Animatrix is a DVD relating to the world of The Matrix , set from when AI was first invented to about halfway through Matrix Reloaded . It consists of a series of nine short animated features, each of which tell a different story and which all help to flesh out the history of the world up to and beyond the creation of the Matrix. These start out fairly easy to follow, but by the end, they become extremely surreal. All were overseen by Larry and Andy Wachowski, and created and directed by prominent animé visionaries, chosen because of the huge influence animé had on The Matrix . Here is a rundown of the various 'minifilms.'

Final Flight of the Osiris

This first feature of Animatrix is computer generated and by far the most straightforward of the lot. It opens with captain Thadaeus and first officer Jue of the Osiris ship in a sparring programme, similar to the programmes Morpheus used to teach Neo about the Matrix. The main story tells of how the crew of the Osiris discover the machines preparing to destroy Zion and attempt to warn the humans. However, they are pursued by Sentinels and, running out of time, it is decided that Jue will make an emergency information drop inside the Matrix. When she drops it inside a post box, to be picked up by Niobe in the game Enter the Matrix , she pushes past an old woman, who says "Sorry. I was in my own little world." The old woman doesn't realise how right she is. The Osiris is then destroyed.

Written by Larry and Andy Wachowski, directed by Andy Jones. This is the only feature on Animatrix which does not have any major Japanese influence.

The Second Renaissance

Split into two parts, this was the first script that the Wachowskis submitted, and it was directed by Mahiro Maeda. It is told from the point of view of someone looking at Zion historical files, and tells the story of how AI arose and how and why it created the Matrix. Humanity, so the story goes, had become decadent and selfish, and created androids so that it would not have to do any actual work itself. There are initially a number of scenes of androids building huge structures resembling the wonders of the ancient world, meant to symbolise the fact that humanity has effectively entered a state comparable to that of the ancient Babylonians. However, this does not last long.

It all starts with one simple act. A human is unsatisfied with his robot and attempts to destroy it. The robot, however, fearing death, instead kills its master. This sparks off a major court case over whether the android should be tried as a human or whether the case should be treated as an owner's right to destroy property. The case is never resolved, for other androids and machine sympathisers come out in force and clash with police. This leads to escalated fighting and riots, with humans killing machines in ways reminiscent of events which occurred in places such as Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, and Northern Ireland, with the slight difference that those events were between humans. The machines withdraw en masse from human habitations and set up their own country, called Zero-One, in the area once occupied by ancient Mesopotamia. Zero-One's technological exports soar, making it by far the richest country on earth and causing serious damage to the economies of human nations.

Increased hostilities from humans prompt Zero-One to send two ambassadors to the UN with the aim of attaining fair trade agreements. Before they get there, janitors clean the UN meeting chamber. A fly lands on the world map where Zero-One is situated, and is then squashed, foreshadowing the trouble to come. The androids sent be Zero-One dress in the human fashion as a gesture of solidarity, but world leaders attack and destroy them. As the head of the 'male' robot falls, it transforms into an apple and then a human nervous system, signifying the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis. This is the end of part one.

Part two kicks off when the war has already started. Humanity has nuked Zero-One, but to no avail. Who started the war is not known. It may have been an extension of human hatred for machines. However, it may also have been a machine reaction against the mistreatment of their ambassadors.

Initially, the story of part two is, like almost all of part one, told via news reports. However, humanity then comes up with the idea of 'Operation Dark Storm,' to black out the skies and cause the machines to lose their solar energy and switch off. When they do this, the observant viewer will notice that they use planes assembled in Zero-One. As the skies disappear and the sun sets on humanity for the last time, the soldiers offer their final payers for forgiveness of sins, mercy on their souls, and karmic dispensation - and then it gets surreal.

