I feel like this show would really benefit from more filler/character focused episodes. Not EVERY episode has to be about the lore or pushing the plot, or at least do it in more subtle ways. Because after a while it gets kind of exhausting.
Well unfortunately due to it being an indie show with a small crew working on it they kinda have to choose wisely what should be focused on and animated.
@@psychomagalor4902 I totally understand. Like either take time to slowly develop characters under a limited budget or push the plot forward, of course they’d choose the latter. I still think they could have pulled it off though
Honestly, this episode is a character development episode instead of straight up just continuing the plot. The entire thing essentially takes place in Uzi’s room and is focused on N and V getting their memories back as the absolute solver tries to erase them. So in my eyes, while this episode has lots of lore, it really is a more filler of a episode compared to something like episode 4 or 3.
(Before watching the video) Just like last episode, this was another case where far too much was happening for me to truly keep up and appreciate either without watching multiple times or watching other analysis videos (for example, I would never have been able to tell Tessa’s arm hurting was likely due to her parents chaining her up in the past as well). My initial impressions were that it was a step up from episode 4, but still one of the “weaker” ones. I still feel that way, but again, I’ve now gained a greater appreciation for this episode over time and what it was trying to accomplish.
I personally think this episode is right smack dab in the middle of the series. Being number 3 out of the 5 While every episode is fantastic, or at least great, some are definitely better than others. Pilot = 7.5/10 Heartbeat = 8.5/10 The Promening = 9.5/10 Cabin Fever = 8/10. This episode is a solid 8.25/10.
I think I could see the criticism you’ll give. I think you’ll give criticism based on that episode’s weak plot, and the timing mess, and over all I agree with you. Edit: But I still trust Liam to deliver a great finale
I disagreed on you with e4 but with this, was accurate, i overall found e5 a bit lower compared to the rest, with the animation getting better each episode, the story gets worse. As much as we learned in e5, it just felt abit too rushed and was moving faster than my brain could process all this new info of the story, having to rewatch many times and see these recaps.
Another great video from the best Murder Drones Critic!!!❤👍 To quote an A.I. decribing somerhing it doesn't "like" but deems necessary, "For the flaw that you are in my system, you're a logical part of existence."
Tbh for me this show is weirdly consistent like i'd give all episodes 8/10 for different reasons which really makes it hard for me to say which is my fav and which is my worst episode,I enjoyed all of them equally and that's rare But yeah I actually had to Chek if I missed an episode cuz dam that is a weird scene change from the end of ep4
We get the origin of Cyn (not Solver) and backstory of Tessa, and how she used to be, and why she became like she is now. We also get why Uzi looks like murder drones, how murder drones came to be, where did they come from, and better look at N's personality. We also get why N lost his memories, his relationship with Cyn, why workers mutate and hint at why they can't be left to be alone unsupervised. You think that is not enough for a pay-off?
Great video with very fair points, But one thing I noticed while watching these episodes that even though the Murder Dones have wings they never actually flap🫤
This episode certainly had some of the best character moments we have seen yet, but I do also have to agree about the sloppy pacing of the episode, as well as the constant use of jokes to interrupt otherwise serious scenes (which happens to be a writing trope I hate with a passion). Liam's hyperfocus on trying to both be unpredictable and also cram as much detail into every single scene really hurts the show, especially for a casual viewer. What this episode really does for me is just make me anxious about the direction of the show's future. I hope these last two episode's insistance on being both too unpredictable and too comedic isn't indicative of what's to come. Apologies if this comes off as pessimistic, but I'm just so frustrated to see a show I once adored fall into my least favorite writing tropes of all time and throw away an exciting premise and focused narrative for the sake of mystery. Awesome video btw!
I don’t think the mystery element of the show is gonna throw off casual viewers at all. I feel like a casual watcher can still watch the show and enjoy the characters and visuals while a hardcore analyst can stop and piece things together from the details provided.
@@psychomagalor4902 agree. :D Edit: and if you want to look deeper into the characters, lore and shoe, you can do that. And if you don’t want to, you can leave it at surface level. Which I think is nice.
*I DIDN'T EXPECT THAT THIS COMMENT WOULD BE THIS LONG!* Although there are several reasons to appreciate the episode, I still have some issues with it. At first, it seemed like it was going to be a nice proper introduction to N's past and his connections with the humans, along with V and J. This, in and of itself, would create a captivating episode. But that wasn’t the only focus, as we get introduced into two new characters, that being Cyn and Tessa. Which is fine, both characters are both good in their own way. But then Uzi showed up as a crow, then states there's some program trying to delete his memories, then Cyn(who's in her Absolute Solver form) threatened Tessa not to go into gala, then N and Uzi started going to the basement, then Doll showed up out of nowhere for that bug thing and much more. Not only a lot of stuff is happening at the same time, but we don’t even know exactly why they're happening. Like, why should we care about the basement? Nothing before has really implied that there's something noteworthy happening there. If Uzi's goal is to recover N's memories, then why is she constantly changing them by interacting with him? Was a needle actually put into N's head by Cyn or did it not happen at all, regardless of Uzi's involvement? There's so many questions here and by the end of it, we not only left we those questions, but have even more. It argued that it's doing it to make more "mysteries" in the show, but I'm kind of tired of them to be completely honest. For my first l viewing of this episode, I experienced a persistent state of confusion regarding the events unfolding and their reasoning. I tm Also, where was V? No, seriously, where was she through most of the episode? She barely even appears throughout the entirety of it, which feels so weird because she has been a major character in the show since the pilot. So I found it a bit disappointing. And the fact that both V and Cyn look very similar to each other also didn't help. Out of the three future 3 murder drones, V had the biggest personality change when she got turn into a disassembly drone. From the flashback in episode 2, she seemed to be more of a gentle and peaceful person, unlike her now. I brought this up because I felt like there was so much potential with her playing a big role in this episode. Especially with N due to him having a pretty big crush on her. He scene where N kindly puts her glasses on and V snapping back into reality is such an adorable scene, it's definitely one of my favourites from the whole show. I just wished she had more screen time. As for J, while is nice that she does have a decent amount of screen time in this episode since she hasn't played a major role for awhile. But the thing is, she doesn't really do anything interesting in that time. She's mostly just "there" with Tessa throughout the episode, without much from her own input. The only memorable scene that she has was when she broke her own chain out of anger. That's it. Which is a shame. It would've been nice if she had more lines, but at-least she's somewhat important here. Then there's N, the character that I enjoyed the most from this episode. I liked N before, but he can be a bit lame at times because he's simply a "yes man" to Uzi. He mostly just does whatever she wants without much of his own input, which can occasionally make him pretty boring. But since Uzi came in later in the episode, it made N actually do stuff by himself, and oh my goodness, he's such a fun character to watch! His kindness and determination to make everyone around him happy(even if it causes him trouble for doing so) makes a great main character. And dare I say, I think he's a slightly better main character than Uzi herself. I hope episode 6 gives him spotlight to shine! Then there's Uzi, I did liked what did they did with her in this episode but I do wish she wasn't included in N's memories because it makes this episode super confusing. And I did felt like both Glitch and Liam weren't confident enough to have N as the main character for an entire episode, so they made an excuse to put in it with him. Don't get me wrong, she's fine in it, I just would've prefer thatl she wasn’t there. I found Cyn to be a great character, I like how she narrates every action she does and her having to keep her own head up with her hand. She weirdly reminds me of Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls as both characters are insanely overpowered and can kill everything around in matter of seconds, while sometimes being a goofball that makes you forget that they can do exactly that. I love her, but I think it would've been better if she was introduced later so most of the episode can be focused more on Tessa and the drones. Speaking of Tessa, she was a nice surprise to see! She definitely has a lot of "main character energy" in her a lot of her scenes and she gives J a bit more depth than she had before. She's just a nice addition to this episode. And finally Doll, I do like that Glitch is still keeping her in the show instead of being a "one off character" and did liked that she appeared out of nowhere because I didn't expected it to happen even though it makes sense. The only issue I have with her is that it seems like her presence is solely for the purpose of being included in the ending. It would've been nice to see either her have an interaction with J and Tessa before it or the show giving a clue that she's working with them. That's my own personal thoughts of the episode! Is it good? Yes! Is it as good as the past 4 episodes? No, it has some major flaws in it that put a few steps back from becoming as good as them. By the way, this video was great! I was as excited for it as much as the episode itself, and it didn't disappoint! You've improved a lot in this and I'm so excited to see your next video!
Just to answer one question V was deactivated in the library and was becouse of this not there until Cyn activates her. I also get what your saying but I was able to follow pretty easily and got most of the details pretty well.
Oh mEh gOd He PoStEd hiS OpIniOn on thE iNterNet I’m aNgrY (this is a joke it’s very hard to tell the difference so I added this so you can’t get confused and be offended)
@@You_Ate_My_Soap I should have made it a 60 page essay trolllololool people are becoming so dumb that they can even think about if they mean it in a figurative sense or a literal or a joking way.
I appreciate how honest and in depth your analysis is, and you clearly know a lot about writing. I think reviews like this are excellent complimentary material to not only understand the show better, but to be critical of the downsides where it's fitting.
The Zombie Drones tape is there to explain what happened in the episode intro, where the Cyn (the drone, as Absolute Solver and Cyn are different entities) had a successful zombie reboot without an OS which the AbsoluteSolver used to get into her and establish its own OS onto her system because zombie drones have no OS. There is a snap of dialogue in the start of that scene on Cyn's visor where the AS tells Cyn if she can enter her OS because she basically has no choice and Cyn answers yes. This is very important as it explains that Cyn and the Absolute solver are different beings, but that AS took over Cyn. It also implies that that isn't the origin of absolute solver (because it already existed before it took over Cyn) (or maybe it is, but someone can dispute that for me), so that can be played out later on
Unfocused or not, I'd say it at least did pretty well as being a creepy, haunted house type of story. Had it been released in October it would've been perfect 😊
Must say, I agree heavily with this. This episode was built up to be heavily lore focused, and not have as many comedic elements. However, we got the complete opposite. We had a very comedic episode with very bare bones lore components. I feel that Uzi’s inclusion in this episode was unnecessary, she literally ruined what could’ve been some necessary N, J, and V screen time and chemistry. Overall, this episode is very mixed for me, I especially hate the ending, as GLITCH just stockpiled everything actually important in the literal last minute of the episode, just so that all the characters can conveniently meet up. Lets hope that next episode will deliver though. ❤
I honestly don’t think the episode was built up as lore focused It just feels like the fanbase thought it was heavily lore focused thanks to the mansion but the point of the episode is that not much is really revealed since it’s closer to a dream sequence
@@NoRegs30 They had a whole teaser hinting at the mansion. The mansion is a part of the mysterious murder drones' pasts. Therefore, it wouldn't be impossible to assume that the episode that focused on that would, or rather should, be heavily focused on the lore. Heck, even Sarcastic Chorus pointed this out. But either way, i think what we got was good...
@@NoRegs30 agreed we only know half of it what happened in the beginning of mansion and after that it remains a mystery because that's what liam likes it he says by himself he want fan to dig what he hides specifically. It's not wise for liam fanbase to have too much hide stuff because we get with it well some people spend 7 hours on the theory too. But it may not be suitable to new people who just came to watch Liam work. but weak point is they giving too little time per ep because of the cost is 200k-300k $ in one ep if they split episode 5 into full lore without uzi involved and save rest of the content for season 2 without too much acceleration it would be even better.
