Post by ravenwithoutcause on Feb 3, 2005 14:35:33 GMT -5
It was apparent from the first few frames of The Matrix that its creators, Andy and Larry Wachowski, were anime fans. Indeed, the movie got off to a start that was more than a little reminiscent of Ghost in the Shell's opening segment, and the film followed through with a string of flashy, kinetic action sequences pinned together by a reality-ain't-what-it-used-to-be plot that's just a little evocative of fare like Megazone 23. The Wachowski brothers were quick to admit their fascination with anime, and in the wake of The Matrix's stunning commercial success and Academy Award coup, they decided to produce an anime supplement to their new franchise. A couple of years later, we've got a very interesting final product in The Animatrix.
The Animatrix is not a continuous, full-length feature film. It's an anthology film, featuring nine separate stories about life in the Matrix, the virtual reality that a race of intelligent machines created by men use to supplant humankind's reality, all the better to draw off their bioelectric energy. (This concept, by the way, totally violates the laws of thermodynamics, but to examine this too closely is to deny the fact that the Wachowskis really just want to tell a cool story.) The string of visually unique but thematically similar stories is strongly reminiscent of anime anthology films like Labyrinth Tales (released in North America as Neo Tokyo) and Robot Carnival. Each of the seven directors showcased on this DVD has a very strong personal vision to share, and it's all presented brilliantly.
Several of the shorts will be familiar to first-time viewers who've been following the progress of The Animatrix in other media. The first short, Final Flight of the Osiris, was used as a lead-in to a recent Stephen King film. It is directed by Andy Jones, who handled animation direction for the beleaguered Final Fantasy: The Spirites Within. It's not a great short-- Jones has so much action to plow through in a short time that he isn't able to focus much on the characters-- but its realistic character models and physics, along with its few gorgeously terrifying glimpses of the machine-controlled surface, are compelling just the same. It also contains an intriguing examination of swordfights as foreplay, but I'll leave the viewer to experience that.
The next pair of shorts, The Second Renaissance, tell the story of how the story's Matrix came to be, courtesy of animation and mecha design wizard Mahiro Maeda. These shorts stand out, for a couple of reasons. First of all, they're the first genuinely horrifying pieces of animation I've seen in a very long time. Graphic violence is a given in a lot of anime, but it's usually presented as bombastically and exaggeratedly as possible. In The Second Renaissance, Maeda examines the inevitable progress of the machines with a documentarian's impartiality, giving the footage of the first artificially intelligent robot to murder his master a special kind of creepiness. Maeda's narrative skills aren't perfect-- the footage of humans and machines at war seem a little disconnected-- but like Jones, he overcomes this problem by simply presenting some stunning imagery and letting the viewer sit slack-jawed.
From then on, the shorts aren't quite as heavy and gloomy, but they're still fresh and interesting and unafraid to experiment. Shinichiro Watanabe's Kid's Story is definitely a highlight, featuring quick, jittery camera movement but character design and physics heavily steeped in realism, and art direction that makes the whole featurette seem like a charcoal and watercolor sketch in animated form. Yoshiaki Kawajiri proves that he's still on top of his game in Program, which is otherwise a rather silly excuse to showcase a really, really cool swordfight. Takeshi Koike's World Record is fascinatingly ugly; the story, about an athlete who manages to break out of the Matrix by sheer willpower during a race, is a little pedrestrian (no pun intended), but the deformed character designs and focus on muscle and sinew still make for some solid viewing.
The Animatrix is rounded out in a most worthy fashion with Koji Morimoto's Beyond, Shinichiro Watanabe's A Detective Story, and Peter Chung's Matriculated. Watanabe's second short on the disc, A Detective Story once again eschews heavy plot development in favor of cool visual design and a very distinctive look-- the entire thing feels like it's being read off of a cheap daily newspaper in 1947. This is reinforced by the main character, a smartly-dressed, straight shooting private eye who's hired by the Matrix's fearsome Agents to help track down Trinity. Most worthy of attention in A Detective Story, however, are the details-- I specifically love the detective's computer, which looks like a cross between a manual typewriter and a console from Star Trek. With Matriculated, Chung goes back to his old practice of providing the viewer with tantalizingly few clues about the story, kind of like what he was doing with Aeon Flux. This is cool, but at the same time a little disappointing-- Matriculated's subject matter, about a band of humans who use their own software "Matrix" to try and convert captured machines to their side, is something I wasn't expecting to see explored.
