Next Club Meeting:November 21, 2026,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 in today's pop culture, such as live-action films, comics, music, art, and other weird things to enjoy and contemplate.
When Mamoru Oshii was offered the opportunity to adapt Masamune Shirow's "Ghost in the Shell". At first, the assignment held little appeal. A cyberpunk police thriller seemed an unlikely vehicle for his interests. But as Oshii immersed himself in Shirow's premise, he recognized something more compelling beneath its genre framework: an opportunity to examine how the rapid expansion of digital networks and information technologies was beginning to reshape the boundaries of human consciousness and identity.
As Oshii and screenwriter Kazunori Itō developed the adaptation, they quickly concluded that Shirow's irreverent sensibility was fundamentally at odds with the film they envisioned. The original 1989 manga balanced its philosophical ideas with manic comedy, punctuating tense action with slapstick, fourth-wall jokes, exaggerated chibi caricatures, and the playful antics of the Fuchikoma spider tanks. Nearly all of these elements were removed.
The most profound transformation was reserved for Major Motoko Kusanagi herself. Shirow's heroine is impulsive, outspoken, and often disarmingly playful; Oshii and Itō reconceived her as a figure defined by stillness, introspection, and profound existential isolation. Her emotional reserve became an extension of the film's central inquiry into the uneasy relationship between body, mind, and machine. Oshii reinforced this conception through the animation itself, instructing his artists to minimize Kusanagi's blinking, lending her an almost uncanny stillness that subtly underscores her distance from ordinary biological life. Oshii transforms what might have remained a conventional science-fiction thriller into something far more reflective: a meditation on memory, mortality, and the increasingly fragile distinction between the human soul and the digital systems that surround and ultimately redefine it.
Scott Raymond Adams was an American cartoonist, author, and conservative commentator. He was the creator of the Dilbert comic strip and nonfiction works of business, self-improvement, commentary, and satire.
Adams worked in various corporate roles before he became a full-time cartoonist in 1995. By the mid-1990s, Dilbert, created in 1989, had gained national prominence in the United States and began to reach a worldwide audience, remaining popular throughout the following decades and spawning several books written by Adams. In the mid-2010s, Adams emerged as an independent commentator on events and politics.
He wrote in a satirical way about the social and psychological landscape of white-collar workers in corporations. In addition, Adams wrote books in various other areas, including the pandeistic spiritual novella God's Debris and books on political and management topics, including Loserthink.
Get ready to geek out! Join me for an epic narrated tour of the San Diego Comic Con 2025 exhibit hall. I'm diving deep into the heart of the action, showcasing all the mind-blowing booths, exclusive merchandise, and incredible cosplay. From Marvel to DC, Star Wars to anime, it's all here . With over 130,000 attendees, Comic-Con is held every summer in July, and literally takes over San Diego. The main attraction of Comic-Con is the Exhibit Hall, but there are hundreds of panels, and tons of off-site events in the Gaslamp District. San Diego Comic-Con is like heaven on earth for nerds, geeks, and fans!
Meet the Coolest Artists at San Diego Comic-Con 2025!
Ever wonder what it's like to be an artist at the heart of the biggest pop culture event in the world? Welcome to Artists' Alley at San Diego Comic-Con 2025! In this video, we take you straight to the show floor to meet and interview the incredible illustrators, comic creators, and designers who bring our favorite worlds to life. We dive into their creative processes, discuss their latest projects, find out what inspires them, and get their advice for aspiring artists. From industry veterans at Marvel and DC to rising stars in the indie scene, get ready for an exclusive look behind the table.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”- Jeremiah 29:11
Why do we create? That question is such a tender and intimate one and its very rare that an author will open up that soft part of himself in order to tell a story. However, that is exactly what we get in the 2024 film, Look Back. The story is so beautiful not just in a vacuum, but also when held up to the life of its brilliant creator, Tatsuki Fujimoto.
The Eternal Ruins are an endless labyrinth of ancient mysteries. Children awaken from strange statues and become Wanderers of the ruins.
The Eternal Ruins are a magical and cosy place. Wanderers often enjoy cooking a hearty meal, or reading old tablets by candlelight. Some Wanderers enter the service of a Great Spirit in exchange for protection and blessings.
The ruins can also be a dangerous and scary place. Demons float through the halls, consuming the souls of unfortunate Wanderers. Strange Servitors of flesh and magic also stalk the ruins carrying out their duties, unaware of the crumbling ruins around them.
Kazuki Takahashi (born October 4, 1961 – died July 4, 2022) was a Japanese manga artist. He made his serial manga debut in 1986, and is best known as the author of Yu-Gi-Oh!, published in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1996 to 2004. The manga spawned a popular trading card game of the same name, which holds the Guinness World Record for the best-selling trading card game to date.