@@welcometothericefields7783 A great example of this is CYN, since whole the drones name was actually CYN before the AbsoluteSolver took over, none of that is ever explained outside of the drone screen scene in the beginning of the episode and her armband, there is also the fact that CYN talks with the AbsoluteSolver right before she revived
I honestly really liked this video! I wasn't much of a fan of your ep4 video cuz different opinions but this one, I agreed with pretty much everything! I'm excited to see how everything pays off in the next few episodes
Alright, lemme give my thoughts. (Essay incoming) I do agree with all the things you said about the characters, and was glad to hear you think J is best girl as well. Now for the comedy, I definitely realize that what makes someone laugh is one of the most subjective things out there, but imo the jokes weren’t nearly as bad as you make them out to be. For one thing I feel the whole thing with a tense moment having a joke follow afterward has been a thing with the show since the start, but even then I wouldn’t say they’re all the “same” joke. They still have different timings(I definitely disagree about the poor timing on the jokes) and overall punchlines and they don’t even always follow an actual tense moment. For me the jokes never really killed the tone in any way, in fact I never really saw the characters making comedic comments to be jokes at all. Uzi saying “thats a pretty metal origin story” for example is completely in character for her than if she suddenly went all somber. Sure it may have been impactful if she went OOC for that moment but imo the fact something messed up happened was probably something she was already expecting so imo it makes sense that she wasn’t as surprised, same with N since he was merely a past version of himself who wasn’t aware what the stuff in the basement would mean for his future yet. I didn’t really find any scenes to be dragged out longer than they needed and I disagree on their being no tension in the V scene. We see clearly the creepy death angel drone above her and the drone bodies on the side that CYN/the AS has been there and we know what the AS and an X symbol usually means for drones as seen in Ep 4 with Uzi. So the tension comes from whether V will reactivate and attack them which we see is exactly what happens at the scenes end. I don’t think the fight with V and J really needed anymore to it(I found the joke that came after pretty funny simply cuz of how absurd it was). Also I don’t think what we see in the basement is meant to imply they were turned into Disassembly Drones by CYN, imo it simply shows she was experimenting on them and making eldritch forms like we see with Eldritch J in episode 2. Sure that also seems like it may have an impact but at the same time I feel this is merely confirming something that Uzi and the viewers had suspected. That and past N likely doesn’t have the context needed to know what it actually means either. In the end we and the characters still don’t know exactly what is going on so I feel the real impactful stuff has yet to actually come and this was merely a teaser. I also think starting to show exactly what was going on at the gala isn’t nearly as cool as leaving it entirely up to the viewers imagination given what we were shown about CYN I don’t think CYN “made” the Disassembly Drones per say, the company most likely still made and sent them to Copper-9, but CYN has something to do with the eldritch horror stuff we’ve been seeing. I personally thought having the “inception-style” exploration of N’s memories instead of a standard flashback episode was a way cooler choice personally. Having Uzi still be able to play a part in the episode as well as just generally way we don’t fully know what was the real memories and what wasn’t is another thing that I feel will keep viewers guessing and just makes it more intriguing to discuss and rewatch. I get the thing about the timeskips and yeah I would like to see more too but again this is an indie show where they have to take careful consideration of what they can afford to animate and what can simply be told via a quick explanation. I don’t think it came out of nowhere per say, since N and V’s memories has been a talking point in prior episodes and we know somethings going on with them so I think this is still a natural progression of that and not something thats out of left field. Also to explain V wasn’t under the AS control in the real world but she was in the memory cuz CYN had been infecting them which Tessa’s parents mistook as being broken, so it had nothing to do with what was happening in the real world. I already addressed the V scene but I still think there is tension there because of the uncertainty. If we saw exactly what she was doing beforehand we’d know exactly what to expect once the scene was over but since we don’t know if somethings even gonna happen or not we’re tense and eager to see what could transpire. We still know theres danger afoot, but where the danger comes from is still unknown to us, and therefore the tension arises. The example you pull of Eldritch J is another case of this, we see it can use holograms and we don’t know how big the monster actually is, therefore the tension arises in the fact it could be anywhere, rather than simply cuz it’s dangerous and they have to avoid it. Now you say theres no buildup in this episode while there was in the previous ones. I would argue the pilot also didn’t exactly have a buildup to the fight with V and J, it was just something that happened cuz it was the most pressing concern at the time. I feel the same is true here. The characters are merely dealing with the most present danger. I feel like there was still a climax to this episode, it just wasn’t as big and bombastic as the others, but that isn’t a bad thing. I personally didn’t find this episode underwhelming, it showed just enough to give us an idea of whats going on but has still left us guessing and theorizing over what it could all mean and what will come next. Sure it wasn’t a huge spectacle, but I don’t think it needed to be. The pacing I feel isn’t really that sporadic, never was there a cut where I thought “wait why are we here instead of there”, everything flowed from one thing to the next pretty naturally if you ask me. The only “confusing” part of this narrative I feel is simply the fact we and the characters still don’t have all the answers yet, and I think thats fine since we still have more episodes to go. Again I don’t feel the comedy was disruptive of anything, all of it was perfectly in character and at this point I feel this show has definitely established itself to be one where tension followed by levity (or vice versa) is the name of the game. I don’t think any scenes were poorly delivered in any way, I suppose if you mean dialogue-wise I could agree that some of the dialogue should be spaced out more but in terms of each scene accomplishing what they were going for I feel each one does so with little trouble. And again I do too wish there were mote contextual scenes but I feel we’re still given a good enough gist that we don’t feel like we’re missing out on anything really. I still think this was a really good episode and personally would put it above 2 and 4(which were still good too imo). I am sure that MD is gonna hold up much better on rewatch once we have a better context for everything and the characters will definitely hold up great. So yeah I definitely disagree on this episode being “the worst” in terms of writing, I feel this ep if anything is the culmination of all MD is. Not saying if you dislike it that means you dislike the show, but imo it does feature all the hallmarks of the series and is a good representation of the series as a whole. I’m sad you didn’t like this one or were mixed on it, I hope this show doesn’t just end up becoming another HB for you where you just end up trashing every new episode…
I’m glad we can disagree on something and still be civil about. At the end of the day we are both MD fans who want to see the show be as successful as possible. I REALLY hope that I don’t have to make another negative review for the rest of the season but regardless of how the future episodes turn out, I have to stay honest with my reviews or I lose all credibility as a critic.
@@vanitymoth Cool, I always try my best to be understanding and civil. I guess my personal recommendation when critiquing things going forward would be to try your best to consider why they made certain decisions in the show and think up potential explanations for them, like looking at the V suspense scene and maybe taking into consideration that they were intending for the uncertainty of what’ll happen to be the source of the suspense rather than an established danger. Thats what I usually do, and if I can’t think of a good reason for why something happens, that’ll be when I consider it a fault. Thats how I usually look at things would be cool if you at least considered trying that way but I won’t force you. Anyways thanks for understanding. 🤝
@@psychomagalor4902 not to mention we still have three episodes-ish, yeah? I’d rank 5 up there with three while the rest stray in a solid a-to-b. To somewhat add onto what you’re saying, you could be right about CYN not being the true inherent mastermind; we know she’s an administrator so the company might not possibly be aware of everything and just 'went with it' so to speak. The dissassembly drones we have now are a lot more refined looking, with CYN’s tampering still existing.
@@psychomagalor4902 oh, and I have seen the idea that the basement that mostly was after was more 'metaphorical'. It could’ve possibly been there for *sure* but I’m more leaning on that imagery being something constructed by the absolute solver itself to try throw Uzi off
The episode was confusing a fuck, but with every rewatch i understand and appreciaye more. I understand its UA-cam series amd it requires to put a lot more into a lot less, but the pacing should be worked on a little more
I will say that I was more than pleased with this episode from a theorist perspective, but from a writing perspective I think you hit every nail on the head. Every tense moment was undermined by an random joke (although I personally liked the scalpel scene) and it felt like it was trying to do too much at once. TLDR almost every take in this video was a w, good job man!
I was really thrown off by the tone of this episode, the teasers made me think it would be serious and the massacre of the humans seemed like it would be a serious thing with less humour, but the humour and tone in this episode was the same as every other one. It doesn’t really take itself seriously, which takes people out of it. The scene with N giving V her glasses was sweet though:)
I hope next episode we explore more On Uzi and N’s relationship because I feel like Uzi can’t stay romantically in love with N the whole season I need to her have her breakdown or emotions on V and N relationship.. just the love triangle must end
I REALLY did not like this episode. It contributed nothing related to N's backstory and how he became a murder drone, along with the many others things you've mentioned in this video!
I have made comments like the ones in this video before but all i got was backlash saying i was being too harsh. You are right with what you are saying. I adore this series but the big jumps between eps and lack of character focused episodes and instead just lore and lore again and again is overwhelming and confusing
I personally don’t think it’s that confusing. We’re still getting good character stuff imo while the lore is mainly background stuff that can be put together later. The main focus is still on having fun I’d say.
Honestly upon rewatch I didn't really like this episode the random "comedic" moments are just not needed and ruin the mood of the scene and it just felt like there was to much filler I give it a 6.5/10
*VERY Long AND verbose, Press read more at your own peril* Personally i really enjoyed this episode, It was likely One of my favourites in the serie so far, however, since i found this serie (or, more accurately, i found Liam's work in general) trought your video on cliffside some time ago (for wich i have to thank you btw!), and then Just watched all five episodes over the course of a few days, i benefitted from not actually having any expectations built up, wich made It near impossible to disappoint Me. Even Then, i do definitely see more than a few issues with the episode. I won't touch on the inconsistent Pacing because, personally, i didn't mind It Too much. Even tho the Scene where N moves V i Too didn't find all that tense, It gave me a few seconds to catch my Breath and Digest what was happenning at the time, wich Is something this show RARELY Does. For the Humor, i Remembered this episode's beeing really good, with J's "this Is an UNRELATED LAYOFF!" Beeing probably my favourite joke in the show as a whole, but on a rewatch i realized i Simply forgot about all the less effective jokes. Even then, most seemed at least forgivable. Tessa interrupting Cyn, as an example, undercuts the tension, yes, but It also demostrates Her personality and fighting Spirit, so i can give most moments like that a pass. The only ones i found actually "bad" (quite Subjective because humor, but still) were the ones where the Adults did It, specifically the One interrupting the J and V fight and "hold that gun less cool this instant!" Beeing quite Egregius. The main problem with this episode as i see It Is the same as the Show's, with this episode as a whole Indeed beeing a microcosm of every problem i have WITH the show: It Is horribly Crammed. If you think about It, this episode Is doing a LOT Of things at the same time. It Is, like the rest of the show, Juggling Horror and Comedy, but ALSO introducing two new characters (with Tessa, in Just One short episode, climbing to the top of my non existant tierlist of Murder drones characters at gale Speed), giving N some breathing room and expanding his character, humanizing J, Explaining why V Is.. well, V in the present day and why she's so afraid/hatefull of Cyn, giving her relationship with N some much needed depth and context, enstablishing *THE* Main villan, hopefully for real this time, AND expanding on pre-existing plot points. THAT, Is an ABSURD amount of stuff to fit into a singular, 20 minutes video. This could have been Solved by cutting a few things out, like Uzi, but I also disaggree with the idea that She could have been left out. While between the Disassembly Trio, Doll, Tessa, and her, Uzi Is the character i find the least interesting, She IS The main character, with V beeing, from a writing standpoint, Just a Foil for her, And N beeing the Heart of the main trio (or, more accurately, the electrified fence keeping the Hyenas and the Lions from eating Eachother in the Zoo), and this episode Is a Natural progression to her and N's Little arc. The two Meet in ep1, split in 2, reconcile in 3, have a tender moment in 4, and now we see how all previus episodes have affected Uzi's relationship with N and the way they interact. Could this have been postponed? Maybe, but judging from the fact now we have faaar more relationships to see (J-Uzi, Tessa-N, V-Doll), i can see why they might try to, keyword here, Cram It in with the rest of the plot. In the Grand scheme of things, The episode didn't at all feel unfocused to me. Rather, It felt like It was focusing on Too much all at Once, since, with All the main cast now meeting up, they NEEDED To get as many plot points and character moments out of the Way as possible. Mind you, this Is NOT an excuse. They shouldn't have added as much stuff as they did to avoid this problem, and should have focused Instead on Building a main plot First, Instead of the Trio (but usually Just Uzi and N) meandering around, searching for clues about Nori for the same reason they searched for the basement (wich was never before established as something important and there was no reason to assume It was) in this episode: The reason beeing that, At the end of the day, The plot Does need to happen. I feel like noone exemplifies this problem Better than, ironically, the Face of the show, V herself. Seriusly, she's a Foil to Uzi, ok, but what IS her purpose to the story other than generating conflict with her? She Isn't going to tell us what She knows, Is 100% hostile to everyone around her, including the protagonist, and often kills on sight. How do you have such a character develop? In any other show, She would be a relatively minor, but recurring antagonist. The only way to develop her Is trought N, wich makes sense: She _(supposedly)_ became the Khorne Berserker we know her as specifically to protect him from SOMETHING in Their past, so her realizing she's doing more harm than good Is the Natural Path for her character to take. No issues there, there have been characters before who'se Characterization was based off of another character. This isn't a problem per se. EXCEPT, N Is Alredy overloaded with Plot Threads! He has his Pilot hat we have no context for, his own personal Amnesia subplot this entire episode Is about, his relationship with Uzi, his connection with Tessa and J, and his apparent Friendship with Cyn, *the main villain.* Uzi also has a bunch of plot threads to follow: her Mom, her quest to take vengeance on Humanity _(Good Luck.),_ what's up with the AS And her transformation, etc. V? V has N. So we have N, Who alredy has a load of Plot Threads, also having to be responsible for V's character development. Luckily, for now, there seems to be more than enought N to go around, but im sure that as the serie goes on, more and more plot points Will have to be quickly acknowledged, resolved, and glossed over in a matter of minutes if this trend of piling things on top of other things doesn't reverse, wich would be unfortunate. I do not think we have reached critical Mass quite yet. Its getting NOTICEABLE How bloated the plot Is getting, but It Is still salvageable, and i 100% have Faith that Glitch and Liam can pull It off no problem, but that doesn't mean they should CONTINUE Doing It, because its inevitably going to hurt the show as time goes on, and indeed, with how much you enjoyed this episode beeing highly dependant on how much you aggree with the statement "audiences Will Stick around more when confused than when bored", It alredy Is.
This is a fairly well put together video and it does a good job at addressing everything in the episode. While I disagree with you on the comedy aspect somewhat I can see where your coming from. My only real complaint is that you don’t use commas in your sentences and it makes the video less enjoyable to watch.
Well before video premieres, lemme just give my honest opinion of the episode and I'll see if we have same opinions. First off, I feel very baited with the teasers, just like Episode 4, most of the teasers never happened. There were many shining teasers but there was literally only one shining reference in the whole ep (the "redrum" scene they teased never even happened and I was so excited for that). And the teasers did a good job of being serious, feeling eerie, something that the episode didn't, almost like the teasers were better than the episode. Now the episode itself. It's definitely way too comedic and not serious enough. The episode would've benefited as an actual flashback episode instead of well what we got. As soon as Uzi appeared and we cut back to her in the present, all my immersion was lost. I get that she's the main character but it honestly feels forced, to me it just feels like when a movie desperately tries to include a popular actor/character, never gets executed well. The scene with Doll bursting in was funny sure, but it sacrificed how serious and intimidating her character is, and her whole motive back in Ep. 3 was just to kill V for revenge for killing her parents and now she wants to side with the very company that sent the DDs. Cyn was a fun villain but definitely untapped potential with her (and the show as a whole), I was definitely overhyping myself with the one frame of the mansion being sucked by a blackhole in EP 4 when N touched the Zombie Drones tape. Also speaking of the tape, pretty BS that the ep started with it playing but he's not even watching it, no one is but the viewer. Glitch also doesn't seem to have the balls to take the massacre of humans seriously. I loved the scene with N giving V her glasses, it was the only big highlight of the entire episode to me. Overall I was really disappointed, and Glitch clearly doesn't want to take the show seriously, which makes me ask why should the fans take the lore seriously. Even my best friend told me the show is a better watch for a "good laugh" than the story. I'm still very excited for the next episodes and the next season (hopefully only 2 seasons), I'll always support Indie films. There's just too much untapped potential.
Can argee on some things especially the teaser part.. The teasers need to be actual teasers instead of teasers which aren’t even in the actual episode. No matter what tho i will still support the series until the very end.
