Pokemon Meets Monster Hunter World
Love, Death & Robots’ first episode takes us to the grimy underworld of “beastie” fighting .In an episode that feels like a combination of Pokemon and Monster Hunter World, Sonnie’s Edge is, on the surface at least, an episode used to showcase the impressive visual flair of the episode. The story itself sees a battle hardened woman called Sonnie entering a monster arena with her chosen “Beastie”, battling against a menacing behemoth, brought to the arena by a foul mouthed bald man. From here, the episode explodes into a flurry of tentacles, blood and violence as the two monsters battle it out in a circular arena. As the audience looks on, applauding every drop of blood, the end to this fight sees Sonnie retreat back to her quarters as the crowd reels over what they’ve just witnessed. It’s at this point where the story takes an interesting turn, bringing with it big questions around abuse before one of two big twists. The first, sees Sonnie stabbed as she lets her guard down, and the second seeing this turn into a double bluff as it’s revealed she was actually alive the entire time. It’s a really nicely worked segment too and one that works surprisingly well given the context of the episode. The animation here is sublime too and the photo-realistic faces really do well to show off how far CGI has come in recent years. On top of that, the voice acting is top notch and despite a plethora of swearing throughout the episode, does well to really sell the moody, grimy underbelly of the arena the episode takes part in. It’s not perfect, and some parts of the episode do feel a tad too heavy on the swearing but despite that, Sonnie’s Edge is an excellent way to start off this anthology.
