Love Death and Robots Title

Geek Errant Reviews: Love Death and Robots

Anthology series like Love Death and Robots always hold such fantastic promise. Love, Death and Robots as a title suggests this show could contain anything around those three ideas. Using the medium of animation, it can dive deep, with the sheer variety of content hopefully allowing for something every audience can enjoy. While the quality of each episode varies, the series as a whole is worth the minor time investment for the animation quality alone.

Love Death and Robots is a new anthology series from Netflix. It’s a collection of 18 short animated episodes, each of varying lengths. These have been produced by a variety of studios. Which themselves have been adapted from a series of stories from sci fi writers. The series has been produced by David Fincher (Yes that one) and series creator Tim Miller with the scripts being adapted by Philip Gelat. Almost all of the episodes are science fiction based, with the subgenres varying between variations of Cyber, Steam and Diesel punk, Space Travel, Horror and more. .

Since each episode is so short, and the effort required to buy in is so little, it’d be difficult to talk about each episode without spoiling them, but I did think there were a few standout episodes.

Three Robots

Love Death and Robots Three Robots

Adapted from a short story by John Scalzi, the second episode of the series is one of the strongest. Three Robots, on vacation in the ruins of a human city long after the apocalypse. There’s nothing particularly original here as the titular three robots pick over the ruins of human life and misunderstand what they find. It is however, a very solid script and story, with some excellent voice acting to raise it up further.

Beyond the Aquila Rift.

Love Death and Robots Aquila

I’m a sucker for a good lost in space narrative. Beyond the Aquila Rift sees the captain of a star ship wake from a space sleep. He finds his ship rescued at a repair station far, far from home. Luckily, an old flame is there to get him through.

The animation style is what really sells this episode. Rendered with an incredibly detailed photorealistic style, this episode does a fantastic job of using this realism to truly stunning effect by the end.

Sucker of Souls

Love Death and Robots Sucker


A team of mercenaries and researchers dig up an ancient evil. There’s a very fluid, specifically french feeling animation style for this episode, paired with exceptional lighting and direction. It perfectly suits the closed, cramped feeling of this episode. In watching their attempts to survive, the episode keeps the horror broad, the humour broader and the action impressive.

When The Yoghurt Took Over

Love Death and Robots Yoghurt

Maurice la Marche (Brain from Pinky and the Brain) lends his talents to a comic episode. He narrates the various goings on in global politics as hyper sentient yoghurt develops a new world order.

His narration is half the reason this episode is so good. The other half is the charming, toylike visual style that plays out on screen. It’s delightfully pleasant, and suits the surreal nature of the topic.

Suits

Love Death and Robots Suits

A bunch of farmers defend their homes from a horde of chitinous bugs using homemade mech suits. If you were to tell me this episode were to be the opening animation for a game, I’d believe you in a heartbeat. Fun action, tight narrative storytelling and some surprisingly engaging voice acting means this episode stands out despite a fairly rote concept.

Individually each episode has highlights, but there are a couple of running problems through the series however.

As an anthology, the series veers in tone to a frankly ridiculous degree. Episode one is a brutal cyberpunk character piece wreathed in darkness and neon. Episode two is a dark comedy playing on dramatic irony with a bright visual style. The varying length of episodes and the fact that the majority of Netflix’s audience is going to watch this in one binge means that tonal whiplash is nearly guaranteed.

Secondly, aside from one notable exception in Helping Hand, female characters are built out of stock backgrounds featuring assault, unflattering depictions of sex work or worse. Women in this series are built around these rather dated tropes. Similarly, probably because of the license granted by the 18+ rating, the camera lingers on the female form a lot. Men are nude as well. But they’re mostly treated for laughs compared to the languid camera work on the ladies side.

The reason for all this seems to be partly because it’s expected for the genre. (which is not an excuse for doing it) I suspect this is because there were very few female writers having their short stories adapted. Sonnie’s Edge and The Witness in particular are early episodes presented in the series and set the tone for the whole series especially poorly.

Thirdly, for aficionados of the genre, there’s nothing new or overly innovative here. It’s easy to spot the plot structure or twist of most episodes with a passing familiarity with sci fi. There’s nothing wrong with this. Each episode is a solid depiction of sci fi tropes, and as a first taste of the genre is valid. This is especially true as a wider Netflix audience may be encountering some of these stories for the first time. It’s just something which could definitely be improved upon for a second season.

I do hope a second season is what we get though. Give me shorts built around africanfuturism, episodes written about other culture’s views of Science Fiction. Stories I haven’t seen in some form before. Get some new writers involved and give them the same quality of presentation everything in season one has gotten.

Love, Death and Robots does a good job of presenting a bunch of sci fi shorts about the three titular concepts. I really want to see it do a better one of everything in between them.