Next Club Meeting: May 25, 2024, at the Fountaindale Public Library in Bolingbrook from 11:00 am - 5:00 pm

The Animatrix Network is an anime & manga fan club located in the Southwest suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. We usually meet on the third Saturday of each month (except when holidays or conventions coincide). The meetings are free and open to the public. Join us for a day filled with anime.

This site provides news, reviews, commentaries, and previews of the world of anime and everything it inspires, such as live-action films, comics, music, art, and other weird things to enjoy and contemplate.

Friday, July 9, 2010

 Next Club Meeting is Saturday, July 10, 2010

Anime Viewing Schedule
Noon- 12:25   Kiddy Girl-and (episode 3)
Twenty-five years after Éclair and Lumière, (from the flagship Kiddy Grade series), rescued the galaxy from destruction's doorstep, the GTO (Galactic Trade Organization), created after the defeat of the GOTT (Galactic Organization of Trade and Tariffs), act on behalf of universal peace by combating criminal activity. Their special ES division mirrored after the GOTT's ES (Encounter of Shadow-work) force, now includes publicly acknowledged ES member candidates. The series follows three such trainees, Ascoeur, Q-feuille, and Di-air as they work their way to ES membership.

12:25 -12:52   Cencoroll
In Cencoroll, large, mostly white amorphous creatures have been appearing in a town modeled after Sapporo, Hokkaidō, Japan. Tetsu (テツ?) (Hiro Shimono) is a male high school student who keeps one such shapeshifting creature named Cenco (センコ Senko?), which he can control via telepathy, though wants to keep it a secret. An inquisitive girl named Yuki (ユキ?) (Kana Hanazawa) chances upon Cenco at school when it is transformed into a bicycle. After Tetsu arrives to retrieve the bicycle, Yuki inadvertently causes Cenco to transform back into its normally large form by poking it in the eye. Yuki is much more interested in Cenco than Tetsu and accompanies them into town. There, a boy named Shū (シュウ?) (Ryōhei Kimura), who controls two of the creatures, confronts Tetsu in order to obtain Cenco. Tetsu manages to fend off Shū's attacks while also protecting Yuki, and they leave while Shū's creature is incapacitated. Shū confronts Yuki later that day and gets her to tell Tetsu to meet and fight Shū again.

12:52 - 1:40   Okami Kakushi 1-2
A 15 year old boy, Hiroshi Kuzumi, has recently moved into a new town in the mountains. The town is separated into new and old streets by the river, and many mysterious local cultures still remain. Although confused and enjoying his new life, one person kept her distance from him: class committee member Kushinada Nemuru. In their few encounters she gave him a word of advice: "Stay away from the old streets."

1:40 - 2:25  Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari 4
Kenshi Masaki is a 15 year old boy that unwillingly traveled from his homeland on Earth to the alternate world of Geminar. In Geminar, the countries usually wage wars against each other by using the Seikijin, humanoid weapons that were originally discovered within ancient ruins. After being deceived by a mysterious organization to participate in an attempt to assassinate Lashara Aasu XXVIII, the young princess of the Streya Empire, he ends up captured after he relucts to kill her when he had the chance. After Lashara and her servants figure about his situation, they decide to give him aid. Disguised as Lashara's servant, Kenshi moves with her to the Holy Land, a virtually impregnable fortress that serves as an academy to train Seikijin pilots selected from around the world. With his kindness, tenacity, and being gifted in a wide range of skills that vary from cooking and cleaning to advanced techniques of survival and combat, Kenshi eventually becomes a celebrity in the academy, becoming the object of affection of many female students and making some of the male students envious of him. However, the same organization who deceived Kenshi is secretly working behind the shadows inside the academy, and a widescale conflict which will engulf the entire world of Geminar is about to begin.

2:25 - 3:15   Angel Beats 7-8
Angel Beats! takes place at a high school in the afterlife in a Purgatory between Heaven and Earth where students learn to give up any lingering attachments they still have from life before finally going to Heaven. While the injuries or cause of death is gone, those in the afterlife school can still feel pain or other things as they did when they were alive, as well as dying again, only to awaken with no injures several minutes later. The story follows the main protagonist Otonashi, a boy who lost his memories of his life after dying. Upon awakening in the afterlife, he meets a girl named Yuri who invites him to join the Shinda Sekai Sensen (SSS) (死んだ世界戦線?, lit. Afterlife War Front), an organization she founded and leads which fights against God for the cruel fates the SSS members experienced in life. Their only enemy in the world is the school's student council president Angel, a being with supernatural powers who is in charge of keeping the status quo and fights against the SSS. Yuri believes that anyone who follows Angel's orders and behaves like a normal student at the school will eventually disappear and pass on to Heaven. However, those who fulfill their dreams in the afterlife will pass on as well. In the SSS, there are two sub-divisions which help in the SSS's operations against Angel. The first is a four-girl band named Girls Dead Monster whose objective in the SSS is to cause a diversion from other activities the SSS is engaged in, while on the surface appearing to be a normal all female band. This includes distracting Angel and a large number of "normal" students and teachers at the school Yuri deems "non-player characters" as they are not human, but look and act the part. Another organization in the SSS is the Guild, located far below the surface of the afterlife world, which serves to supply the weapons the SSS uses against Angel. Anyone in the afterlife is able to create anything out of dirt that they had memories of in life, and the Guild uses this ability to mass produce weapons. Angel uses a similar ability to create her supernatural powers.

