:: Friday, June 06, 2003 ::

A still from the short film "Beyond" on the "Animatrix" DVD

I rented "The Animatrix" which came out on DVD this week. I am blown away. The "Matrix" sequel, "Reloaded", pales in comparison to the works of art on display in this DVD. Larry and David Wachowski commissioned Japanese anime directors to work with them on the overall "vision" of their mythology, and the animators came up with some of the more thrilling animation in decades. Certain of these "films" have been seen in theaters as teaser trailers, and four have been downloadable from the Animatrix website. Two friends had mentioned the films last month, and I dutifully downloaded the free files but didn't know what to expect from the whole project until I popped the DVD into my player. 10 of 10 on the Mikometer. Excellent animation. Excellent stories. And some fresh epiphanies gained from the documentary detailing the history of the Japanese art form of Animie and Manga. Of the nine shorts, I was particularly awed by three of them. Mahiro Maeda, best known in Japan for "Blue Submarine #6", one of the first animie collections to blend conventional animated characters with CGI composited vehicles and virtual sets, directed the two part "Second Renaissance", which serves as a very ironic, especially in these troubled times,history of the creation of the matrix, from the creation of the first robots, through their subjugation and then dismissal by the human race, which of course is finally defeated by the machines. The imagery is a mix of "newsreel footage", Buddhist Mandala impressions, and CGI generated machines which blend seamlessly into the animated backgrounds. "The Last Flight of the Osiris" by Andy Jones, one of the team responsible for "Final Fantasy" has created CGI "sythespians" which completely overshadow the previous work done on Fantasy. The short could easily be inserted into the new Matrix film and I doubt audiences would even guess it is CGI.
The best film of the nine, in my opinion, is "Beyond", which, according to the documetary on the disc, also took the longest to produce. This one isn't part of the free download, and I recommend buying, not renting the DVD, so you can savor it's elegaic imagery and the wonder emaniting from it's cels. Koji Morimoto ("Robot Carnival") is the director. He worked on the seminal "Akira" in 1988, which for many Americans, signaled their awareness of the artform. "Beyond" tells the story of a group of kids in an overcrowded Japanese neighborhood who happen upon a "haunted" house where objects do not behave as they should in "reality". The place is actually a "glitch" in the matrix, and the adventures taken by the group of kids is awe inspiring and beautiful. I have gushed about anime in the past, and have recently "discovered" the works of Hayao Miyazaki, responsible for the 2002 Best Animated Film "Spirited Away". Miyazaki directs in an almost reverential "early Disney" style rather than the "forced" or "limited" animation seen in most animie. His earlier films, 1986's "Castles In the Sky" and 1998's "Kiki's Delivery Service" (with Phil Hartman in one of his last jobs voicing Kiki's cat) are now available on DVD from Disney. (They only distribute the films. Miyazaki's studio in Japan is called Studio Gibli.) When I first saw his "Princess Mononoke" on Ebert's recommendation, I loved it, but didn't realize when watching "Spirited Away" that it was made by the same team. All the films available are now in my DVD collection. Miyazaki, like Osamu Tezuka (the Godfather of Manga) whose work inspires Taro Rin's excellent "Metropolis" from 2001, crafts some of the best films in any canon, be they live action or animated. American audiences (as pointed out again on the Animatrix documetary, "From Scrolls to Anime") think of animated films as cartoons. The Japanese just think of them as movies. And the best seem to be coming out on DVD all the time. Animatrix is merely the latest.

:: Michael Nyiri 8:35 AM Leave a Comment on this Post ::
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