t one point in The Matrix Reloaded, cassock-clad messiah Neo (Keanu Reeves) is approached by an eager teenager (Clayton Watson) who burbles with excitement over Neo's return to the human city of Zion and thanks Neo for saving his life. The film reveals no more about the boy's history or his escape from the illusory world of the Matrix—that's left for "The Kid," one of nine original short pieces that comprise the animated anthology The Animatrix.
Matrix trilogy writer/directors Larry and Andy Wachowski personally scripted four of the nine shorts, but they handed over the directors' reins to a group of animation veterans, mostly known for their anime work. The Wachowski-scripted pieces have the most connection to the canonical events of the central Matrix trilogy: "The Second Renaissance," parts 1 and 2 (directed by Blue Submarine No. 6's Mahiro Maeda) show how our familiar world was taken over by vengeful man-made machines and eventually became the Wachowskis' horrific future dystopia. "Kid's Story" (directed by Cowboy Bebop's Shinichirô Watanabe) tells how Watson's character emerged from the Matrix. After spending some time exploring the process of foreplay through virtual sword-dueling, "Final Flight of the Osiris" (directed by Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within animation director Andy Jones) sets up a key plot point for The Matrix Reloaded as a ship's crew discovers a looming threat against Zion.
The other five pieces explore different areas of the Matrix's world. Writer/director Peter Chung (Aeon Flux) shows how people outside Zion live by capturing and brainwashing malevolent machines in "Matriculated." Watanabe both wrote and directed "A Detective Story," a black-and-white noir piece about a gumshoe hired to track down Carrie-Anne Moss's superhacker, Trinity. Koji Morimoto, who directed segments for the anime anthologies Memories and Robot Carnival, wrote and directed the melancholy "Beyond," in which a glitch in the Matrix becomes a "haunted house" that draws the attention of neighborhood children. "Program," which mostly centers on a virtual battle between two flamboyantly costumed samurai, was written and directed by (Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust) director Yoshiaki Kawajiri, who also scripted Takeshi Koike's "World Record,"in which an extraordinary athlete transcends his Matrix-imprisoned body.
A daring package that doesn't disappoint
Half of The Animatrix's segments were made available to the public online or in theaters before its release, in order to drum up advance interest in the project and in the release of The Matrix Reloaded. It was a savvy marketing strategy; the anthology's wildly diverse segments sell themselves. Their sheer daring speaks to a high level of directorial freedom and a massive budget—nearly all of them are eye-popping experiments in visual style and animation technique.
The collection's one real disappointment is "Program," which matches a stiff, overwrought script to the collection's least expressive characters. By comparison with Watanabe's loose, perpetually shifting styles in "The Kid," which suggests a mixture of Richard Linklater's Waking Life and a Bill Sienkiewicz comic book, "Program" seems archaic. It also features The Animatrix's most conventional anime visuals, in a program of shorts that mostly don't resemble anime at all—"Final Flight of the Osiris" uses Final Fantasy's hyper-realistic CGI animation, which looks fantastic when dealing with machines, and almost fantastic when dealing with humans; "World Record" gives its characters bizarrely distorted, exaggerated features, like something out of a Peter Chung short, while Chung's own fantastic "Matriculated" features his most accessible storyline and least distorted characters ever, while exploring a fantastic psychedelic virtual world. It seems like no expense was spared in animating these shorts; they all look like labors of love.
Better yet, the stories are mostly interesting. Of them all, Morimoto's "Beyond" may be the most subtle and the most memorable; its images of children finding ways to play with broken physics are charming and spooky at the same time. The "Renaissance" pieces are fairly bread-and-butter in their simple storytelling, but they feature some unforgettable images along with the basic information. Matrix fans in general won't want to miss the Wachowski-scripted pieces, which help fill in little holes in the two Matrix movies to date. But animation fans of all stripes shouldn't miss The Animatrix, possibly the most cohesive, ambitious and visionary animation projects ever assembled. Individually, these shorts are dazzling. Together, they're simply astounding.
