Spider Rose

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.

My problem with Spider Rose

The only Season 4 episode I liked was Spider Rose (it is actually a dramatic improvement on the source story). But there is one problem I can't ignore.

Here is the description of *Colonel Doctor* Jade Prime from Bruce Sterling's story:

"A Shaper's face appeared, one of the Oriental-based gene lines, smooth raven hair held back with jeweled pins, slim black eyebrows arched over dark eyes with the epicanthic fold, pale lips slightly curved in a charismatic smile. A smooth, clean actor's face with the glittering ageless eyes of a fanatic."

Shapers are the genetically perfected Übermensch counterparts to Spider Rose's cyborg Mechanist set. The two scientists in Swarm were Shapers. They are physically perfect (which is why Swarm wanted to breed a human caste of symbiotes with them), and their minds bred for high IQ to the point where some became hyperintelligent enough to be seriously unstable.

They were not jagged toothed scarfaced monstrosities like the Jade Prime of the episode.

My problem is this: the animators had such Hollywoodesque contempt for the IQ of their audience, that is, us, that they had to uglify Jade Prime so we would know him for a villain. Because he's ugly.

It irritates me out of all proportion, but there it is.

A traumatized cyborg seeks revenge against the people who killed her lover. Along the way, she finds possible healing, though.

This was an interesting episode, and certainly more in line with what I was hoping for. After a music video and a sophomoric comedy short, we finally get a science fiction story. The science fiction elements were pretty cool, but the short runtime meant that you didn't really get a lot of detail.

The art is amazing, which perhaps explains why it's so short. It's in a pretty realistic style and has a solid emotional base. You get to know the cyborg's suffering fairly well during your brief time with her, and her emotions come through well in the artwork. The voice acting captured the characters well, too.

I would have liked to have seen something a bit more exciting during the climax, but the action sequences were done well. It definitely gave off vibes of Heavy Metal, especially the climactic fight, which was gory and intense.

The most essentially science fiction part of the episode is not really the cyborg. It was her payment for a salvage job -- an alien pet that gives her a reason to live besides vengeance. It was interesting and kept the episode from being something as straight-up "here's some badasses in a gunfight" like Kill Team Kill.

Overall, definitely an episode for people like me. If we had an entire season of episodes like this, I would be satisfied, but I hope we get some more crazy stuff like ZIma Blue, The Witness, and Jibaro.

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.

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.