The Animatrix
Four years ago we all sat in awe of The Matrix, a cyberpunk sci-fi movie that stood head and shoulders above other releases of that year, including winning the best effects Oscar from under the nose of George Lucas' much maligned Phantom Menace. It was the combination of an intriguing storyline, great visual design and gr
Four years ago we all sat in awe of The Matrix, a cyberpunk sci-fi movie that stood head and shoulders above other releases of that year, including winning the best effects Oscar from under the nose of George Lucas' much maligned Phantom Menace. It was the combination of an intriguing storyline, great visual design and groundbreaking special effects that kept us coming back for more and bore a massive franchise for Warner Brothers.
So we waited patiently for the next installment, and here we are in 2003: Year of The Matrix. Following the theatrical release of The Matrix Reloaded and the high concept game Enter The Matrix, we get The Animatrix. A collection of nine short films by acclaimed Asian animators, each telling stories in, around or about The Matrix.
Final flight of the Osiris recounts the events immediately before The Matrix Reloaded, when the Osiris discovers that the machines are tunnelling towards Zion - the last human city. Produced by Square, the team behind Final Fantasy, the 10 minute piece is visually stunning, from the opening slow-mo teasing swordfight, to a battle with hundreds of sentinels, I forgot that it was all CG, as it looks so much like the original movie, my only complaint is that it's not long enough.
The second Renaissance tells the origins of machines ruling the Earth. Split in to two parts it tells how machines wanted to be accepted as part of Earth's population, and that fear and hate on Man's part led to the race's enslavement. This has classic Anime visuals, and whilst nowhere near as exciting as Osiris it has some great imagery, relating to some of our own race’s less proud moments, showing a pretty brutal war and more about the machine city.
Kid's story recounts the origin of one of Reloaded's characters, a schoolkid who has become aware of the Matrix, and hopes, with Neo's help, to reach the real world. Reflecting the theme of alienation from the original movie, compressed in to eight minutes. It has a unique visual style that takes some getting used to.
Program sees two people considering whether to go back to the blissful ignorance of the matrix, or stay in the real world. This has the best action after Osiris, with very traditional anime visuals, and a neat concept.
World record tells of a sprinter who has pushed himself so far that he is breaking the boundaries of the Matrix. I found this rather confusing and I wasn't sure what was going on, although ultimately I liked the conclusion.
Beyond tells of an anomaly in the Matrix - a haunted house where the normal rules of physics don't apply, and when discovered by Yoko, a young woman searching for her cat, she finds herself questioning reality. This is strangely cool as it questions some of the realities surrounding myths in our world, as well as having some pretty smart visuals.
A detective story follows a Private Investigator hired to find the hacker Trinity. Played like a Philip Marlow-esque crime story, with retro visuals and grainy, almost black and white animation, this is a triumph of style over content, and suffers from having too little time to develop a very neat idea.
Matriculated is set in the real world and shows a group of humans trying to convince machines to join them, with some success. This is without doubt the wierdest of the lot...bizarre imagery which is supposed to mean something to the machines but meant nothing to me. Visual design of the real world is smart, but as a short story it's pretty poor.
I'm not a huge fan of Anime, but I enjoyed the various ideas and styles presented in the shorts, and as an introduction to anime, it's excellent. Of the nine films there are five that I will watch again, two I will show to friends and a couple that I didn't like at all. As a companion to the movies it gives some good background information, but all this plays second fiddle to Final flight of the Osiris , which blew me away, and in retrospect putting this first on the disk sets the bar so high, the following features can't compare. I review these as a fan of The Matrix and sci-fi, so I would be interested to see the opinion of an Anime fan.
The DVD is well presented in the style of the first movie’s release. The picture is clear and colourful throughout without evidence of grain, as you would expect. The image only gets really tested in Osiris and this film is absolutely beautiful to look at, but I did notice some change in aspect ratio on a couple of the films, so watch out for that. The sound, in Dolby Digital 2.0, isn’t used too much, although again Osiris does have some decent rear effects. Music, provided by The Matrix Reloaded composer Don Davis, reuses many of the film’s themes, but there is also some new, very atmospheric music provided here, as well as some trademark techno for the action scenes. Each of the shorts gets its own making of featurette, explaining the background of the creators, with footage of their previous efforts, as well as interview footage with the artists and directors. One complaint is that many of the interviewees speak in Japanese, and on the two DVD players I tried you had to have the subtitles turned on to get their translations. This aside, each making of is almost as long as the short itself, with storyboards and animatics, with the Osiris documentary showing the demo video produced to demonstrate they could pull it off, with a leather-clad Aki (from Final Fantasy) doing battle with a Sentinel. I particularly enjoyed learning about the backgrounds of the artists and why they were chosen. Different approaches by each artist, but 8 very interesting documenaries.
Next up is Scroll to screen: the history and culture of Anime, and 20 minute documentary on the evolution of Anime. For the uninformed (ie me) this was very interesting and traces its origin from comics, the influence of American comics, it even features footage from Battle of the Planets which gives it a certain coolness in my book, and goes on to talk about the classic Akira and popular productions like Vampire Hunter and the cultural influences that drive them.
Four of the shorts have Director commentaries; Second Renaissance, Program and World Record. Funnily these are in Japanese and so you have to put the subtitles on to understand what they are talking about! That aside the commentaries discuss the ideas and inspirations for the films, and given that the films themselves are fairly short, it’s bearable to listen to the Japanese and read the text to learn a little more about the creative processes applied in making these films.
Also included is an Enter the Matrix trailer for the game that picks up after Osiris and before Reloaded and runs parallel with the second film. It has movie footage that is in the game that explains some of the events in Reloaded. Confused? Well you should be. Like I said 2003 is year of The Matrix, and you have got to see \ play \ buy all of these products to fully understand what the hell is going on, or at least that’s the idea…
Add to this profiles for the directors and producers and you actually have a pretty packed DVD considering the length of the 9 films themselves. I’m pretty impressed with the package although and enjoyed all but one of the films, even if some of them were pretty shallow in content. Still, I’d buy this for Osiris and Renaissance, so the rest of the content is a bonus. Overall a great DVD for fans of the movies, and for Anime fans I guess there’s plenty of stuff for you too.
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