to discuss Golden Axe, premiering this Wednesday Sept. 16 on Paramount+. It’s an adult animated comedy series adaptation of the iconic SEGA video game, featuring the voices of Matthew Rhys and Danny Pudi. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: Mike, I love that this show is described as an “homage” to the 1989 SEGA video game, because you’ve got classic elements and new elements. What was your overall approach to this — as a tribute to the fans and for new fans?

Mike McMahan: Well, really we’re the fans. So we’re really tributing ourselves. And you always wanna tribute yourself when you’re making something. Joe and I grew up playing this game — me in the arcade, him at home on the Genesis, so he had the easier version. We’re comedy writers, so we don’t usually get the keys to a cool, big, fantasy epic, so it was important to us that, whether you’ve played the game or not, you are enjoying a show where the stakes of the world really matter to these characters. They really are being sent out on a huge, epic journey. It’s kind of our “Lord of the Rings” that also happens to be funny. This is a show that if you love swords and sorcery, “Dungeons and Dragons”, any sort of big, broad fantasy stuff, but you also like to hang out with your friends [and] have a good time — this shared understanding of these worlds… it feels like getting and hanging with people who get the same stuff that you do.

JM: Joe, what is so appealing to you as a storyteller when it comes to stories about quests and journeys — and those kind of character arcs?

Joe Chandler: We’re all questing all the time. One of the reasons fantasy works so well is: these massive stakes for things that feel… “I’m just trying to get my kids to school on time”… it relates to things we’re going through day to day. I also love this genre. I’ve been playing D&D since I was a kid. I played this game when I was a kid. “The Lord of the Rings”… “The Hobbit”… these things all matter to me. Getting to tell a story through a comedy filter that is this world we love so much is thrilling. So exciting.

JM: And the self-aware narration and the observational humor work really well. I screened the first few episodes. Mike, was it tricky at all to incorporate that, or because of your experience in this field, it just felt right to have that blend with the action and the scope of it all?

MM: It felt pretty easy because we were actually utilizing that stuff… Joe and I both grew-up doing animated shows where every episode you’re kind of re-starting. In this, you can join in on any episode and enjoy it, but if you watch from beginning to end… every episode is serialized. It’s picking up where the previous one left off. You’ve got a narrator. You’ve got a map you’re following. It feels like you’re reading an amazing “Lord of the Rings” journey that happens to be funny. So all those mechanisms and genre stuff — all of the things you’re used to in fantasy shows… those things existed in fantasy media in order to help you the audience understand where we were each episode or each chapter. We just utilized it in the same way, which was really helpful.

JM: Nice. So the scope and the scale of it all… Joe, what amazed you about what this animation team has brought to life and what you wanted to explore with the locations here on “Golden Axe”?

JC: We went to the animation team with this idea of, “We want to do an adult animated show that doesn’t look like an adult animated show.” We wanted it to look beautiful, and we gave them these points of reference… Titmouse was down to try it. We met with artists — David DePasquale and Giancarlo Volpe. Both delivered this thing. They just did it for us. When you get animators tasked like this, they are excited to do it. “Oh I don’t just draw a box in a booth? I get to draw skulls and a door?” They grew up on this stuff too. They love this stuff more than we do, even. They were running with the assignment. Super fun to be able to hand that assignment to artists who are so excited to work on something like that.

MM: They just wanna draw dragons, these guys! They love dragons! How could you not?

JC: They love dragons, and they were happy to do it. So it was really fun to get to ask them to do that.