The Animatrix will be a collection of 9 animated shorts, three of which will be written by Andy and Larry Wachowski, they also personally approved the screenplays and designs for the other six. The 9 Animatrix shorts will be directed by 7 world-renowned Japanese anime masters including Yoshiaki Jawajiri (Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust) and Mahiro Maeda (Blue Submarine NO. 6) whose short will be animated by the same house that did Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. "We're planning a series of animated short subjects that will kind of take the world from the world we're in today to the world of the Matrix and how we got there. We have assembled a team of unbelievably talented and renowned Japanese animation directors and artists to create a series of short films that will be accessible either on the Internet or eventually on DVD." Said Joel Silver in an interview. Yoshiaki Kawajiri, one of the episode directors for The Animatrix says, "The Matrix is a flat-out incredible experience both visually and on a narrative level. It really manages to fuse a lot of disparate elements of cinema. You see why people love it so fanatically. It really convinced me that a new breed of filmmaking had arrived." His short "Program" will be based within the simulation training program, that ends up becoming a part of the real world. It's billed as an "Akira-style ninja epic." Another episode directed by Takeshi Koike entitled "World Record", follows a man inside the Matrix who breaks out through use of "sheer physical power". Koike hints that in the short many questions about the Matrix will be answered and that "the more you understand it, the more interesting it becomes". One of the shorts to look for will be the two-part "Second Renaissance", which tells the story of how the machines took over the world. And will focus on man’s inability to recognize the soul of his new machines, director Mahiro Maeda’s furious rush of images will depict the chaos and horrors of the past 400 years slavery, lynchings, world wars, concentration camps, Nazi experiments, the cold war, riots and nuclear wars, among other things. All 9 of the Animatrix shorts will be released on video and DVD June 3rd, but a number of the shorts will also be made available for download online before then. The Animatrix (2003) DVD Release Date: June 3rd The Shorts: Second Renaissance Part 1 Mahiro Maeda Second Renaissance Part 2 Mahiro Maeda Program Yoshiaki Kawajiri Kid's Story Shinichiro Watanabe World Record Takeshi Koike Beyond Koji Morimoto Matriculated Peter Chung Detective Story Shinichiro Watanabe The Final Flight Of The Osiris Square USA

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