I think the snowball is truly and firmly rolling down the hill now, here in the West. They’re building, and that just begets more fans of adult animation. And now Netflix they have so much adult animation on there. “Despite having pretty much the pantheon of giant Hollywood directors involved and not a large budget, people still weren’t willing to take the chance. “David Fincher and I tried to get a new adult animated film on its feet for 10 or 12 years,” recalls Miller.
That difference alone speaks to how far the medium has evolved since Miller first had the idea for an animated movie for adults. Not all of them are as hardcore and edgy as Love, Death & Robots, but they tackle more adult themes and center around older characters.
In the streaming world, series like Netflix’s Arcane and Castlevania and Amazon Prime’s Undone and Invincible are pushing genre boundaries, telling serialized stories, and catering to a more mature audience. But in the television space, shows are expanding beyond the norms of adult-geared animation like American Dad and South Park. Theatrical animation does still sway toward family-friendly content. And when you look over there, how come they get to tell those stories and we don’t?” Everyone’s seen what every other country has. Even though things like Akira and Ghost in the Shell were happening, they’re like, Oh, it’s just weird to me. “Because when I was starting out, everyone I was working for had never seen anime before. “I think it’s a generational shift,” says Nelson.
One big reason? The growing popularity of anime. They feel like the tide is slowly but surely shifting. But Miller and Nelson want to fight against that stereotype. While many animators fight this stereotype, jokes about animated movies being primarily for children continue to persist. There are exceptions, of course, but big theatrical projects are usually PG affairs. In the United States, animation tends to be shoved into a family-friendly, all-ages box.
When a chance like this comes along, where I can finally stretch into what I want to do, as far as trying to approach stories in a completely full-spectrum way and be free - this is what I actually have always wanted to do.” But that’s been what it’s been mainly in the U.S., especially if you’re going for big-budget world-building stories. And so for me, animation is not supposed to be just a child’s medium. “My natural sensibility is very dark, much more adult animation,” Nelson explains. It might seem strange that the director of Kung Fu Panda 2 pivoted to helping manage a hardcore, edgy anthology, but Nelson tells us that moving into adult animation came completely naturally to her. One of those directors happened to be former DreamWorks director Jennifer Yuh Nelson ( Kung Fu Panda 2 and 3), who directed season 2’s LDR short “Pop Squad” and season 3’s “Kill Team Kill.” She also serves as an executive producer this season. Miller (director of Deadpool and Terminator: Dark Fate) and co-creator David Fincher (director of Seven, Fight Club, Zodiac, and much more) launched the anthology series in 2019, picking a wide variety of directors and studios to work on the shorts. And unlike other staples of adult animation, like Big Mouth or Family Guy, Love, Death & Robots is a genre spectacle, adapting various science fiction and fantasy stories.Ĭo-creator Tim Miller says he hand-picks the stories from the vast collection of short-fiction anthologies on his Kindle. None of the shorts shy away from gritty, hardcore elements: blood and guts, nudity and sex, horror and horniess galore.
It’s like nothing else in animation right now: Each episode tells a different, self-contained story ranging in tone from crass comedy to dark drama. Netflix’s anthology series Love, Death & Robots returned for a third installment on May 20 in all its edgy, red-band glory.