Review of The Animatrix (2003) by Deusdedit D — 20 Aug 2012

The Animatrix is actually 9 short movies set in the same fictional universe as The Matrix, The Matrix : Reloaded and The Matrix : Revolutions. The short movie titled Final Flight of the Osiris is an extension of the first two movies.

It borrows heavily from the movies' graphical style and feels more like a video game (needlessly sexualized graphism included) than anything else. The short movie titled The Second Renaissance (pt.

1 and 2) gives the historical background explaining how humanity went from as we know it to as it is in The Matrix universe. It makes no sense and the symbolism is so unsubtle that it is insulting (I give them 1 star each).

The short movie titled Kid's Story gives background details on how Kid was rescued from the matrix. It has the same structure as Neo's encounter with his boss in The Matrix and is thus astoundingly uncreative (I give it 1.

5 stars). The short movie titled Program is about how one particular human rescued from the matrix is trained. It looks like the writers/animators just wanted to do an animation about samurais and the storyline is rather poor, being inspired by a particular part on The Matrix movie (I give it 1.

5 stars). The short movie titled World Record is rather interesting, as it explores an alternate method of becoming conscious within the matrix (I give it 2.5 stars). The short movie titled Beyond is more or less pointless; it looks like a random kid's anime (I give it 1.

5 stars). The short movie titled A Detective Story is interesting because of the animation style (departing from what we would expect, but illustrated from the main character's point of view) and the storyline, which has some twists while remaining consistent with the matrix universe (I give it 3 stars).

The sort movie titled Matriculated is, in my opinion, the best one on all levels because of it's creative storyline (I give it 3.5 stars), although I really wonder why all women, but no men, jack in the matrix while only wearing their underwear (this comment also applies to other short movies).