Nine different animators, nine different visions of what happens when you build something and it develops a will of its own. Some segments are gorgeous and haunting, others are pure kinetic chaos, one is basically a slapstick comedy about a robot and a kid. The anthology format means you're never sure what tone you're walking into next, which keeps you alert in a way single-narrative anime can't touch. This is what happens when you give masters of the craft a blank check and a single theme. The real discovery is that "robots" was never the point, it's always been about the people who make them.

Nine different visions of robots come together in this anthology, where nine of Japan's top animators were each asked to make a short piece on the theme of robots. The segments stand entirely apart from one another, but all of them look at how people interact with machines and what it means to bring life into being with your own hands. Koji Morimoto directs Franken's Gears, Hidetoshi Omori directs Deprive, Yasuomi Umetsu directs Presence, Hiroyuki Kitazume directs Star Light Angel, Mao Lamdo directs Cloud, Hiroyuki Kitakubo directs A Tale of Two Robots, and Takashi Nakamura directs Nightmare. Atsuko Fukushima and Katsuhiro Otomo frame the collection with an opening and an ending. The shared theme is handled nine very different ways, mixing action, comedy, drama, fantasy and mecha science fiction.