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1st Episode Of Animatrix Released
Devistater writes "The official Matrix page has word of the first officially released widescreen Anime episode of the Animatrix for download (in quicktime format). This is the first of 4 free episodes that will be released on the web. A total of 9 episodes will be availible for purchase on DVD within the next few months. The feature-quality anime shorts range in length from 6 minutes to 16 minutes. There's a trailer availible if you want to get a taste for what they will be like."
Technically speaking, the trailer was very impressive I thought. You might have to suspend belief for a second to believe the plot, as outlined, but it was very pretty and had some powerful imagery.
Anime and The Matrix! Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together! I even Shutdown eMule to download this ;)
-JE
Why do robots need to wear safety construction helmets? ;-)
Here it is: The Second Renaissance Part 1
The solution that has worked best for me...is to avoid public discussion. -- CmdrTaco
eeyy.
p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixlgfinal_dl.mo v
:P
for lame masterl, simply do: wget http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/
!note it's mov not mo v
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
And the other resolutions:
320x136
480x204
640x272
The solution that has worked best for me...is to avoid public discussion. -- CmdrTaco
wget "http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/ progressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixlgfinal_dl.m ov"
Have Fun!
Here is a to the 640-width trailer for everyone who would like to perhaps save it locally and not use the imbedded junk. I hate that.
...wow. Aren't I articulate? This is, essentially, fanfic. And it is pretty damned good.
As for the trailer
God bless timothy for posting this at 6:49AM. =)
My
Limekiller
Heh, the first QuickTime movie that MPlayer fails on me with :(
Starting playback...
mjpeg: JFIF header found (version: 1.1)
mjpeg: unsupported coding type (c2)
VDec: Codec did not set sh->disp_w and sh->disp_h, trying workaround.
Error while decoding frame!04 ct: -0.000 3/ 3 0% 0% 0.0% 0 0 0%
mjpeg: unsupported coding type (cf)0.000 5/ 5 0% 0% 0.0% 0 0 0%
mjpeg: unsupported coding type (cf)
etc...
I used wget on http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixlgfinal_dl.mo v to get the high definition version (about 140MB)
... In the first film it they intimated that they didnt really know much history - they didnt even know the date. This seems to show quite a detailed history of what happened.
Its also quite sympathetic to the machines. If you are one of the last of a group which has almost been wiped out, you are unlikely to see your history from the point of view of those who did the wiping.
<fnord>OBEY</fnord>
Just image Fred Flintstone kicking Snagglepuss's ass then switching a sweet bullettime pan of scooby doo standing and.. get this.. BLINKING.. OMG... that would Ownzor...
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
Recursive Anime?? aaaaiiiieeee!!!!
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
The movie was heavily influenced by anime and asian action films.. makes sense to do anime stories of the matrix.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
The problem with The Matrix was its message: technology is inherently bad. The dialog places the blame of the whole Matrix world being due to "scientists messing with things they shouldn't" (paraphrased). Other movies, like the Terminator series, are just as bad. I don't get why such a blatantly anti-technology movie is so popular with the technology crowd, other than appreciation for the work that went into the special effects.
I watched this last night (the short they released, not the trailer) saw some thing on it while my wife was watching Access Hollywood or ET...), it was neat animation and all, although the large format wasn't working, but the story wasn't that great. In fact it was actually quite disillusioning (is that a word?)- it seems like the humans were very mean to the robots - there was a robot holocaust and they were just defending themselves, trying to be free etc...so really what rights do the humans in The Matrix have to complain??? According to the short, they brought it on themselves.
Oh well, I'm just going to pretend I didn't watch it...
I can just see it now...
;-)
Morpheus: Neo, we now have the ultimate weapon against the machines... a weapon so powerful that our victory is insured...
neo just stands there with his mouth hanging open
Morpheus: The Slashdot effect. Named after cyber attack (per the DMCA in the early 2000s), it harnests the power of millions of overweight single geeks checking out the newest movie clip at the same time. This will allow us destroy the machines once and for all.
Neo: whoa
--
*Yawn* Of course anime is sexist and full of cheesecake, just as much as American shows do. the main difference is that the anime is far more likely to have sexually appealing underage girls.
