Beginning with the CGI-animated Final Flight Of The Osiris, it's clear that Animatrix is no Saturday morning cartoon. Osiris features amazingly lifelike animation, and truly feels, more than most of the Animatrix shorts, like a real, integral part of the saga. Indeed, it's referenced in dialogue in The Matrix Reloaded, but not in such a way as to confuse those who haven't watched this DVD. And that's the cool thing about Animatrix - it's extra flavoring, some nice bacon bits of backstory on the big screen salad. You don't need 'em, but you get that extra little zing from having seen them before diving into the second film. Osiris was CGI animated by Square, makers of both the Final Fantasy games and movie, and it's hugely entertaining - in fact, I could've done with it being quite a bit longer. As it is, you may get a chuckle out of the swordplay-as-foreplay intro.

The two-part Second Renaissance chronicles the rise of the machines, from man's slaves to man's dominators, and does so in a style that reminded me strongly of Heavy Metal (I'm thinking chiefly of the prominent skull imagery, not Ralph Bakshi's rotoscoping). It's a brutally impartial retelling of the events from the perspective of an entry in the Zion archives. To say more than that...would give too much away.

Kid's Story introduces us to another Reloaded character, a high school misfit obsessed by dreams of Neo, Trinity and Morpheus (which almost ponders the really intriguing self-referential question of whether or not the Kid is actually a fan of the movie). Isn't he just surprised when Neo contacts him, offering to free his mind - if he just has faith and forgets everything he knows about the rules? The animation here is sketchy, a splash of ice cold water after Osiris and Second Renaissance, and yet it does what it needs to.

Program, the short which comes closest to looking like traditional animè, is an interesting tale of a sparring program with a built-in loyalty test which pushes the female protagonist up to and beyond her limits - and when she awakens in the real world, surrounded by the familiarity of her ship and crew, she's none too happy about it. If you're looking for philosophical connections in The Matrix, then this one is obviously a newfangled take on Milgram's controversial experiments into the nature of obedience, authority, and free will.

World Record gives us the tale of a disgraced track star trying to regain his glory after a drug scandal. As he nears the finish line of his last big race, he somehow stumbles onto the truth of life in the real world, a momentary flash that everyone later regards as an hallucination - but it's enough to draw the attention of the dreaded agents. The animation in this segment is truly unusual, fluid and angular all at the same time. In some of its character depictions it isn't flattering, nor does it need to be. I raised an eyebrow a bit at the drug reference though, especially since The Matrix, despite the movies' R ratings, has a sizable audience of teenagers.

Beyond is an interesting and somewhat simple story of a group of curious kids who examine what they believe to be a local haunted house - a place where strange things happen, and no one dares to go (except, of course, for them). In actuality, it's the site of a program glitch in the Matrix, and it's due for deletion and restructuring...but will anyone remember it afterward?

A close runner-up for the most intriguing segment is A Detective Story, an atmospheric mock-film-noir tale of a detective hired by the Matrix's agents to track down Trinity. The hard-nosed, hard-drinking private eye does indeed find her, but when she tries to expose him to the truth of his existence instead of the Matrix's virtual reality, it turns his life around - but not soon enough to save it. The texture and lighting of A Detective Story goes a long way toward selling the film noir feel.

The final short, Matriculated, is the most abstract and impressionistic segment, as a group of freedom-fighter researchers tries to convert one of their greatest foes to the cause: one of the deadly "squiddy"l sentinels. We see this process from the sentinel's point of view, and it helps to reinforce that connection I've always felt was there between Tron and The Matrix - the imagery is a lot like Syd Mead's future-deco designs from the 1982 cult hit.

Overall, it's a sweet little package - I had high expectations, and didn't expect them to be met, let alone exceeded. The Animatrix is proof that there are plenty of stories to be told in the Matrix universe, some of which intersect with the movies' main characters and some of which don't.

George Lucas, take note. Oh, wait...you already did.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com webmaster / editor-in-chief