Word: animé
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...other Matrix-related merchandise, including the video game and comic books, the release of an animated extension might seem like overkill. But the Wachowski brothers are devoted to and informed by anim?, the cerebral, ultraviolent, consciously cinematic style of animation pioneered by the Japanese. After the original Matrix opened in Japan in September 1999, the Wachowskis floated the possibility of producing an anim? homage, based on the Matrix world, as an appendix to the films. Top directors?including Shinichiro Watanabe, creator of the hip Cowboy Bebop, and Koji Morimoto, who worked on the seminal Akira?signed on immediately. The brothers...
...Matrix universe in ways that the plot-bound live-action films could not. The Wachowski-written Second Renaissance, Parts 1 and 2, mini-epics in their own right, describe how man began the war with machines and how the Matrix came into being (in the usual dystopic, postapocalyptic anim? tradition, man is hoisted by the petard of his own pride). The taut Program is set in a simulacrum of feudal Japan; Detective Story somehow turns the Wachowskis' vision into film noir, complete with fog, fedoras?and Trinity in (what else?) tight, black leather...
...engage the vital 13?15-year-old male demographic, Osiris also throws in a sword duel that leaves the heroine wearing little more than a thong. The short is visually enthralling and its digital heroes manage to outemote Keanu Reeves. Still, Osiris is more video-game interstitial than anim?...
...Matriculated, my favorite, is written and directed by Peter Chung, creator of the ground-breaking if perplexing MTV anim? Aeon Flux. Chung grasps the creepy biomechanics at the heart of the Matrix world. His machines and humans alike are faintly insectoid and fatally interdependent on each other. Remember how Morpheus talks about going "down the rabbit hole"? Well, Matriculated pulls you there and then some. Chung takes the concept of humans living in a computer-generated world and turns it on its head, plugging a machine into a kaleidoscopic human dreamworld. The result is electric?Kool-Aid brain candy, with...
...With its focus on the obscurer parts of the Matrix mythology, The Animatrix will appeal to dedicated acolytes. Less obsessive cinema buffs will appreciate it too, as engrossing entertainment and a popular expression of the sometimes obscure anim? form. If nothing else, The Animatrix provides a reminder of why so many of us loved The Matrix in the first place...