As to anime as porn, replace every instance of anime in your previous statement with "movie." We have live action porn movies in this country, it uses a medium that is also used to convey works of art and random schlock. Just like anime. As a feminist should I avoid everything that might be tainted with non feminist ideals or should I just keep that in mind while I watch a damn goos show?.
If you want disturbing elements though, try reading up on the casual libking of sex and violence in Japanese culture. It gets very disturbing when you delve into it.
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
I would reccomend using a tool like wget or lftp to grab them, as my connection reset several times while downloading (due to the traffic I imagine).
Small (30MB+):p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixsmfinal_dl.mo v
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/
Medium (90MB+):p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixmedfinal_dl.m ov
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/
Large (140MB+):p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixlgfinal_dl.mo v
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/
Dammit, I can't download the file.
I gotta stop others from leeching until I can get the file.
Wow. I have seen ignorance on /. before, but this is just crazy. Anyone who can call the works of Tezuka Osamu or Miyazaki Hayao "no better than pornography" should probably educate themselves before posting. Yes, there is a lot of anime with sex and/or nudity in it. So do American movies and TV. But there is also anime with significantly better feminist messages than just about any Disney film (see any film by Miyazaki, Matsumoto Leiji, etc.), anime which raises interesting questions of gender roles (Shoujo Kakumei Utena, Versailles no Bara), and countless titles which no one could possibly find offensive.
So before you make blanket comments (especially about something as varied as anime), try to have some clue what you're talking about. Or at least give evidence.
It's nice to have choices in entertainment, and a market that drives the creation of stuff like this.
While I like the "Star Wars" universe and even enjoy a few meager facets of the worn-out "Star Trek" universe, it's great to find anime used to generate realism and convincing stories within a very intriguing framework like the "Matrix" movies.
It's not extremely original, the story. We've got a basic Arthurian legend story going in the same way in the latter "Star Wars" movies. But, as any writer would tell you, it's all in the presentation. And present this offering does. Very fun to watch, and illuminating.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Animatrix Trailer (high res)
Animatrix Part 1
just right click and choose "save as" if you're using IE =)
These things are all MacGuffins. Don't let them distract you from the storytelling.
What makes science fiction interesting is not the idea of self-aware computers that want to kill us, or time travel, but the implications of those things for future societies... how people respond to them. Dan Simmons wrote one of the best S.F. stories I've ever read in "Hyperion" and its follow-ups and I'm pretty sure he used all three of those MacGuffins, maybe more. Alfred Bester wrote two incredible novels that, using your analysis, were "anti-telepathy" or "anti-teleportation," but in fact they were much more.
There are lots of bad S.F. books and films out there as well that explore (or try, or maybe don't even try) the same themes. "The Matrix" and the first two "Terminator" movies certainly were not bad. You might argue that one or more (or all) of those episodes of ST:TOS where Kirk blows up the evil computer controlling a society, or his ship, are better examples of how not to do it.
So, to sum up, it's not only Hollywood, it's not really Luddism, and if done right can be really interesting and enjoyable.
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
There is a certain substantive portion of the anime produced for which the above is entirely true. It certainly is not a troll. To the extent that japanese women view japanese pornography - which is vile stuff, substantially - this is spot on, and a great deal of anime is merely sexist. American women view slasher movies which might follow in a similar psychological vein; I'm not sure that "internalising oppression" is really what is happening - people have a certain fascination with the horiffic which I think draws women to watch horror movies, and may draw japanese women to watch japanese pornography, such of it as includes a great deal of rape or S&M or what have you. To say that women who view softcore pornography are necesarilly self-loathing is excessively prudish. More apologetics below.
However, and this has been true for a long time, it is not a recent devlopment, a great deal of anime is not sexist.
In a lot of anime the female characters are stylised representations with exagerated secondary sexual characteristics - this is often true in material which objectifies women in a sexist fashion, but sylised (cartoony) representations of people do NOT necesarilly objectify them. Any particular work must be viewed as a whole. Having been a teenage boy, I can say that my perception of women at that time was hyper-sexualised; this is pretty much universal among straight teenage boys.
Is adolescent male sexuality inherently sexist? I think that it is not.
Is it sexist for artists who were teenage boys to represent female characters in this way, particularly if the protagonist is an adolescent male, as is often the case? It is not. It's an accurate representation of an internal environment, which is what a cartoon is intended to do.
