Next Club Meeting:October 17, 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.
A reluctant teen discovers he's the next "Spirit Guardian" and sets sail across the Sea of a Million Islands to save his grandmother, uncover the truth behind his missing father, and stop a growing darkness from consuming the human and spirit worlds.
While celebrating their last night together, Jo and Raissa stumble upon a mysterious portal that transports them to the fantastical island of Nakali, packed with magical and mythological creatures they grew up hearing stories about from their Filipino families. Some of these figures will become friends, some foes. Joined by well-meaning-but- hapless weredog Raww (Dave Franco) and a small-but-mighty pack of pals, Jo and Raissa must face The Dreaded Manananggal (Tony winning icon Lea Salonga), the most feared creature on the island. When they discover that the memories of their entire friendship are the price for returning home, Jo and Raissa will race to find a way to leave the island before they forget each other forever.
This Affects All Anime Fans and Its Entire Culture
Studio GAINAX is responsible for creating cult classics like Gun Busters, Gurren Lagann, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Die Buster, FLCL "Fooly Cooly", Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, and so many more. After decades of mismanagement and multiple directors / animators leaving the company to form their own studios like Khara and TRIGGER. Studio Gainax officially closes its doors after a long 42 years of legacy.
Join me as I travel across Japan to uncover the places which inspired Studio Ghibli's "Spirited Away". From stunning bathhouses, to an ancient festival which Hayao Miyazaki used as the basis of his iconic Spirit World.
"Lucky the Leprechaun's loss is our loss. When Lucky's cereal is taken from him, who is really getting robbed? We are. Raising children to turn a blind eye to petty crime steals our future from us. But we can get it back. We can fight for our future. Our lucky charms are: hope, compassion, family, and hard work. That ... that is what's really lucky." - Don Draper
Gundam creator says Disney movies are BORING & SAD!
The creator of Gundam says Disney animation is BORING and he's worried that Japanese anime will follow suit. Japan is doing well when it comes to entertainment with manga, anime, and their own movies, and Hollywood has taken notice. One Piece, The Boy and The Heron, and Godzilla Minus One are dominating American screens!
Tokushima's Awa Odori (阿波おどり) is the most famous of many dance festivals held across Japan during the Obon season in mid August. Awa is the former name for Tokushima Prefecture while Odori means dance.
The Awa Odori festival grew out of the tradition of the Bon Odori which is danced as part of the Bon "Festival of the Dead", a Japanese Buddhist celebration where the spirits of deceased ancestors are said to visit their living relatives for a few days of the year.
Mr. Fujiwara is Japan's Top Pet Detective. We were lucky enough to spend 2 weeks with him and his team, as we searched out lost pets. An experience unlike any we've ever had. An unbelievable story about a very unique job. Mr Fujiwara's Pet Detective Service can be found here: https://www.rescue-pet.com/
‘Ghost Book’ (GHOSTBOOK おばけずかん) is a 2022 Japanese fantasy adventure directed by Takashi Yamazaki. Based on the picture book ‘Obake Zukan’ written by Hiroshi Saito and illustrated by Etsuyoshi Miyamoto, the film revolves around a group of school children who discover a book that leads them to a magical world filled with various ghosts and monsters. The cast includes Kairi Jyo, Fuga Shibazaki, Sonny Mcclendon, Fumika Yoshimura, Ryunosuke Kamiki, and Yui Aragaki.
Synopsis: Sixth-grade elementary school students Kazuki, Taichi, and Sunny have a “wish” they really want to make come true. The boys pray earnestly with their hands at the shrine. Then suddenly, the wish-granting “Ghost Book” gives them a test. Guided by the magic of the book, the boys and their homeroom teacher, Ms. Yohko, wander into a different world where ghosts live. They try to escape through trial and error but it seems that by catching the ghosts and completing the book, their wishes will come true and they will be able to escape from this world. Thus, the five work together and hope to make their wish come true… [Source: JFDB]
(at Good Smile Company located in Akihabara Tokyo)
This is a typical Japanese working day at the office at one of the top figure production companies in Japan. Creating all sorts of popular figures like Jujutsu Kaisen, and even Kimetsu no Yaiba! We follow Sho from morning until evening to see what a complete day would be like working at a Japanese figure making company. Sho works in Japan as a Genkeishi, also known as a Figure Sculptor. Sho sculpts his anime figure prototypes by hand using Nendo, in English putty or clay, in his case, a polyester putty. And for his main tools, uses a toothpick to add putty and a sharp q tip to smooth out the surface. Today, he is working on a Nedoroido (Nendoroid) style figure. We also meet and talk to some of the other office workers in the Japanese company and give a full office tour. This is life in Tokyo for a Japanese anime and manga figure sculptor.