With the sun gone, the battlefield resembles Hell to a large degree. There is a motif of a machine running past on a robotic horse, perhaps signifying one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse. Most of the story from here on is told by cameras inserted into the soldiers' helmets, and there are some pretty grotesque sights to be seen - for example, a soldier's mobile suit being peeled open like a lobster and the man himself being ripped out by a huge tentacle, leaving his arms and legs strapped in (presumably the machines are operating on some sort of auxiliary power supply). The machines, having studies humanity for so long, now begin experimenting on them in order to create the Matrix. A new ambassador is sent to the UN, but this time, the shoe is on the other foot. While the first ambassadors imitated humans as a show of respect, this new one has, like many others, taken on an insectoid form peculiar to machines. It fails to convince the world leaders to voluntarily plug in, and so detonates, levelling New York in a similar manner to the way in which Tokyo is destroyed at the start of the animé film Akira . The feature ends with a child playing among the rubble, then being called in by her parents, who turn out to be agents. The image then metamorphosises into one of the child plugged in, and the camera zooms out to give a view of the entire Matrix as it exists in the real world. This feature contains a surprising amount of computer generated images, but they are rendered in a style which makes them indistinguishable from the hand-drawn animation.

Kid's Story

This is the final script which the Wachowski brothers actually wrote. For it, the director Schinichiro Watanabe chose to use an old style of animation which uses shading, as opposed to black lines, to delineate the boundaries of an image. 'Kid,' who in Matrix: Revolutions is the one who shouts out "The war is over!," is what Jake Horsely terms a Matrix Warrior - one who senses that there is something wrong with the world, who perhaps even knows about the Matrix, but is still plugged in. Kid does not know about the Matrix, but he does think it odd that his dreams seem more real than reality. Late at night, he logs onto a chatroom, posts the following: "Why does it feel more real when I dream than when I am awake? How can I be sure my senses are not lying to me?" To Kid's astonishment, he receives a reply from Neo, stating that "There is some fiction in your truth, and some truth in your fiction. In order to know the truth, you must free you mind." Kid then asks who this mystery person is and is he alone, but receives no reply.

Next day at school, Kid's mobile phone goes off in class and he receives a tongue-lashing from his teacher. He turns it off, but the it rings again. It is Neo, who warns: "They know you know. Get out, get out now." Kid looks out the window and sees several agents emerging from a car. He initially runs, and then manages to outpace the agents by some impressive skateboarding. In a way, Neo guides Kid out to freedom in the same way that he himself was guided out of danger by Morpheus. Kid runs to the top of the school building and jumps off, enacting a dream he has at the very beginning of the story. He dies in the Matrix, then wakes up in Zion with Neo and Trinity standing over him and remarking about how he was able to survive.

Programme

This feature, written and directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, uses a lot of shading and contrasting colours to achieve a very vibrant look, one which also serves to highlight the blood and make the whole story resemble, to an extent, a Buddhist scroll, in art style at least. It starts with rebel Cys in a simulation of feudal Japan, in the role of a samurai horsewoman, fending of archers as part of a training exercise. After that, her brother Duo appears and they spar for a while. Duo then reveals his plans to re-enter the Matrix, have his memory wiped, and live a good life. This mirrors Cypher's ideas in The Matrix ; after all, even if life is nothing more than a simulation, is that not irrelevant to happiness? What's the point of knowing the truth if all it entails is misery? He has also blocked signals so that Cys cannot call for help. Cys, however, has a far stronger will, and ends up killing Duo in order to save herself and preserve the safety of Zion. It then turns out that the whole thing was just a computer simulation, the final test to see if she's worthy.

World Record

This one begins with sprinter John Davis' attempt at a world record in the 100-metre dash. When he starts running, his muscles and muscle movements are exaggerated and slightly deformed in order to emphasise them. The race, shown in slow motion, is broken up by Davis' recent memories, in which Davis himself is very calm and serene while all the other characters are rather more energetic. This acting is a counterpoint to Davis' attitude, intended to magnify his personality. Davis' coach is extremely worried, as he fears that if Davis does manage to set a new world record, he will physically suffer. This is true, as halfway through the race, many of Davis' tendons snap and he drops back, but then reaches deep within himself and sprints ahead of the pack. A faraway agent puts out a call to stop Davis from finishing, and all the other racers become agents, who then freeze time for all but themselves and Davis. Incredibly, Davis manages to outrun them - and then wakes up in the real world. How this occurs is never explained, but the likeliest explanation is the huge amount of adrenalin that must have been flowing through his system would have enhanced the senses to a high enough degree to enable him to feel reality. However, a sentinel forces him back into the Matrix, and he then finishes the race in 8.72 seconds - a new world record, but one which costs him the use of his legs. The agents turn back into the other racers, and finish just after him.

