What To Watch Next If You Loved Love, Death, and Robots, Part 2
by Tito W. James
As a followup to my last article here are 8 more animated short films you should watch if you loved Love, Death, and Robots.
[***Some of the shorts will contain cartoon sex and violence and may not be appropriate for all viewers].
Due to a deadly STD outbreak, men and women are segregated and all forms of sexual contact are banned. There’s only one place where the youth are free–a nightclub called Urbance. The animated pilot fuses cyberpunk and afrofuturism to create a fully original science fiction world. Urbance was created to be a full anime series and it will hopefully find a home on a streaming platform.
Paths of Hate puts the animal back in the term “Dog Fight.” This is by far the best aerial battle I’ve ever seen and I wish I could see it on the big screen. The pacing in Paths of Hate is perfect, seamlessly shifting from fast-motion to slow-motion as we follow the dizzying flight patterns of the two planes.
David Oreilly is an animation auteur who has more recently dipped into video games with the release of the indie gem, Everything. In Please Say Something we follow the tragic and darkly comedic marriage between a cat and a mouse. Oreilly’s signature use of low-poly art has made his style recognizable even when he’s a guest animator on Adventure Time.
Felix Colgrave takes the rhythmic and repetitive techniques from 1930s animation and combines them with medieval fantasy art to create something original. Double King follows a mad tyrant’s quest to become the one and only ruler. But, as Shakespeare said, “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.”
On a more serious note, Steve Cutts’ Are You Lost In The World Like Me critiques the current cultural plague of distraction. The social media dystopia is rendered in a nostalgic cartoon style from a simpler time. The satire is sharp and shockingly real. However, if you feel isolated in the social media age, you are not alone.
X-Story is a classic treasure hunt adventure that pits our cyborg protagonist against various obstacles. The 2D animation and cell-shaded CGI are blended perfectly. Considering the animated short’s length, subject matter, and quality, X-Story could have easily been produced for Love, Death, and Robots.
I can easily recommend all of the animation produced by France’s animation school Gobelins. This graduation short encapsulates the themes of Love, Death, and Robots, by telling a story about a young man’s addiction virtual relationships.
I could easily recommend all of Blur Studio’s showreel. They have been making high quality action packed video game trailers for years. The trailer for Angel Stone features an over-the-top demon battle worthy of Bayonetta. The game itself is far less cool, but as an animated sequence, Angel Stone holds up on its own.