Love, Death & Robots — Netflix’ Science Fiction Anthology in Review
This past friday (March 15th 2019), Netflix released a science fiction anthology called “Love, Death & Robots”, a collection of 18 short movies. The episodes are all made in a variety of animation and CGI styles, ranging from anime-style to hyperrealistic computer animation.
At first, I thought it was purely cyberpunk, but the stories are set in different flavors of scifi, including a steampunk episode (where not electronics and computers are the major technology, but gears and steam engines) and a more horror/ fantasy-oriented one.
Interestingly, many episodes are based on short stories by prolific writers such as John Scalzi (Old Man’s War), Alastair Reynolds (Revelation-Series) and Peter F. Hamilton (Night’s Dawn-Series). The quality of the stories overall is high indeed, infused with lots of humor.
Netflix rated the series for adults 18+ only, a lot of episodes feature gratiuitous violence and nudity — though not much more than your average Game of Thrones episode.
The fact that every episodes is animated differentiates this to the Black Mirror series, also on Netflix, which in turn relies on longer episodes and heavier topics. Love, Death & Robots is definitely more focused on quick wit and a more liberal approach to storytelling.
