Filipino Culture Dominates Animation this Year...

S U N  C H A S E R
Episode One

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.

Memories Serve as Fuel for a Malevolent Entity...

Forgotten Island

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.

Forgotten Island in theaters September 25, 2026

Legendary manga and anime creator dies at 85...

LEIJI MATSUMOTO
(January 25, 1938 - February 13, 2023)
Famed Japanese manga and anime creator Leiji Matsumoto,
whose real name was Akira Matsumoto, has died at age 85

Leiji Matsumoto was famous for his space operas such as Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999. His style was characterized by mythological and often tragic storylines with strong moral themes, noble heroes, feminine heroines, and a love of strange worlds and melancholy atmosphere.

Leiji Matsumoto was born on January 25, 1938, in Kurume, Fukuoka. He was the middle child of a family of seven brothers, and, in his early childhood, Matsumoto was given a 35mm film projector by his father, and watched American cartoons during the Pacific War. During this time, he gained an interest in science fiction novels by authors Unno Juza and H. G. Wells. Matsumoto started drawing at the age of six, and began drawing manga three years later after seeing the works of Osamu Tezuka. At 18, he moved to Tokyo, to become a manga artist.

Matsumoto made his debut under his real name, Akira Matsumoto, in 1954 with Mitsubachi no bōken in the magazine Manga Shōnen.

Matsumoto had his big break with Otoko Oidon, a series that chronicled the life of a rōnin (a young man preparing for university entrance exams), in 1971. In 1972 he created the mature-themed dark comedy Western seinen series, Gun Frontier, for Play Comic magazine, which ran from 1972 to 1975. Around the same time he started a series of unconnected short stories set during World War II, Senjo Manga Series, which would eventually become popular under the title The Cockpit.

He was involved in Space Battleship Yamato (1974) and created the highly popular series Space Pirate Captain Harlock and Galaxy Express 999 (both 1977). In 1978, he was awarded the Shogakukan Manga Award for shōnen for Galaxy Express 999 and Senjo Manga Series. Animated versions of Captain Harlock and Galaxy Express 999 are set in the same universe, which spanned several spin offs and related series, most notably Queen Emeraldas and Queen Millennia.

Matsumoto supervised the creation of several music videos for the French house group Daft Punk, set to tracks from their album Discovery. These videos were issued end-to-end (making a full-length animated movie) on a DVD release titled Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem.

About two dozen bronze statues – each perhaps four feet tall – of characters and scenes from Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999 were erected in the downtown area of Tsuruga in 1999. Each statue includes a plaque at its base explaining the character and featuring Matsumoto's signature.

Matsumoto worked with Yoshinobu Nishizaki on Space Battleship Yamato (known outside Japan under various names, but most commonly as Star Blazers). Matsumoto created a manga loosely based on the series, and the Yamato makes cameo appearances (sans crew) in several of his works including the Galaxy Express 999 manga.

A later work by Matsumoto called Great Yamato featuring an updated Yamato had to be renamed Great Galaxy due to legal issues with Nishizaki. As of 2009, Matsumoto and Nishizaki were working on independent anime projects featuring the acclaimed Space Battleship Yamato, with the conditions that Matsumoto cannot use the name Yamato or the plot or characters from the original, and Nishizaki cannot use the conceptual art, character or ship designs of the original.

In August 2014, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his debut, Matsumoto launched the manga Captain Harlock ~Jigen Kōkai~ (Captain Harlock: Dimensional Voyage), illustrated by Kōichi Shimahoshi, in the pages of Akita Shoten's Champion Red magazine. Dimensional Voyage is a retelling of the original 1978 Space Pirate Captain Harlock manga. It had been licensed in the U.S. by Seven Seas.

Matsumoto was married to manga artist and Licca-chan creator Miyako Maki.

On November 15, 2019, Matsumoto suffered severe respiratory problems and collapsed during an event in Turin, Italy, for the 40th-anniversary tour celebrating the Captain Harlock anime adaptation. He was taken to a hospital in critical condition and had a breathing tube inserted after he was admitted to the emergency unit. However, he was considered to be out of danger two days later.

