Breravin

It's always fun to see what Pixar is up to, and I appreciate their attempt to do something a little different, but these shorts don't really work. With virtually no voice work everything feels like a pantomime which really saps the life from the characters and thereby the shorts themselves. As a result they're too hollow for a more mature audience, and too boring for a younger one. Ironically, for the few episodes that do have voice acting, the short becomes entirely about the voice work, swinging entirely too far in the other direction. In short (pun intended), these are a swing and a miss for me.

As with most things in life, to each their own. Nonetheless I felt a bit compelled to provide a slightly different point of view from the stream of 10's I'm seeing on IMDb so far.

I see a lot of "now this is Art!" comments. To be clear, film (even when shown on television) has been recognized as Art for generations now. Granted, this particular series is generally well executed and presents visuals that are often stunning and unique - but let's not trip over ourselves trying to hold up Love, Death & Robots as some breakthrough for the medium. And as gorgeous as it is, it's not without some really obvious flaws. The uncanny valley is still very deep with this series.

In terms of substance, this was nothing short of painful to watch. Completely predictable plot, utterly shallow dialogue, heavy handed cliches and extremely clumsy in its execution. The "twists" could be seen a mile away, and then any subsequent counter-twist felt tacked on as "gotchas" even though they were often transparent themselves. And the jokes suffered the exact same fate. Everything about the script felt like a first draft attempt.

There was also a strangely tone-deaf nature to much of the subject matter as well. The series sets up strong themes of empowerment, diversity and responsibility, only to explore those themes through extremely childish, macho narrative devices and stereotypes. It's an adolescent boy's attempt at writing about deeper issues without any greater understanding of them. Highly (and needlessly) sexualized (women only), brutally violent (because violence = power of course), and unimaginatively crass and crude (because curse words are "brutal, and "real"). I've seen some reviews actually decrying the themes as "SJW" - but interestingly, I think if you look even a tiny bit below the surface, it's more likely the opposite.

Yes, I've never seen anything quite like Love, Death & Robots before, but I still find it empty all the same. Plenty to see, nothing to take away.

One of the few series where the animation only gets better as the show goes on. Yoko Kanno's music is absolutely perfect, truly heart wrenching. It really adds to the very professional feel of the entire series. It may be your classic good versus evil plot (in a way) but there are so many other elements that make the whole escaflowne world come to life. A truly well done series. The only animated TV series I know of that feels like I'm watching a movie.