Review: The Animatrix A lot of other reviewers have already commented on how the Wachowski Brothers borrow heavily from anime and manga to create The Matrix. They now complete the circle with The Animatrix. I choose to willfully ignore that this is all a matter of vertical market integration by Brothers Wachowski and Joel Silver. Instead I'll add my meager 2 cents of anime background and bloated opinion....
The Animatrix is a series of short animated films from several Japanese anime directors (and a couple of American ones as well). I call attention to the now 15+ year old Robot Carnival, which is a Japanese movie composed of a series of animated short pieces strung together by the narrative hook of robots. Perhaps not surprisingly, there is an overlap as Kouji Morimoto directed bits for both films ("Franken's Gear" in Robot Carnival and "Beyond" in The Animatrix). And like Robot Carnival, some of the pieces work well and some are downright dull in The Animatrix.
The Animatrix does succeed in extending Matrix universe by allowing other creative minds to play with the setting. "Final Flight of the Orsiris", essentially a prologue to Matrix Reloaded, is from the creators of the beautifully rendered but soul-less Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. As the closest thing to "film" in The Animatrix, it makes for a nice bridge between this animated and the theatrical release. (Okay, I admit I wasn't sure if they were CG-characters or rotoscoped at first.) As animation, it is nothing new or special (Oh boy, they can render individual strands of hair even more realistically!)
My favorites of the short films are "The Second Renaissance", Parts I and II. There is some filling of the backstory on the history of Men and Machines. It also makes the best use of anime as a mirror for reality. It is reminescent in prologues of dystopian scifi futures such as Akira and Appleseed. Want a future world? Draw it and enhance the "reality" by interlacing with "news footage", staged reenactments, and documentary narration.
Another piece I really liked was "Matriculated". (If the style looks familiar, that's because it is from Aeon Flux creator Peter Chung.) The idea of humans kidnapping and reprogramming machines by seducing them with fleshy pleasures is the closest The Animatrix come to extending (and inverting) the metaphor of the Matrix. "Matriculated" is also different in that it extends the Matrix milieu by exploring the surface as well as acknowledging the existence of other species that survived blotting of the sun. Besides, I liked the use of the cybernetically-linked lemur as hypersensitive optical system.
The other story which is most scifi is "Beyond". Here, in a glitch in the Matrix creates a "haunted house" in the midst of a Tokyo (?) burb. It is also the most fantastical story with a classic (cliche?) twist ending. For me, "Beyond" is childlike and plain delightful.
"Kid's Story" and "World Record" are cool enough vignettes of other humans in the Matrix. Stylistically, they very much echo anime conventions. They don't add new understanding to the Matrix, however.
Most disappointing was "A Detective Story", an animated take on the film noir private dick. Coming from Cowboy Bebop director Shinichirno Watanabe, only makes me more disappointed. Cowboy Bebop, the story of bounty hunters Spike and Jet, is a terrifically stylistic rendering of a future informed by noir, Westerns, and sci-fi trophes, all set to a high-energy jazz/rock soundtrack. The theatrical version released this past spring in American art houses is one of the most enjoyable (if complicated) movies I've seen this year. The TV series version is available on DVD and is shown (somewhat edited) as part of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block. "A Detective Story" comes off as rather bland and is dissonant in its technology (I'm reminded of the odd retro mix in Terry Gilliam's vision of Brazil.)
My main peeve is that The Animatrix fails to extend or even address the one of the more interesting issues raised by The Matrix: what is reality? One piece that could have and should have dealt with acquiesance to the Matrix vs. embracing reality is "Program". Here, a recruit is tempted by her trainer/handler to return to the Matrix. It could have been an interesting extension of humans choosing between the discomfort of reality vs the faux-paradise of the Matrix. Instead, "Program" is merely a battle between two humans. It doesn't even go as far as rehashing of the dinner scene with Cypher and Agent Smith in the first movie. For those unfamiliar with the use in anime of superheroic jumping and flying, or the way anime can jump from reality to reality... well The Matrix already is a live-action rendering of the anime/Hong Kong action style. Thus "Program" is merely an animated rendering of a film apeing anime conventions. (Echoes of Scary Movie <=> Scream <=> teen slasher movies, anyone?)
So In Conclusion, I liked The Animatrix well enough. In a "postie" way, it completes the recursion of anime and The Matrix. And anytime the American audience can be exposed to good anime (as opposed to Pokemon or Legend of the Overfiend type anime) is always a plus in my book. No spoilers per se. Like the video games and graphic novels, you probably won't learn anything here that changes one's understanding of the movies (although I read there is a secret level or somesuch in "Enter the Matrix" where some hints are given as to who are some of the characters in Matrix Reloaded.)
(NB: I've only watched the anime shorts so far. I still have the special features and directors commentaries to get through.)
10:00:06 PM 
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