I don’t think the teasers were trying to give off a different vibe than the episode, it still teased something big and bad was gonna happen and it did. I still think the episode had good eerie moments and imagery. At the same time though basically all the teasers for the show I feel can be interpreted as being serious and dark somehow while the episodes themselves are more in between so I feel at this point MD has definitely shown us what the expect at this point. At this point I feel expecting MD to be fully serious is probably just gonna set expectations up for failure. I think it being more than just a standard flashback and instead giving us something to still keep us guessing and theorizing rather than just giving us all the answers right away was a good move. I think Uzi showing up just made things more intriguing about how things were gonna play out. I don’t think Doll bursting in was meant to be “funny” more sudden and frightening, and we do know that she mostly just had a vendetta against V over anything else, she only said the things about siding with the Murder Drones to Uzi to get her to stay out of her way. She also likely didn’t want to side with Tessa and J, but decided she had too because they were her best bet to finding what she was looking for. So she likely still has no love for the company, she just made a reluctant deal. We definitely haven’t seen the last of CYN and will see more of her and what she’s all about going forward, so I don’t think theres untapped potential just yet. Same with the black hole, we’re definitely gonna see what that was going forward. Considering the Zombie Drones tape is integral to this episode(CYN is clearly a zombie drone) and it’s possible N and V haven’t gotten the chance to watch it yet due to passing out, I feel it was still a good choice to show it at the start. Also I don’t see how they in any way showed they weren’t taking the massacre of the humans seriously. Sure there was a joke in the basement about the AS not being able to pick up tools but the massacre was still happening above and the joke had nothing to do with it. Now depending on whether the show wants us to take the lore seriously or is just giving us an excuse to watch funni robots be funny and die horribly depends on what your looking for out of the series I feel. Your friend does have the right idea in that you can easily watch the show casually and have a good laugh at the craziness of everything, or you could stop and analyze things to piece together an interesting series of events and messages. I am personally hoping there’ll be at least 3 seasons of MD but I wouldn’t write everything off as untapped potential just yet. Imo as long as a piece of art or entertainment accomplishes what it was going for, then it’s fulfilled it’s purpose, and if it leaves you wanting more, that just shows how good it was.
@@psychomagalor4902 my point with the untapped potential is, why have to wait for the final episodes to have those potentials, when you could make every episode have them
I kinda felt really bad for Cyn at the beginning of the episode,she looked almost like she was mentally/physically disabled and seeing her be treated like an outcast or burden was sad. Obviously that wasn't the intention for her character and she's not innocent like that.😅
I tend to just assume the environment in this episode was a isolated hackerman sandbox created by Uzi to deep dive on what was causing N & V to collapse to investigate. Its already been confirmed in ep2 that N & V had their memories reformatted to soup so technically, this revealed that Cyn was the source of the problem as she was actively trying to reformat N & V again as her cover got blown by V saying her name aloud infront of Uzi ep4. What happened in the true massacre is anyone's guess. However, the scenes where N or V aren't present, such as the basement & Gala are from Cyn. There is a possibility that with V being mostly absent or stationary. She got offscreen'd in typical horror movie fashion, brought back under Cyn's control, sent out and successfully takes out J/other drones and finally either through force or trickery, convinced N to go in the basement where he gets got the first time.
Personally, I didn’t like the ending a lot because of how abrupt it was, so it felt pretty off to me. However, I do agree with everything else you said in this video. I went into this episode expecting to see N watch Cyn kill everyone, so I was also kinda disappointed with how the gala massacre was offscreen. I was at least somewhat satisfied that the massacre did happen though, and how we at least got to hear it happen even if we didn’t really see much of it.
This episode was pretty strong lore and character wise, but the pacing is pretty bad and the jokes were a mixed bag. Tessa was really entertaining but the intermision with the dad was annoying. However, it was a good episode overall in my opinion. It's the weakest alongside ep 4, but don't worry guys. Episode 6 was a MASSIVE IMPROVEMENT over this one IMO.
I agree. Ep. 6 has EVERYTHING we want out of a high-tier movie. Liam basically squashed the best aspects of horror, comedy, lore, romance (NUZI), psychopath (ALICE) and heroic sacrifice (RIP V) into one episode. Every single element was perfect imo. There was so much going on, yet the overall quality was outstanding. As someone previously said, I think it's a good idea to share your thoughts on this episode. I mean, I can't think of any critique atm about this episode.
@@musicwill321 maybe the way they sidelined J, or the massive convinience of them just happening to stumble into Alice's lair, of HOW THE HELL DID TESSA GRAB THE KNIFE TO UNTIE HER ARMS? Granted, those are minor things and it's still the 2nd best episode(Promening fan for life). Also, I rewatched Ep4 and it's better than I remembered but I have a question: If Doll was eating the Drones and Uzi only licked some oil, how did Doll not become an unhinged Murder Drone? If you can answer please do.
@@mrpro538 That's a very good question. I have actually heard a few people brought up that same question and no one seemed to have answered them yet. At first, I was thinking that the solver-infected drones might experience different symptoms of the AS program inside of them. But after I watched ep. 5, I had a different viewpoint on this matter. We notice the Uzi changed the admin of N and V's programming from Cyn to herself right after N and V regained their memories and V rebuked "You little nark, get out of my head!". It is like as if Uzi had some degree of control over her own Solver powers, isolating it from the AS. So we may hypothesize that a solver-infected drone like Doll and Uzi can manage to have have partial or full self-control when using their Solver abilities. In Doll's case, she managed to retain her own sanity and awareness while using her powers. Therefore, it would be considered that she has full self-control of her Solver abilities. On the other hand, Uzi only has partial-control of the Solver abilities. And it's only a matter of time before the AS ends up taking over her entire programming, being the vehicle of her own world's destruction, like how Cyn (the AS's first host) lead to Earth's demise. Maybe in the later episode, Uzi might be able to find a way to control herself like Doll. Or N and Tessa might be able to find the cure to this programming in the labs. These are the two predictions that I have in mind for the next episode or the finale. I know, this is a long read. Hopefully, you at least get some parts of it lol.
@@mrpro538 That's also a good question lol. Before ep. 6 released, my all-time favourite has been ep. 3. But after ep.6 released... uhhh kind of a different story lol. Honestly, ep. 6 and 3 are tied in terms of overall quality.
I agree, the "humor" in this film is becoming too offensive for me that I'm hate-watching it at this point. I'm only curious about the lore, the action also looks cool
1:29 pretty sure she was talking about the "broken" drones frozen in an error loop, which included V, so N and J were concerned for her and possibly other affected drones.
21:18 I believe that the scenes where neither N or Uzi are present are good examples of dramatic irony; times in the story where information is relayed to the audience, but not the characters. As a result we can probably assume that those scenes, such as Cyn threatening/warning Tessa to stay away from the gala and the gala massacre actually happened roughly as depicted. 21:33 That's been my primary concern since episode 2. If they spent another 2 or 3 minutes at the start of each episode better setting up the context for the episode's story, they would feel a little bit more cohesive. For me, it has felt as though they are rushing the cold open for the sake of time when they don't need to. And I do like your suggestion about tying each episode together with the closing and opening scenes. Taking episodes 4 + 5 as examples, they could lead directly into one another. Episode 4 could cut when they get back to the front door of the bunker with N and V suddenly freezing up (or collapsing) while their digital visors display the "Error 606" message. Then episode 5 could open with Uzi and Khan (and maybe a couple others like Thad + Lizzie) dragging N's and V's bodies back to their home so Uzi can try to hack into them. Thus completely eliminating the need for the first interruption as the audience (represented by Khan) would already know what is going on. Episodes 3 + 4 could have benefitted from the same treatment. Episode 3 could end with Uzi, N, and V confronting Khan about the potential connection between Nori and Yeva. Thus setting up episode 4 (while also explaining that potential connection between eldritch J and Nori in episode 2.) After which the cold open for Episode 4 could have been the scene where Uzi breaks back into Doll's apartment to steal oil and the WD parts that she stuffs in her backpack. During which process she could stop and say something like "I have to know why this is happening." Then cut to arriving at the camp. 25:34 The seeming aimlessness of the show thus far makes it feel like Liam didn't know which overarching storyline that he wanted to pursue and thus mashed them together. Off the top of my head we've got 5 or 6 directions the show could be going, some of which are pulling in opposite directions, and some that were introduced and dropped in subsequent episodes. I only hope that Liam is able to pull the threads together to make it all feel more cohesive when we have the complete story. Murder Drones thus far has reminded me a lot of the X-Files in how it is trying to do a "monster of the week" for each episode's story while seeding clues to a grander overarching plot. Although a UA-cam comment seems inadequate to properly articulate a compare and contrast of the two shows, how they handle the episode to episode, and how they handle the grand story. (Although I recognize that any analysis would have to acknowledge upfront that MD, as an independent animation project, is a lot more limited in how much time it has to tell its stories than the X-Files which had twenty or more forty minute long episodes a season)
Cool video, interesting commentary and some really well-written descriptions, even if I don't necessarily agree with all of your points. Here are my thoughts as I was watching. 1:29 Not just N and J, but all of the seemingly-deactivated drones in the library. 5:24 As this and the next episode show, N is kind to a fault (discounting his murderous rampages from before meeting Uzi, since he didn't seem to recognize the Worker Drones as sentient). 11:35 It being more like Episode 1 is coming back to bite it, as the same thing happened with the pilot, since it was riddled with gags interrupting serious moments. I will say that horror and comedy aren't fully opposites, as they compliment each other well; levity makes you care more about the characters' well-being and breaks up monotony that would otherwise occur from being too dark the whole time, enhancing the horror, while horror provides a nice emotional counter-balance that comedic elements can use to break expectations or provide emotional whiplash. 11:40 Comedy is inherently subjective; I think several of these jokes were done really well. 12:00 You know what, that's a fair analysis of the core of the gag. Points for that. 12:40 I think Tessa interrupting Cyn's monologue, only for Cyn to turn the situation back around is actually really well-done and scary, as it shows a dynamic of the two taking turns controlling the situation, with Cyn ultimately taking a stranglehold on it (with the results implied right after). 13:38 Again, subjective. 14:50 I think it's more a testament to N's ability to repress stuff like that or put it off, supported by Episode 2 having him respond to the head-regrowing question with "I actively avoid unpacking how that works". You are right that it's a bit short of a scene, but my biggest issue is that it goes by so fast that the audience can't really tell the significance of it unless they pause, which is something that should be reserved for smaller details on rewatches, not a main plot point. 17:02 Yeah, this scene _rocks._ You articulated everything I knew I liked about it, and quite a bit more that I didn't. 21:00 Based on N's appearance/behavior and the other drones in the library, V was probably in the same coma-like state we saw in the beginning of the episode, just not directly on top of the basement door. If Cyn brought in library-drones to participate in the gala massacre, V was probably among them; otherwise, she was probably kept in reserve and then tinkered with until she became the V we see in the Pilot, or at least something close to it. N seems to be mentally and "physically" reset to his state in the start of that memory, so V likely was as well. 21:23 As I understand it, the simulation takes the perspectives of all parties connected to it and merges them, so N and V contribute their memories since they're both hooked up. It's possible that since the Absolute Solver was present and trying to wipe those memories, its own recollection was called upon as well, and everything else is probably extrapolated from that. Cyn and/or the Solver seem to have a very high level of awareness for what's going on around the mansion, so they probably contributed to stuff that N and V weren't directly aware of. 21:38 To me, it sounded more like Uzi started hacking _after_ N and V passed out, since N seemed to be regaining his memories on his own. 21:55 A scene like this would be really good as a way to tie the episodes together, though I feel like Cyn/Solver would probably be a little more snarky about what it says. Also, I think the cold-open and unexplained reasoning for the beginning of the episode works in its own way, as it keeps the audience guessing as to what the heck is going on. 22:50 Something to note is that V _wasn't on top of the door before,_ as seen in the beginning of the episode. She either was moved by memory-shenanigans, or _moved herself._ She wasn't an obstacle until _just now,_ which is why it's so tense - what else could change? 24:50 It does suffer in its narrative structure. Someone in a comment or video pointed out that N's involvement in memory dousing feels off, as if it's missing a personal narrative for him specifically, as he's just being dragged around with little agency and no real arc. That same person suggested that he would start off hesitant and.or reluctant to salvage the memories because of how traumatic they are and he's currently living through them, building up to him making the _choice_ to push forward and keep them, which I think would have been a nice little mini-arc for him.
I like how Uzi’s feelings towards Thad has change to N but I feel bad because Im pretty sure she will be alone at the end because V will take over Uzi’s place.. but N promised Uzi he would be by her side so that would also affect V and N’s relationship.. N would have to choose between Uzi and V, likely He would go with Uzi in the end because they are the main protagonists..!
