I watched The Animatrix this weekend. Since a lot of the people who come to my site from Google are searching for commercial music (ie: that song from the levi’s french dictionary ad). I’ll do the same for The Animatrix before I give you a review. The song that plays over the main DVD menu, and is used in a couple of the shorts is called Supermoves and is on the Snatch soundtrack (among other places). The song from The Kid’s Story and that plays during the closing credits is called Who Am I by Peace Orchestra. It’s on the Memento soundtrack, and the Peace Orchestra album.
On to the shorts. First, I was blown away by the quality of animation in each of them. They’re all a little different, but all gorgeous in their own way. The first was done by the team who did the Final Fantasy movie, and was just amazing to look at. The characters were more refined, and the muscles more accurate than in The Spirits Within (although they used some of the same character models, it’s hard to tell – or at least you get past is quickly). The second two, The Second Renaissance Parts 1 & 2) were absolutely stunning. The rest of them are worth watching for the visuals alone, but my favorite has got to be Beyond. It’s the story of a group of kids who find a glitchy spot in the Matrix in an old abandoned house. Things are wonky in the house, and it’s way too much fun to watch the kids play with conventions like bullet time we saw in the movie. The have a falling contest and stop inches from the ground after jumping off a second story window ledge and others. It was the best play on the physics set up in the movies on the disc.
Overall, it’s fun to watch. The shorts aren’t long enough that you get bored with the story or animation style. And while there are a couple duds on the disk (World Record being the worst), the great and good stuff on the disk more than make up for it.