MURDER DRONES: A Retrospective Review

 

"Will you take my soul away?"

R.I.P || Serial Designation V

This review is dedicated to SD-V

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Overview

For the past year, the corporate animated media industry has been… boring, to say the least. Sure, some companies were able to cover this hole of emptiness, one honorable mention is the second installment to the Spider-Verse trilogy: Across the Spider-verse, which released on 2 June 2023 in the US. I personally loved Across the Spider-verse but knowing that the third installment is not coming until at least the next few years, that empty hole is reopened. But I digress. That being said, I would like to introduce today’s underlying topic, indie animation. Indie animation refers to forms of animated media produced by independent animators or studios. In most cases, indie animation come in the form of animated shorts and animated series, and sometimes even music videos. Additionally, indie animation usually has unique styles of visuals and storytelling, which could be vastly different and diverse, being not limited to the expectations of a company’s management. Now don’t get me wrong, corporate I’m not saying that corporate animation is terrible, its just that these forms of animation are incredibly limited by its purpose, which is making money and increasing ratings of these major corporations. Consequently, causing its storyline to be *very* limited, especially with the target audience, usually targeting younger audiences.

Now all that was a decently long opening paragraph. Continually, today’s review is about Murder Drones, an animated series created by Liam Vickers and produced by GLITCH Productions, an indie animation studio based in Sydney, Australia. Murder Drones, described as “a show about cute little robots that murder each other for reasons,” had its Pilot episode debut on the 29th of October 2021 on YouTube. Receiving highly positive reception from its audience. The pilot currently stands at 30 million views on YouTube, after then receiving a trailer for its first season. Currently, Murder Drones has 6 episodes, each episodes standing 15-25 minutes with the first season projected to have 8 episodes, the final two episodes targeted to be released Spring 2024.

nice hands no?

The Story (TL;DR version) [MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD]

Set in 3071, our story starts with an exposition with a mysterious voice. Explaining firstly, that they are worker drones. Android robots made and sent by JCJenson to help humans mine minerals out of Copper-9, an exoplanet placed light years away from Earth. During this mining expenditure, the humans responsible for the expedition somehow managed to destabilize the exoplanet’s molten core, causing a core collapse and putting the exoplanet in a nuclear winter. The breakdown of the core has resulted in the entire planet being devoid of human life, with frozen skeletons standing in the eternal cold caused by their own race. This leaves the worker drones, now in the absence of human control, to gain sentience. Somehow reproducing and multiplying in amount. Unfortunately, JCJenson’d board of executives decided that apparently, leaving a rogue AI in an exoplanet light years from Earth is not a great idea. Prompting them to create the titular Murder Drones with one sole purpose to serve: To disassemble and eliminate any form of AI still residing in Copper-9.

Talk about dramatic entrances huh?

After all that explaining, our perspective zooms out to introduce our protagonist for this show, Uzi Doorman. Voiced by Elsie Lovelock, Uzi is the stereotypical rebellious-angsty teenager, with a crazy temper and can be utterly sadistic at times. Uzi stating that their kind has been doing nothing but hiding behind walls and doors from the Murder Drones, she introduces her go-to-solution-turned-school-project, a “sick as-hell railgun (which is more of a laser gun than a railgun itself)”. After an unfortunate mishap involving her “railgun” blowing-up mid class, she gets sent to the nurse’s office, where the scene cuts.

The scene cuts to a different setting, with Uzi trying to sneak outside the safety of the doors to get a spare energy-source for her railgun. Where she runs into her father, Kahn Doorman. Voiced by David Dixon, Kahn Doorman is the head of the place where Uzi and the worker drones reside, being the head of WDF, a “company” he started in order to ensure the safety of the worker drones. After venturing outside the walls into the Murder Drones’ landing pod, she finds the power source she was looking for and was going to head back. That’s when she meets a Murder Drone. Meet Serial Designation N (or N for short), voiced by Michael Kovach (that’s ko-vech if you’re wondering), N was sent out to Copper-9 acting as a pilot along with 2 of his colleagues. The unhinged, unfeeling, sadistic Serial Designation V (voiced by Nola Klop) and Serial Designation J (voiced by Shara Kirby). 

ouch

Long story short after this encounter, N and Uzi ventures out within the confines of their cold planet in order to find out about their pasts and origins. Everything in between I will leave for you, the reader to find out as you watch the entire series. With that being said, I solely believe that Murder Drones is best experienced through the confines of your own screen.

