Halo Legends is an anthology film featuring 7 short stories that are set in the Halo universe. Prominent Japanese animation studios were assigned to create their own visual interpretation of Halo, resulting in a varied collection of art style, storytelling while staying true to the Halo franchise, and retaining the familiar and iconic Halo soundtrack.

The Halo franchise is one of the most popular franchises in gaming history and a killer app for the Xbox gaming platforms. The thing is, Xbox consoles didn’t fare well in the Japanese market, because there were no games that appealed to a typical Japanese gamer. Add to that fact, Microsoft had to deal with two gaming giants namely Nintendo and Sony’s Playstation series of consoles. Maybe this was Microsoft’s attempt to get a foothold in Japan by letting the top animation studios in Japan. Or just maybe, anime is more flexible and offers more stylistic approaches to art, animation, and story. Besides, gamers are also (usually) anime fans and seeing their favorite video game getting an anime treatment, you’d get the best of both worlds. Oh yeah, Toei Animation did one of the stories in Halo Legends titled “Odd One Out” and it involves the spartan, two youths with Dragon Ball Z physics. Oh yes, you heard that right! Odd One Out is non-canon, obviously, but it’s one hell of a fun story!

Much like Halo Legends, Batman: Gotham Knight is another anthology film based on DC Comic’s caped crusader and dark knight, Batman. The short stories revolve around the first two films of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy that featured a drearier, darker and a more realistic approach to the Batman Universe.

Compared to the other two films, Batman: Gotham Knight is a short anthology film only containing 6 stories, but each story was masterfully crafted by Japan’s best studios namely Bee Train, Production I.G, Madhouse, and Studio 4°C. And the stories are varied as well from a group of kids imagining what Batman actually is to Batman dealing with crime syndicates to Batman realizing that no matter how he tries, he can never rid of Gotham of crime; and we watch Batman do battle against a couple of iconic villains.

Anime and Batman mix well together and Japan loves anti-heroes with tragic backstories, and Batman is the kind of hero studios like Madhouse loves. If only Warner Bros. hired Madhouse to adapt The Killing Joke instead... Ugh, God, the animated adaptation of one of the best Batman stories ever was poor. Do yourself a favor: Go read The Killing Joke comics than watch this abomination of an adaptation by Warner Bros.

Based on the Matrix franchise by the Wachowskis, The Animatrix is a collection of 9 short films featuring stories that expand upon the Matrix universe. These animation shorts handled by different Japanese animation studios fall within the Matrix canon, from a story detailing the fate of the Osiris and how they warned Zion of a direct invasion from the Machines, to flashbacks on how everything began.

This is the film that started the craze of hiring Japanese studios to expand the universe of a franchise or series. It naturally made sense for the Wachowskis to hire Japanese studios to create the Animatrix because the Matrix film franchise was heavily inspired by anime and Japanese culture. What sets The Animatrix apart from the two titles is the stories follows canonly and four of the stories were written by the same Wachowskis that wrote the Matrix Trilogy. The first short film “Final Flight of the Osiris” detailed how the ill-fated hovercraft discovered the Machines started digging from the surface down to Zion, the last human city. The two-part “The Second Renaissance” tells the history of how Man created the Machines and how the Machines gained sentience. It also details how Man starting hating on the Machines that resulted in a bloody war that scarred the planet, and how the Machine eventually enslaved humanity as their main source of energy. The rest of the shorts are stories from various perspectives of individuals who started to notice the world they’re living in isn’t real.

The Animatrix, overall, is a good example on how to create an anthology film to properly expand the universe by creating unique stories, using different art styles from very different animation studios, and at the same time, being loyal to the original source material.