To the extent that this stylistic element is repeated in works by women, which are about 50% of what is produced - I will not speculate on the internal environment of adolescent girls, but I don't think this arises from self-loathing, I think that would be reflected in the female characters behavior rather than in how they are drawn.
Finally, in a sexist society (Japan) is it sexist to represent sexist interpersonal relationships in a work of fiction? I agree that it is good and laudible for a work of fiction to attempt to break down popular preconceptions and prejudices, but it is always okay for a work of fiction to reflect one's actual experiences.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Don't be silly. The insistence that people must belong to one camp or another is tiresome in the extreme.
Technology is just technology. It's not something to be For or Against. All it represents is the ability to use the natural elements of the Universe around us. What bothers people is the total lack of regard and responsibility displayed by those who make big, messy displays as they use Technology; as they interact with the Universe in destructive, dirty and dangerous ways which affect the world and everybody around them whether we like it or not. Technology isn't ruining the world. It's the greedy morons who are using technology in the negative who are ruining the world.
Films like The Matrix and Terminator aren't anti-technology. Heck, Frankenstein, the grand daddy of Luddite-style thinking, isn't anti-technology, even if Mary Shelly thought that it was, (and I'm not at all convinced that English professors are correct in their claim that she did!). These are messages which address the very real concerns that technology placed in the hands of greedy assholes is, in no uncertain terms, bloody dangerous!
I don't see anything wrong or misplaced in these concerns, or in being interested in the issues raised by those concerns. And in any case, The Matrix and Terminator were entertaining for more than just their sociological and special effects values. They were exciting films, for flip's sake! Change out of your camp tee-shirt, get on the bus, and come back to reality.
-Fantastic Lad --"Ain't no flies on us!"
Because it doesn't have a license to decode the signal. The same reason it's illegal to watch DVDs on Linux. Plus the additional restrictions introduced in the Digital Rights Management Act of 2005. You know, the one the MPAA demanded passed before making HDDVDs.
The solution that has worked best for me...is to avoid public discussion. -- CmdrTaco
wget http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixlgfinal_dl.mo v
p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixlgfinal_dl.mo v
or
curl -o http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/
As already mentioned, the Matrix was *definitely* influenced by anime (and martial arts movies). Story has many similarities to Lain (as mentioned) and also Ghost in the Shell. In fact, there's a website pointing out the similar scenes http://www.geocities.com/tacobelll/matrixgits/ Even the green text stuff was in the opening credits for the GiTS movie. Of course, that's not to say that the animes didn't get influenced by earlier sci-fi works and such, however, the Matrix bears a lot of sylistic similarity to anime, particularly GiTS and Lain (when she starts getting into the Wired, got wires clipped to herself as the interface...).
Try here for QuickTime/mplayer instructions.
Looks like he was just trying to play the initial frame (which is a different track, and appears to be specially stored as a JPEG image.
May we never see th
Were we watching the same film?
It says nothing about technology being bad. If you look past the fact that they are machines and see them as a people you can see many elements of some of the biggest fuckups in human history. The number of references to these were staggering. Off the top of my head (after just seeing it once), I got the following:
They are undoubtably more in there that I missed.
I could cite a dozen references to each of these in the past 100 years alone. So called "modern society" in the west is guilty of most of them, some we are doing right now! Mainly, I thought the short was about how we repeat the same mistakes again and again and never seem to learn. With what is going on in the world at the moment, it's clear that we haven't learned a thing from history.
But nowhere was it implied that technology is "bad". At the most it was a futuristic negative utopia (1984, Brazil, Blade Runner), and it's clear that future human society will be utilising more and more technology, so it goes without saying that AI/machines will feature in it.
Watch it again, this time viewing the machines as people, sort of a "working class" society.
I gotta say, it was one of the most thought provoking things I've seen in a while. Very impressed, and normally I'm not remotely interested in Anime.
Good point, but the machines probably consider their inception, as in their creation, inclusion in human society, and nigh destruction to be index "00" and seeing the failure of that existence, incremented to version "01" to signify a new begining. Eh?
I just got the file.
:)
Leech away
All forms of technology have good/bad sides. A subtle example is the old bow + arrow. Somewhat Good: Kill animals easier for survival and food. Bad: Kill our fellow man easier as well.
How about something more drastic: Atomic fusion. Good: Very powerful energy source. Bad: Very powerful bombs.