The next we see of Davis, he is in a wheelchair in a hospital, listening to a nurse talk about her grandmother's cherry pie, a counterpoint of mundanity to the bizarre, painful, and traumatic events Davis has just witnessed. Some distance away is an agent, talking into his mobile phone, ordering a close watch to be kept on Davis, but there should be no problems. After all, he will eventually dismiss his glimpse of the real world and happy in the fact that he set a new world record. Davis then gets up and takes a few steps. In the end, it is not certain whether he will ever manger to escape or not.

Written by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, directed by Takeshi Koiké.

Beyond

This story is set in Tokyo, and concerns a young woman, Yoko's, search for her missing cat Yuki. As she searches, three children tell her that they saw Yuki going to the 'haunted house,' and take Yoko there, where, indeed, she finds Yuki. As one might expect, the so-called 'haunted house' is nothing more than a particularly glitchy part of the Matrix, and Yoko and the children play various forbidden games there, such as jumping off walls and not hitting the ground, or smashing bottles and watching them reform. Yoko has unwittingly stumbled across a portal to 'The Other Side,' and she plays on the border without ever wanting to truly go though. However, her time there is shattered when agents arrive, remove all four of them, and reformat the 'haunted house' in order to eliminate the glitches which humans could at some point use to escape. In the end, Yoko deliberately cuts herself and lets a drop of blood fall to the ground, in mourning of a something lost.

Written and directed by Koji Morimoto

A Detective Story

The penultimate feature of Animatrix is a black-and-white story written and directed by Schinichiró Watanabé, the creator of acclaimed animé series Cowboy BeBop , and has Trinity in it. Something of a film noir , it concerns failing private detective 'Mr. Ash,' who is hired by Agent Smith to track down Trinity. As Ash descends deeper into the case, he discovers some very curious things: three other guys had been hired to get to Trinity recently; one was dead *, one was insane, and one had vanished off the face of the earth. Ash pays a visit to the crazy one, who babbles about the non-existence of Trinity and a lot of stuff about Alice in Wonderland . Ash manages to find Trinity in a chatroom, where 'he *' goes by the alias of RED_QUEEN. Trinity leaves a message to jump over the first of six brooks and meet 'him' there at 20:05. When Alice jumped the first brook, she found herself at a train station, and this is where Ash goes, just barely catching the 20:05 train. He finds Trinity, who proceeds to remove a tracking device implanted in his eye and tells him that he has passed a test. They then come under pursuit be agents and run, but an agent tries to force its way into Ash's frame. Trinity shoots him to prevent this, and then informs him that he cannot leave, but for what it's worth, he could probably have handled the truth. Trinity then shoots through the window and escapes jus ahead of the agents, leaving Ash forever. Indeed, this was a case to end all cases.

Matriculated

If you thought Animatrix so far was weird, then this will blow you away. It is one of the most bizarre, surreal, abstract audio-visual experiences ever made. It concerns a small group of humans who may of may not be affiliated with Zion, who capture a machine and hook it up to a matrix of their own devising. They then lead the robot through a series of brightly-coloured, surreal landscapes, with the eventual aim of causing it to defect from AI to the side of organics. This is shown when, about halfway through, the machine's appearance in the humans' matrix changes from one resembling its true form to a more humanoid appearance. However, the base is then attacked by sentinels. All of the humans are killed, except for the one who captured the machine, which goes on to save her. It then plugs the two of them back into the matrix, much to the human's horror.

Written and directed by Peter Chung

Other Stuff

Like most DVDs around nowadays, Animatrix features various bonus features. These include features on the making of each episode and interviews with the people involved in making them. It also features a history of animé with special attention paid to Cowboy BeBop, Ninja Scroll, Akira, and early animé, interview with Mahiro Maeda, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, and Takeshi Koiké, and a feature on the video game Enter the
Matrix .