Ambitious Crossover: Animated 'Black Mirror' from the Director of 'Fight Club'

Netflix Original Series of one-shot episodes called Love, Death&Robots is a virtual high-five for everyone in the geek culture. 18 episodes that only share the same motifs (unsurprisingly, it`s all about love, death, and robots) can offer everyone what they love. Let us just make some connections between the possible sources of inspiration and the episodes.

High-quality, unbelievably realistic graphics of the episodes like Sonnie`s Edge, Beyond the Aquila Rift and Helping Hand are going to please the fans of the visuals of Detroit: Become Human. Speaking of which, there is an incredibly loaded plot of a machine coming to sentience and emotions in episode Zima Blue. It is hard to say that it is fully exploring philosophical topics of existentialism and Artificial Intelligence Ethics, but there was an attempt. Anyways, the show never positioned itself as an incredibly intellectual one.

Honestly, the series is worth watching even if you do not like the pseudo-philosophical content. The handwriting of the animators of the iconic award-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is clearly seen in a much higher rated (definitely 18+) episode called the Witness. Enjoy some action in the style of a comics with illustrated "klank" noises.

For those who miss the Black Mirror, there is always some dark humour about the mistakes that humanity has made and disasters it imposed on itself. When the Yoghurt took over and Three Robots ridicule the catastrophes. Outstanding.

There are Asian motifs of Good Hunting are mixed with some good old steampunk. An episode about a fox-spirit makes you shiver through fluid animation and visuals and remind of the Ghibli Studio, both in subject matter and a pumping story about retribution.

There is some unexpected, pun intended, depth in Fish Story. Not only the glowing ocean of fantasy is alluring; it is also quite dangerous and engulfing.

The series ends with the trashy absurdity about the Soviet division fighting the ghouls during Second World War (Episode Secret War).

And there is so much more to this. All in all, Love, Death&Robots is an animation of various styles and stories like a buffet full of colour and emotion. As promised it gives you views on love: romantic, platonic, unrequited; it shows some deaths: near-death experiences, losses, triumphs. And, of course, every episode features some sort of technology, it might be a sentient robot, a program or a total failure of the human mind.

Did it bring something entirely new to the geek culture? Well, probably not, but what it did is a great survey of the existing prompts and styles that suit every taste.