I think really one of the points is to make sure we guide the technology, not follow it.
Insert Sig Here
So by the same token we should occupy germany forever because they were mean to use several generations ago?
The Matrix Revisited has a 10-minute feature that explains how it came about. The Wachowskis got some of the best and brightest animators in Japan (and a couple from outside of Japan) to do some anime shorts for them. The animators, all of whom were enthralled with The Matrix, were only too happy to oblige. (And why shouldn't they be? The Wachowskis stole the memes from their anime; they were only just taking them back again. :)
The announcement of the Animatrix last year did answer one burning question...it was mentioned in news stories that, aside from Final Fantasy, Square USA would produce only one other bit of animation--a short film--but it was never mentioned what it was. Then, when it was announced, a lot of people were going, "Ohhhh!"
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
A series that is soon to be available again, this time on DVD, is Cat Girl Nuku Nuku. In it, you have some remarkable female characters. Mishima Akiko is the CEO of Mishima Heavy Industries, and her two-woman Administrative Assistant hit squad kick some serious butt too, especially Arisa, the gun-crazy "warrior maiden." One of the sub-plots has to do with Akiko trying to fit into the role of a stereotypical Japanese housewife to get closer to her son Ryunosuke, but coming to the realization that this is not for her. Kicking ass and taking names is. :-)
Yes, Nuku Nuku herself is a kawaii little thing in a Sailor-suit High School uniform. But don't fsck with her either. She knows how to throw down too. And if she's a little fluffy around the edges, don't blame her...she started out her existence as a cat. ;-)
Cat Girl Nuku Nuku is coming out on the 10th. ADVision. A brand-new dub joins the subtitled version on the DVD. It's not going to have a lot of goodies like what they are doing with Excel Saga but oh well, at least it is coming out.
One last thing: Japanese pop culture has a lot of violence, sex, and sex and violence co-mingled. However, Japanese civil culture is perhaps one of the least violent the world has ever known. Investigate the homicide rate in Japan, then compare it to the US and Europe. Then get back to me.
"But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever....In the digital world, we don't need back-ups..."
-- Jack Valenti
I've always thought people said that to justify their copyright violations.. well, now's your chance to prove me, and more importantly WB, wrong.
For all of you still trying to watch the streamed QT version online, you can now download the High Def version (145Mb) on Kazaa.
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
Found a solution.
e /p rogressive/thematrix/us/med/animatrixlgfinal_dl.mo v
Apparently Quicktime Player itself will piece the thing together, even if the server drops the connection repeatedly.
From within Quicktime Player, go to File --> Open URL in New Player
They cut and paste:
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonlin
Worked like a charm. Full speed ahead.
Found this patch on the MPlayer-Users mailing list.
:)
Now, if someone could just tell me how to apply it...
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
This is a repost of a classic troll from over two years ago. On Slashdot, trolls provoke moderation wars and many replies. Those signs are both present in this confirmed troll. Whoever is inclined to agree with this bunk ought to rethink his position.
The solution that has worked best for me...is to avoid public discussion. -- CmdrTaco
animatrixlgfinal_dl_mov.torrent
Since the main site seems to have been hit hard by this slashdotting, try getting it from this BitTorrent site; Please leave your download window open as long as possible after finishing the download to help out others getting the file.
BitTorrent is a peer to peer file swarmer. You can get the client from http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/download.html; it is Free, open, and does not contain ad/spyware; versions exist for *ix, win32, OS X, etc.
I did that (convert it to nicer format that is). Ogg media stream container, mpeg4 video using mencoder+libavcodec (2pass, high quality, 4 motion vectors per macroblock, bitrate 800 kbit), Ogg Vorbis audio (quality 1). Result is a 58MB big file. Obviously there is quality loss (the original was 141MB), and mencoder seems not to encode all frames, making it a bit skippy at times (this also probably explains the small size).
.
It is good quality IMHO (good enough for me to dump the original), and the audio is in sync (the original file has two audio streams, but mplayer ignores the shorter one, for this encoding I decoded both streams to raw pcm, concatenated the streams and encoded the one stream). If you don't like it, don't use it.
Oh, and I had to split it in two since I don't have enough webspace in one spot for 58 megs. Either play them consecutively or join them with ogmcat(1) found in the ogmtools
File 1, 39MB
File 2, 19MB
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.