WAITTTTTWAITWAIT I CANT BE THE ONLY ONE NOTICING THAT THE BACKGROUND MUSIC IS A LIKE CHILL VERSION OF A MURDER DRONES SOUNDTRACK? THIS IS TRUE RIGHT??? WOOHHHWWW
20:30 I actually theorize that N actually didn't survive the ravens in the original situation and rather got cloned by cyn. This seems to make sense as we not only have cyn actively mention that she has replacements, but actively see her to be currently working on his body when entering the basement. Also everything N does after the ravenscene obviously wouldn't have happened without uzi's intervention (like trying to get the basement key) up until the glasses intereaction between N and V which easily could have come from the cloned body as cyn was actively operating on him at that point
So, I'm going to combine my thoughts from the last video and the current one. I apologize for the length. First and foremost, I love Murder Drones. The thoughts to follow are not at all intended to bash the show but rather express some concern for it. To start, an answer on Vanitymoth's last video. I find myself at odds with his conclusion, because I agree with him. I find murder drones is too comedic because it doesn't have enough serious moments. For me personally, my favorite episode from the series so far is still the first one. Episode 5 has come close enough that I hold it in the same regard, but all others feel bellow the quality of the pilot due to the aspects they choose to develop and their comedy being too foreground rather than woven into the background. In the first episode, I found myself amazed at how witty the comedy was. For every comedic moment, I could find a justification for it actually happening in the parameters of the world the show introduced. A few examples: The parents abandoning their baby in the intro sequence. As implied by Uzi's exposition, the worker drones are new to their sentience and, as per their design, prioritize self-preservation over an underdeveloped copy. This also plays into the scene when Khan shuts himself behind a door and abandons Uzi. My friends and I burst out into laughter when we saw it as it was a logical thing for Khan to do. The characters are robots after all, and logic would be their foremost motivator. These moments of comedy don't overshadow their serious moments with how they are woven due to this fact. Other forms of the shows comedy were well integrated into the background, such as the inciting incident joke in Uzi's presentation, the school announcement boards as well as the school structure itself. In episode 2, the students are seen taking "I am not a robot" tests just like humans use today for authentication. All of this subtly built up (in my mind) that the worker drones were attempting to mimic humanity; just as Uzi implied in the first episode when she mentioned, "picking up where the humans had left off." The comedy was actively used for both entertainment and world building. Now, this is where I could be reading WAY too into the show, but I interpreted the creators portraying the students as a more evolved form of their parents, more human than the adult worker drones. I took Uzi's rebellious nature as a way to portray how the students aren't content with their situation like the adults are. The other background students are seen to be more emotional and less logic driven like their predecessors. The last form of humor I love in the show is even more subtle, such as "edge levels restored" or "nice vision lol" seen on/through the worker drones' visors. This posted in the background on announcement boards also fall under this. However, in the first episode, none of the humorous moments overshadowed the weight of the serious moments in the first episode. Either each forward joke could be found an in world justification, or it was in the background enough to act like an easter egg for keen viewers. When a murder drone was on screen, the workers were actively in danger, and it wasn't played lightly. They were treated with the respect of the world ending entities the murder drones are made out to be. Even N's innocence didn't get in the way with his established behavior parameters. Contrast this with episodes 4 and 5, and most of the jokes lack any justification or witty subtlety. Lines such as Tessa's "this is a citizens murder" just had me cringing at the way it didn't fit in the moment. Episode 4 as a whole simply didn't have the patience of build up for the workers to trust the murder drones and forced it with V threatening them. Personally, when having seen how smart the humor can be, the show lost me with this direction. I disagree with Moth when he says we aren't intended to care for the worker drones. If that were the case, then an established bunker society wouldn't be needed, and Doll's motivating backstory wouldn't be a thing. I particularly want to care for the worker drones and want to see more of the society they created/see the evolution of the students to become more human with each generation. The last bit I want to address and see what others think is the direction the show has taken. Based on the pilot, I inferred some of the conflict that would arise is getting the workers to trust N like uzi does. I feel an opportunity was missed for some tension had N been allowed to stay with the workers in conjunction with the disappearances caused by Doll. With N needing to feed off oil like a vampire, he would have been a logical suspect and the reveal of Doll on prom night would have made the assistance from the murder drones more impacful and given development for the workers to trust them on episode 4. Furthermore, it would have allowed for some hilarious kills from V after earning their trust. This is obviously my own desires for the show, and I have no problem with their current direction, I just can't help but feel the development between each episode is rushed. A way it could improve is just a little slower pace (as in more attention given to developments, not a slower show) and some conditions set for when humor comes to the foreground or is pushed back. For example, if a threat is on screen like cyn or a murder drone, humor should fade back. If characters are just chilling like Thad and Uzi in episode 1, bring the humor up. If they let their story cook a little longer, I feel it would be perfect. Last thing, thank you, Vanitymoth, for breaking the show down so thoroughly and making the quality of analysis you do. You're truly enjoyable to watch.
Once we get closer to the end of season 1 I want to make a video revisiting the pilot because in retrospect the pilot almost feels like a different show at times. Great analysis!
@vanitymoth Thank you, I totally agree, I have a sneaky suspicion there was a change in direction, but some of the consept art that got released (such as the spells art) has me doubting that theory. Keep up the great work. I can't wait to see how this all pulls together.
Despite the episode's shortcomings, I do want to point out that you are one of the only people I've seen point out how amazing the scene at 17:02 _(in your video)_ is, which I feel is underappreciated. Kevin Temmer (the one who animated it) even pointed out himself how he purposely played up the "puppet-like" nature of CYN to achieve its intended effect. This is one of my favorite scenes because it really represents where I think Murder Drone excels at, which makes sense considering how much it matches Liam's past works. I will agree with you that I think Murder Drones would greatly benefit from leaning more towards its horror aspects. *(P.S.) There is a really cool freeze frame of CYN during the lighting strike that you can see if you go back a few frames from **17:09* (again, in your video).
It may be a mess, but I LOVED the entire ride. And I think it did what it was meant to do, it gave us key insights into Cyn, Tessa, J, and V, albeit in a roundabout way. All while being hilariously horrifying. And yes, the scene with N giving V her glasses was precious.
I feel like this episode would’ve been far better if it actually focused on the dissassembly drones backstories instead of having uzi interfere with those memories for zero reason That’s the thing that makes this episode not as great as the others
I disagree with your comments on the humor personally. I enjoyed most of the jokes, I thought it was a great balance compared to other episodes (which ironically, in my opinion, the comedy-horror balance was worse in other episodes compared to this). The only moments I didn't really enjoy was Tessa's dad's reaction and N's reaction to the basement. Even though it led up to the joke, I feel it still kept the tension (except N with the crows, which was meant to break the tension and personally I didn't mind). I agree with the praise for characterization and issues with pacing, the disappointment of a reveal with the basement, and not being able to see the massacre.
Im pretty sure the scenes that show cyn and the AS as the same entity are red herrings, as for a brief moment when cyn boots up at the beginning of the episode, you see that she was havinga text conversation with something that was typing out similar to the AS, also the fact that all of her movements in episode 5 seem to be almost puppet like, while the first time we see her in episode 2 (iirc) she wasnt having those issues with moving. So I still think that cyn and the AS are different entities, and that the AS took over cyn sometime around the flashback in episode 5, also the fact that Absolute solver was blocked specifically by cyn in episode 1 when we see N reboot. so yeah.
also, I personally think that JCJenson did send the MDs to copper-9. I think that JcJenson stepped in after or during the massacre at the galla, and managed tot take control of the situation, however seeing the capabilities of the AS, they decided to reuse much of what they found, while retrofitting everything (N, J and V) into bodies that JcJenson have more control over/ are more useful for what they want to do. . this is supported by the fact that the trio came in spaceships, and Tessa is now JcJenson technician who came with another J.
THANK YOU! Even as a casual viewer of the series, I still noticed the repetitive humor beats, and I thought I was going crazy. I'm not saying the episode is devoid of humor, case in point; The scene where Tessa and J swap weapons genuinely made me laugh out loud, but it definitely needs a better balance in my opinion.
I gotta say, Episode 5 was enjoyable and the humor (kind of) gets in the right timing, unlike in episode 4, episode 4 was quite nice but it really lead me to some questions like: why are the worker drones scared of Uzi but when she turned into a Zombie Drone every worker drone found it funny, boring, unscary, etc? I understand that Uzi's classmates are supposed to be stereotypical, but i'm pretty much sure strereotypical students should be scared about these things. I found Episode 4 a bit boring, since it didn't have that much emotions, Episode 4 felt quite wrong and i barely understood what was happening. But, episode 4 had SOME lore so it was interesting..? So, in my opinion episode 5 was better than episode 4, since we get to see some lore about the Disassembly Drones, and the Zombie drones, and we also got to ses how N's life was before he turned into a Disassembly Drone. Cyn having movements like a broken doll/puppet was an amazing concept to her character, and adds more emotion, when i saw the trailer i expected Cyn to be a normal drone with a broken voice box, but it was different from my imagination. I also like the detail that Cyn (and also V) has yellow eyes while the others doesn't, showing that Cyn was completely different from the others. I have a feeling that the way the episodes get released quite fast, is the reason why the writing gets a bit sloppy. I really hope Liam isn't rushing his progress so he can release episodes quicker, if he does this, he needs to slow down a since this is his most succesful series yet.
Tbb,i personally have to rewatch and episode like 2-3 just to understand what even is happening , there is to many things happening in such short time,like just looking away for like a couple of seconds and than your completely lost and confused ,i always have to pause alot just to comprehend whats happening , its kinda sad cuz the show is pretty interesting :/
The biggest gripe i have with this episode is that we are not exactly told, or even hinted, at what we're supposed to look at. As you said if we take the basement scene, what are we supposed to understand here? Is it a true representation what really happened, and Cyn killed/repurposed the three drones? Uzi says it's quite an origin story, but for who? The Gala massacre scene is also weird because neither N nor V are present, so hard to understand in the context of the memory hacking. Something else which is weird is why did Cyn turn on N and V? From what we see, especially for N, they've always been supportive of her. I could get why J gets to be slashed down, but what motivates the rest?
Id say Home was still better than episode 4. Episode 4 skipped a huge part too, killed off potential screentime for other characters, and id say Zombie Uzi was lack luster with her transformation, since there was alot more...to be expected of that
I think helluva fans felt the underwhelming aspects a bit more seeing how western energy did this just before episode 5 came out. I know I was hoping for something good because of it.
Also something that I feel will have massive effect on the show was a blink and you'll miss it moment, when N and V are rebooting from the memory sequence on their displays it shows that the administrator, who was cyn, was overwritten with a new administrator, darkxwolf17. Uzi has taken control over N and V from cyn.
imo this episode was kinda mid but it gave A LOT of lore drops and made a LOT of sense with the way it was presented you are calling it "poorly written", i would call it well written tbh, we know in the episode that the absolute solver is trying to delete the memories and we know that Uzi is also messing around with the memories too, we see here in a form the absolute solver and Uzi fighting for these memories, while Uzi wants to get access to as much as possible, we see the absolute solver try to restrict and stop it, and that explains why V is guarding the basement cronologically, i feel like episode 6 should've been earlier or something, like 3 rockets came in front of your house and you turn a blind eye to it for 2 episodes straight?, i have a slight feeling that the episode 6 will end early or something, cause why would we find out about tessa's relationships between drones, i think it would end early, and we can tell Doll gave up on killing V and the only one that would want to fight is J, we can even kinda see that at the end, only J was kinda doing a charge at them, while the rest were doing a weird duck imo episode 5 was used more for lore and to tie lose ends from previous episodes and to get ready for the next few episodes
I think this episode would have been better if it focused more on the horror and not the comedy. The comedy was more of an issue than a good thing and i think the episode could have been better without it. There was not enough horror to balance the comedy. Scenes like the ballroom massacre and the reveal of the basement could have been longer to help balance the comedy as those scenes were intense and leaned more to the horror of this episode. One nitpick that I do have is that the zombie drone vhs was hyped up and i feel like how it was used in ep 5 was underwhelming. I think if the episode started off with n watching the tape and that caused n and v to shut down would have been much better. An idea i would have liked to see in the episode is throughout the episode we would get little sequences of lore that reveal more info from the vhs until the end of the episode when the whole entirety of the vhs is revealed if that makes sense. I feel like they could have utilized the vhs better in this episode. The pacing also felt off and i feel like it was just randomly put together. They could have also done the memory thing a little bit better as we don’t know what happened and what didn’t. Other than that the episode was good.
I agree allot on youre points, i found that they kinda missed the jokes and therefor also missed the horror part as an example in ep 1 where uzi fights with N and the dropes the sentence that shes pirating anime i found kinda funny but that 1 guest i don't and i never will know says someting feels kinda akward and kills the vibes a bit. 1 Thing is tho i think they should show death and so on, yes MD is a kids series aparently but in ep.2 cyn also rips apart multile bodies with defently horror vibes leading to that i see ep.2 cyn monster much more treatning than the one in ep 5 i mean the series already has enough death and so on or at least a picture of multile dead robots and humans like a bit shoved behind the tables and chairs would have been perfect i find it gives a good atmosper while still not too horror like. Btw sorry for so much text got a bit too much in the flow. Love youre vids
I really liked the Syn reveals, I was leaning towards the „syn" character from N's perspective (from ep.1) being both the „absolute solver" and by extension the creator of the murder drones since ep.2, but it's really nice to see it confirmed.
Thank you. I've watched the episode dozens of times through reactions and all, and it took me a while to get it was a legal joke. But i couldn't for the love of me understand what she was saying.
![The Meaning of [ 𝚗 𝚞 𝚕 𝚕 ] | A Murder Drones Crackpot Hypothesis](/img/n.gif)
I am quite confident that this is my best video yet. Let me know how it ranks in comparison to all my other videos.
I'm going to rewatch the show but I'm not going to watch it right now it's going to be soon eventually i don't know
I am sad you didn’t like this episode… I thought it was great.
@@psychomagalor4902 , by what hes talking about its like he mostly liked it but talked about flaws it had.
Despite the flaws, I enjoyed it. Likewise, other people who were able to watch it they can still enjoy it regardless 😊 am I right?
You could be wrong i don't care
I feel like this show would really benefit from more filler/character focused episodes. Not EVERY episode has to be about the lore or pushing the plot, or at least do it in more subtle ways. Because after a while it gets kind of exhausting.
I agree.
Well unfortunately due to it being an indie show with a small crew working on it they kinda have to choose wisely what should be focused on and animated.
@@psychomagalor4902 I totally understand. Like either take time to slowly develop characters under a limited budget or push the plot forward, of course they’d choose the latter. I still think they could have pulled it off though
My brain cant keep up
Honestly, this episode is a character development episode instead of straight up just continuing the plot. The entire thing essentially takes place in Uzi’s room and is focused on N and V getting their memories back as the absolute solver tries to erase them. So in my eyes, while this episode has lots of lore, it really is a more filler of a episode compared to something like episode 4 or 3.
(Before watching the video)
Just like last episode, this was another case where far too much was happening for me to truly keep up and appreciate either without watching multiple times or watching other analysis videos (for example, I would never have been able to tell Tessa’s arm hurting was likely due to her parents chaining her up in the past as well). My initial impressions were that it was a step up from episode 4, but still one of the “weaker” ones. I still feel that way, but again, I’ve now gained a greater appreciation for this episode over time and what it was trying to accomplish.
I disagree, I thought the humor was well good in this episode.But I do agree with your point on spending more time in the basement.
I personally think this episode is right smack dab in the middle of the series. Being number 3 out of the 5 While every episode is fantastic, or at least great, some are definitely better than others. Pilot = 7.5/10 Heartbeat = 8.5/10 The Promening = 9.5/10 Cabin Fever = 8/10. This episode is a solid 8.25/10.
Cool, looks like i’m waking up at 1 am
I think I could see the criticism you’ll give. I think you’ll give criticism based on that episode’s weak plot, and the timing mess, and over all I agree with you.
