 |
The Matrix
"Beyond"
Animatrix
Written and directed by Koji Morimoto
2003 |
Some youngsters play in a “haunted
house” in their neighborhood.
Watch the animated short at Daily Motion
Didja Know?
"Beyond" was an animated short
that appeared on the
Animatrix video relased in 2003 with seven other
animated shorts.
Characters appearing or mentioned in this story
Yuki (cat)
Yoko
Yoko's neighbors
Pudgi
Manabu
Masa
Misha
Agent (unnamed)
Kenny
Didja Notice?
The story takes place in a Japanese city of the Matrix. The
crosswalk signs in the city make chirping sounds or musical
notes when it's lit for crossing. This is true of many
crosswalk signs in Japan. The tune played here is
"Tōryanse", a traditional Japanese children's song.
At 1:44 on the video, notice that Yuki's shadow is seen on
the building 20 feet or so in the distance where her shadow
should not be able to cast. Even the cat itself notices
something is off. This is the first indication of a problem
in that area of the Matrix.
| At 9:09 in the video, the futuristic exterminator truck
has a stylized cockroach-like insect logo on it. Since the
people in the truck arrive at the site of the haunted
mansion to take care of the anomaly, the insect logo seems
symbolic of eradicating bugs in the system. |
 |
While jumping to land an inch above the ground in the
mansion, Masa shouts, "Banzai!" This is a Japanese
exclamation meaning "10,000 years of long life".
At 12:15 in the video, the tin can that had previously been
floating inside the old mansion appears to have the word
"BEYOND" printed on it.
The date on the call log at 11:13 on the video has a date of
2-2-03, suggesting February 2, 2003 inside the Matrix. This
is around 4 years after the events of
The Matrix. However, the
truce between the machines and humans occurs only about 6
months after The Matrix,
so when does this story really take place? It would seem to
take place before the truce. Of course, the date seen is
probably more of a reference to when the short film was
made, which was in 2003. So, we might assume it is still
1999 in the Matrix events of this story.
As the short film ends and "Matrix code" starts to swarm
across the screen, a number of words can be made out, at
least some of which are pop culture related: STAR TREK, USS
ENTERPRIZE (sic), NEMESIS, TAKUMA, BEYOND, STUDIO, WORLD
JAPAN.
Back to The Matrix
Episode Studies
