Love, Death, and Robots is a return to the glorious days of Liquid Television

Not all anthology series are great, and telling a story in an abbreviated format often means not telling a story complete enough to squeeze emotion out of modern audiences, but sometimes it still works. Case in point: the recent Netflix series Love, Death, and Robots.

Cartoon shorts used to be pretty common, even the rule. And anthology shows remained popular through the '90s. MTV's Liquid Television, for example, birthed not only Beavis and Butthead but the groundbreaking Aeon Flux as well. But somewhere after Kablam! and Cartoon Sushi, cartoon shorts started to fade. Even now, short cartoons tell a much longer narrative. Just look at Steven Universe, whose 11-minute bite-sized episodes just wrapped a story that stretched across the universe and took years to complete.

Which is why Love, Death, and Robots feels like such a breath of fresh air. Netflix released the series in 2019, bringing in multiple artists and storytellers together around the very loose titular sci-fi concepts. And we got a lot out of it: robot tourists, vampires, robot wolf girls, and a deeper analysis of humanity's struggle to use art to achieve immortality.

Karama Horne, co-host of SYFY WIRE's Who Won the Week podcast, joined Every Day Animation today to talk all things Love, Death, and Robots. We make the connection between the show and the animation style of a certain Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse you might remember. But we also talk about art, and technology, and what stories we connected with personally.

And if you're watching along with us, get ready for sweet Russian Jewish mice to get lost and sing sappy songs, because tomorrow SYFY WIRE's features editor and host of The Fandom Files, Jordan Zakarin, joins the program to talk about the Don Bluth classic An American Tail. We also talk about the sequel, where Fievel goes west. So go somewhere out there today and we'll see you right back here tomorrow for more Every Day Animation.