'Love, Death + Robots': Fincher gives you Red Hot Chili Peppers dolls and you swallow them.

It was in 2019 when the audiovisual industry fell at the feet of the - often disdained - Netflix platform , all thanks to the launch of a series that was a breath of fresh air : Love, Death + Robots (produced by Joshua Donen, David Fincher, Jennifer Miller and Tim Miller ) was a series of animated science fiction stories for adults. The first season (Volume I, according to its creators) did, indeed, have some love, death and robots, and above all it stood out for the originality of the proposal: 18 self-contained episodes, of short duration (the shortest could last five minutes, the longest around twenty), each with its own idiosyncrasy, drawing style (a mix of 2D and 3D) and story.

In short, each chapter introduced us fully into a new and very cyberpunk universe that partly followed the narrative begun by Charlie Brooker in Black Mirror: worlds, some post-apocalyptic, where technology has, as it could not be otherwise, gotten out of hand. The lighter and more comical episodes ( Yogurt Power, The Three Robots ) contrasted with those with more beautiful animation ( Happy Hunting, Night of Sea Creatures ), or with those with a more philosophical and profound tone ( Zima Blue , which is probably the best episode of the series to date, in which a renowned and mysterious artist decides to tell his past).

Then the pandemic hit, and in 2021 they surprised everyone again with the release of the second volume, which featured eight new chapters that followed in the footsteps of the first ones, although they were even darker and more pessimistic ( Evolutionary Response is perhaps the most memorable of all: in a world where people are immortal, the answer to ending overpopulation is to eradicate births at all costs). The third volume arrived just a year later, adding another eight chapters to the series.

And since May 15th, we can enjoy the fourth volume of the series, this time with ten new episodes that provide continuity to the plot, although they (hopefully) lack the freshness of the first offering. But what television series doesn't have that experience?

As a curious fact: the fact that each chapter is completely self-contained and written and directed by a different person not only adds richness to the plot, but also demonstrates the democratization of today's animation studios. Three Spaniards ( Blow Studio , located in Seville, Able & Baker and Pinkman TV., both located in Madrid) have participated in the creation of several chapters of the American series, along with other countries such as Poland, France or Denmark. In fact, the Spaniard Alberto Mielgo (winner of the Oscar for best animated short film in 2022 for The Windshield Wiper ) won an Emmy for his work on Jíbaro , the last chapter of the third volume: a beautiful fable about a deaf knight and a mythological mermaid who tries to trick him.

In this fourth season, as is customary, computer animation has been prioritized over 2D, with the honorable exception of the episode Golgotha , which is the first in the series shot entirely in real image ( B-movie style ) and which, paradoxically, is the one that works the worst. There's a bit of everything in the new offering, to choose from: a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert with puppets (directed by David Fincher), where they sing Can't Stop , and which really doesn't contribute anything unless you like the Red Hot Chili Peppers so much that you don't mind seeing them in puppet form. It doesn't matter, at this point, David Fincher doesn't have to ask anyone for accountability.

Director Alberto Mielgo won his first Emmy for the episode "Jíbaro" from the third season.

There are also electronic devices that complain about their owners in Smart Devices, Idiot Users. A cat who fights the devil for the soul of a poet in 1700 in Because He Can Crawl, based on a story by Siobhan Carroll. A group of kids who have to fight in the middle of the apocalypse with giant babies (vaguely reminiscent of the Titans in Attack on Titan ) in The 400s , or a man and his faith in the middle of World War II, in Zeke and His Encounter with Faith , to name a few more examples.

Although it feels familiar, as many of the directors and studios from previous seasons are returning for this fourth season, the formula that worked well in the past doesn't work as well this time around . The jokes aren't as funny, nor are the sci-fi insights as profound. However, one of Love, Death + Robots ' key strengths is its versatility and how well the stories with such different tones complement each other.

The sci-fi ones tend to be more outstanding, the nihilistic ones leave a bitter aftertaste in the audience, and the funny ones are a good counterpoint to all of this, although this season they fall into the absurd on more than one occasion. Visually, it's still excellent, although less varied: only two non-American animation studios participated in the production (and Spain isn't among them). Narratively, it's a little less so, which doesn't mean it remains one of the most notable and entertaining series on the platform. Perhaps we've simply grown accustomed to it being the Apocalypse.

It was in 2019 when the audiovisual industry fell at the feet of the - often disdained - Netflix platform , all thanks to the launch of a series that was a breath of fresh air : Love, Death + Robots (produced by Joshua Donen, David Fincher, Jennifer Miller and Tim Miller ) was a series of animated science fiction stories for adults. The first season (Volume I, according to its creators) did, indeed, have some love, death and robots, and above all it stood out for the originality of the proposal: 18 self-contained episodes, of short duration (the shortest could last five minutes, the longest around twenty), each with its own idiosyncrasy, drawing style (a mix of 2D and 3D) and story.