Anyone watched the Netflix series "Love Death & Robots"

[Johnny Novgorod]

Most of the shorts are just action sequences that start halfway through a story that doesn't actually end. Without context or pay-off you just sit there and marvel at the art style. Archaeologists fight vampires. Russians fight insectoids. Soldiers fight werewolves. Cyborgs fight robots. Farmers fight more insectoids. Why do I give a shit? "Suits" was the only one that made me care just for a snippet of characterization and that twist at the end where you finally get some context. Otherwise it really just feels like I'm back at school, doodling cool fight scenes.

The only two ones that actually tell a story are "Good Hunting" and "Zima Blue". That last one is the most sober and heartfelt. The other one, I'm going to be completely honest, felt like a demo for an anime appealing to weeaboos and furries. Both of them have a proper beginning, middle and end but it's interesting how in both endings there's a sense of "back to square one", just within a different context and the feeling that something has been accomplished.

The other one I like is "Three Robots". Funny, good dynamic between the robots, snappy visual humor, some good black humor gags as well. I'm more than a bit done with that joke about cats dominating mankind with their entitlement and cuteness, so that final twist was lost on me.

 

[gorfias]

I'm watching an episode about super smart yogurt. Sounds like Brain from Pinky and the Brain.

 

[Dalisclock]

I'm watching an episode about super smart yogurt. Sounds like Brain from Pinky and the Brain.

Maurice LaMarche and yes, it is.

He's also known for doing a good Orson Welles Voice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i7ycxiog40

 

[Agema]

I'm sorry I was a bit late to watching this, but:

Best:

Zima Blue. Honestly, given all the exciting things one could do with SF, lots of the stories were a disappointment, wading through boring SF tropes. Zima Blue is probably the most mature and cerebral, with a brief but touching consideration of art and life: what is it to be alive and give oneself meaning, and the use of art to seek and explain that meeting. I found the end quite moving: probably the only point in the entire series. In that sense, it's light years ahead of nearly all the others.

Funniest:

Three Robots. Quite a few are clearly groping for comedy, but this is the one that stands out by some margin. Three robots, with some nice interplay between their different characters, doing some post-apocalyptic tourism over the now-extinct huamn race (and getting plenty wrong).

Worst:

The Witness. This was awful - except the animation, which was excellent. But if I were tasked to specifically make a piece of work that would confirm lots of SF haters' worst prejudices about SF, I'd have made something like this. It's effectively an empty chase story involving people we are given no emotional investment in, with a weak and very predictable "twist", and full of gratuitous sexualised content that adds nothing to it except the cheapest of titillation. (Beyond the Aquila Rift and Sonnie's Edge likewise have some pointlessly sexualised moments that seem to suggest fanservice more than forethought.)

Overall:

I feel too many of these are pitched around the level of computer game cut-scenes. And given the generally low narrative standard in computer games, I mean that negatively. Some do however have merits: "Suits" is simple and hackneyed in it's way, but at least has some (cliched) characters you're inspired to care about. "Helping Hand" is good: taut, effective and wince-inducing tale of survival. Likewise good is "Shape Shifters", which I could imagine being expanded into a TV series. Stuff like "Blindspot", "Soul suckers" and "The Secret War" are just easily forgettable nothingburgers.

So, in short, nice concept, but pretty hit and miss. Wouldn't mind another series, though.

 

[Dalisclock]

Zima Blue, Good Hunting and Three Robots were my favorites, with When the Yogurt took over, Suits, Helping Hand, and Sonnie's Edge being pretty good as well. Fish Night was one that just about worked for it's magical realism thing and being 10 minutes long. The rest were okay to meh. I think the only one I actively disliked with The Witness, being this weird Porn-chase thingy.

 

[Agema]

Zima Blue, Good Hunting and Three Robots were my favorites, with When the Yogurt took over, Suits, Helping Hand, and Sonnie's Edge being pretty good as well. Fish Night was one that just about worked for it's magical realism thing and being 10 minutes long. The rest were okay to meh. I think the only one I actively disliked with The Witness, being this weird Porn-chase thingy.

I did check the authors on whose work the cartoons were based. I couldn't help but notice that ones generally well regarded came from the pens of Alastair Reynolds and John Scalzi, who are top-rank modern SF authors. I suspect this is not a coincidence.