Edit: But I still trust Liam to deliver a great finale
Sorry i'm a bit late, the alarm didn't quite work at all
Ah, I forgot one thing in my prediction. Two words "Liam Humor".
I disagreed on you with e4 but with this, was accurate, i overall found e5 a bit lower compared to the rest, with the animation getting better each episode, the story gets worse. As much as we learned in e5, it just felt abit too rushed and was moving faster than my brain could process all this new info of the story, having to rewatch many times and see these recaps.
are you playing chess?
Another great video from the best Murder Drones Critic!!!❤👍
To quote an A.I. decribing somerhing it doesn't "like" but deems necessary,
"For the flaw that you are in my system, you're a logical part of existence."
I think you've explained your opinions perfectly. I even agree with some of your thoughts.
Tbh for me this show is weirdly consistent like i'd give all episodes 8/10 for different reasons which really makes it hard for me to say which is my fav and which is my worst episode,I enjoyed all of them equally and that's rare
But yeah I actually had to Chek if I missed an episode cuz dam that is a weird scene change from the end of ep4
We get the origin of Cyn (not Solver) and backstory of Tessa, and how she used to be, and why she became like she is now. We also get why Uzi looks like murder drones, how murder drones came to be, where did they come from, and better look at N's personality. We also get why N lost his memories, his relationship with Cyn, why workers mutate and hint at why they can't be left to be alone unsupervised.
You think that is not enough for a pay-off?
Technically, wouldn't Doll's appearance be strategic since she went after the bug while V and N were incapacitated?
Syn insynyouating
15:37(*episode 2flashbacks*)
669 LIKES LETS A FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Great video with very fair points, But one thing I noticed while watching these episodes that even though the Murder Dones have wings they never actually flap🫤
I feel like I’ve been as hyped for this review as the episode itself
Honestly i look at the episode and think about it less than this rewiev
I agree, I enjoyed it as well
This episode certainly had some of the best character moments we have seen yet, but I do also have to agree about the sloppy pacing of the episode, as well as the constant use of jokes to interrupt otherwise serious scenes (which happens to be a writing trope I hate with a passion). Liam's hyperfocus on trying to both be unpredictable and also cram as much detail into every single scene really hurts the show, especially for a casual viewer.
What this episode really does for me is just make me anxious about the direction of the show's future. I hope these last two episode's insistance on being both too unpredictable and too comedic isn't indicative of what's to come.
Apologies if this comes off as pessimistic, but I'm just so frustrated to see a show I once adored fall into my least favorite writing tropes of all time and throw away an exciting premise and focused narrative for the sake of mystery.
Awesome video btw!
I don’t think the mystery element of the show is gonna throw off casual viewers at all. I feel like a casual watcher can still watch the show and enjoy the characters and visuals while a hardcore analyst can stop and piece things together from the details provided.
@@psychomagalor4902 agree. :D
Edit: and if you want to look deeper into the characters, lore and shoe, you can do that. And if you don’t want to, you can leave it at surface level. Which I think is nice.
*I DIDN'T EXPECT THAT THIS COMMENT WOULD BE THIS LONG!*
Although there are several reasons to appreciate the episode, I still have some issues with it.
At first, it seemed like it was going to be a nice proper introduction to N's past and his connections with the humans, along with V and J. This, in and of itself, would create a captivating episode.
But that wasn’t the only focus, as we get introduced into two new characters, that being Cyn and Tessa. Which is fine, both characters are both good in their own way. But then Uzi showed up as a crow, then states there's some program trying to delete his memories, then Cyn(who's in her Absolute Solver form) threatened Tessa not to go into gala, then N and Uzi started going to the basement, then Doll showed up out of nowhere for that bug thing and much more.
Not only a lot of stuff is happening at the same time, but we don’t even know exactly why they're happening. Like, why should we care about the basement? Nothing before has really implied that there's something noteworthy happening there. If Uzi's goal is to recover N's memories, then why is she constantly changing them by interacting with him? Was a needle actually put into N's head by Cyn or did it not happen at all, regardless of Uzi's involvement?
There's so many questions here and by the end of it, we not only left we those questions, but have even more. It argued that it's doing it to make more "mysteries" in the show, but I'm kind of tired of them to be completely honest.
For my first l viewing of this episode, I experienced a persistent state of confusion regarding the events unfolding and their reasoning. I tm
Also, where was V? No, seriously, where was she through most of the episode? She barely even appears throughout the entirety of it, which feels so weird because she has been a major character in the show since the pilot. So I found it a bit disappointing. And the fact that both V and Cyn look very similar to each other also didn't help.
Out of the three future 3 murder drones, V had the biggest personality change when she got turn into a disassembly drone. From the flashback in episode 2, she seemed to be more of a gentle and peaceful person, unlike her now. I brought this up because I felt like there was so much potential with her playing a big role in this episode. Especially with N due to him having a pretty big crush on her. He scene where N kindly puts her glasses on and V snapping back into reality is such an adorable scene, it's definitely one of my favourites from the whole show. I just wished she had more screen time.
As for J, while is nice that she does have a decent amount of screen time in this episode since she hasn't played a major role for awhile. But the thing is, she doesn't really do anything interesting in that time. She's mostly just "there" with Tessa throughout the episode, without much from her own input. The only memorable scene that she has was when she broke her own chain out of anger. That's it. Which is a shame. It would've been nice if she had more lines, but at-least she's somewhat important here.
Then there's N, the character that I enjoyed the most from this episode. I liked N before, but he can be a bit lame at times because he's simply a "yes man" to Uzi. He mostly just does whatever she wants without much of his own input, which can occasionally make him pretty boring. But since Uzi came in later in the episode, it made N actually do stuff by himself, and oh my goodness, he's such a fun character to watch! His kindness and determination to make everyone around him happy(even if it causes him trouble for doing so) makes a great main character. And dare I say, I think he's a slightly better main character than Uzi herself. I hope episode 6 gives him spotlight to shine!
Then there's Uzi, I did liked what did they did with her in this episode but I do wish she wasn't included in N's memories because it makes this episode super confusing. And I did felt like both Glitch and Liam weren't confident enough to have N as the main character for an entire episode, so they made an excuse to put in it with him. Don't get me wrong, she's fine in it, I just would've prefer thatl she wasn’t there.
I found Cyn to be a great character, I like how she narrates every action she does and her having to keep her own head up with her hand. She weirdly reminds me of Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls as both characters are insanely overpowered and can kill everything around in matter of seconds, while sometimes being a goofball that makes you forget that they can do exactly that. I love her, but I think it would've been better if she was introduced later so most of the episode can be focused more on Tessa and the drones.
Speaking of Tessa, she was a nice surprise to see! She definitely has a lot of "main character energy" in her a lot of her scenes and she gives J a bit more depth than she had before. She's just a nice addition to this episode.
And finally Doll, I do like that Glitch is still keeping her in the show instead of being a "one off character" and did liked that she appeared out of nowhere because I didn't expected it to happen even though it makes sense. The only issue I have with her is that it seems like her presence is solely for the purpose of being included in the ending. It would've been nice to see either her have an interaction with J and Tessa before it or the show giving a clue that she's working with them.
That's my own personal thoughts of the episode! Is it good? Yes! Is it as good as the past 4 episodes? No, it has some major flaws in it that put a few steps back from becoming as good as them.
By the way, this video was great! I was as excited for it as much as the episode itself, and it didn't disappoint! You've improved a lot in this and I'm so excited to see your next video!
Great review! With writing like that you could totally make your own review videos.
I honestly liked this episode a lot better than episode 4
Just to answer one question V was deactivated in the library and was becouse of this not there until Cyn activates her. I also get what your saying but I was able to follow pretty easily and got most of the details pretty well.
@@Idk-qw2ty that's not a hard task
Oh mEh gOd He PoStEd hiS OpIniOn on thE iNterNet I’m aNgrY (this is a joke it’s very hard to tell the difference so I added this so you can’t get confused and be offended)
It's not even uploaded yet bruv
@@steve23738 i fogor to add this is a joke in the comment 💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
I mean the joke is extremely obvious even for a autistic idiot like me so yeah you don't need to explain
I love how society reached a point where you had to write an essay to show that you are not offending anyone
@@You_Ate_My_Soap I should have made it a 60 page essay trolllololool people are becoming so dumb that they can even think about if they mean it in a figurative sense or a literal or a joking way.
I appreciate how honest and in depth your analysis is, and you clearly know a lot about writing. I think reviews like this are excellent complimentary material to not only understand the show better, but to be critical of the downsides where it's fitting.
The Zombie Drones tape is there to explain what happened in the episode intro, where the Cyn (the drone, as Absolute Solver and Cyn are different entities) had a successful zombie reboot without an OS which the AbsoluteSolver used to get into her and establish its own OS onto her system because zombie drones have no OS. There is a snap of dialogue in the start of that scene on Cyn's visor where the AS tells Cyn if she can enter her OS because she basically has no choice and Cyn answers yes. This is very important as it explains that Cyn and the Absolute solver are different beings, but that AS took over Cyn. It also implies that that isn't the origin of absolute solver (because it already existed before it took over Cyn) (or maybe it is, but someone can dispute that for me), so that can be played out later on
Unfocused or not, I'd say it at least did pretty well as being a creepy, haunted house type of story. Had it been released in October it would've been perfect 😊
If this is what they released during spring/summer, imagine what they'll release in October
Must say, I agree heavily with this. This episode was built up to be heavily lore focused, and not have as many comedic elements. However, we got the complete opposite. We had a very comedic episode with very bare bones lore components. I feel that Uzi’s inclusion in this episode was unnecessary, she literally ruined what could’ve been some necessary N, J, and V screen time and chemistry. Overall, this episode is very mixed for me, I especially hate the ending, as GLITCH just stockpiled everything actually important in the literal last minute of the episode, just so that all the characters can conveniently meet up. Lets hope that next episode will deliver though. ❤
I honestly don’t think the episode was built up as lore focused
It just feels like the fanbase thought it was heavily lore focused thanks to the mansion but the point of the episode is that not much is really revealed since it’s closer to a dream sequence
@@NoRegs30 agreed
@@NoRegs30
They had a whole teaser hinting at the mansion. The mansion is a part of the mysterious murder drones' pasts. Therefore, it wouldn't be impossible to assume that the episode that focused on that would, or rather should, be heavily focused on the lore. Heck, even Sarcastic Chorus pointed this out.
But either way, i think what we got was good...
@@NoRegs30 agreed we only know half of it what happened in the beginning of mansion and after that it remains a mystery because that's what liam likes it he says by himself he want fan to dig what he hides specifically. It's not wise for liam fanbase to have too much hide stuff because we get with it well some people spend 7 hours on the theory too. But
it may not be suitable to new people who just came to watch Liam work. but weak point is they giving too little time per ep because of the cost is 200k-300k $ in one ep
if they split episode 5 into full lore without uzi involved and save rest of the content for season 2 without too much acceleration it would be even better.
@@welcometothericefields7783
A great example of this is CYN, since whole the drones name was actually CYN before the AbsoluteSolver took over, none of that is ever explained outside of the drone screen scene in the beginning of the episode and her armband, there is also the fact that CYN talks with the AbsoluteSolver right before she revived
I love Uzi still has her both personalities angsty and Shy romantic feelings for N she is such a tsundere for N it’s adorable 💜
I honestly really liked this video! I wasn't much of a fan of your ep4 video cuz different opinions but this one, I agreed with pretty much everything! I'm excited to see how everything pays off in the next few episodes
This is a comment for engagement boosting & editing later.
Alright, lemme give my thoughts. (Essay incoming)
I do agree with all the things you said about the characters, and was glad to hear you think J is best girl as well.
Now for the comedy, I definitely realize that what makes someone laugh is one of the most subjective things out there, but imo the jokes weren’t nearly as bad as you make them out to be. For one thing I feel the whole thing with a tense moment having a joke follow afterward has been a thing with the show since the start, but even then I wouldn’t say they’re all the “same” joke. They still have different timings(I definitely disagree about the poor timing on the jokes) and overall punchlines and they don’t even always follow an actual tense moment.
For me the jokes never really killed the tone in any way, in fact I never really saw the characters making comedic comments to be jokes at all. Uzi saying “thats a pretty metal origin story” for example is completely in character for her than if she suddenly went all somber. Sure it may have been impactful if she went OOC for that moment but imo the fact something messed up happened was probably something she was already expecting so imo it makes sense that she wasn’t as surprised, same with N since he was merely a past version of himself who wasn’t aware what the stuff in the basement would mean for his future yet.
I didn’t really find any scenes to be dragged out longer than they needed and I disagree on their being no tension in the V scene. We see clearly the creepy death angel drone above her and the drone bodies on the side that CYN/the AS has been there and we know what the AS and an X symbol usually means for drones as seen in Ep 4 with Uzi. So the tension comes from whether V will reactivate and attack them which we see is exactly what happens at the scenes end.
I don’t think the fight with V and J really needed anymore to it(I found the joke that came after pretty funny simply cuz of how absurd it was). Also I don’t think what we see in the basement is meant to imply they were turned into Disassembly Drones by CYN, imo it simply shows she was experimenting on them and making eldritch forms like we see with Eldritch J in episode 2. Sure that also seems like it may have an impact but at the same time I feel this is merely confirming something that Uzi and the viewers had suspected. That and past N likely doesn’t have the context needed to know what it actually means either. In the end we and the characters still don’t know exactly what is going on so I feel the real impactful stuff has yet to actually come and this was merely a teaser.
I also think starting to show exactly what was going on at the gala isn’t nearly as cool as leaving it entirely up to the viewers imagination given what we were shown about CYN
I don’t think CYN “made” the Disassembly Drones per say, the company most likely still made and sent them to Copper-9, but CYN has something to do with the eldritch horror stuff we’ve been seeing.
I personally thought having the “inception-style” exploration of N’s memories instead of a standard flashback episode was a way cooler choice personally. Having Uzi still be able to play a part in the episode as well as just generally way we don’t fully know what was the real memories and what wasn’t is another thing that I feel will keep viewers guessing and just makes it more intriguing to discuss and rewatch.