On July 6, 2022, Takahashi was found dead in the water 300 meters (980 ft) off the shore of Nago, Okinawa, by Japan Coast Guard officers following a civilian report from a passing boat. He was found wearing snorkeling gear, and his cause of death was determined to be drowning. On October 11, the American military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported that Takahashi had died in the afternoon of July 4 while assisting in the rescue of three others who were caught in a rip current.
Kentaro Miura (三浦 建太郎, Miura Kentarō) was a Japanese manga artist. He was best known for his acclaimed dark fantasy manga Berserk, which began serialization in 1989 and continued until his death. As of 2021, Berserk had more than 50 million copies in circulation, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time. In 2002, Miura received the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.
Early life and education
Miura was born in Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, in 1966. In 1976, at the early age of 10, he made his first manga, entitled Miuranger, which was published for his classmates in a school publication; the series ended up spanning 40 volumes. In 1977, Miura created his second manga, Ken e no michi (剣への道, The Way to the Sword), in which he used India ink for the first time. When he was in middle school in 1979, Miura's drawing techniques improved greatly as he started using professional drawing techniques.
While in high school in 1982, Miura enrolled in an artistic curriculum, where he and his classmates started publishing their works in school booklets. His first doujinshi was published in a magazine, with the help of friends, in the same year. At age 18, Miura worked as an assistant to George Morikawa, of Hajime no Ippo fame. Morikawa quickly acknowledged Miura's high artistic level and dismissed him, saying there was nothing he could teach that Miura did not already know.
Career In 1985, Miura applied for the entrance examination to the art college of Nihon University. He submitted his project Futanabi for examination and was granted admission. The project later earned him a nomination as Best New Author in Weekly Shōnen Magazine. Miura's first serialized work, Noa, was published in the magazine, but it was not successful. In 1988, while working for Buronson on a project titled Orō (王狼, lit. "King of Wolves"), Miura published a prototype of Berserk in Hakusensha's Gekkan ComiComi. This 48-page prototype placed second at the 7th ComiComi's Manga-School prize. The full serialization of Berserk, ultimately Miura's most famous and successful work, began in Hakusensha's Monthly Animal House in 1989. In 1990, a prequel to Ōrō entitled Ōrō Den (王狼伝, The Legend of the Wolf King) was published in the magazine. In 1992, Monthly Animal House was renamed Young Animal, where Berserk continued serialization. In the same year, Miura collaborated with Buronson on Japan, also published in Young Animal.
In 1997, Miura supervised the production of a 25-episode anime adaptation of Berserk produced by OLM, Inc., which aired in the same year on NTV. He also supervised the 1999 Dreamcast video game Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage. In 2002, Miura received second place in the annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for the series. Starting in 2006, Berserk went on frequent and often extended hiatuses, alternating between monthly and irregular serialization. As of 2018, the series has been collected in 40 tankōbon volumes, and as of May 2021 it had more than 50 million copies in worldwide circulation, including digital versions. The series also spawned a host of merchandise, both official and fan-made, ranging from statues, action figures to key rings, video games, and a trading card game. Various art books and supplemental materials by Miura based on Berserk were also released.
In 2013, Miura released the short standalone manga Gigantomakhia, released into English-speaking territories as Giganto Maxia by the publisher Dark Horse in 2016. Duranki, a short manga produced by Miura's personal manga studio Studio Gaga, was serialized in Young Animal Zero in 2019.
Death On May 20, 2021, Hakusensha announced that Miura had died on May 6, 2021, due to an acute aortic dissection. A private ceremony was held by his family. Various manga artists offered condolences, including George Morikawa, Hiro Mashima, Rei Hiroe, Hebi-Zou, Ken Akamatsu, Chica Umino, Makoto Yukimura and Atsushi Ohkubo. Susumu Hirasawa, composer for the 1997 television anime adaptation of Berserk, and singer Yoshino Nanjō also offered condolences. Thousands of online players gathered together in Final Fantasy XIV to mourn Miura, with many playing as the Dark Knight class, which itself was heavily inspired by Berserk's protagonist.
Influences Miura stated that the work that had the biggest impact on his own is the manga series Fist of the North Star (1983 debut). In particular, Miura was influenced by Nagai's manga Violence Jack (1973 debut). Other influences cited by Miura include the Japanese fantasy novel series Guin Saga (1979 debut), Paul Verhoeven films, the Hellraiser series (1987 debut), shōjo manga works, Disney films, and the works of Hieronymous Bosch, M. C. Escher, Gustave Doré and Pieter Bruegel.
