Love, Death & Robots: Season 1 recap and review

Netflix

Shape-Shifters

Decker, a barefooted US soldier, patrols through an Afghanistan village, heading up a convoy of other soldiers and a tank. He stops suddenly having detected something with his heightened senses.

He sniffs the air and listens hard, but he is shot in the leg by a sniper before he can pinpoint what he was sensing. His eyes change, he locates the sniper’s location and dodges an incoming bullet as he reports the coordinates to artillery. They take out the sniper.

While Decker’s abilities give a clear advantage against the enemy, back on base he faces prejudice and mistrust. He and his buddy Sobieski are werewolves and they are treated with contempt and fear by the other soldiers.

Still, they rely on them to hunt down the Taliban. Sobieski goes out on patrol but something goes wrong and they lose contact. Decker goes out to try to help him, but something ripped Sobieski and the whole squad apart. Looks like the Taliban have werewolves of their own.

Decker has his scent and helps the unit track him down, but once he locates him he keeps it to himself and sneaks out to face him alone. They transform into their wolf forms, skin molting off to make room for the larger, more powerful bodies.

It’s a pretty cool effect. Decker is flanked mid-transformation and has to throw off his attacker before he can finish. Then he has to take down two Taliban werewolves. Even with an arm ripped nearly off, he is able to kill them both, finally stretching his jaws over the head of the elder wolf and chomping down to crush his skull.

When he returns to the base he is naked and badly injured. This commanding officer tells him he’s not a soldier, he’s an animal. Decker accepts this and replies that he’d done wearing the army’s leash. He takes off his dog tags, drops them on the ground, picks up Sobieski’s body, and leaves the base.

He buries Sobieski in the desert, saying he’ll see him in the wild. With a blatant and uncomplicated message against prejudice, the story balanced that with a tale of revenge and a cool werewolf battle.

While for the most part, the animation was hyper-realistic, there were some stylistically striking moments that stood out, particularly when Decker finds Sobieski and the other murdered soldiers.