I get the thing about the timeskips and yeah I would like to see more too but again this is an indie show where they have to take careful consideration of what they can afford to animate and what can simply be told via a quick explanation. I don’t think it came out of nowhere per say, since N and V’s memories has been a talking point in prior episodes and we know somethings going on with them so I think this is still a natural progression of that and not something thats out of left field. Also to explain V wasn’t under the AS control in the real world but she was in the memory cuz CYN had been infecting them which Tessa’s parents mistook as being broken, so it had nothing to do with what was happening in the real world.
I already addressed the V scene but I still think there is tension there because of the uncertainty. If we saw exactly what she was doing beforehand we’d know exactly what to expect once the scene was over but since we don’t know if somethings even gonna happen or not we’re tense and eager to see what could transpire. We still know theres danger afoot, but where the danger comes from is still unknown to us, and therefore the tension arises. The example you pull of Eldritch J is another case of this, we see it can use holograms and we don’t know how big the monster actually is, therefore the tension arises in the fact it could be anywhere, rather than simply cuz it’s dangerous and they have to avoid it.
Now you say theres no buildup in this episode while there was in the previous ones. I would argue the pilot also didn’t exactly have a buildup to the fight with V and J, it was just something that happened cuz it was the most pressing concern at the time. I feel the same is true here. The characters are merely dealing with the most present danger. I feel like there was still a climax to this episode, it just wasn’t as big and bombastic as the others, but that isn’t a bad thing.
I personally didn’t find this episode underwhelming, it showed just enough to give us an idea of whats going on but has still left us guessing and theorizing over what it could all mean and what will come next. Sure it wasn’t a huge spectacle, but I don’t think it needed to be.
The pacing I feel isn’t really that sporadic, never was there a cut where I thought “wait why are we here instead of there”, everything flowed from one thing to the next pretty naturally if you ask me. The only “confusing” part of this narrative I feel is simply the fact we and the characters still don’t have all the answers yet, and I think thats fine since we still have more episodes to go. Again I don’t feel the comedy was disruptive of anything, all of it was perfectly in character and at this point I feel this show has definitely established itself to be one where tension followed by levity (or vice versa) is the name of the game. I don’t think any scenes were poorly delivered in any way, I suppose if you mean dialogue-wise I could agree that some of the dialogue should be spaced out more but in terms of each scene accomplishing what they were going for I feel each one does so with little trouble. And again I do too wish there were mote contextual scenes but I feel we’re still given a good enough gist that we don’t feel like we’re missing out on anything really.
I still think this was a really good episode and personally would put it above 2 and 4(which were still good too imo). I am sure that MD is gonna hold up much better on rewatch once we have a better context for everything and the characters will definitely hold up great.
So yeah I definitely disagree on this episode being “the worst” in terms of writing, I feel this ep if anything is the culmination of all MD is. Not saying if you dislike it that means you dislike the show, but imo it does feature all the hallmarks of the series and is a good representation of the series as a whole.
I’m sad you didn’t like this one or were mixed on it, I hope this show doesn’t just end up becoming another HB for you where you just end up trashing every new episode…
I’m glad we can disagree on something and still be civil about. At the end of the day we are both MD fans who want to see the show be as successful as possible. I REALLY hope that I don’t have to make another negative review for the rest of the season but regardless of how the future episodes turn out, I have to stay honest with my reviews or I lose all credibility as a critic.
@@vanitymoth Cool, I always try my best to be understanding and civil.
I guess my personal recommendation when critiquing things going forward would be to try your best to consider why they made certain decisions in the show and think up potential explanations for them, like looking at the V suspense scene and maybe taking into consideration that they were intending for the uncertainty of what’ll happen to be the source of the suspense rather than an established danger. Thats what I usually do, and if I can’t think of a good reason for why something happens, that’ll be when I consider it a fault.
Thats how I usually look at things would be cool if you at least considered trying that way but I won’t force you. Anyways thanks for understanding. 🤝
@@psychomagalor4902 not to mention we still have three episodes-ish, yeah? I’d rank 5 up there with three while the rest stray in a solid a-to-b.
To somewhat add onto what you’re saying, you could be right about CYN not being the true inherent mastermind; we know she’s an administrator so the company might not possibly be aware of everything and just 'went with it' so to speak. The dissassembly drones we have now are a lot more refined looking, with CYN’s tampering still existing.
@@psychomagalor4902 oh, and I have seen the idea that the basement that mostly was after was more 'metaphorical'. It could’ve possibly been there for *sure* but I’m more leaning on that imagery being something constructed by the absolute solver itself to try throw Uzi off
I really dont like where this show is heading. Really hoping for season 2 to be more balanced in horror and comedy
The episode was confusing a fuck, but with every rewatch i understand and appreciaye more.
I understand its UA-cam series amd it requires to put a lot more into a lot less, but the pacing should be worked on a little more
I will say that I was more than pleased with this episode from a theorist perspective, but from a writing perspective I think you hit every nail on the head. Every tense moment was undermined by an random joke (although I personally liked the scalpel scene) and it felt like it was trying to do too much at once. TLDR almost every take in this video was a w, good job man!
I was really thrown off by the tone of this episode, the teasers made me think it would be serious and the massacre of the humans seemed like it would be a serious thing with less humour, but the humour and tone in this episode was the same as every other one. It doesn’t really take itself seriously, which takes people out of it. The scene with N giving V her glasses was sweet though:)
I hope next episode we explore more On Uzi and N’s relationship because I feel like Uzi can’t stay romantically in love with N the whole season I need to her have her breakdown or emotions on V and N relationship.. just the love triangle must end
I REALLY did not like this episode. It contributed nothing related to N's backstory and how he became a murder drone, along with the many others things you've mentioned in this video!
It showed us that Cyn was the being who created the murder drones tho-
I have made comments like the ones in this video before but all i got was backlash saying i was being too harsh. You are right with what you are saying. I adore this series but the big jumps between eps and lack of character focused episodes and instead just lore and lore again and again is overwhelming and confusing
I personally don’t think it’s that confusing. We’re still getting good character stuff imo while the lore is mainly background stuff that can be put together later. The main focus is still on having fun I’d say.
3:10 Thank you for explaining that part. I honestly have had no idea what that reveal was supposed to be other than, “look at all these bodies!”
I believe Uzi, N, and V were simply viewing the tape and then N and V become compromised by AS leading to Uzi needing to hack into them.
Honestly upon rewatch I didn't really like this episode the random "comedic" moments are just not needed and ruin the mood of the scene and it just felt like there was to much filler I give it a 6.5/10
personally i thought it was great, but omg can we GET SOME SERIOUS SCENES-
*VERY Long AND verbose, Press read more at your own peril*
Personally i really enjoyed this episode, It was likely One of my favourites in the serie so far, however, since i found this serie (or, more accurately, i found Liam's work in general) trought your video on cliffside some time ago (for wich i have to thank you btw!), and then Just watched all five episodes over the course of a few days, i benefitted from not actually having any expectations built up, wich made It near impossible to disappoint Me.
Even Then, i do definitely see more than a few issues with the episode.
I won't touch on the inconsistent Pacing because, personally, i didn't mind It Too much. Even tho the Scene where N moves V i Too didn't find all that tense, It gave me a few seconds to catch my Breath and Digest what was happenning at the time, wich Is something this show RARELY Does.
For the Humor, i Remembered this episode's beeing really good, with J's "this Is an UNRELATED LAYOFF!" Beeing probably my favourite joke in the show as a whole, but on a rewatch i realized i Simply forgot about all the less effective jokes.
Even then, most seemed at least forgivable. Tessa interrupting Cyn, as an example, undercuts the tension, yes, but It also demostrates Her personality and fighting Spirit, so i can give most moments like that a pass.
The only ones i found actually "bad" (quite Subjective because humor, but still) were the ones where the Adults did It, specifically the One interrupting the J and V fight and "hold that gun less cool this instant!" Beeing quite Egregius.
The main problem with this episode as i see It Is the same as the Show's, with this episode as a whole Indeed beeing a microcosm of every problem i have WITH the show: It Is horribly Crammed.
If you think about It, this episode Is doing a LOT Of things at the same time.
It Is, like the rest of the show, Juggling Horror and Comedy, but ALSO introducing two new characters (with Tessa, in Just One short episode, climbing to the top of my non existant tierlist of Murder drones characters at gale Speed), giving N some breathing room and expanding his character, humanizing J, Explaining why V Is.. well, V in the present day and why she's so afraid/hatefull of Cyn, giving her relationship with N some much needed depth and context, enstablishing *THE* Main villan, hopefully for real this time, AND expanding on pre-existing plot points.
THAT, Is an ABSURD amount of stuff to fit into a singular, 20 minutes video.
This could have been Solved by cutting a few things out, like Uzi, but I also disaggree with the idea that She could have been left out.
While between the Disassembly Trio, Doll, Tessa, and her, Uzi Is the character i find the least interesting, She IS The main character, with V beeing, from a writing standpoint, Just a Foil for her, And N beeing the Heart of the main trio (or, more accurately, the electrified fence keeping the Hyenas and the Lions from eating Eachother in the Zoo), and this episode Is a Natural progression to her and N's Little arc.
The two Meet in ep1, split in 2, reconcile in 3, have a tender moment in 4, and now we see how all previus episodes have affected Uzi's relationship with N and the way they interact.
Could this have been postponed? Maybe, but judging from the fact now we have faaar more relationships to see (J-Uzi, Tessa-N, V-Doll), i can see why they might try to, keyword here, Cram It in with the rest of the plot.
In the Grand scheme of things, The episode didn't at all feel unfocused to me. Rather, It felt like It was focusing on Too much all at Once, since, with All the main cast now meeting up, they NEEDED To get as many plot points and character moments out of the Way as possible.
Mind you, this Is NOT an excuse.
They shouldn't have added as much stuff as they did to avoid this problem, and should have focused Instead on Building a main plot First, Instead of the Trio (but usually Just Uzi and N) meandering around, searching for clues about Nori for the same reason they searched for the basement (wich was never before established as something important and there was no reason to assume It was) in this episode:
The reason beeing that, At the end of the day, The plot Does need to happen.
I feel like noone exemplifies this problem Better than, ironically, the Face of the show, V herself.
Seriusly, she's a Foil to Uzi, ok, but what IS her purpose to the story other than generating conflict with her?
She Isn't going to tell us what She knows, Is 100% hostile to everyone around her, including the protagonist, and often kills on sight. How do you have such a character develop?
In any other show, She would be a relatively minor, but recurring antagonist.
The only way to develop her Is trought N, wich makes sense:
She _(supposedly)_ became the Khorne Berserker we know her as specifically to protect him from SOMETHING in Their past, so her realizing she's doing more harm than good Is the Natural Path for her character to take.
No issues there, there have been characters before who'se Characterization was based off of another character. This isn't a problem per se.
EXCEPT, N Is Alredy overloaded with Plot Threads!
He has his Pilot hat we have no context for, his own personal Amnesia subplot this entire episode Is about, his relationship with Uzi, his connection with Tessa and J, and his apparent Friendship with Cyn, *the main villain.*
Uzi also has a bunch of plot threads to follow: her Mom, her quest to take vengeance on Humanity _(Good Luck.),_ what's up with the AS And her transformation, etc.
V? V has N.
So we have N, Who alredy has a load of Plot Threads, also having to be responsible for V's character development.
Luckily, for now, there seems to be more than enought N to go around, but im sure that as the serie goes on, more and more plot points Will have to be quickly acknowledged, resolved, and glossed over in a matter of minutes if this trend of piling things on top of other things doesn't reverse, wich would be unfortunate.
I do not think we have reached critical Mass quite yet. Its getting NOTICEABLE How bloated the plot Is getting, but It Is still salvageable, and i 100% have Faith that Glitch and Liam can pull It off no problem, but that doesn't mean they should CONTINUE Doing It, because its inevitably going to hurt the show as time goes on, and indeed, with how much you enjoyed this episode beeing highly dependant on how much you aggree with the statement "audiences Will Stick around more when confused than when bored", It alredy Is.
This is a fairly well put together video and it does a good job at addressing everything in the episode. While I disagree with you on the comedy aspect somewhat I can see where your coming from. My only real complaint is that you don’t use commas in your sentences and it makes the video less enjoyable to watch.
I mostly agree with this however the comedy in many places I think was well written and it genuinely good comedy
Facts absolutely facts 6:07
J is 100% Best girl XD
basically what he said was that murder drone episode 5 is overall pretty good but there are flaws.
Well before video premieres, lemme just give my honest opinion of the episode and I'll see if we have same opinions.
First off, I feel very baited with the teasers, just like Episode 4, most of the teasers never happened. There were many shining teasers but there was literally only one shining reference in the whole ep (the "redrum" scene they teased never even happened and I was so excited for that). And the teasers did a good job of being serious, feeling eerie, something that the episode didn't, almost like the teasers were better than the episode.
Now the episode itself. It's definitely way too comedic and not serious enough. The episode would've benefited as an actual flashback episode instead of well what we got. As soon as Uzi appeared and we cut back to her in the present, all my immersion was lost. I get that she's the main character but it honestly feels forced, to me it just feels like when a movie desperately tries to include a popular actor/character, never gets executed well. The scene with Doll bursting in was funny sure, but it sacrificed how serious and intimidating her character is, and her whole motive back in Ep. 3 was just to kill V for revenge for killing her parents and now she wants to side with the very company that sent the DDs. Cyn was a fun villain but definitely untapped potential with her (and the show as a whole), I was definitely overhyping myself with the one frame of the mansion being sucked by a blackhole in EP 4 when N touched the Zombie Drones tape. Also speaking of the tape, pretty BS that the ep started with it playing but he's not even watching it, no one is but the viewer. Glitch also doesn't seem to have the balls to take the massacre of humans seriously. I loved the scene with N giving V her glasses, it was the only big highlight of the entire episode to me.
Overall I was really disappointed, and Glitch clearly doesn't want to take the show seriously, which makes me ask why should the fans take the lore seriously. Even my best friend told me the show is a better watch for a "good laugh" than the story. I'm still very excited for the next episodes and the next season (hopefully only 2 seasons), I'll always support Indie films. There's just too much untapped potential.
Can argee on some things especially the teaser part..
The teasers need to be actual teasers instead of teasers which aren’t even in the actual episode.
