REVIEWED: SEASON 1 (ALL EPISODES) | WHERE TO WATCH: NETFLIX
When a promo reel shouts proudly about a new show’s ‘adult only content,’ that normally goes one of three ways; violent excess, lots of sex, or both. Love, Death and Robots has both, just one or the other, or neither throughout its 18 episodes, a new foray for Netflix into sci-fi anthology television. It is intermittently inventive, but some good-looking animation work is marred by gratuitous content and short running times.
Producers Tim Miller and David Fincher have assembled a band of animators and creative minds from all over the world and the differences in presentation shine through. Some episodes like ‘The Witness’ strike you with explosive colour, while others like ‘Secret War’ just win you over with realism and grit. The attention to detail has been meticulous, but not at the expense of aesthetics, and the teams behind each episode have been given license to run away with their imagination. The beautiful ‘Zima Blue’ is a standout, with a piercing look and feel that only good animation can pull off.
It is animated eye candy, in more ways than one. Dig beneath the stunning surface and unfortunately, Love, Death and Robots is too full of sexualisation, objectification, and violence that does not really make much sense. The series’ opener ‘Sonnie’s Edge’ sets a precedent for this – too often do episodes slide into unwarranted violence against women, typification and overly confusing plot developments that try to be clever and fail. The immature mind of a young boy has won out when writing most of these episodes, and it curses the series so much that it never really recovers.
Some of the episodes do manage to become something above all of this surface level titillation. The likes of ‘Good Hunting’ and ‘Three Robots’ are more there to make you think than provide base pleasures, and realise something close to their potential. The strange running times, however, mean that none of these episodes gets as far into the issues as they would like – each episode hovers around the 15-minute mark, which is too short. It makes the series a breezy watch but leaves you wanting a lot more.
Love, Death and Robots does well in its explosive visions of the future but is let down by poor decisions and content firmly rooted in the present. Looking good is not enough to be heard amidst the high-quality animation scene of today. Miller and Fincher’s project fleetingly becomes what it should really be, but just does not have the sophistication needed to make it memorable. The series is fascinating in its prospect and in its design, but tries desperately to do everything and in doing so only just avoids doing nothing.
