Someone recommended to me to see the Animatrix before seeing Reloaded ... so the morning of the day I was to see it ... I searched the web and found some of the shorts that comprise the Animatrix

Well, actually I found four FREE shorts ... and I guess the rest were for pay? I don't know ... but if you knew me, I'm a sucker for good anime --- which thankfully most of these NINE shorts are ... pretty damn excellent anime

Ok, so it occurred to me about three shorts into the DVD that this series of shorts is really intended by the Wack Bros. to kind of paint in the edges ... build some of the mythos and side stories that simply can't be done in a two hour format of a conventional pseudoreligious tech heavy, gun-fu movie

Again, let us give you some geneaology on my minimal Matrix expertise ... I'm a scifi fan who is from the church of Heinlein/Dick/Lucas/Roddenberry ... I don't refer to my DVD player as the Worship Machine of Zionist Freedom ... I've only seen movies uno and dos ... ONCE each front to back ... and it has been my constant impression that the original concept was fairly understandable, mostly intelligent, and made another memorable world for us sci-fi fanboys (and aspiring ninja girls) to like

I think what I like about the Animatrix generally is that it paints aspects of a bigger universe .... A Matrix universe .... some of history, some in the Matrix, some in ships much like the "Mr. I saw the handwriting on the wall Babylonian ruler"

Ok, so what I'm trying to say is that vibrant universes have OTHER STORIES TO TELL besides that of the Trinity-Mo-Neo main line ... hell, tell it in a video game ... that's really a new kind of approach (game sucked, but I applaud the Wack Bros for making a good attempt out of it)

I guess my first impression is ... what a difference in is seeing it on a larger screen as opposed to my maybe 3 by 3 in. QuickTime Player

What really struck me when I was watching it was that my brain kept telling me --- Heavy Metal, Heavy Metal, Heavy Metal ... and no, this is not recurring brain damage from my obsession with acquiring St. Anger

And I don't know how many people remember Heavy Metal the original scifi American animated movie ... I've read elsewhere (and I mostly agree) that we all kind of built up this mystique about it because it really wasn't available in a VHS or DVD format until just recently (well, ok, maybe within the past 10 years, I think) ... and then Kikaida or Tokusatsu syndrome set in --- in other words, you watched it and went wow, this is really kind of cheesy, the effects are limited, the story is well linear but not fantastic, it looks so dated ... same with Heavy Metal

Maybe someday we will look back at the Animatrix and say the same thing ... or maybe not

What I did find about this set of shorts is that they were all entertaining in their own way ... some of them just busted the bank with CGI, some had crappier animation comparatively but went the emotional route ... there was really always something to like about it