The anime movies Keanu Reeves watched while making ‘The Matrix’
From the contemporary success of John Wick to the Matrix sci-fi series that made him a household, the career of Keanu Reeves has long ridden close to the frenetic world of anime. Indeed, The Matrix, with its revolutionary approach to action filmmaking and John Wick, which is visually inspired by the world of video games and Japanese art, has a lot to owe to the medium of anime.
The influence of anime on some of the greatest movies of his career has inspired Reeves to make a comic of his own, recently taking to San Diego Comic-Con to promote BRZRKR, his new graphic novel he co-created and co-written with Matt Kindt. Telling the story of ‘B’, a man, half-mortal and half-god who has wreaked havoc across 80,000 years of violence, Reeves’ tale isn’t too dissimilar from his seemingly immortal characters Neo from The Matrix and the titular John Wick.
“I was that kid coming back with bags of comic books, and it was always a good day,” Reeves told The Hollywood Reporter when discussing his new concept. Revealing his excitement when it came to the release of the first copy of BRZRKR, he added: “I was like, ‘I’m kind of an adult, and this is the best fucking Christmas I’ve ever fucking had’”.
First introduced to the world of anime during his time on The Matrix, Reeves revealed, “I was watching anime on channel 79, and I didn’t even know what it was”. Yet, this changed when he worked with the Wachowski sisters on The Matrix, “They were like, ‘You need to watch these.’ So it was Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and that’s pretty much the start of it. I’m not really up-to-date on current anime. A couple of my friends have some kids who can just spit anime, and I’m like, ‘That sounds amazing’”.
Taking key visual references from both Akira and Ghost in the Shell from the conception phase of the film all the way through to its final completion, the Wachowskis were arguably responsible for bringing the essence of anime to a mass audience.
This influence was implemented even in the film’s most minor details, too, with the iconic typeface of the movie, created by designer Simon Whiteley, being directly inspired by Ghost in the Shell. Including distorted half-width kana characters and Latin letters and numerals, the typeface quickly became iconic following the release of the movie.
This took Whiteley by surprise, who later stated: “The Matrix code was relatively simple to create…The strange thing is that it’s the most iconic and lasting of all the things I’ve designed”. Now a well-known piece of movie trivia, much of the inspiration he got for the typeface actually came from an undisclosed Japanese sushi book that has never once been revealed by the production team behind the movie.
Take a look at the iconic opening for Ghost in the Shell below and note the similarities it shares with The Matrix.