No matter what tho i will still support the series until the very end.
Common Swag W, love this take
I died of old age trying to read this, but I do agree (mostly)
I don’t think the teasers were trying to give off a different vibe than the episode, it still teased something big and bad was gonna happen and it did. I still think the episode had good eerie moments and imagery. At the same time though basically all the teasers for the show I feel can be interpreted as being serious and dark somehow while the episodes themselves are more in between so I feel at this point MD has definitely shown us what the expect at this point.
At this point I feel expecting MD to be fully serious is probably just gonna set expectations up for failure. I think it being more than just a standard flashback and instead giving us something to still keep us guessing and theorizing rather than just giving us all the answers right away was a good move. I think Uzi showing up just made things more intriguing about how things were gonna play out. I don’t think Doll bursting in was meant to be “funny” more sudden and frightening, and we do know that she mostly just had a vendetta against V over anything else, she only said the things about siding with the Murder Drones to Uzi to get her to stay out of her way. She also likely didn’t want to side with Tessa and J, but decided she had too because they were her best bet to finding what she was looking for. So she likely still has no love for the company, she just made a reluctant deal.
We definitely haven’t seen the last of CYN and will see more of her and what she’s all about going forward, so I don’t think theres untapped potential just yet. Same with the black hole, we’re definitely gonna see what that was going forward. Considering the Zombie Drones tape is integral to this episode(CYN is clearly a zombie drone) and it’s possible N and V haven’t gotten the chance to watch it yet due to passing out, I feel it was still a good choice to show it at the start. Also I don’t see how they in any way showed they weren’t taking the massacre of the humans seriously. Sure there was a joke in the basement about the AS not being able to pick up tools but the massacre was still happening above and the joke had nothing to do with it.
Now depending on whether the show wants us to take the lore seriously or is just giving us an excuse to watch funni robots be funny and die horribly depends on what your looking for out of the series I feel. Your friend does have the right idea in that you can easily watch the show casually and have a good laugh at the craziness of everything, or you could stop and analyze things to piece together an interesting series of events and messages. I am personally hoping there’ll be at least 3 seasons of MD but I wouldn’t write everything off as untapped potential just yet. Imo as long as a piece of art or entertainment accomplishes what it was going for, then it’s fulfilled it’s purpose, and if it leaves you wanting more, that just shows how good it was.
@@psychomagalor4902 my point with the untapped potential is, why have to wait for the final episodes to have those potentials, when you could make every episode have them
Before the video goes live, I just want to say that Tessa should've been the main character.
I kinda felt really bad for Cyn at the beginning of the episode,she looked almost like she was mentally/physically disabled and seeing her be treated like an outcast or burden was sad.
Obviously that wasn't the intention for her character and she's not innocent like that.😅
I tend to just assume the environment in this episode was a isolated hackerman sandbox created by Uzi to deep dive on what was causing N & V to collapse to investigate.
Its already been confirmed in ep2 that N & V had their memories reformatted to soup so technically, this revealed that Cyn was the source of the problem as she was actively trying to reformat N & V again as her cover got blown by V saying her name aloud infront of Uzi ep4.
What happened in the true massacre is anyone's guess. However, the scenes where N or V aren't present, such as the basement & Gala are from Cyn.
There is a possibility that with V being mostly absent or stationary. She got offscreen'd in typical horror movie fashion, brought back under Cyn's control, sent out and successfully takes out J/other drones and finally either through force or trickery, convinced N to go in the basement where he gets got the first time.
Personally, I didn’t like the ending a lot because of how abrupt it was, so it felt pretty off to me. However, I do agree with everything else you said in this video.
I went into this episode expecting to see N watch Cyn kill everyone, so I was also kinda disappointed with how the gala massacre was offscreen. I was at least somewhat satisfied that the massacre did happen though, and how we at least got to hear it happen even if we didn’t really see much of it.
This episode was pretty strong lore and character wise, but the pacing is pretty bad and the jokes were a mixed bag. Tessa was really entertaining but the intermision with the dad was annoying. However, it was a good episode overall in my opinion. It's the weakest alongside ep 4, but don't worry guys. Episode 6 was a MASSIVE IMPROVEMENT over this one IMO.
I agree. Ep. 6 has EVERYTHING we want out of a high-tier movie. Liam basically squashed the best aspects of horror, comedy, lore, romance (NUZI), psychopath (ALICE) and heroic sacrifice (RIP V) into one episode. Every single element was perfect imo. There was so much going on, yet the overall quality was outstanding. As someone previously said, I think it's a good idea to share your thoughts on this episode. I mean, I can't think of any critique atm about this episode.
@@musicwill321 maybe the way they sidelined J, or the massive convinience of them just happening to stumble into Alice's lair, of HOW THE HELL DID TESSA GRAB THE KNIFE TO UNTIE HER ARMS? Granted, those are minor things and it's still the 2nd best episode(Promening fan for life). Also, I rewatched Ep4 and it's better than I remembered but I have a question: If Doll was eating the Drones and Uzi only licked some oil, how did Doll not become an unhinged Murder Drone? If you can answer please do.
@@mrpro538 That's a very good question. I have actually heard a few people brought up that same question and no one seemed to have answered them yet. At first, I was thinking that the solver-infected drones might experience different symptoms of the AS program inside of them.
But after I watched ep. 5, I had a different viewpoint on this matter. We notice the Uzi changed the admin of N and V's programming from Cyn to herself right after N and V regained their memories and V rebuked "You little nark, get out of my head!". It is like as if Uzi had some degree of control over her own Solver powers, isolating it from the AS. So we may hypothesize that a solver-infected drone like Doll and Uzi can manage to have have partial or full self-control when using their Solver abilities. In Doll's case, she managed to retain her own sanity and awareness while using her powers. Therefore, it would be considered that she has full self-control of her Solver abilities.
On the other hand, Uzi only has partial-control of the Solver abilities. And it's only a matter of time before the AS ends up taking over her entire programming, being the vehicle of her own world's destruction, like how Cyn (the AS's first host) lead to Earth's demise.
Maybe in the later episode, Uzi might be able to find a way to control herself like Doll. Or N and Tessa might be able to find the cure to this programming in the labs. These are the two predictions that I have in mind for the next episode or the finale.
I know, this is a long read. Hopefully, you at least get some parts of it lol.
@@musicwill321 good explanation. Also, whats your favourite episode rn?
@@mrpro538 That's also a good question lol. Before ep. 6 released, my all-time favourite has been ep. 3. But after ep.6 released... uhhh kind of a different story lol. Honestly, ep. 6 and 3 are tied in terms of overall quality.
I agree, the "humor" in this film is becoming too offensive for me that I'm hate-watching it at this point. I'm only curious about the lore, the action also looks cool
“So I don’t expect to see people ripped apart.” Meanwhile that one Khan hologram in episode 2:
Big difference between robos and real humans.
J’s corpse from the same episode:
@@triggeredemoji298 Ok yeah true lol
I must not have a good sense of humour
1:29 pretty sure she was talking about the "broken" drones frozen in an error loop, which included V, so N and J were concerned for her and possibly other affected drones.
21:18 I believe that the scenes where neither N or Uzi are present are good examples of dramatic irony; times in the story where information is relayed to the audience, but not the characters. As a result we can probably assume that those scenes, such as Cyn threatening/warning Tessa to stay away from the gala and the gala massacre actually happened roughly as depicted.
21:33 That's been my primary concern since episode 2. If they spent another 2 or 3 minutes at the start of each episode better setting up the context for the episode's story, they would feel a little bit more cohesive. For me, it has felt as though they are rushing the cold open for the sake of time when they don't need to. And I do like your suggestion about tying each episode together with the closing and opening scenes.
Taking episodes 4 + 5 as examples, they could lead directly into one another. Episode 4 could cut when they get back to the front door of the bunker with N and V suddenly freezing up (or collapsing) while their digital visors display the "Error 606" message. Then episode 5 could open with Uzi and Khan (and maybe a couple others like Thad + Lizzie) dragging N's and V's bodies back to their home so Uzi can try to hack into them. Thus completely eliminating the need for the first interruption as the audience (represented by Khan) would already know what is going on.
Episodes 3 + 4 could have benefitted from the same treatment. Episode 3 could end with Uzi, N, and V confronting Khan about the potential connection between Nori and Yeva. Thus setting up episode 4 (while also explaining that potential connection between eldritch J and Nori in episode 2.) After which the cold open for Episode 4 could have been the scene where Uzi breaks back into Doll's apartment to steal oil and the WD parts that she stuffs in her backpack. During which process she could stop and say something like "I have to know why this is happening." Then cut to arriving at the camp.
25:34 The seeming aimlessness of the show thus far makes it feel like Liam didn't know which overarching storyline that he wanted to pursue and thus mashed them together. Off the top of my head we've got 5 or 6 directions the show could be going, some of which are pulling in opposite directions, and some that were introduced and dropped in subsequent episodes. I only hope that Liam is able to pull the threads together to make it all feel more cohesive when we have the complete story.
Murder Drones thus far has reminded me a lot of the X-Files in how it is trying to do a "monster of the week" for each episode's story while seeding clues to a grander overarching plot. Although a UA-cam comment seems inadequate to properly articulate a compare and contrast of the two shows, how they handle the episode to episode, and how they handle the grand story. (Although I recognize that any analysis would have to acknowledge upfront that MD, as an independent animation project, is a lot more limited in how much time it has to tell its stories than the X-Files which had twenty or more forty minute long episodes a season)
Cool video, interesting commentary and some really well-written descriptions, even if I don't necessarily agree with all of your points. Here are my thoughts as I was watching.
1:29 Not just N and J, but all of the seemingly-deactivated drones in the library.
5:24 As this and the next episode show, N is kind to a fault (discounting his murderous rampages from before meeting Uzi, since he didn't seem to recognize the Worker Drones as sentient).
11:35 It being more like Episode 1 is coming back to bite it, as the same thing happened with the pilot, since it was riddled with gags interrupting serious moments. I will say that horror and comedy aren't fully opposites, as they compliment each other well; levity makes you care more about the characters' well-being and breaks up monotony that would otherwise occur from being too dark the whole time, enhancing the horror, while horror provides a nice emotional counter-balance that comedic elements can use to break expectations or provide emotional whiplash.
11:40 Comedy is inherently subjective; I think several of these jokes were done really well.
12:00 You know what, that's a fair analysis of the core of the gag. Points for that.
12:40 I think Tessa interrupting Cyn's monologue, only for Cyn to turn the situation back around is actually really well-done and scary, as it shows a dynamic of the two taking turns controlling the situation, with Cyn ultimately taking a stranglehold on it (with the results implied right after).
13:38 Again, subjective.
14:50 I think it's more a testament to N's ability to repress stuff like that or put it off, supported by Episode 2 having him respond to the head-regrowing question with "I actively avoid unpacking how that works". You are right that it's a bit short of a scene, but my biggest issue is that it goes by so fast that the audience can't really tell the significance of it unless they pause, which is something that should be reserved for smaller details on rewatches, not a main plot point.
17:02 Yeah, this scene _rocks._ You articulated everything I knew I liked about it, and quite a bit more that I didn't.
21:00 Based on N's appearance/behavior and the other drones in the library, V was probably in the same coma-like state we saw in the beginning of the episode, just not directly on top of the basement door. If Cyn brought in library-drones to participate in the gala massacre, V was probably among them; otherwise, she was probably kept in reserve and then tinkered with until she became the V we see in the Pilot, or at least something close to it. N seems to be mentally and "physically" reset to his state in the start of that memory, so V likely was as well.
21:23 As I understand it, the simulation takes the perspectives of all parties connected to it and merges them, so N and V contribute their memories since they're both hooked up. It's possible that since the Absolute Solver was present and trying to wipe those memories, its own recollection was called upon as well, and everything else is probably extrapolated from that. Cyn and/or the Solver seem to have a very high level of awareness for what's going on around the mansion, so they probably contributed to stuff that N and V weren't directly aware of.
21:38 To me, it sounded more like Uzi started hacking _after_ N and V passed out, since N seemed to be regaining his memories on his own.
21:55 A scene like this would be really good as a way to tie the episodes together, though I feel like Cyn/Solver would probably be a little more snarky about what it says. Also, I think the cold-open and unexplained reasoning for the beginning of the episode works in its own way, as it keeps the audience guessing as to what the heck is going on.
22:50 Something to note is that V _wasn't on top of the door before,_ as seen in the beginning of the episode. She either was moved by memory-shenanigans, or _moved herself._ She wasn't an obstacle until _just now,_ which is why it's so tense - what else could change?
24:50 It does suffer in its narrative structure. Someone in a comment or video pointed out that N's involvement in memory dousing feels off, as if it's missing a personal narrative for him specifically, as he's just being dragged around with little agency and no real arc. That same person suggested that he would start off hesitant and.or reluctant to salvage the memories because of how traumatic they are and he's currently living through them, building up to him making the _choice_ to push forward and keep them, which I think would have been a nice little mini-arc for him.
I like how Uzi’s feelings towards Thad has change to N but I feel bad because Im pretty sure she will be alone at the end because V will take over Uzi’s place.. but N promised Uzi he would be by her side so that would also affect V and N’s relationship.. N would have to choose between Uzi and V, likely He would go with Uzi in the end because they are the main protagonists..!
