The Final Flight of the Osiris
Written by Andy and Larry Wachowski; Directed by Andy Jones
Animation and production design by Square USA, Inc.
The crew of the hovercraft Osiris must get a message back to Zion, a message of vital importance. Easy to do, but for the armada of Sentinels between them and Zion.

The Second Renaissance – Parts 1 and 2
Written by Andy and Larry Wachowski; Directed by Mahiro Maeda
Animation and production design by Studio4°C, Tokyo
The Genesis of the Matrix: the last cities of mankind, the war with the machines, and humanity’s ultimate downfall. An epic guided tour of the Zion archives and the history of the Matrix.

Kid’s Story
Written by Andy and Larry Wachowski; Directed by Shinichiro Watanabe
Animation and production design by Studio4°C, Tokyo
Sitting in his high school classroom, THE KID gets a personalized invitation from Neo (voiced by Keanu Reeves) to escape the Matrix. But finding an exit proves more difficult than he ever imagined.

Program
Written and directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri
Animation and production design by Madhouse Studios, Tokyo
In the simulated world of a Samurai training program, CIS, a soldier of Zion, is forced to choose between love and her comrades in the real world.

World Record
Written by Yoshiaki Kawajiri; Directed by Takeshi Koike
Animation and production design by Madhouse Studios, Tokyo
Through an incredible combination of will power and physical strength, DAN, a world-record-holding sprinter, breaks out of the Matrix and gets an all-too-brief glimpse of the real world beyond.

Beyond
Written and directed by Koji Morimoto
Animation and production design by Studio4°C, Tokyo
In a quiet town where all is not as it seems, YOKO finds a bug in the system: an abandoned mansion in which anything seems possible. And then the exterminators arrive to “de-bug”.

Detective Story
Written and directed by Shinichiro Watanabe
Animation and production design by Studio4°C, Tokyo
Hard-boiled private investigator ASH tracks cyber-criminal TRINITY (voiced by Carrie-Anne Moss) through the looking glass…

Matriculated
Written and directed by Peter Chung
Animation and production design by DNA, Seoul
A small group of rebels have captured a sentient robot and proceed to program it to act as an ally for their cause. They succeed too well in teaching the robot to prefer their “human Matrix” to machine reality. And the robot’s appetite for the “human Matrix” may exceed the humans’ ability to supply it.

Like it or hate it, The Animatrix is here. After going through this disk twice in one day… we’re left with some mixed feelings about it.

The Animatrix consist of 9 shorts, each with an average running time of 10 minutes --Telling different stories from the Matrix universe with its own unique style of art, animation and directing. The first four episodes fill in lots of gaps that the Matrix movies left. These episodes are also by far the best features, mostly because they directly affect the plot of the Matrix trilogy. All the others simply tell stories that take place sometime during the Matrix nothing special here I found. They also happen to be the episodes not done by the Wachowski Brothers… Go figure.

The audio is truly great, providing great 5.1 sound, with no drop outs or anything like that. During the two sessions I had with this, I watched it in the English language… mostly because I didn’t think there was anything else… Until I discovered that there was a Japanese and French audio track thrown in. I didn’t really get the chance to listen to these that much, just briefly for this review. But from the bit that was heard, they sounded great. Getting back to the English voices, they sounded great; much of the characters seem believable.

The video was practically flawless with few problems in its Anamorphic Widescreen glory. There was some aliasing, not much. But apart from that, all the beautiful animation and CG scenes (And there’s a lot of them.) will look crystal clear.

Extras score really high here with the Enter The Matrix Game Trailer, 4 Audio Commentaries, 7 Director Profiles / Making Of, Biographies, Documentaries, Scrolls to Screen: The History and Culture of Anime. Great and amusing stuff here, not only they help fill even more gaps in the Matrix story… well mostly for the Audio Commentaries. But just the running time for them alone is bond to keep you saying to your self one thing. “I got my moneys worth.” In other words it will take you some time to digest everything this disk has to offer. The interview I found to be rather informative as well.

The menus are quite simple, nothing really major to them. The animations in the background look nice, but that’s really it, mind you, the episode gallery looked great. One gripe I did have was the lack power to change things during video. If you wanted to change the audio track by selecting it with your DVD player remote control options in the middle of everything. Well you couldn’t. I didn’t try this with the subtitles, but I would imagine it would be the same.

Overall I found The Animatrix something really great to have. But that’s only because, I’m a Matrix fan and an anime fan at the same time. So I like this. I’m quite sure all Matrix fans will enjoy this as well, in fact I recommend they all take the time to watch this, for it’s the only way to fully appreciate the movies. As for the typical day-to-day anime fans? You might want to say away from this. The animation alone might just turn you off.