An old Chinese legend tells of the painter Wu Daozi (680-c760), who learned to paint so vividly that he was finally able to step inside his work and vanish into the landscape. Magical though it sounds, this legend iterates the common intuition that artworks are more like portals than ordinary objects: they can transport us into other worlds. When I look at Pieter Bruegel’s The Hunters in the Snow (1565), I feel like I was there in the frost-bitten village, rather than the galleries of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. When reading Crime and Punishment (1866), the letters on the page conjure a whole world, and in some sense I am no longer in my living room but right there in Dostoevsky’s Russia; the cinema, too, is a gateway to faraway galaxies and past centuries.
Even non-representational works can take hold of us, like the breathing colour fields of Mark Rothko’s paintings or the beautiful ambience of Max Richter’s music. Sometimes, artworks have such a magnetic pull that we forget the actual world around us and lose our sense of time and place, of other people – and sometimes even of ourselves. The French art critic Denis Diderot (1713-84) called such immersive experiences ‘art at its most magical’. Once a painting by Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714-89) pulled Diderot inside a pastoral river scene so completely and enjoyably that he compared the experience to a divine mode of existence:
Where am I at this moment? What is all this surrounding me? I don’t know, I can’t say. What’s lacking? Nothing. What do I want? Nothing. If there is a God, his being must be like this, taking pleasure in himself.
No wonder, then, that there is a certain sense of wistfulness when it all ends, when the lights come up or the last page is turned, and we find ourselves back where we were, forced to carry on with our daily lives.
The idea of artworks as portals to other worlds dates back several centuries, and it has become a commonplace way of talking about our experiences with art. In Pictures and Tears (2001), the art historian James Elkins called it the ‘travelling theory’ of aesthetic experience. The obvious problem with this theory, however, is that it sounds terribly metaphorical. In reality, I never leave my place in physical space. I’m there in the gallery, the auditorium or on my sofa all along. Try as I might, I cannot enter Bruegel’s landscape by touching the canvas, nor can I run into the world of Hamlet by running onto the stage. The artwork allows me only to peer as if from a threshold, where I can see inside but never enter. Here we face what I call the paradox of aesthetic immersion: when I’m immersed in artwork, I seem to go somewhere without going anywhere, and I seem to be in two worlds at once, and yet I’m not properly in either. So what kind of ‘travelling’ are we talking about?
Today we are wandering through a moss-filled temple in the Japanese countryside of Ishikawa. Quite possibly one of the most beautiful temple grounds that the country of Japan has to offer. Today, we explore the beautiful grounds of the Natadera Temple.
A young boy hopes to become the Lion's Head in the traditional Chinese Lion Dance, but a group of bullies try to dash his dreams. Can he find his inner Lion to overcome his foes and be the hero he needs to be?
The creator of the Japanese anime manga Love Hina has some concerns over the future of his industry! He calls out Tokyo, Japan and their progressive new policy!
ALL Kathleen Kennedy Projects Delayed or CANCELLED!
News from Overlord DVD:
Information has been flooding in from MANY of my sources that there has been a MASSIVE UPHEAVAL at Lucasfilm, and ALL of Kathleen Kennedy's projects have been delayed or CANCELLED. Rogue Squadron was only the tip of the iceberg according to these rumors, EVERYTHING is gone, including Rian Johnson's Star Wars trilogy! This is one of the most information-intense videos I've ever made, with each item in it worthy of its own video, so watch it to the end to get every detail out of it, but either way you cut it, Kathleen Kennedy's reign over Lucasfilm appears to finally be at an end!