WAITTTTTWAITWAIT I CANT BE THE ONLY ONE NOTICING THAT THE BACKGROUND MUSIC IS A LIKE CHILL VERSION OF A MURDER DRONES SOUNDTRACK? THIS IS TRUE RIGHT??? WOOHHHWWW
i literally didn't understand any thing of the episode
20:30 I actually theorize that N actually didn't survive the ravens in the original situation and rather got cloned by cyn. This seems to make sense as we not only have cyn actively mention that she has replacements, but actively see her to be currently working on his body when entering the basement. Also everything N does after the ravenscene obviously wouldn't have happened without uzi's intervention (like trying to get the basement key) up until the glasses intereaction between N and V which easily could have come from the cloned body as cyn was actively operating on him at that point
So, I'm going to combine my thoughts from the last video and the current one. I apologize for the length. First and foremost, I love Murder Drones. The thoughts to follow are not at all intended to bash the show but rather express some concern for it. To start, an answer on Vanitymoth's last video. I find myself at odds with his conclusion, because I agree with him. I find murder drones is too comedic because it doesn't have enough serious moments. For me personally, my favorite episode from the series so far is still the first one. Episode 5 has come close enough that I hold it in the same regard, but all others feel bellow the quality of the pilot due to the aspects they choose to develop and their comedy being too foreground rather than woven into the background. In the first episode, I found myself amazed at how witty the comedy was. For every comedic moment, I could find a justification for it actually happening in the parameters of the world the show introduced. A few examples:
The parents abandoning their baby in the intro sequence. As implied by Uzi's exposition, the worker drones are new to their sentience and, as per their design, prioritize self-preservation over an underdeveloped copy. This also plays into the scene when Khan shuts himself behind a door and abandons Uzi. My friends and I burst out into laughter when we saw it as it was a logical thing for Khan to do. The characters are robots after all, and logic would be their foremost motivator. These moments of comedy don't overshadow their serious moments with how they are woven due to this fact.
Other forms of the shows comedy were well integrated into the background, such as the inciting incident joke in Uzi's presentation, the school announcement boards as well as the school structure itself. In episode 2, the students are seen taking "I am not a robot" tests just like humans use today for authentication. All of this subtly built up (in my mind) that the worker drones were attempting to mimic humanity; just as Uzi implied in the first episode when she mentioned, "picking up where the humans had left off." The comedy was actively used for both entertainment and world building. Now, this is where I could be reading WAY too into the show, but I interpreted the creators portraying the students as a more evolved form of their parents, more human than the adult worker drones. I took Uzi's rebellious nature as a way to portray how the students aren't content with their situation like the adults are. The other background students are seen to be more emotional and less logic driven like their predecessors.
The last form of humor I love in the show is even more subtle, such as "edge levels restored" or "nice vision lol" seen on/through the worker drones' visors. This posted in the background on announcement boards also fall under this.
However, in the first episode, none of the humorous moments overshadowed the weight of the serious moments in the first episode. Either each forward joke could be found an in world justification, or it was in the background enough to act like an easter egg for keen viewers. When a murder drone was on screen, the workers were actively in danger, and it wasn't played lightly. They were treated with the respect of the world ending entities the murder drones are made out to be. Even N's innocence didn't get in the way with his established behavior parameters. Contrast this with episodes 4 and 5, and most of the jokes lack any justification or witty subtlety. Lines such as Tessa's "this is a citizens murder" just had me cringing at the way it didn't fit in the moment. Episode 4 as a whole simply didn't have the patience of build up for the workers to trust the murder drones and forced it with V threatening them. Personally, when having seen how smart the humor can be, the show lost me with this direction. I disagree with Moth when he says we aren't intended to care for the worker drones. If that were the case, then an established bunker society wouldn't be needed, and Doll's motivating backstory wouldn't be a thing. I particularly want to care for the worker drones and want to see more of the society they created/see the evolution of the students to become more human with each generation.
The last bit I want to address and see what others think is the direction the show has taken. Based on the pilot, I inferred some of the conflict that would arise is getting the workers to trust N like uzi does. I feel an opportunity was missed for some tension had N been allowed to stay with the workers in conjunction with the disappearances caused by Doll. With N needing to feed off oil like a vampire, he would have been a logical suspect and the reveal of Doll on prom night would have made the assistance from the murder drones more impacful and given development for the workers to trust them on episode 4. Furthermore, it would have allowed for some hilarious kills from V after earning their trust. This is obviously my own desires for the show, and I have no problem with their current direction, I just can't help but feel the development between each episode is rushed. A way it could improve is just a little slower pace (as in more attention given to developments, not a slower show) and some conditions set for when humor comes to the foreground or is pushed back. For example, if a threat is on screen like cyn or a murder drone, humor should fade back. If characters are just chilling like Thad and Uzi in episode 1, bring the humor up. If they let their story cook a little longer, I feel it would be perfect.
Last thing, thank you, Vanitymoth, for breaking the show down so thoroughly and making the quality of analysis you do. You're truly enjoyable to watch.
Once we get closer to the end of season 1 I want to make a video revisiting the pilot because in retrospect the pilot almost feels like a different show at times. Great analysis!
@vanitymoth Thank you, I totally agree, I have a sneaky suspicion there was a change in direction, but some of the consept art that got released (such as the spells art) has me doubting that theory. Keep up the great work. I can't wait to see how this all pulls together.
Despite the episode's shortcomings, I do want to point out that you are one of the only people I've seen point out how amazing the scene at 17:02 _(in your video)_ is, which I feel is underappreciated.
Kevin Temmer (the one who animated it) even pointed out himself how he purposely played up the "puppet-like" nature of CYN to achieve its intended effect.
This is one of my favorite scenes because it really represents where I think Murder Drone excels at, which makes sense considering how much it matches Liam's past works.
I will agree with you that I think Murder Drones would greatly benefit from leaning more towards its horror aspects.
*(P.S.) There is a really cool freeze frame of CYN during the lighting strike that you can see if you go back a few frames from **17:09* (again, in your video).
Yeah no, the episode is not bad and the writing is not the worst :/
True i hope ep 6 be better than 5
It may be a mess, but I LOVED the entire ride. And I think it did what it was meant to do, it gave us key insights into Cyn, Tessa, J, and V, albeit in a roundabout way. All while being hilariously horrifying.
And yes, the scene with N giving V her glasses was precious.
I feel like this episode would’ve been far better if it actually focused on the dissassembly drones backstories instead of having uzi interfere with those memories for zero reason
That’s the thing that makes this episode not as great as the others
I agree on most of this because I had the same thoughts-
I was expecting V being her self with N, Tessa, and J in this episode.
It's quite of a mess, but If there N, everything fine for me
I deeply disagree on comedy. This is basically a rule of the show to never keep tension for more that a dozen seconds.
I disagree with your comments on the humor personally. I enjoyed most of the jokes, I thought it was a great balance compared to other episodes (which ironically, in my opinion, the comedy-horror balance was worse in other episodes compared to this). The only moments I didn't really enjoy was Tessa's dad's reaction and N's reaction to the basement. Even though it led up to the joke, I feel it still kept the tension (except N with the crows, which was meant to break the tension and personally I didn't mind).
I agree with the praise for characterization and issues with pacing, the disappointment of a reveal with the basement, and not being able to see the massacre.
Im pretty sure the scenes that show cyn and the AS as the same entity are red herrings, as for a brief moment when cyn boots up at the beginning of the episode, you see that she was havinga text conversation with something that was typing out similar to the AS, also the fact that all of her movements in episode 5 seem to be almost puppet like, while the first time we see her in episode 2 (iirc) she wasnt having those issues with moving. So I still think that cyn and the AS are different entities, and that the AS took over cyn sometime around the flashback in episode 5, also the fact that Absolute solver was blocked specifically by cyn in episode 1 when we see N reboot.
so yeah.
also, I personally think that JCJenson did send the MDs to copper-9. I think that JcJenson stepped in after or during the massacre at the galla, and managed tot take control of the situation, however seeing the capabilities of the AS, they decided to reuse much of what they found, while retrofitting everything (N, J and V) into bodies that JcJenson have more control over/ are more useful for what they want to do.
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this is supported by the fact that the trio came in spaceships, and Tessa is now JcJenson technician who came with another J.
Me is dog
anyone think cyn sounds like glados?
12:25i still can't someone plz explain wtf is she saying
THANK YOU! Even as a casual viewer of the series, I still noticed the repetitive humor beats, and I thought I was going crazy.
I'm not saying the episode is devoid of humor, case in point; The scene where Tessa and J swap weapons genuinely made me laugh out loud, but it definitely needs a better balance in my opinion.
It is the best episode yet imo
15:37(*episode 2flashbacks*)
I gotta say, Episode 5 was enjoyable and the humor (kind of) gets in the right timing, unlike in episode 4, episode 4 was quite nice but it really lead me to some questions like: why are the worker drones scared of Uzi but when she turned into a Zombie Drone every worker drone found it funny, boring, unscary, etc? I understand that Uzi's classmates are supposed to be stereotypical, but i'm pretty much sure strereotypical students should be scared about these things. I found Episode 4 a bit boring, since it didn't have that much emotions, Episode 4 felt quite wrong and i barely understood what was happening. But, episode 4 had SOME lore so it was interesting..?
So, in my opinion episode 5 was better than episode 4, since we get to see some lore about the Disassembly Drones, and the Zombie drones, and we also got to ses how N's life was before he turned into a Disassembly Drone. Cyn having movements like a broken doll/puppet was an amazing concept to her character, and adds more emotion, when i saw the trailer i expected Cyn to be a normal drone with a broken voice box, but it was different from my imagination. I also like the detail that Cyn (and also V) has yellow eyes while the others doesn't, showing that Cyn was completely different from the others.
I have a feeling that the way the episodes get released quite fast, is the reason why the writing gets a bit sloppy. I really hope Liam isn't rushing his progress so he can release episodes quicker, if he does this, he needs to slow down a since this is his most succesful series yet.
2:36 finally someone explained it to me
[Comment]
Bro to be honest, everytime I watch a murder drones episode, I completely forget what happen due to how random it seems
Tbb,i personally have to rewatch and episode like 2-3 just to understand what even is happening , there is to many things happening in such short time,like just looking away for like a couple of seconds and than your
completely lost and confused ,i always have to pause alot just to comprehend whats happening , its kinda sad cuz the show is pretty interesting :/
The biggest gripe i have with this episode is that we are not exactly told, or even hinted, at what we're supposed to look at. As you said if we take the basement scene, what are we supposed to understand here? Is it a true representation what really happened, and Cyn killed/repurposed the three drones? Uzi says it's quite an origin story, but for who?
The Gala massacre scene is also weird because neither N nor V are present, so hard to understand in the context of the memory hacking.
Something else which is weird is why did Cyn turn on N and V? From what we see, especially for N, they've always been supportive of her. I could get why J gets to be slashed down, but what motivates the rest?
Every episode is just a mess of ideas that have bad pacing.
Id say Home was still better than episode 4. Episode 4 skipped a huge part too, killed off potential screentime for other characters, and id say Zombie Uzi was lack luster with her transformation, since there was alot more...to be expected of that
I think helluva fans felt the underwhelming aspects a bit more seeing how western energy did this just before episode 5 came out. I know I was hoping for something good because of it.
Also something that I feel will have massive effect on the show was a blink and you'll miss it moment, when N and V are rebooting from the memory sequence on their displays it shows that the administrator, who was cyn, was overwritten with a new administrator, darkxwolf17. Uzi has taken control over N and V from cyn.
imo this episode was kinda mid
but it gave A LOT of lore drops and made a LOT of sense with the way it was presented
you are calling it "poorly written", i would call it well written tbh, we know in the episode that the absolute solver is trying to delete the memories and we know that Uzi is also messing around with the memories too, we see here in a form the absolute solver and Uzi fighting for these memories, while Uzi wants to get access to as much as possible, we see the absolute solver try to restrict and stop it, and that explains why V is guarding the basement
cronologically, i feel like episode 6 should've been earlier or something, like 3 rockets came in front of your house and you turn a blind eye to it for 2 episodes straight?, i have a slight feeling that the episode 6 will end early or something, cause why would we find out about tessa's relationships between drones, i think it would end early, and we can tell Doll gave up on killing V and the only one that would want to fight is J, we can even kinda see that at the end, only J was kinda doing a charge at them, while the rest were doing a weird duck
imo episode 5 was used more for lore and to tie lose ends from previous episodes and to get ready for the next few episodes
I think this episode would have been better if it focused more on the horror and not the comedy. The comedy was more of an issue than a good thing and i think the episode could have been better without it. There was not enough horror to balance the comedy. Scenes like the ballroom massacre and the reveal of the basement could have been longer to help balance the comedy as those scenes were intense and leaned more to the horror of this episode. One nitpick that I do have is that the zombie drone vhs was hyped up and i feel like how it was used in ep 5 was underwhelming. I think if the episode started off with n watching the tape and that caused n and v to shut down would have been much better. An idea i would have liked to see in the episode is throughout the episode we would get little sequences of lore that reveal more info from the vhs until the end of the episode when the whole entirety of the vhs is revealed if that makes sense. I feel like they could have utilized the vhs better in this episode. The pacing also felt off and i feel like it was just randomly put together. They could have also done the memory thing a little bit better as we don’t know what happened and what didn’t. Other than that the episode was good.
I think Uzi hacked in the solver as well. Pretty sure Both N and V have the solver inside. So Uzi took a peek in all 3.
I agree allot on youre points, i found that they kinda missed the jokes and therefor also missed the horror part as an example in ep 1 where uzi fights with N and the dropes the sentence that shes pirating anime i found kinda funny but that 1 guest i don't and i never will know says someting feels kinda akward and kills the vibes a bit. 1 Thing is tho i think they should show death and so on, yes MD is a kids series aparently but in ep.2 cyn also rips apart multile bodies with defently horror vibes leading to that i see ep.2 cyn monster much more treatning than the one in ep 5 i mean the series already has enough death and so on or at least a picture of multile dead robots and humans like a bit shoved behind the tables and chairs would have been perfect i find it gives a good atmosper while still not too horror like.
Btw sorry for so much text got a bit too much in the flow. Love youre vids
I really liked the Syn reveals, I was leaning towards the „syn" character from N's perspective (from ep.1) being both the „absolute solver" and by extension the creator of the murder drones since ep.2, but it's really nice to see it confirmed.
I knew this was gonna be negative…
I just have a question is it possible to put 2D in 4k animation or whatever it is that's spider man cross the spider verse has
12:32 what she actually says here is "N wants paid time off. To attend unioooon negotiatioooooons!"
Thank you. I've watched the episode dozens of times through reactions and all, and it took me a while to get it was a legal joke. But i couldn't for the love of me understand what she was saying.
I'm back and a quarter way done digging my grave! >:)
This is your first video that I actually fully agree with, finally.
So how you feel about the Helluva boss Lost episode since it out now?
in what way is this show meant for a younger audience?
Can't wait for your review on Episode 6.
You ship v x n or Uzi x n? I ship v x n x uzi lol