Love Death + Robots

[Mr Janny]

A lot of people comparing to Heavy Metal understandably but there's an older anime anthology called Robot Carnival that's actually A LOT like this as well, less sex and violence but similar adult feel for an animated sci-fi anthology. I think the modern animation in LD+R actually draws more from japanese anime than 70s western animation of Heavy Metal too. I love 70s/80s western animation but it's kind of a dead end in terms of an evolutionary chain.

Vulture ranked "The Witness" as the worst episode which is laughable and probably shameless click bate. It's an incredible work whether they scanned video footage or not. As a designer myself I trace over photos to create what become unique visuals all the time. Bakshi's Lord of the Rings movie did the same 40 years ago.

The animation style, I agree, owes more to anime than Western animation. The comparison to Heavy Metal is in more the subject matter and story style. I can imagine episodes like Suits and Secret War easily appearing in the original Heavy Metal movie. Suits particularly.

Heavy Metal is an easy comparison to make, because for many people of a certain age, it's the closest that adult animation came to mainstream. Bakshi is also up there with LOTR, but that was fairly underground until Peter Jackson's films, and still sort of remains there today. Wizards never really got a following and Fritz the Cat was more known for it's X rating than for its actual content.

Heavy Metal was shown on TBS or USA late at night, so I guess that made it more accessible. I put it in the vein of stuff like Tales from the Crypt or Creepshow, which are also apt comparisons for LD&R, imho.