"The Second Renaissance" (2003) are two anime shorts which are a part of The Animatrix collection. Both parts were written by the Wachowski brothers and were directed by Mahiro Maeda. The shorts were rendered by a mix of traditional hand drawn animation and CGI.
The shorts provide a background to the 1999 film, The Matrix. Part 1 explains the origins of the machines' conflicts with the incumbent human civilization. Part 2 shows the war which results in the machines' dominance and the creation of the Matrix. Both parts are structured as fictional documentary films, unlike the other shorts from The Animatrix.
Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers
This part begins with the imagery of a city that is ultimately controlled by humans but where the everyday 'grunt' work is done by a vast multitude of machines. Due to the fact that the human population has become lazy and lethargic there is a sense of a loss of morals or ethics in this utopia. Some people would get the feeling that this was in some way connected to the Protestant work ethic idea of the founding of America.
Anyway, things start to pick up when one of the machines is threatened with destruction by his intoxicated owner and ends up killing his human owner in self defense. After this a trial occurs where the defense argues that machines deserve the same rights as humans. However, the judges and government disagree and undergo a vast campaign to destroy all humanoid robots. The robots do have some sympathizers who attempt to prevent the destruction of robots on a wide scale but are unsuccessful. Eventually the remaining humanoid robots go on to create their own city in the Middle East. There they excel at creating technological consumer goods and are soon creating economic devastation in other countries. Part 1 ends with the United Nations debating whether to declare war on the robot city and the rejection of two robot ambassadors that are sent on what is believed to be a genuine mission of peace.
This part begins with the nuclear bombing of the robotic city in the Middle East. However this does not destroy all of the robots and thus leads to essentially World War III between humanity and machines, like The Terminator movies. As humanity begins to lose the war a consensus is reached to blacken the skies in order to cut the robots off from their primary energy source, the sun. There is a lot of spiritual imagery associated with this part of the episode as many people pray hoping that this is the correct decision. The plan goes off without a problem yet it is too late as the machines have already adapted. The war ends and the machines undertake to experimenting on humans to create a new energy source; hence the Matrix is created.
Part 1
Part 2
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