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THE SERIES: In the early Nineteen-Hundred-and-Nineties MTV wanted to be more than Music TV, so it commissioned animators to provide short content to slap-and-tickle the curiosities of America’s young adults on the Liquid Television series. Ultimately, the most successful offering was Aeon Flux, a nihilistic, amoral, ultraviolent science-fiction series starring the eponymous half-nekkid, spread-tossing, neo/nil/anti-heroine with preposterous spit curls, feline physicality, and prehensile breasts. The later episodes made for the half-hour MTV Aeon Flux series—presented here in sharper, color-enhanced, digitally remastered form—are an ambiguous, brain-rotting freakshow featuring cartoon bloodbaths, disorienting military-industrial-complex psychobabble, and viscera-tweaking imagery successfully employed to inject sexual content into the show while baffling the MTV “standards” department. Enjoy the original, pointless, practically nonverbal salutes to warfare, sex, and murder, and then watch the series meander as the creators give Aeon and pals voices and personalities in the later episodes.

THE EXTRAS: This three-DVD treasure trove of fanboy/girl one-handed viewing contains a sampling of other non-Flux Liquid Television stablemates, plus the original Aeon Flux pilot episode presented contiguously, a featurette starring the gear the fleshy-yet-skeletal spygirl packs to finish you (and herself) off, storyboards, character model sheets, animated pencil tests, promotional crap, and a full clip of commentary and interview blabbering from creator Peter Chung and others, punctuated with an emphatic blank-verse spoken-word presentation found in the “History of Aeon Flux” short, courtesy series writer Mark Mars, who sums it all up for us: “Aeon Flux/ Bitch Fatale/ Anarchic Chic/ She’s a death toy/ She takes no prisoners/ She takes no lip/ You’re gonna rip a zipper dangerboy and trip to get a grip on the equipment but you’re under cardiac arrest/ This is not a test/ She’s a death toy/ Aeon Flux, she’s a death toy.” And you can play with her forever.

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