The whole Animatrix thing is definately worth getting...it breaths a bit more life into the whole thing, rather than it being an action movie, it becomes a believable story. The second rennaisance made it seem so much more real, just simply because it is what we, as humans, would do were the situation to arise.
Although I'm sure that someone in the world would realise the stupidity in operation dark cloud...and that machines would utterly annihilate humans in real combat.