The second season of the unique animated Netflix series Love Death + Robots is available since last weekend and once again David Fincher and Tim Miller have put together an impressive collection of science fiction short films by animation studios from around the world, as well as Miller’s very own visual effects studio Blur.

As a result the eight new episodes, produced by different casts and crews, vary widely in tone, length and style again, whereby the series as a whole still clearly targets an adult audience.

After the first run my favourite new episode is “The Drowned Giant” by Tim Miller himself, which closes this season and offers an unusual, poetic and gentle narrative based on a short story by J. G. Ballard from 1964. It stands out against the rather action-filled, more traditional Sci-Fi topics presented in most of the other new pieces of the anthology.

It can’t quite keep up with the wonderful, Zen-like “Zima Blue” from season one, though, which I must have watched a dozen times. To me the second season overall is not as strong as the first one, albeit beeing extremly impressive and diverse on the technical side yet again. Perhaps the concept isn’t as fresh anymore as it was when launched initially back in 2019 –so thematic overlaps are predetermined to happen–, or perhaps the fewer episodes –eight instead of eighteen– naturally leave less room for variation and new ideas. Either way, I somewhat missed the impact the first eigtheen episodes had on me.

With that beeing said, if you are into (mature) animation, the art of moving-images and science fiction stories, there’s nothing like this series –at least since Heavy Metal (1981) and Animatrix (2003)– and season two is well worth watching for sure. I’m very happy the gutsy, artistic project is continued, an eight-episode third season is scheduled for a release in 2022.