Review of the Animatrix

Introduction
first off, i have to mention that i'm a huge scifi/anime fan so my opinion my be a little
biased, but i'm going to try and keep it pretty fair. ok, about the animatrix. i remember
hearing about it a long time ago...not sure when, but i thought it sounded like a really cool
idea: stories based in the Matrix world/universe, but animated. not just animated normally,
but by some of the most innovative creators around today. the Animatrix contains a nice
variety of these animations. there's cgi, there's anime, there's even some cool looking film
noir animation in one of the stories. the dvd itself is packaged together quite nicely. the
menus have some sweet animations and a cool look and feel to them. the problem i had
right off the bat was the quality of the sound in the stories. most of the time, the sound
was off-balance. for the most part, the dialog was very quiet and the music was too loud.
i'm not sure if the sound problem was an issue with the dvd or the sound setup i was using
to watch the dvd. another viewing should determine that.
As i mentioned earlier, the stories are animated by some of the top animators in the world.
There are a total of 9 stories, with four of them being written by the Wachowski brothers
and the other 5 being written by the creators. The 9 stories are as follows: Final Flight of
the Osiris, The Second Renaissance: Parts 1 and 2, Program, World Record, Kid's
Story, Detective Story, Beyond, and Matriculated.
Since this is a collection of animated films, i will not be delving into the technical or
cinematic aspects of film making. Instead, i plan to review the idea and the story first,
then comment on the style of animation, how the animation fits with the idea or story, and
finish up by commenting on the choice of music for the story as the music does have a
large role in both anime and the matrix films already.
Final Flight of the Osiris
is it me, or do the hovercraft's in the Matrix's real world have some cool names. i know
the Nebuchadnezzar is one (Morpheus's) and this short talks about the Osiris. the Enter
the Matrix game talks about Niobe's hovercraft, but i don't remember the name of
it...chances are, it's a cool name. Anyway, to the actual movie/short film. Final Flight of
the Osiris is a computer-generated (cg from now on) animated film. it was directed by
Andy Jones of Square Pictures (Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within) and written by the
Wachowski brothers. this film was a pretty decent self-contained story. it begins in the
construct in a sparring simulation not unlike the one in the Matrix [movie] in which Neo
and Morpheus fought. right off the bat, the viewer can tell that the animation is very highquality cg. the stuff shown in this film blows the Final Fantasy movie out of the water...or
at least i think so. a muscular black man is facing off against an asian(?) woman. both are
garbed in sparring wear and armed with swords. they begin to fight a pretty nice battle
(especially considering that it's cg) all the while cutting off each other's clothes. the battle
ends when an alarm sounds off and the two leave the construct. The cockpit of the Osiris
is shown next and the reason for the alarm also presents itself: thousands of sentinels are
gathering somewhere above the Osiris. So the rebels go in the hovercraft and find where
all the sentinels are and discover the main tie-in to Matrix Reloaded....i don't want to give
the entire thing away....especially if Matrix Reloaded hasn't been seen yet. back to Osiris,
it's a pretty tragic, but nicely fitting tale for the Matrix universe. the premise was good

and the actual execution was nice as well. Osiris is a fast-paced, understandable, and
fitting story for the Animatrix. Grade for this short is a solid 9.
The Second Renaissance: Parts 1 and 2
this was what i was interested in the most when i first heard about the Animatrix. the
second renaissance details the history of the Matrix world and deals with the creation of
A.I. and then the downfall of man/rise of machine. this story is presented in an interactive
history archive of sorts. a cool-looking female character is the narrator of the story.
there's too much detail for me to remember the specific plot point, but the story was very
cool. it was much like watching a documentary or something along those lines. the
animation was also very nice, but it sometimes seemed too cartoony for the subject matter.
if you've seen the anime remake of Metropolis, that's what this short looked like. Mahiro
Maeda directed this set of short films and the Wachowski's wrote it. Maeda is responsible
for the series Blue Submarine No. 6 that was aired on Cartoon Network a few years back.
i've read reviews where this was not a well-favored short in the collection, but i liked it
quite a bit. the idea of the story was really cool. the storytelling was good, but it seemed
a little detached to me. i remember a lot of and for a time, it was good... however,
there aren't any outstanding characters, so it was hard for me to latch on to anything worth
remembering except that everything was pretty cool-looking. at least it's nice to know
how some of the stuff happened to create the Matrix and make the machines be the
dominant beings on the planet. Grade for this film: 8
Program
this was a pretty interesting short. i hadn't heard anything about the rest of the included
shorts, so they were all surprising to me once i viewed them. Program was written and
directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, the man resposible for Ninja Scroll; Program reflects this.
the story starts off where a female character is in the construct running a feudal japan
samurai simulation. she fights off an army of warriors and faces another comrade from the
real world. they battle and it's pretty even; soon it becomes known that they more than
just know each other, but that they're actually lovers. as the film progresses, the heroine is
faced with a choice to forsake her friends in the real world and join her love in reentering
the Matrix or forsake her love for the greater good of fighting against the machines. the
story is very fast-paced, but it also seemed a little short. the characters were developed to
a point, but the short length hindered the overall development and i was left wanting to
know more about the history of the characters instead of assuming that they know and
love each other. as far as the animation goes, it was good and reminiscent of Ninja Scroll.
the fighting looked good and the death scenes were over-the-top, but that's not a bad
thing. while i enjoyed watching this film, it seemed a little more like standard-fare instead
groundbreaking innovation. i wasn't bored with it by any means, but there are a few more
interesting movies than Program. Grade: 7.5.
World Record
this one started out strong, but then just fizzled out at the end. World Record was
directed by Takeshi Koike, responsible for supervising many anime films including Ninja
Scroll. this story had nothing to do with the rebels, agents (directly), or any of the things
in the movies. instead, it follows an athlete that set the world record for speed (a race of
some sorts) in the qualifiers and was about to start the actual race. the narration begins
stating that some people are so exceptional that they do not need to be awakened to see

the matrix (like what they did to neo in the first movie); they awaken themselves. this
instance, the exceptional person is the athlete and he's being told by a friend that he needs
to take it easy and not push so hard or he'll die or ruin his career by getting injured. the
athlete disagrees and says that he'll push as hard as he needs to break that record and
prove that he is that good (the story details earlier events where the athlete had the record
revoked because he used drugs). the race begins, the athlete starts going hardcore and his
legs collapse and buckle due to the strain. he falls behind and then goes into overdrive.
this action pushes him beyond the limit and he begins seeing the code of the Matrix. this
causes him to wake up in his tank and the machines find and subdue him in the tank. now
the story collapses and goes back to showing the athlete in a wheelchair with the agent
saying he'll never walk or remember any of that again. the athlete does one last thing
(and i don't remember seeing his motivation) and stands up, breaking the braces that are
on his legs. the agents say sit down under their breath a few times and the athlete falls
to the ground....talk about fizzling out. the animation was ok and i thought the beginning
idea was really cool. this execution of it, however, is not what i was looking for. Grade:
6.