Spider Rose

Netflix's "Love, Death and Robots" returns for a fourth season. Overall, I've enjoyed the first three runs and have written individual reviews for each episode. I think I'll continue that approach with this set too.

Lydia (Emily O'Brien) lives in an asteroid ring, trying to trade with passing ships. Lydia is planning revenge against Jade (Feodor Chin) but has so far only been able to kill his clones, and not Jade himself. She is temporarily left with the pet of one of her trading partners, a creature that absorbs the DNA of those that it eats. She bonds with the creature, nicknamed Nosey, but Jade has discovered her location and is planning an attack.

We're back with Blur Studios here, and their level of near photo realism animation is back too. To be fair, this is not quite at the highest level of graphics we've seen, but a strong contender. Unfortunately, many of these visually splendid efforts are pedestrian with their stories and I'm afraid that "Spider Rose" felt like another one of those to me.

There was a gory battle scene, which was intense, but nothing else particularly memorable about the episode.

This one was maybe the closest to what Love, Death and Robots used to be, and yet, you will not find me re-watch it. It has elements that we have explored before, but this time, it is told in a less shocking or exciting fashion. Nothing unique about our character, we've seen this done multiple times, just about watchable. I'd say it was ok-ish overall, but just below average. Unfortunately, it will not get better than this when it comes to storytelling or vibe...which is annoying and disappointing for something that used to make people go "whoah, now what is something creative". I also found something about our character's face being a bit too much in terms of animation, but that is just a small thing, might be just me.

A bio-mechanical femme in a vast orbiting web-like space station controls a strange alien artifact, barters with extraterrestrials, seeks revenge for a dead mate, and acquires a strange pet. All of which is interesting but given the 15 minute running time, the disparate storylines just don't gel - too bad as they generally start off interestingly. The designs of Rose (the cybertrix) and the aliens are imaginative as is the rendering of Rose's vast mechano-environment. With a bit more focus, this could have been one of the top L,D+R episodes but even as is, it has so far been my favourite from the anthology's unfortunately weak fourth season.

This story feels like a retread of a previous seasons.

The one with a human going in to space to investigate a hive mind entity and then decides they would make a better queen and ruler of the hive and then finds out the old hive / queen isn't happy about that idea.

The agenda of the aliens is kind of unclear did they send the cute pet on purpose to harvest the spider rose / human / augmented dna ? Or where they merely trying to maintain their ' arrangement' ?

The timing of the villain attack is also somewhat circumspect and coincidental.

Animation and voice acting off the charts with amazing sound stage to sell it.

There are some interesting themes in this one, and it evokes similarities with what must have been done by the same studio, the sci-fi episode in the previous season, the one about hive-mind extra-terrestrials. I must admit I _loved_ that one -- the one in season 3, it actually had a novel story, certainly one that's worth pursuing which it tried to do.

Anyway, this may just be done by the same studio, it bears some visual style similarities for me to think so.

But unlike the other one, this one doesn't really explore a particularly interesting theme. It's visually striking, but the show already set the standard for 3-D animation, and I, for one, expect no less.

The theme that I liked -- which the episode didn't manage (or bother) to fully explore -- is loneliness, despair, desire for revenge and last but not least, _pets_! :) It ended too soon for me to have a lasting impression, which I think is its chief shortcomings, perhaps even the only shortcoming -- there is an interesting theme there somewhere, vaguely painted and lazily left unexplored.

Twice the story and half the animation quality (even at the same run length) would have improved this one by a margin, I'd say. Alas.