Legacy
Established as one of the best-selling manga of all time, Miura's series Berserk impacted the manga medium and beyond, with journalist Jade King stating: "[It] is difficult to overstate the tremendous impact his work has had on the world of games, manga, film, anime, and even literature." The image of Guts and his massive sword is attributed to inspiring characters like Cloud Strife of Final Fantasy VII and Dante from the Devil May Cry series, with the overall aesthetic of Berserk inspiring the monsters and world of the Dark Souls series.
"In my last interview with Kim Jung Gi, I tried to figure out who he is, and why he’s so good. In this episode, I’m going to dive deeper. I’m going to analyze his methods, his techniques, and his process… I’m going to figure out HOW he draws. If you’re interested in drawing like Kim Jung Gi, this interview is for you."
The futuristic visual artist behind 'Aliens,' 'Tron,' and
'Blade Runner' dies after a battle with lymphoma cancer
[Source: Polygon] Renowned industrial designer and futurist artist Syd Mead has died at age 86 due to complications from lymphoma cancer.
Mead is best known as a concept artist on science fiction films like Blade Runner. After working in the motor vehicle industry for some time, Mead worked as a production illustrator on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, on which he famously designed V’ger. One of his most cited work, however, was the futuristic design he employed for Blade Runner — his version of Los Angeles, and the vehicles that populated it, would become iconic and emboss a vision of the future designers would return to time and time again.
In his decades-long career, Mead worked on films like Aliens, Mission: Impossible 3, and Blade Runner 2049. His work has also appeared in video games: Aliens: Colonial Marines, Cyber Speedway, Wing Commander: Prophecy, and CyberRace. He’s widely considered a visionary for his detailed, sleek work.
Mead announced his retirement in September after 60 years in design. The Art Directors Guild is expected to honor Mead and his work with the Cameron Menzies Award during the Guild’s 24th Annual Awards on Feb. 1.
[Source: Deadline] J. Michael Mendel, an Emmy-winning animation producer best known for his work on The Simpsons and Rick and Morty has died. He was 54.
Mendel began working on popular Adult Swim series Rick and Morty when it launched in 2013. The cable network released a statement Monday calling him the “heart” of the show’s production team.
“All of us at Adult Swim are devastated by the untimely passing of Mike Mendel,” the statement began. “Mike was the heart of the Rick and Morty production family, his fantastic talent and wit will be sorely missed.”
Rick and Morty on Adult Swim
“Mike was a universally respected Emmy-winning producer with over 25 years in the industry, who guided and supported a generation of artists, writers and creators and his absence will be felt by the entire community,” the statement continued. “Our deepest condolences go out to his family, friends and colleagues during this difficult time.”
Justin Roiland, co-creator of the series, shared a tribute on Twitter.
“My friend, partner, and line producer Mike Mendel passed away,” Roiland tweeted Monday. “I am devastated. My heart breaks for his family. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you by my side Mike. I’m destroyed.”
Mendel won four Emmys for his work on The Simpsons and Rick and Morty.
Lupin III manga creator Monkey Punch (real name: Kazuhiko Katō) passed away on April 11 due to pneumonia. He was 81.
Monkey Punch was born in Hamanaka, Hokkaido in 1937. He made his major debut with Playboy Nyūmon in Futabasha's Manga Story magazine in 1965. Lupin III then launched in Futabasha's Manga Action magazine in 1967. Due to the popularity of the series, the first Lupin III television anime adaptation premiered in 1971. The franchise has since inspired numerous television anime and films, as well as live-action works and games.
Beginning in the 1980s, Monkey Punch received honors such as Comic-Con International's Inkpot Award, Romics' Golden Romics, the Association of Media in Digital (AMD) Awards' Meritorious Service Award, and Tokyo Anime Award Festival's Meritorious Service Award. In recent years, Monkey Punch had been studying 3D art using CG, and he served as a guest lecturer for manga production at major universities.
The Lupin III franchise's newest anime film, Lupin the IIIrd: Mine Fujiko no Uso (Lupin the IIIrd: Fujiko Mine's Lie), will open in Japan on May 31
GKIDS and Fathom Events began streaming an English-subtitled trailer on Tuesday for their screening of the Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki (Owaranai Hito Miyazaki Hayao) television documentary special. GKIDS and Fathom Events
will screen in more than 500 United States theaters on Thursday,
December 13 and Tuesday, December 18. All screenings will be
English-subtitled and at 7:30 p.m. local time. Tickets are on sale via GKIDS' website.