Matsumoto died of acute heart failure at a hospital in Tokyo on February 13, 2023, at the age of 85.

Sayonara, Mr. Leiji Matsumoto! You will be sorely missed.

Joe Ruby, co-creator of Scooby-Doo, Dies at age 87

JOE RUBY
(March 30, 1933 - August 26, 2020)
Writer and co-creator of Scooby-Doo

[Source: Yahoo!] Joe Ruby, who has died aged 87, was an American animator, writer and co-creator of the cartoon favorite Scooby-Doo, the intellectually challenged talking Great Dane, who has entertained children over five decades.

The simple tales of Scooby and four teenagers hunting ghosts in their “mystery machine” van first aired on CBS in America in 1969. It soon became a huge success in the UK, too, and went on to become a global franchise worth billions of dollars.

Scooby and his gang, Norville “Shaggy” Rogers, Velma Dinkley, Daphne Blake and Freddie Jones, were dreamed up by Ruby and Ken Spears, Hanna Barbera’s head storymen, after Joseph Barbera had been approached by the CBS executive programme maker Fred Silverman.

Silverman wanted a child-friendly cartoon “mystery show” with the working title “Who’s S-S-Scared?” for the station’s Saturday morning slot. It was Ruby and Spears who suggested that a dog should be the star of the show. They originally thought of a creating a big, comically cowardly sheepdog, before settling on a Great Dane.

The dog was originally going to be called Too Much but, listening to music on a flight from New York to Los Angeles, Silverman misheard Frank Sinatra’s scat sequence at the end of Strangers in the Night: “As we’re going in for the landing, Frank Sinatra comes on and I hear him say ‘Scooby dooby doo’.”

At first the CBS thought the artwork for the Great Dane was “too frightening” for an intended audience of children, but Hanna-Barbera’s art director Iwao Takamoto saved the day by making Scooby comically big and clumsy, with a hump back, bowed legs and big chin.

The eponymous Great Dane

Don Messick, the voice of Muttley on Wacky Races, was picked to speak Scooby-Doo’s lines and decided to add to the comedy by introducing rolling r’s into Scooby-Doo’s speech pattern. The dog would frequently say “Ruh-roh, Raggy” as he jumped into the arms of his hapless sidekick Shaggy.

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? was an instant hit on CBS, and the early programmes created a formula for several revivals as well as film adaptations, numerous spin-off series and lines of merchandise. Scooby-Doo routinely features in polls of the best cartoon characters of all time.

The series also spawned suggestions of inner meanings. The way that Shaggy was always giggling in the back of the Mystery Machine, and was constantly suffering from “the munchies”, fuelled rumours that the character was a hippy “pothead”, while there were claims that “Scooby Snacks” were not really dog biscuits, but cannabis brownies.

Scooby and the gang, l-r, Velma, Shaggy, Daphne and Fred - PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy

However, in his memoir My Life With a Thousand Characters, Iwao Takamoto denied there were any veiled drug references in the series: “Drugs of any kind were an anathema to Joe Ruby; he hated them.”

Joe Clemens Ruby was born on March 30 1933 in Los Angeles, where he attended Fairfax High School. During the Korean War he served in the US Navy as a sonar operator on a destroyer.

He began his career at Walt Disney Productions as an assistant animator, before moving to Hanna-Barbera Productions, where he met his writing partner Ken Spears in 1959.

As well as Scooby-Doo, the pair were credited with creating cartoon characters including Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, Jabberjaw, The Barkleys, and The Houndcats.

In 1977 they founded their own production company, Ruby-Spears, which created Alvin and the Chipmunks, Mr T, Superman and Thundarr the Barbarian.

Ruby also wrote the sci-fi thriller series Planet of the Apes (1974) and the horror film Rumpelstiltskin (1995).

Joe Ruby is survived by his wife Carole, whom he married in 1957, and by two sons and two daughters.