The Good and The Bad

"Did you just slapped me with that arm?"

Well, that was an opening. I could keep talking about the Murder Drones all day, but at that rate we won’t be getting into the review until a few tens of thousand words. Like stated earlier, corporate animated media usually targets young audiences (movies such as Disney movies), while others target adult audiences (series such as Rick & Morty). Now, this creates a void in the teenager-young adult audience that needs to be filled in. This is where Murder Drones come in. In my opinion, Murder Drones did a great job in filling in this space, being the perfect mixture of angsty teen humor, body horror, and sprinkling in a tinge of horror, this mix of genres create a series that serves to fill that empty, middle-point. 

Getting into the review, it brings me into the topic, first I would like to address the amazing creators and cast of Murder Drones. Murder Drones, as an indie animation has a pretty big production team, comparable to the likes of decently big animations. Murder Drones was directed by not 2, not 3, but 4 directors, two of them being the founders of GLITCH Productions. Murder Drones also boasts a wide roster of voice actors, some of them are well-known names in the dubbing community such as Michael Kovach (Hazbin Hotel and Lackadaisy) as N, and Elsie Lovelock (Spooky Month and TADC) as Uzi. Looking beyond N and the other main characters, Murder Drones also has several other minor characters that play major and minor roles in the story. Some well-known names are Lizzie Freeman (TADC and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind), Emma Breezy (Genshin Impact) as the Russian-speaking Worker Drone Doll. Then there’s Nola Klop (ENA) as V and Shara Kirby (RWBY) as J.

One of my favorite aspects of Murder Drones is the wonderful character design. A very underlying aspect of character design is how the Murder Drones are made to look pretty much like the Worker Drones. This is explained later in the series, but I digress. Another aspect I like is the duality of N’s personality. You see N, as a Murder Drone literally built to kill, has a not so killer-y vibe to him. Instead, N is the stereotypical goofy side character that gives comedic relieve in tense scenes. After watching the Pilot episode, I immediately grew a liking to the character of N, that’s just how likable he is.

"you're a bit short for a disassembly drone"

Putting character design aside, a major part that contributes to the greatness of this series is its atmospheric soundtrack, the combination of organ sounds really extenuate the tense feeling scenes where the background music is played. One piece of soundtrack that really stand out in the series is Eternal Dream, written by AJ DiSpirito and sung out by Elsie Lovelock. This song was used as the background music for the end credits of the 6th episode of the series, the fluid combination of lower vocals and organ-like sounds really point out the sadness of the setting the song was played.

Of course, good things come with bad things, after all nothing escapes unscathed from criticism. One of the real downsides of Murder Drones is the sometimes-corny jokes that really stand out. Additionally, sometimes jokes are really badly placed, and takes the tensity in certain scenes, plus, the way Uzi is self-aware of the angsty-teen stereotype really puts it into a position where it is really pushed out to the point where it becomes slightly overused. Building off that, some of the quips are Marvel-level bad.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, Murder Drones is yet another indie web series built to captivate its audience through its wonderful compositing of sounds and animation while playing with the concept of finding out where they came from. Liam Vickers did a terrific job at putting a twist in an else would be your average web series and turning it into the really captivating series that is Murder Drones. While the series like to tread on cringeworthy, predictable territory, later episodes show the very peak of creativity in its usage of foreshadowing in earlier episodes implying something big set to happen in the future, really shows how well-planned the story of this series is. Added by the amazing board of voice actors and screenwriting, this series successfully became a visually entertaining series while at the same time makes you think about what would happen next and keeping you on your toes. Therefore, my recommendation for this series is a solid “Mediately-Strongly Recommended” as the series is understandably not for everyone but can definitely be fun to watch for those who enjoys the genre. Given all the support given to the series, its safe to assume that a second season would be coming sometime in the future. All in all, Murder Drones is an interesting take to the sci-fi genre, delivering a great storyline with sprinkles of horror here and there.

Overall: 9.5/10

[Highly Recommended]

- Saddhana V.