If you're wondering why I refrained from mentioning Morimoto's Beyond until now, it's because Beyond is the best short on the disc. Like most of the others, it also has a fairly simple story framework, but the character designs are remarkably fresh without seeming too rough, and the animation is eye-popping even during the slow moments. The story, about a young woman and a few kids who come across a 'haunted' mansion with software bugs and spend an afternoon entertaining themselves with the house's broken physics, comes off more like a quiet, engrossing bit of magical realism than a small chunk of a much larger science fiction narrative. If each of The Animatrix's shorts had been released individually, I think this one might have been the strongest candidate for Oscar nomination.
Warner Bros. have seen fit to pack this DVD with features and other goodies. Along with all nine of the shorts (in both English and Japanese, with subtitles), there's a making-of featurette for every short, director commentaries on four of the shorts, and miscellaneous profiles and trailers. There's also a really cool 30 minute documentary about the history and evolution of anime, which includes appearances by well-known animation scholars like Fred Schodt and Gilles Poitras. Finally, since The Animatrix was initially a theatrical project, all of the shorts are presented in anamorphic widescreen. The total package looks and sounds fantastic... well, except for those annoying 'snapper' cases that Warner Bros. loves so much.
The Animatrix will be of most use to fans of the Matrix film franchise, but it's something that should be watched by all animation buffs. It has a small share of problems, but those are easily overshadowed by the total package. Anime fans have spent years quaking in terror at the idea of collaboration between Hollywood and Tokyo, fearing that it would cheapen their favorite cartoons. The Animatrix is proof of the exact opposite; it's the best of both worlds, featuring the sharp, tightly focused storytelling of great Hollywood cinema with the kind of visual appeal and dynamics that one would expect from anime. Best of all is the fact that The Animatrix, by virtue of its comparatively high budget, looks good. There aren't any rendering problems, or animation mistakes, or character designs going off model. The wealth of talent represented here were given ample time and resources to create their stories, and it's paid off in a huge way. This DVD isn't an absolute jewel of perfection, but it's still irresistably absorbing and stylish. Animation fans the world over owe it to themselves to see it.
Bottom line, a 9/10
The Animatrix is not a continuous, full-length feature film. It's an anthology film, featuring nine separate stories about life in the Matrix, the virtual reality that a race of intelligent machines created by men use to supplant humankind's reality, all the better to draw off their bioelectric energy. (This concept, by the way, totally violates the laws of thermodynamics, but to examine this too closely is to deny the fact that the Wachowskis really just want to tell a cool story.) The string of visually unique but thematically similar stories is strongly reminiscent of anime anthology films like Labyrinth Tales (released in North America as Neo Tokyo) and Robot Carnival. Each of the seven directors showcased on this DVD has a very strong personal vision to share, and it's all presented brilliantly.
Several of the shorts will be familiar to first-time viewers who've been following the progress of The Animatrix in other media. The first short, Final Flight of the Osiris, was used as a lead-in to a recent Stephen King film. It is directed by Andy Jones, who handled animation direction for the beleaguered Final Fantasy: The Spirites Within. It's not a great short-- Jones has so much action to plow through in a short time that he isn't able to focus much on the characters-- but its realistic character models and physics, along with its few gorgeously terrifying glimpses of the machine-controlled surface, are compelling just the same. It also contains an intriguing examination of swordfights as foreplay, but I'll leave the viewer to experience that.
The next pair of shorts, The Second Renaissance, tell the story of how the story's Matrix came to be, courtesy of animation and mecha design wizard Mahiro Maeda. These shorts stand out, for a couple of reasons. First of all, they're the first genuinely horrifying pieces of animation I've seen in a very long time. Graphic violence is a given in a lot of anime, but it's usually presented as bombastically and exaggeratedly as possible. In The Second Renaissance, Maeda examines the inevitable progress of the machines with a documentarian's impartiality, giving the footage of the first artificially intelligent robot to murder his master a special kind of creepiness. Maeda's narrative skills aren't perfect-- the footage of humans and machines at war seem a little disconnected-- but like Jones, he overcomes this problem by simply presenting some stunning imagery and letting the viewer sit slack-jawed.