3:15 - 4:15    Meeting/Announcements/Strange sightings
We will be showing highlights of Anime Expo 2010, including cosplay videos and photos. This should prove to be a very interesting meeting! Don't miss it!

4:15 - 5:05   Omamori Himari 1-2
Seven years ago, Yuto Amakawa's parents died in a car accident, leaving him alone without a single relative. Ever since then, his childhood friend, Rinko Kuzaki, has woken him up, cooked for him, and generally takes care of him. The only thing he has from any relative is a mysterious amulet given to him by his grandparents (an omamori). On his 16th birthday, the amulet he wore has lost its effectiveness and Himari—a cat spirit samurai girl—suddenly appears in his life as his bodyguard. There is only one small problem: Yuto has an allergic reaction to cats!

5:05 - 5:55   Katanagatari 4
Katanagatari centers on Yasuri Shichika, the seventh head of the Kyotō-ryū (虚刀流?, literally "swordless style") of Japanese sword martial arts. One day, a girl named Togame arrives on the island where Shichika and his older sister Nanami live with a favor to ask from him. She tells him that she is on a mission to find and collect the final twelve swords forged by a master swordsmith by the name of Shikizaki Kiki and that she needs his help. They both then leave the island together to seek out the swords.

5:55 - 6:20   Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu 6
The story centers around a boy named Akihisa Yoshii, also known as the idiot or "Baka" of the titled anime. He attends Fumizuki Academy, a school where the staff rigidly divides the students based on the results of their academic scores. At the start of the school, students are academically sorted by entrance exam test grades. In this case, Class A is filled with the highest-scoring students; therefore, their classroom was filled with many prestigious items (air conditioners, fancy seats, huge spaces, etc.), while the state of Class F is the complete opposite of that, leaving much to be desired.

This academy has something special, where all the students manage to call forth Summoned Beings (Shōkanjū, or "Avatars" in the official English translation). These Beings are used for battles between the classes to capture the facilities of the classroom. Since Class A is filled with prodigies, they all have strong Summoned Beings, while Class F has drastically weak ones in comparison. These beings are supplied in health by the matter of knowledge in a certain subject. Points vary and could even be supplied greatly in a F student if when calling a battle.

On the day of the placement test, an intelligent girl named Mizuki Himeji suffers from a fever and is unable to complete her test, hence her reigning in a score of zero. As a result, she is pigeonholed into Class F together with Akihisa Yoshii. Akihisa, who worries for her health, pitches an idea to his class to rule over the higher-level classes by doing a Summoned Being War for both Mizuki's sake and to get more and more privileges. Aside from Mizuki (who happens to be the second-ranked student in the year), there is also the class representative Yūji Sakamoto, the bishōnen Kinoshita Hideyoshi, the perverted Tsuchiya Kouta, and the tomboyish Shimada Minami (who, as Akihisa claims, is his worst enemy).

6:20 - 8:00   Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror (Movie)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED          *****

"Where do all your childhood treasures go when you grow up?"

Production I.G and Fuji Television Network present a new full length computer graphic animation feature film - Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror (ホッタラケの島 〜遥と魔法の鏡〜, Hottarake no Shima: Haruka to Mahō no Kagami?) is a 2009 Japanese CG animated film directed by Shinsuke Sato. It was nominated for the award for Excellent Animation of the Year at the 33rd Japan Academy Prize. 

Story: Haruka lost her mother at a young age. While her mother was still alive, she received a hand mirror from her as a gift. After her mother's death, she had forgotten about the mirror, and eventually lost it. One day, she decides to go to a local shrine and pray for the hand mirror to be returned to her. It is there that she accidentally encounters a small masked fox-like creature which she secretly follows to the land of forgotten things. In this magical world, humans are not allowed. Lost items are bartered and treasured amongst the fox-like folk, who use the discards of humans to build fantastic machines such as mono-rail trains that use bicycle tires for wheels and party balloons for dirigibles. And on this isle of Oblivion, the most valuable lost item of all is that which Haruka has come to seek.

This is a truly remarkable film. The word "magical" has often been used to describe many other animated movies, but none other deserves it more like Oblivion Island. This is like having Hayao Miyazaki direct his own Pixar film in full CG anime style.

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