Documentary Shows Hayao Miyazaki at Work
GKIDS describes the documentary:
In 2013, film director and animator Hayao Miyazaki suddenly announced his retirement at the age of 72. But he couldn't shake his burning desire to create. After an encounter with young CGI animators, Miyazaki embarked on a new endeavor, his first project ever to utilize CGI. But the artist, who had been adamant about hand-drawn animation, confronted many challenges. The film even faces the danger of being cancelled. Can an old master who thinks he's past his prime shine once again? This program goes behind the scenes over two years as Miyazaki overcomes struggles to create his short film using CGI.
The documentary premiered on NHK TV in Japan in 2016, and it debuted on the NHK World channel and website with English subtitles in 2017. The Japan Society screened the special in New York in September 2017.
In the program, Miyazaki reported that he wants to return to making an anime feature film, after retiring from directing feature films in 2013. The documentary shows Miyazaki working on "Kemushi no Boro" (Boro the Caterpillar), a planned CG short for the Ghibli Museum.
Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki revealed in August that Hayao Miyazaki's upcoming Kimi-tachi wa Dō Ikiru ka (How Do You Live?) feature film will open in "about three or four years." Suzuki also noted that the film has been in production for two years, and that the studio is doing things in the film that it could not do before.
Miyazaki himself had stated in October 2017 that he would need three or four years to complete his action-adventure fantasy film. Miyazaki derived the film's title from writer Genzaburō Yoshino's 1937 masterpiece of the same name. He added that this book is a story that has great meaning to the protagonist of his film. Yoshino's book centers around a man named Koperu and his uncle, and through Koperu's spiritual growth, it discusses how to live as human beings.
[Source: Yahoo!News] Stan Lee, the Marvel Comics godfather who helped create Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man and so many more “feet of clay” superheroes, characters that both reinvented the comic genre and formed the basis for the now-dominant motion-picture form, died Monday, according to TMZ and the Hollywood Reporter. He was 95.
In 2018, as the latest Marvel movie, Black Panther, was winning over audiences and critics, Lee canceled public appearances due to an irregular heartbeat and pneumonia. While he returned to the convention circuit a couple of months later, longtime friends and admirers, such as filmmaker/podcaster Kevin Smith, said they were no longer able to communicate with the comic legend, and a report said a battle over the control of Lee’s estate was underway.
Lee, Marvel’s longtime editor and publisher, was credited as an executive producer on nearly 150 films and TV shows based on Marvel titles, including the billion-dollar-grossing X-Men, Spider-Man, Avengers, and Iron Man franchises. Other productions bearing Lee’s name include the Wolverine, Captain America,Guardians of the Galaxy, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Thor and Doctor Strange films, as well as the Jessica Jones and Luke Cage series.
As of 2017, four of the world’s top 20 all-time box-office hits were based on characters co-created by Lee: The Avengers; Avengers: Age of Ultron; Iron Man 3 and Captain America: Civil War. Many more Marvel movies bearing Lee’s name, if not featuring one of Lee’s signature onscreen appearances, are in the pipeline. In 2018 alone, Lee appeared in Black Panther; Ant-Man and the Wasp; Avengers: Infinity War; and Venom. He will also appear in the untitled Avengers movie, due out in 2019.
“Stan’s impact on popular culture is immeasurable,” Tobey Maguire, star of the 2000s’ Spider-Man movies, once said at a Comic-Con event honoring Lee.
Hard as it was to sum up what Lee meant to what we watch, read and consume, the world kept trying. Lee was presented with the Producers Guild’s Vanguard Award, the National Medal of the Arts and a Disney Legends Award. At age 91, he was placed among Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas on Forbes’ annual ranking of the most influential celebrities.
Lee had an aw-shucks take on his career and legacy: “I’m just a guy who wrote comic books,” he would say.
Lee’s own origin story went like this: He was born Stanley Martin Lieber on Dec. 28, 1922, in New York City. In 1939, when he was 17, Martin Goodman, his cousin Jean’s husband, launched Timely Comics, the forerunner to Marvel. Goodman hired the young Lee to refill inkwells for Timely’s editing team, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, both already renowned for having created the star-spangled Captain America.
When Kirby and Simon left Marvel in 1941, Lee was transformed like Peter Parker was from nerdy high-schooler to Spider-Man: The former gofer was tapped to be Timely’s lead writer, art director and editor-in-chief. The latter title was something Lee, outside a break to serve in the Army during World War II, would hold until the 1970s.
In the 1950s, Timely, which morphed to Atlas, which morphed to Marvel, churned out monster, mystery and cowboy tales. Superheroes surfaced only occasionally. Marvel was on the ropes, and Lee was bored.
