Love, Death & Robots

Love, Death & Robots (stylized as LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS) is an American adult animated anthology web television series on Netflix. The 18-episode first season was released on March 15, 2019. The series is produced by Joshua Donen, David Fincher, Jennifer Miller, and Tim Miller. Each episode was animated by different crews from a range of countries. The series is a re-imagining of Fincher and Miller's long in-development reboot of the 1981 animated sci-fi film Heavy Metal.

The cast includes Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Topher Grace, Gary Cole, Samira Wiley and Stefan Kapičić, with Grace and Winstead appearing in live-action roles, rather than animated.

Premise
The animated series consists of 18 stand-alone episodes, all under 20 minutes long, and all produced by different casts and crews. The series title refers to each episode's thematic connection to love, death, and robots.

Release
Netflix released the first trailer for the series on February 14, 2019.

In March 2019, Netflix revealed that it was experimenting with a new approach by including a different order of episodes to different users. In response to an accusation that the episode order was based on the streaming company's perception of a user's sexual orientation, Netflix responded via Twitter that there were four unique episode orders, released to users at random.

Reception
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds an approval rating of 73% based on 30 reviews, and an average rating of 6.68/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "This animated anthology has enough creative Death to satisfy cyberpunk aficionados who Love their Robots to have some Heavy Metal influence, but the series' lofty ambitions are often undercut by a preoccupation with gore and titillation."

Abby Robinson of Digital Spy called the series problematic in its portrayal of women as primarily sexual objects and victims of trauma, labeling it as "firmly rooted in the past". Writing in The Daily Beast, Nick Schager described the series as "Black Mirror for the ADD-addled video game crowd" and praised the show for its "diverse affair rife with violence, humor, and a healthy dose of sensuality". In a more negative review, Ben Travers of IndieWire described the episodes as "too often hyper-masculine and half-baked" and gave the series a C grade, though the review was based on only 6 of the 18 episodes. Writing for Wired, Peter Rubin praised the show and its boundary-pushing nature, saying that "sometimes, you just want to see Adolf Hitler suffocated by a giant mound of gelatin". Rubin further voiced frustration with the seemingly "endless parade of stoic supermen and the women who deceive or escape them", noting that at times it seems as though Fincher and Miller have aimed the show at a "particularly retrograde subset of genre fans".