Volume 4 – Love, Death + Robots

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Aidan H Netflix’s animated series Love Death + Robots, onto its fourth season now, has a delightfully tacky aesthetic and a strong hit-to-dud ratio for an anthology show. Last season’s champ was Jibaro. The winner of this season’s deathmatch is 400 Boys. It is directed by Robert Valley, the Canadian animator who brought to life Jamie Hewlett’s angular rockers for Gorillaz and Peter Chung’s emaciated mutants in Aeon Flux. Valley’s style is an efficient synthesis of these influences but it’s his animation that is truly distinctive. His lithe yet muscular characters move with a compelling staccato quality, like Martha Graham on meth. Slick visuals make Valley an in-demand commercial director and his 2016 Oscar-nominated animated documentary Pear Cider and Cigarettes revealed a meditative indie sensibility. That originality was present in Zima Blue in Season 1 of Love Death + Robots, but 400 Boys is one of those rare moments when the right story finds the right auteur. A gang war at the end of days, 400 Boys is the gold nugget that makes that tattered Sci Fi anthology worth your time. Slash is the leader of The Brothers, a gang of teenagers skulking through the ruined fragments of Fun City. World War Last is over. Nobody won. The 400th district has been invaded and partially demolished by mysterious giants. It’s the end of the world but The Brothers still think and act like hoodlums, edgy as they enter the turf of a rival gang, the Soooooots. All they find amidst the ruins are mangled bodies. Rumours of the giants’ powers that initially sounded like wild exaggerations – “…the giants had ripped up Big Bridge by the roots and thrown it at the moon” – begin to seem credible. The Brothers finds a sole survivor, the shell-shocked leader of the Soooooots. “We got flattened,” he mumbles. Old beefs are forgotten. They team up and make for the territory of Fun City’s top gang. The Galrogs are a posse of rollerblading soul sisters with lethal hockey sticks. Their spiritual leader Old Mother seeks the truth in a visionary trance. She reports that the giants are, “the ones outside who came through the cracks” after the war ended with, “weirdbombs going off like firecrackers.” One of the Brothers dubs the giants, “the 400 Boys”. This act of naming immediately stiffens the survivors’ will. The unknown becomes something comprehensible – a rival gang. Their mission now clear, the Brothers gather more survivors and march on the 400th. Tim Miller’s laconic script is closely based on a short story by Marc Laidlaw, who went on to script video games like Half-life. Laidlaw wrote 400 Boys in 1983, which may explain the echoes of two 1979 films, Walter Hill’s The Warriors and George Miller’s Mad Max. Like Hill and Miller, Laidlaw does not burden his story of youthful ultraviolence with much exposition. You are expected to learn the distinctive argot of Fun City en route. Strange features like the gangs’ telekinetic abilities are baldly presented without explanation. Nor do his heroes attempt to ingratiate themselves to us. The Brothers are punks – rash, unsentimental, cruel. Their virtues were forged in the Bronze Age – loyalty, courage, honour. Their leader Slash, voiced by John Boyega, is a charismatic tyrant out for revenge. His quest to slay the monster in its lair seems glorious but doomed. The 400 Boys, when they at last appear, are overgrown babies, redolent of Gustav Vigeland’s iconic sculpture The Angry Boy. The final battle is played out in compositions stark as opera sets to the martial sound of drums. One of The Brothers’ allies suggests the invaders are “God-things, mind-stuff…” which gives the finale a Wagnerian mood. A mighty common enemy forces petty rivals to unify, 400 Boys could also be read as an allegory of colonialism or class struggle. No doubt it will be. To me, it seems rather more Freudian. The scenes of giant murderous babies being shot, melted, hamstrung, scalped and impaled are at once comic and disturbing. Whatever it means – and perhaps there is no deeper meaning to the violence – it’s here, in this surreal climax, that Valley’s extraordinary visual bravura comes into its own. Each shot is composed like an Art Deco poster. His characters strike more iconic poses than Freddy Mercury. Valley’s trademark distortion is everywhere. Any still from the deliriously violent final battle could be the cover of some demented Prog Rock album. In an age of ubiquitous CGI and AI slop, Valley’s commitment to the primal act of drawing can seem perversely atavistic but he renders his tale of kameradschaft in a primitive future with a savage simplicity. After the turf war is won at great cost, 400 Boys concludes with the remark, “Nothing ever ends…” Whether you interpret that as ominous or hopeful, you’ll find this dreamlike film lingers endlessly in the imagination. AH Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 11/03/25 Full Review XUE X Fewer cats, more creativity. Rated 0.5/5 Stars •  Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 09/29/25 Full Review Alexandre A It felt like leftover ideas from previous seasons. With exception of one or two episodes, the scripts were very weak, more like pitches written by 12 years old for 12 years old: all style, no substance. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 07/27/25 Full Review Nate L Should be kept 3d animation focused. I don't mind the live action or other creative stuff. But leaning away from 3d animation focus throws off the series. Also, the stories were not as interesting for season 4. Felt cheap and gimmicky. The idea should be to tell stories not just do weird videos. Keep it scifi/ fantasy focused. Still an okay season, but it felt like a drop in quality. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 07/19/25 Full Review Nathaniel W Simply bad writing. The visuals were stunning, as with previous seasons, but bad writing made me not care about almost every episode. The short stories were often disjointed, nonsensical, contradictory, or introduced irrelevant details. I say this as someone who loves non-linear, ambiguous, or abstract stories. These felt more like amateur fan-fiction than professional writing. The few episodes that did start well then ended abruptly -- not in a fun, interesting, or bittersweet cliffhanger kind of way, but like they ran out of funding mid-script. Rated 1.5/5 Stars •  Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 07/18/25 Full Review Iscenemox I All episodes WAY too short. All episodes felt unfinished. Even the EPs where the story seemed interesting, just abruptly ended/cut off, ruining the entire episode :/ Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 07/13/25 Full Review Read all reviews

Love, Death + Robots — Volume 4

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