Æon Flux

Peter Chung is definitely one of the most creative minds in animation today. This is his groundbreaking work he is best known for.

Originally a recurring short for MTV's Liquid Television, Aeon Flux combined the flash of the sexy heroine and action movie violence with extremely surreal and bizarre scenarios. MTV later commissioned 10 half-hour episodes. Obviously the more high profile placement of a scheduled program lead to more network restrictions. Not quite the same surreal vision as the original shorts but definitely interesting in themselves.

A lot of people saw it as some kind of anime rip off. It's nothing of the sort. While without a doubt drawing influence from Japanese animation the more apparent influences are European fantasy illustrators like moebius.

I bought the TV episodes and shorts on a VHS several years ago. I'm not sure if it has made it to DVD. There's a live action movie based on the characters of the animation series coming out this winter. It's extremely doubtful they'll be able to pull off any of the weird stuff. It will probably be just another boringly ordinary Hollywood sci-fi/action movie. One of Peter Chung's ideas with his animation is to create something you can't do in live action.

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.

First of all I have read the other reviews...these were done by tired no brain idiots who fail to appreciate the HOST of creative subtleties that made this show entirely unique. There is no material-biting , or boring skeletal sketches; everything in the series is done for a reason: these characters are drawn to make you think on a symbolic level, they act to make to you think on a symbolic level, their complicated idiosyncrasies are complicated, and repellent and sensuous at once...you HAVE to watch them more than once, that's why I LOVE them..Peter Chung worked extremely hard to fit so much meaning into so short a time frame. I have never seen anything like this series and likely never will again. One of the best things ever shown on MTV!

I'll spare you the standard review and assume that you've already accepted that Aeon Flux is bloody awesome. What follows is a guide to getting the full bloody awesomeness out of this experience.

If at all possible, take it in chronological order since the first 6 shorts are what set the stage. Essentially all rules are bent, broken, defecated upon and then handed back to us with a hint of Snuggle fabric softener. This is no mere cartoon; this is a revolution in storytelling.

The best way to describe the shorts is to say they are visual puzzles for us to solve. It ain't easy, either. I highly recommend watching the short, feeling like an idiot, and then watching it again with Peter's commentary. He doesn't always spell out the solution, but he gives some good hints that allow you to appreciate it on its intended philosophical level.

I'll give you just one example without really ruining anything. In the episode "War", we see a bunch of people killing people, getting killed, and more of the same. But there's much more to it than that. What Chung does is play on our fickle sympathies to make us change loyalties over & over. Without noticing, we start out rooting for the black team, then the white team, back to black, white, black, etc. You can surmise what sort of statement he's making about the act of war & society's attitudes. I can't help but wonder if Peter Chung was a fan of the 19th century French writer Maupassant ("Tell the people to vote for the Emperor and they'll vote for the Emperor. Tell the people to vote for the Republic and they'll vote for the Republic.")

Bloody awesome.

Other episodes are more abstract but just as deliberate & defined. In "Tide" we're presented with some seemingly arbitrary, repeating scenes. But actually it's a very carefully orchestrated show. The scenes, each exactly 2 sec long, repeat in a scripted sequence that can only be described as mathematical (or as Peter says in the commentary, "musical").

Bloody bloody awesome.

OK, I'm probably losing some of you, and that's to be expected. After all, what's interesting about political, mathematical & metaphysical themes? The answer: a hot assassin chick in a vinyl bikini with boobs that defy Newton's Laws of Physics, that's what.

What's the word I'm looking for? Oh right: bloody freaking whacktastic awesome.

After the initial 6 shorts comes the Pilot which is also without dialogue and highly expressionistic as well as philosophically jam packed. However when the actual series followed, MTV took more of an active role making changes that weren't always for the best. The biggest change is that the characters speak. Another big change is that Aeon develops more of a consistent personality and morality (unlike in the shorts where she was an Existentialist to the max). Some of the episodes are still very good--the ones written by Peter Chung--but others were given to different writers who didn't have a clear grasp on the artistic concept. The result was more plot driven, linear, humorous at times & random at times. At the same time, some of it became more poetic in a literal sense. In all, a very different flavour but still very enjoyable, even if the episodes aren't the brain-teasers we had seen at first.

That's about all I have to say, so I'll close by saying we need more women dressing up as Aeon Flux at halloween parties. Ladies, if you do that you win hands down. Well except for maybe the green star trek chick.

It's a futuristic "White Rabbit" that comes to mind whenever I recall any episode of this "Liquid TV" born legend. The style wasn't bubbly or cute like 75% of the Anime you witness, it's lines were crude, bodies were awkward but it's feel was seductive.

I personally feel that the creators wanted to give the audience a constant view into the side of what we don't see all that often. Such movies as "Total Recall" and "Blade Runner" danced just outside of those unseen elements using them as sight-gags, AF exploited them in an incredible way....if you didn't understand what you were watching, it was only a matter of a partial storyline before you understood it.

When it was originally created, Aeon herself was silent, an occassional moan, groan or sigh - the TV series added new elements giving that much needed dialog and shedding evil light onto an already unimaginable world.

The action is intense, the storylines are fluid and entrancing, the voice acting is top-notch and it's lifespan was cut short to make way for the new generation clot with teenie-boppers, hip-hoppers and wannabes. If AF proved anything, aside from it's jaded stance on a futuristic world that puts "Mad Max" to shame - it's that MTV DID INDEED SELL-OUT....for those of us who spent countless hours trying to get the station to even rekindle just ONE MARATHON of "Liquid TV", know the heartache.