Research on the art and history of animation
Memes are everywhere. That’s their most striking feature, really : wherever you go on the Internet, you’re bound to find something that more or less resembles it, from an image macro, to a twisted boomer comic or a completely surreal image that you do not fully understand nor wish to. Memes have become somewhat of … Continue reading Postmodern Media : Memes and Database Consumption
Katsuhiro Otomo’s work in animation is mostly and rightly remembered for his 1988 masterpiece Akira, especially in the West where it has become part of the SF and animation canon. However, just like his career as a mangaka goes beyond Akira, his contribution to anime does not only come down to this behemoth of 80’s … Continue reading Before and after Akira : the themes and motifs of Otomo’s shorts
In a previous essay about otaku identity and militarism, I mentioned that the issue of gender was a central one to understand the development of otaku identity, and most notably, its construction as a dominantly male, SF-oriented narrative. Most of Japanese feminist and queer anime criticism (most notably the work of Mari Kotani) has sadly … Continue reading Gender roles in Gundam and Macross
Thomas Lamarre’s The Anime Machine is undoubtedly one of the most important books dedicated to animation, and especially to anime. It manages to be at the same time a historical overview of anime and its techniques, a thorough analysis of some of its most prominent artists, and a compelling theory of animation and media in … Continue reading On animetism : or, the importance of sakuga to theory
Anime is infamous for its unsuccessful attempts in the horror genre : even though violence is often depicted, the feelings of fear and terror are rarely provoked in the audience. The explanation you most often see comes from the medium itself, animation : because we know, more than in live-action cinema, that what we see … Continue reading Animating terror : Noroi the white weasel
I would roughly say that, in English-translated works, there have been two general historical accounts of the phenomenon called “otaku” : the first, embraced by Toshio Okada, reads in otaku practices the expression of something specifically Japanese. For example, Okada roots otaku’s obsession with encyclopedic knowledge in 18th century Edo period art criticism and trade. … Continue reading Militarism and otaku identity : from Gundam to Macross
Anime as relations of production What have we learned from our general overview ? That anime is difficult to define, obviously ; more precisely, that it is a shape-shifting phenomenon that changes depending on where you look at it from. This means that a definitive and all-inclusive definition is probably impossible. However, one can always … Continue reading Defining anime – Part 3
Is anime what’s on the screen ? While the formulation of this question might seem strange, as it is obvious that anime, as animation, is something that we look at, quite a large part of academic studies has chosen to approach anime indirectly. To put it simply, many scholars chosen to discard an approach of … Continue reading Defining anime – Part 2
In the end of 2016, the publication of the music video Shelter on the online platform r/Anime provoked a controversy : should this work, directed by a an American but produced by a Japanese studio, be considered anime ? An admin of the forum famously denied Shelter the qualification of anime, defining the latter as … Continue reading Defining anime – Part 1
This essay is dedicated to all the artists at Kyoto Animation who died in the 2019 fire attack and whose painstakingly beautiful work is here celebrated. What seems the most beautiful thing to me, what I would wish to do, that would be a book about nothing, a book without any external ties, which would … Continue reading Liz and the Blue Bird : Beyond Realism
Animétudes 