With a mix of different creators and influences, the Animatrix gives us a great collection of animation shorts that shows the diversity of the animated medium. Each show has their own merits and demerits.

Final Flight of the Osiris: Lovely computer graphics was used to show the sacrifice of the Osiris. The female lead is probably the prettiest animated in CG so far. The piece itself could have served as an opener for the movie and probably no one would complain… and probably a few won’t notice that it was animated.

Second Renaissance: Showing the history behind the Matrix, Second Renaissance has the look and feel of a documentary. The story itself was riveting, showing the desperation and cruelty of the war between humans and machine.

Kid’s Story: My least favorite, though this is still amazing visually. Kid’s Story directly ties to the Reloaded movie. The animation looks a bit different from regular anime or animation, but I thought it was energetic and appropriate.

Program: I loved the Ninja Scroll feel to this movie. Magnificent animation and action. It also had a good thought-provoking story for its ten-minute length.

World Record: The one I least liked visually, World Record makes up for it with a good story about an athlete awakening from the Matrix by breaking his limit. The ending is especially noteworthy and touching.

Beyond: Colored in light hues, Beyond shows what happens when a glitch in the Matrix occurs. It’s the most innocent-looking piece within the anthology. The story is pretty straight forward, yet the underlying message in the ending of the loss of wonder and magic makes it strangely tragic.

Detective Story: My personal favorite. Detective Story effectively captures a good noir detective feel with its black-and-white visuals. It even features a good riveting story for its short length.

Matriculated: I think this was the longest. I had a weird Lawnmowerman vibe to the feature. Still, it was still visually interesting and its story was not that bad. However, I didn’t really enjoy the Aeon Flux character designs.

The biggest and most pleasant surprise regarding the Animatrix features is that they can tell a good story despite their short length. It is a testament to the skill of the directors that they could tell the good story given such constraints. Very admirable.

The bonus features of the DVD are also great additions to an already good feature. I particularly liked the History of Anime and Manga feature, which, for its length, was already a great bonus. Still, I wished that there were more creator interviews. The only one I saw was an interview with the people who did Final Flight of Osiris. I wished they could have also added an interview with Shinichiro Watanabe regarding Detective Story or the director of Beyond. That would have certainly made the experience more interesting.

The Animatrix is an interesting study into the world of animation. Definitely a must-have for a Matrix fan, but more of a should-have for a fan of animation in general.

Written and submitted: ??.??.2004

Individual Rating: Art: 8; Story & Plot 9; Characters: 8; Sounds: 9; Overall: 9

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 29th, 2005 at 7:00 pm and is filed under Animatrix, The, Anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.