“Around 1960, I told my wife, ‘I can’t stand this anymore,'” Lee said. “…My wife said, ‘If you want to quit anyway, before you leave why not do a comic or two the way you want.'”
Around the same time, Lee would recall, Goodman told his editor he wanted a superhero team-up title, à la Justice League of America, a then-hot, new hit for rival DC Comics.
A year later, in 1961, the first issue of The Fantastic Four, co-created by Lee and Kirby, who’d returned to the Marvel fold, was published. The title was unlike anything comic-book fans had seen.
Where the JLA was an all-for-one collective of do-gooders, the Fantastic Four was a group of mutants who bickered.
“I changed the whole line around,” Lee would say. “New ways of [characters] talking, hangups, introspection and brooding.”
Lee’s vision for the superhero came down to this: “Inside their colorful, costumed booties they’d still have feet of clay,” he wrote in his book, Origin of Marvel Comics.
The thinking was revolutionary.
“The beauty of Stan Lee’s characters is that they were characters first and superheroes next,” Jeff Kline, a producer of animated series (Transformers Prime, Dragon Tales), once said. “They never just had superpowers.”
Hulk, Iron Man, the X-Men, the Avengers, Nick Fury, the Silver Surfer, Ant-Man and Black Panther were among the flawed heroes and antiheroes Lee and Kirby cranked out, one after the other, through the early 1960s.
“Lee and Kirby were the Lennon and McCartney of comics,” Dark Horse Comics founder Mike Richardson once told the Los Angeles Times.
With Steve Ditko, Lee co-created Spider-Man, the web-slinging outsider who would become, status-wise, Marvel’s equivalent of Superman. It was Lee who penned, in the very first Spider-Man adventure in Amazing Fantasy No. 15, the words that would famously be boiled down to, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
Lee was front and center as Marvel rose like a rocket, and he became a star (complete with his own catchphrase, “Excelsior!”) to baby-boomer and Gen-X readers of the 1960s and 1970s.
In the 1960s, Hollywood began mining Marvel for fodder for children’s cartoons. As comics moved into the mainstream, Marvel heroes went primetime with the 1970s shows The Amazing Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk.
Lee’s characters had a tougher time transitioning to the big screen. While DC scored successes with the Christopher Reeve Superman franchise and the Tim Burton Batman movies, Spider-Man and his cohorts languished in development hell. For a time, the most famous Marvel movie was the one that never got released: the low-budget, Roger Corman-branded Fantastic Four. (Lee was not a producer on that fiasco.) In 1996, Marvel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Then, in 2000, X-Men opened in theaters, and everything changed. The bigger-than-expected hit spawned multiple spinoffs, including the Wolverine and Deadpool movies, and, along with the Sam Raimi Spider-Man that followed in 2002, sent Hollywood on a superhero binge from which it has yet to back away from.
Lee’s name not only appeared in the credits, but the man himself appeared onscreen, a cameo tradition that dated back at least to the 1989 TV-movie The Trial of the Incredible Hulk and will continue with the upcoming Wreck It Ralph sequel, Ralph Breaks the Internet, which open Nov. 21. His 2017 cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 teased that Lee’s omnipresence was due to his being one of the all-seeing Watchers — yet more characters created by Lee and Kirby.
Lee once joked his cameos were the reason the Marvel movies were so successful. “The cameo is very brief,” he said. “Somebody might miss it, you might’ve reached down for popcorn. If you missed a cameo, what do you do? You run to the box office and buy another ticket! So half of the money they’ve made is because of my cameos!”
In 2009, Disney bought Marvel Entertainment, and a price tag was essentially affixed to the characters, adventures and titles that originated at the Lee-era Marvel Comics: $4 billion.
Lee, who stepped down as Marvel publisher in the 1990s, kept a hand in the company as its chairman emeritus. Always a hustler, Lee founded the media company POW! Entertainment and starred in his own reality-TV series, Who Wants to Be a Superhero?.
In 2017, the man who’d left an imprint on so many literally left his prints at the TCL Chinese Theatre. The ceremony was held less than two weeks after Lee’s wife of 69 years, Joan Lee, died at the age of 95.
Lee grappled with claims of elder abuse, which were being investigated by Los Angeles police, in the past year. He was granted a temporary restraining order against a former business manager in June, following a bizarre series of events, including the disappearance of millions from his bank accounts and the sale of his blood to fans. However, he insisted just last month, “There really isn’t that much drama.”
Through it all, Lee showed no signs of slowing down or of losing the ability to spin a good story. Asked once which of his characters was his favorite, Lee answered as any proud parent would: “I love ’em all,” he said.
