Set over forty years in the future, a top detective is assigned to find a missing scientist. His search leads him to a major corporation set on reducing the effects of aging. Through his investigation, he learns that good and evil is not always as easy as black white.

Before we even get into the story of RENAISSANCE, the unique animation style has to be addressed. It’s black and white, with sharp angles and a primarily dark tone to it. It’s sometimes difficult to follow exactly what you’re looking at, and at times it will give you a headache because you’re not used to watching this kind of animation, especially two hours of it. However, once I got acclimated to it, I really began to like it. It also helped that the style was very cool and the story was pretty creative.

I didn’t have very high expectations for the film when I first started watching it. I’m not that big a fan of adult animation and I expected the story to be a typical dried out rendition of something we’ve seen before. I was pleasantly surprised that the animation was very stylish and the plot was interesting and well developed.

If I have one gripe with the film, it was with its use of color. Actually, there was only once scene with colors and it just didn’t work. The use of colors in a film like this could have made a huge impact in the film, but since they were thrown in on an unimportant scene, it just felt like a waste. There’s a major character that dies at one point, and using the colors on them, during their death would have made a much bigger impact.

As much as I liked the animation, I couldn’t help but think how great this would have been as a live action film. Of course, the budget would be through the roof, but with the right leading star, you’d have yourself a summer blockbuster. As it turns out, it made for a slick animated film that will probably surprise most viewers.

Video: Widescreen (2.35:1): It’s sharp black and white animation, so there’s really no way for them to go wrong.

Audio: English 5.1, French 2.0 with French and Spanish subtitles: The audio was very nice with sound effects really coming through.

Making of Renaissance (26:08): The creators are French, so this is a subtitled featurette. However, I found the details into the making of this film to be fascinating. It really was an ambitious project and the amount of work that went into it was amazing. The featurette did have a few too many pauses of movie scenes, but it was still an interesting little featurette that covers just about everything in the film, albeit briefly.

There are also some Previews

I think RENAISSANCE is going to take audiences everywhere off guard. Even if you don’t like animation that much, I highly recommend at least giving this one a rental. I think you’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised.