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Review : The Animatrix

Earlier this week The Animatrix came out on DVD. Now you may ask ..

What is the Animatrix?

Unfortunately no one can be told about the Animatrix you have to see it for yourself.

Ah I am just kidding. You see the creators of The Matrix movies, the Wachowski brothers have been big time fans and students of Japanese Anime and Hong Kong action cinema. In fact the Japanese animators interviewed on this DVD were stunned at the extent of Japanese animation that Larry and Andy Wachowski knew Japanese animation.

After visiting Japan after the first Matrix movie in 1999 they met their idols, the best of the Japanese animation directors. Most of the Anime directors were impressed by the creativity and vision of the Wachowski brothers and a plan was hatched to develop a series of short animated films created by the top animated talent of Japan. These short films would be back stories and side stories and serve to add depth and background to the movies. These short movies ranging from six to sixteen minutes in length would be shown as trailers and on the Internet to create a renewed excitement about The Matrix movies. Thus a group of nine very cool very creative short films were produced in Japan and Hawaii. They were displayed on DVD along interviews and documentaries.

Because this is still quite new I am not going to reveal any spoilers in these films and I wish that comments posted respect those who have not seen this yet.

Final Flight Of the Osiris
This is a hyper realistic computer animated film done by Squaresoft Pictures. This studio created the artistic and technical computer animation achievement that was Final Fantasy the movie. But after the massive financial failure of Final Fantasy the movie this short film was the last project by the cutting edge but star-crossed computer animation studio. The film is damn sexy by every definition of the word. It is set in a Zion hovership after the first movie but before the game and The Matrix Reloaded. The look and feel is dead on and the execution is better than any computer animation I have seen. This short film surpassed Final Fantasy for the realism of the computer animated humans. In a word HOT.

The Second Renaissance Part 1 and 2
These films are my favorite of the Animatrix. It is a documentary style film on the history of the relationship between Man and Machine. It covers the first seeds of rebellion, the attempts for peace and finally the apocalyptic war prior to the creation of The Matrix. This was directed by the man behind the Japanese series Blue Submarine No 6 that mixed 3d animation with traditionally drawn 2d animation. The imagery is stunning as an introspective look at the the atrocities of the twentieth century used as an analogy in the events that lead to the war. The images of Armageddon were created before the September 11th attacks and I am proud of the director did not compromise his vision. It is more relevant now than ever. These films are both fascinating and troubling.

Kid's Story
This film came from the mind of the director of another beloved Japanese Animation, Cowboy Bebop. It is a story of an American teenager who becomes disillusioned with his life and becomes aware of The Matrix. However this does not look like the clean Anime feel of Cowboy Bebop one bit. It was done in a rough hand drawn pencil heavy style that has a series of impressionistic cross hatching to add a living texture to the image. I first thought it was the work of Bill Plympton. Some of the agents in this film reach a point of abstraction approaching Pink Floyd's The Wall.

Program
Program is a story of a virtual training fight in by two human agents of Zion. The training fight is in a historical Japanese Shogunate era but with the physics and reality of The Matrix. This is from the creator of the ninja action anime epic Ninja Scroll. It is full of dark black and red and was designed to resemble traditional Japanese Ukioe painting. The is the only one that is traditional Anime but it is quite a rush!

World Record
This is a film of a world champion runner who becomes close to awareness to the reality of The Matrix. The realistic but abstracted human designs based on perspective and just plain stunning. The art style reminds one of Peter Chung's Aeon Flux and the game Jet Set Radio. This was done by a young anime director and we have much to look forward to from this artist.

Beyond
Beyond is a look at how glitches in the Matrix can affect how people interact in the world that they live in. This animator also worked on the collection of avant guard animation Robot Carnival. Man I wish Robot Carnival would get released on DVD.

A Detective Story
Once again from the director of Cowboy Bebop is a gritty film noir detective story. Told form the perspective of the trench coat clad gumshoe as he seeks out the hacker Trinity. Done in pure grainy black and white it is almost like the director was trying too hard to folow the film noir cliches. Ah well It was damn cool to see Trinity in animated form

Matriculated
Peter Chung of Aeon Flux and Reign brought his skills as a highly skilled action director to this short story about humans attempting to communicate with the machines that run the world. The computer animated dreamworld in this film is a bit hard to swallow but I am expecting that I will pick up the nuances in time.

These films were never formally submitted to the MPAA for rating but they are done to an R rating and are not for kids.

The DVD also includes an superb documentary on Manga and Anime and another documentary on the creation of The Animatrix. The disk was made from the wide screen digital source and the picture and sound is crisp and colorfully. There is commentary tracks on half of the films and the only thing they were missing on this DVD was a teaser trailer for The Matrix Revolutions.

I implore anyone who enjoyed the Matrix to rent or buy this disk. Fans of Abstract and cutting edge animation should run right now and get this. I almost like it more than the movies and I don't think I will ever get tiered of watching this DVD.

Jake at June 6, 2003 Reviews

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Comments

Posted by: Jap at June 6, 2003 8:13 AM

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