by Rollin Bishop

Got 40 minutes and a hankering for something animated that bends visual rules? Spend that time watching the full pilot animatic for Jorge R. Gutierrez's El Guapo vs The Narco Vampires, a first taste of the adult animation series which creator Gutierrez hopes to make.

"I’m currently bleeding (joyfully) all over a brand-new indie adult animation pilot called EL GUAPO VS THE NARCO VAMPIRES," Gutierrez shared on social media back in July 2025. "It’s pretty insane. It’s totally unhinged. I love it with all my mustached heart."

The animatic — the first three minutes of which are fully animated by Anima Estudios — follows the tale of El Guapo, a Mexican luchador, voiced by Gutierrez, who ends up indebted to a cartel of narco vampires. He and his brother end up paying the price for El Guapo's debt, but the eponymous wrestler is given another chance and returns to the land of the living in order to redeem himself. To say that there are adult themes would be an understatement; there's gore and sex and violence and more gore, but also plenty of comedy.

I can't quite remember when I first became aware of Gutierrez's work. El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, which he created with Sandra Equihua, aired on Nickelodeon while I distractedly muddled through college, but it's something I was aware of if not actually watched. I suspect the 2014 movie The Book of Life is where my interest was first piqued, but it wasn't until Netflix announced Maya and the Three back in 2018 as part of an impressive animation slate that I really started paying attention.

Since Maya and the Three came and went in 2021, Gutierrez has been attached to a number of different projects that are either still in development or appear to have been canceled or haven't quite made it to the stage of actually being announced. As just one example, a potential sequel to Maya and the Three, Kung-Fu Space Punch, ultimately got the axe at Netflix Animation in 2022. (Not that this phased Gutierrez, who noted that it was the third time that Kung-Fu Space Punch had died in development and that The Book of Life ultimately took 14 years to happen.)

"The hope and dream is that if enough people around the world like what they see, we can find a studio partner to help finance and distribute this epic 9-episode (30-minute episodes) adult animated limited series," Gutierrez says in the YouTube upload's description. "This is my first-ever foray into the indie adult animation world, so it’s a big, bold experiment for me."

There are several stylistic touches I associate with Gutierrez's work, not the least of which is distinctive character designs, but the one that always makes me sit up and pay attention is the way in which he plays with letterboxing. There are frequently black mattes above and below any given shot, but these aren't simply static placements — they are foreground, background, and stretch, shift, or move as needed.

Need to emphasize action? Have the characters literally break out of the screen by moving in front of the letterbox. Want to drill down on movement? Don't just move the scene! Move the letterbox too. It's a fun, fascinating choice that more animators should lean on, and I love that Gutierrez so regularly does so.

Here's hoping he gets the chance to experiment even more and that the story of El Guapo doesn't end here.

/out of frame

💀 Rollin: While Kam didn't include it in his recent anime season guide, I was immediately drawn to SHIBOYUGI: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table this season. Partly because the name is an absolute mouthful, and partly because I'd seen some peers heap praise on it. It, uh, goes places, and I look forward to seeing how the season unfolds.

🧟 Kambole: Primal is back! Genndy Tartakovsky bringing Spear back from the dead as a shambling zombie opens up some genuinely very emotional (and crucially, silent) storytelling with a boldness that feels rare for American animated series right now. The entire season is incredible. The timing is also uncanny - with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (which I saw yesterday) walking a surprisingly similar path in how it reconsiders what the zombie can symbolically stand for.