The Animatrix by Munky

Genre: Action/Drama
Format: 9 OVA
Allegiance: Warner Bros.
Director: Morimoto Koji, Watanabe Shinichiro, Peter Chung, Kawajiri Yoshiaki, Maeda Mahiro, Andy Jones, Koike Takeshi
Vintage: 2003
Intelligence Agency Report by: Munky
A collection of nine short films, each with their own story line, writer, director, and animation style. From CG to black and white, this anime offers plenty of fluctuations to suit your animation desires. The shorts are: “The Final Flight of the Osiris,” “The Second Renaissance: Parts 1 and 2,” “Program,” “Detective Story,” “Kid’s Story,” “Beyond,” “Matriculated,” and “World Record”.

Field Agent Report by: Munky
Plot
Characters
Impact
Visual
Audio
8.00
7.75
8.00
8.25
8.00
Overall 8.25

These nine shorts offer a style for everyone. If you liked Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, then “Final Flight of the Osiris” is for you, but with even better CG! If you like the old black and white mysteries, then “Detective Story” is for you. No matter what your fancy is, you’re bound to find something that interests you.

While most of the shorts have great animation, a few fall short. “Kid’s Story” has great background art, but is lacking on the character animation. The same character style can also be found in “World Record”. “Matriculated” and “World Record” were by far the worst episodes out of the nine. The shorts have very little to nothing but the guys in black suits to do with The Matrix.

The Animatrix suffers the most from the length of each episode. If each short had been made into a 30 minute episode, a lot more could’ve been accomplished and the stories would’ve been a lot more, to actually being, complete. When the stories leave you hanging and wandering just exactly what’s going on, you can’t help but gripe. Another thing that is odd with this is the voice-overs. Since a lot of these shorts are done with English voices originally, most episodes are best watched in English, rather than the Japanese option. You can tell this by the exact voiceover fittings with the lip flaps and that the people and their names are nowhere near anything Japanese.

From watching this I came out with one statement that sums everything up. Oh crap, here come those guys in the black suits. I still don’t know why they keep showing up, that part seems to have been left out.