Æon Flux

If you're looking for the series that breaks Japanimation's stranglehold on quality mature cartoons, this is it. Aeon Flux is Peter Chung's twisted brainchild, a fantastic future world where everyone and no one are everything they seem, and more, and less. This is not the series you want if you're looking for easily acceptable doses of comprehensible violence and sex. Aeon Flux attacks your brainpan directly through your optic nerve, inducing afterthought in the brain. If you are ready to go beyond, to enjoy boundary-cracking animation that switches in and out of characterization, plot, action, and even dialogue, then go find this tape. Buy it. You'll thank me later.

I rewatched this little series lately and I just can state: Aeon Flux is still pushing boundaries regarding storytelling for a sci-fi animation show. With its own visual style and story (ideas) plus the sometimes weird storytelling techniques still a pleasure to watch. Such kind of experimental stuff they do only very rare these days - just look what MTV has become...

If I were to make a list of the top ten television shows ever made, I would put Aeon Flux at #1. If I were to make a list of the top ten television shows and movies combined, it would end up at #2 (if you read my other comments, you'll notice that I often exalt films that I've seen in a similar top ten list format and that I have said that many films are this high on the list, but that was usually right after seeing it without any retrospect; I have seen every episode of Aeon Flux at least 10 times, so I have the proper retrospect here). It only falls behind Stanley Kubrick's 2001.

Like 2001, Aeon Flux is a mind-bending series that pushed the limits of narrative. As Trevor Goodchild says in the final episode of this series (so far; they've said that they might come back), "End Sinister": "A person from a thousand years ago could never comprehend the world today." Well, Aeon Flux is about 800 years in the future, because one has to see all the episodes several times before they begin to make sense. I like this, because the first few times you can appreciate the art. After you have seen each episode multiple times, you notice how amazingly and originally the narrative is constructed. So don't get angry at the series if you don't understand it initially.

Begin with the more conventional (though that word can hardly describe this television series) episodes. Rent or buy (it is certainly good enough to buy without having seen it before; look at my other comments to see if you agree with my tastes, then go for it if you do) the red cassette (which is also on DVD), and watch the first two episodes, "Thanatophobia" and "A Last Time for Everything." Then on the Blue Tape, watch "Reraizure," the first episode. Next, go to intermediate episodes, "Isthmus Crypticus," "Ether Drift Theory," "The Demiurge," "Utopia or Deuteronopia," and "End Sinister" (though you may want to save that for the end). Then, for the advanced class, go to the silent episodes on the red and yellow tapes, then see the hardest-to-get episodes "The Purge" and, by far the most mindbending and 2001-like, "Chronophasia." Personally, I like the simple beauty of "Thanatophobia" and "A Last Time for Everything" best, but "The Purge" and "Chronophasia" will warp your mind for sure. And like I said, don't dismiss them if you don't understand them. Think about each episode as an individual structure and then as a part of the whole. And if you're truly impressed, good luck finding the Aeon Flux book they published, _The Herodotus File_. It will help in your understanding if you have the good luck to find it. Also, another miraculously-produced MTV animated series marvel that you might like if you like this is The Maxx. It can usually be found on the shelf with Anime films, but if not, it can be purchased just as Aeon Flux can. It, if I were to list it along with the greatest television series and films, would be #3.

So please, go get your mind warped today by Aeon Flux and The Maxx!

I remember watching this series late at night about 5 years ago on MuchMusic (Canada's MTV equivalent). It was (and probably still is) the most innovative animated series I've had the chance to lay my eyes on (and wrap my brain around). Definitely not for kids, definitely not straightforward, this series fluctuates between abstract narratives, warped motives, and unconventional characters to tell us the stories of a futuristic communist society ruled by Trevor Goodchild and clashed with by the ever-present iconoclast known as Aeon Flux, a society that is both a distortion and a reflection of our own. Nothing in this series is clear-cut and the writing definitely lets you think your way through instead of being spoon-fed. Thank you, mister Chung, for the great work.

Having first seen Aeon Flux as MTV shorts I was instantly captivated, breaking free from the constraints of the "standard" method of story telling, so much is left in the mysterious and unknown, with very imaginative and surreal atmosphere, in some cases one feels like they have just been dropped in the middle of a story with no real explanation of what is going on, its not needed it adds to effect. An interesting format that the heroine is killed off only to be reincarnated in the next short, almost like a video game in some contexts.

This format was eventually abandoned and a more story like series followed, which might lead one to believe that the initial shorts might of been proof of concept or tests? These episodes are very similar in the same surreal atmosphere but with a little more story line and plot driven in to make them more durable.

A highly imaginative animation series that is worth inclusion in anyones collection especially those seeking something a little off the beaten path.