From then on, the shorts aren't quite as heavy and gloomy, but they're still fresh and interesting and unafraid to experiment. Shinichiro Watanabe's Kid's Story is definitely a highlight, featuring quick, jittery camera movement but character design and physics heavily steeped in realism, and art direction that makes the whole featurette seem like a charcoal and watercolor sketch in animated form. Yoshiaki Kawajiri proves that he's still on top of his game in Program, which is otherwise a rather silly excuse to showcase a really, really cool swordfight. Takeshi Koike's World Record is fascinatingly ugly; the story, about an athlete who manages to break out of the Matrix by sheer willpower during a race, is a little pedrestrian (no pun intended), but the deformed character designs and focus on muscle and sinew still make for some solid viewing.
The Animatrix is rounded out in a most worthy fashion with Koji Morimoto's Beyond, Shinichiro Watanabe's A Detective Story, and Peter Chung's Matriculated. Watanabe's second short on the disc, A Detective Story once again eschews heavy plot development in favor of cool visual design and a very distinctive look-- the entire thing feels like it's being read off of a cheap daily newspaper in 1947. This is reinforced by the main character, a smartly-dressed, straight shooting private eye who's hired by the Matrix's fearsome Agents to help track down Trinity. Most worthy of attention in A Detective Story, however, are the details-- I specifically love the detective's computer, which looks like a cross between a manual typewriter and a console from Star Trek. With Matriculated, Chung goes back to his old practice of providing the viewer with tantalizingly few clues about the story, kind of like what he was doing with Aeon Flux. This is cool, but at the same time a little disappointing-- Matriculated's subject matter, about a band of humans who use their own software "Matrix" to try and convert captured machines to their side, is something I wasn't expecting to see explored.
If you're wondering why I refrained from mentioning Morimoto's Beyond until now, it's because Beyond is the best short on the disc. Like most of the others, it also has a fairly simple story framework, but the character designs are remarkably fresh without seeming too rough, and the animation is eye-popping even during the slow moments. The story, about a young woman and a few kids who come across a 'haunted' mansion with software bugs and spend an afternoon entertaining themselves with the house's broken physics, comes off more like a quiet, engrossing bit of magical realism than a small chunk of a much larger science fiction narrative. If each of The Animatrix's shorts had been released individually, I think this one might have been the strongest candidate for Oscar nomination.
Warner Bros. have seen fit to pack this DVD with features and other goodies. Along with all nine of the shorts (in both English and Japanese, with subtitles), there's a making-of featurette for every short, director commentaries on four of the shorts, and miscellaneous profiles and trailers. There's also a really cool 30 minute documentary about the history and evolution of anime, which includes appearances by well-known animation scholars like Fred Schodt and Gilles Poitras. Finally, since The Animatrix was initially a theatrical project, all of the shorts are presented in anamorphic widescreen. The total package looks and sounds fantastic... well, except for those annoying 'snapper' cases that Warner Bros. loves so much.
The Animatrix will be of most use to fans of the Matrix film franchise, but it's something that should be watched by all animation buffs. It has a small share of problems, but those are easily overshadowed by the total package. Anime fans have spent years quaking in terror at the idea of collaboration between Hollywood and Tokyo, fearing that it would cheapen their favorite cartoons. The Animatrix is proof of the exact opposite; it's the best of both worlds, featuring the sharp, tightly focused storytelling of great Hollywood cinema with the kind of visual appeal and dynamics that one would expect from anime. Best of all is the fact that The Animatrix, by virtue of its comparatively high budget, looks good. There aren't any rendering problems, or animation mistakes, or character designs going off model. The wealth of talent represented here were given ample time and resources to create their stories, and it's paid off in a huge way. This DVD isn't an absolute jewel of perfection, but it's still irresistably absorbing and stylish. Animation fans the world over owe it to themselves to see it.
Bottom line, a 9/10
