While laid to waste with the flu on my families farm in Brazil, the third season of Love, Death, and Robots came out. I thought most of them were pretty good, but Jibaro absolutely floored me. As the credits rolled, I just stared at the TV at a loss for words.
Well, as I round day 7 of bed rest due to my flu, I thought I'd put my thoughts on it down!

First, a quick summary of Jibaro: Spoilers lie ahead! (If you haven't seen it, please watch it instead of reading this.)
Jibaro follows a man of the same name who seems to be of high status who is a part of a Spaniard conquistador detatchment. Their business is soon disrupted by the cry of a jewel-clad Siren, risen from a close by lake, who bewitches everyone in the company. They all immediately begin racing haphazardly into the lake, killing each other in order to ensure that they are the only one to reach the Siren. Shocker, they all are either murdered or drowned. Jibaro, being deaf, is immune to the siren's cries.
Naturally, Jibaro is pretty freaked out by the whole event. The Siren too, is pretty freaked out by how Jibaro is immune to her song. Their freaked-out-ness emerges slightly differently, though. Jibaro's manifests itself in terror, and he goes through a desperate run through the forest to escape. The Siren's manifests itself in curiosity, as she's never been unsuccessful in tempting a man to his doom before.
Jibaro makes his escape, but loses his horse in the process. At nightfall he rests near a stream. The Siren finds him there, asleep, and settles in as the big spoon for the night. Jibaro awakes first, understandably freaked out, causing the Siren to return to the water, but soon Jibaro is more interested than scared and follows her to a waterfall. There, he approaches her and they meet in a kiss. The Siren is most definitely pretty far from human, as the kiss hurts Jibaro and draws some blood, but he persists. PLOT TWIST Jibaro wasn't in love, he was lusting after (literal) jewels. He headbutts her unconscious, picks as many jewels off of her as he can, throws her into the waterfall, makes a sack out of his cape, and runs off into the forest like an asshole. He eventually reaches another part of the stream and rests there for a bit.
The Siren's blood filled the water and started gushing down the waterfall and filling her home lake. The blood reaches where Jibaro was resting and cures his deafness through it's magical properties. Jibaro, having never heard sound before, flips out and, in his frenzy, ends up back at the lake where the whole thing began.
PLOT TWIST AGAIN the Siren wasn't dead, just messed up. She awakens in her lake and is horrified to see that nearly all of her jewels are now missing. She real pissed. She sees Jibaro at the lake and cries at him, and, no longer deaf, he falls under her spell. She draws him into the lake where he sinks into the water and drowns.

I think the first thing that really captured my imagination was the animation style. My favorite episode from Season 1 was The Witness, the style of which is strikingly similar to that of Jibaro. Both of them were directed by Alberto Mielgo, which would explain why I loved each of them so much! The style has bold lines, vivid colors, and a sketchy look, reminiscent of the hugely popular Spiderverse movie. Furthermore, when at movement the shapes seem to become more simple, which beautifully contrasts the intricately detailed look when the "camera" is focusing on a subject.
So, the animation hooked me, but oh my god the storytelling kept me. At it's core, it speaks a lot to greed. Jibaro, clearly quite well off, saw an opportunity for more riches and took everything from the Siren just to fulfil his oppulent desire for more. This isn't what endears me to the short so much, though.

What really drew me in was the late Pre-Columbian era / early Post-Columbian era setting. For those who don't know, Pre-Columbian refers to Central and South America prior to European contact, while Post-Columbian refers to those areas post European contact. While I was in Bogota last year, I went to a gold museum showing Pre-Columbian gold artifacts of all kinds. These people were seriously into jewelry, man. They made some gorgeous stuff out of gold, which was abundant in certain areas throughout Central and South America. Some of the jewelry they made was super over the top, both in size and in complexity.
While watching Jibaro, I couldn't get the parallels out of my head. Just as the Conquistadors pillaged the Americas for precious metals and jewels in the 1500's, so too did Jibaro pillage the Siren for her gold and jewels.
While at the museum I read a story about some conquistadors who developed the theory that the molten lava in the caldera of a volcano (That I visited! Neat!) was actually liquid gold. They tried in vain to extract the gold for quite some time before eventually discovering it wasn't gold at all (learn more here). The scene with the entire detatchment of conquistadors rushing into the deep lake and either drowning or dying on the blade of their fellow reminded me a lot of the shortsighted, starstruck, gold-sick spirit exhibited by the real life conquistadors from the volcano.
The most gut-wrenching part of the short was when the Siren awoke in her lake, stripped of her gold and jewels. Her mourning and misery was conveyed so intensely, so viscerally, that it made me feel like a voyeur; yet, I couldn't tear my eyes from the screen. This was the perfect crescendo for the parallels of the fresh European influence in Latin America. As with the native people in the Americas, the Siren had been robbed for all she had, then cast aside with no regard to herself as a being with intrinsic value. She was left for dead after having all she held precious taken from her.
One last observation that I noticed is that the short is from the perspective of Jibaro, the conquistador. It follows his steps, and ends when he drowns among hundreds of his kin. His perception of the siren, at first as a dangerous, unknown entity, then as an opportunity for riches to be extracted mirrors the historical conquistador perception of native peoples in Latin America. Their fates, sadly, do not parallel, as colonial forces ultimately prevailed in the vast majority of cases.

Jibaro is by far my favorite episode of Love, Death, and Robots, any season. It incorporated everything I loved most about The Witness, my second favorite, then took everything I thought The Witness fell short on and absolutely knocked them out of the park. The animation style is vividly captivating, the audio delivers the emotion straight into the depths of your heart, and the story telling leaves you raw. I seriously can't recommend Jibaro enough.
If you have any thoughts, please leave a comment, I'd love to hear your opinions!