When I first encountered the part of L. M. Montgomery’s 1911 book The Story Girl that contained the tale of “The Wedding Veil of the Proud Princess,” I was struck by a sense of recognition. As a director and storyteller myself, it felt less like discovering a story and more like remembering one I had always known, a fairy tale so archetypal that it seemed impossible it was not already part of the shared cultural canon. Its setup of a beautiful princess who declares she will only marry the king who conquers all kings, and the payoff of this turning out to be Death himself, has all the hallmarks of a medieval fairy tale.

What is animation’s relationship to the real? Much of animation scholarship – from Eisenstein’s glowing affection for ‘plasmatic[ness]’ to the newly codified photoreal (46) – dedicates itself to the pursuit of this question, probing the structures and ontologies of our inherently fantastic medium. As comprehensive as these critiques are, however, the vast majority refuse to question animation’s greatest obstacle to reality: the screen. Like its live-action cousins in film, most animation remains bounded by a flat plane, unable to interact with the tangible dimensions of our landscape. The advent of projected animation (a lamentably untheorised field!) explodes these boundaries, as the animated ‘real’ ventures beyond the surface and into the physical world of stagecraft.

Superheroes are a staple of American culture, following the adventures of men and women in tights who use their superhuman gifts to defeat villains that terrorize their hometown. However, one question has been commonly wondered by readers and viewers alike: What happens when the hero loses and the bad guy wins? The 2010 animated film Megamind, directed by Tom McGrath, may just have the most disruptive yet meaningful answer to this hypothetical. As the titular supervillain wins a battle against Metro City’s caped saviour after decades of failed attempts, everything else about the city seems to fall apart on its own after its core narrative event has been rewritten, and DreamWorks retorts with an even deeper question: what if the bad guy was never the bad guy at all?

Threshold Animation Studios’ 2012 animated feature film Foodfight! (Lawrence Kasanoff, 2012) is considered by critics and the audience as one of the worst animated productions of all time. But while Foodfight! performed poorly at the box office, in home video sales, and in critic and audience reviews, the film is often overlooked as a perfect example within the animation industry of everything that can go wrong when making an animated film. To understand its colossal failure, context in how, why, and when it was created is essential.

Look Back (2024), directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama and written by Tatsuki Fujimoto, explores the emotional struggles involved when maintaining artistic motivation, told through the story of protagonists Fujino and Kyomoto. Through an expressive use of animation sound, and colour, the film immerses viewers in a narrative that examines the complicated relationship that artists often have with creativity as they seek validation and self-worth. This blog will analyse how Look Back, along with its manga counterpart, portrays the emotional complexities of creative ambition, burnout, and identity, while reflecting the internal conflicts many artists face when the passion in their art begins to waver.

Common notions about the homeless have been perpetuated through demeaning tropes that only fuel their ostracism from society. Almost every television programme or film has depicted homeless people before, often portraying them in a negative light, using them for comedic relief, or simply treating them as shallow background characters, without ever addressing their situation seriously. Japanese film director Satoshi Kon, however, shines a spotlight on the personal experiences of these people, who often come from different backgrounds, by making them the main characters in his animated feature film, Tokyo Godfathers (2003).  Set in a snowy Tokyo at Christmas, the story follows Hana, a transgender woman and former drag queen, Gin, a middle-aged alcoholic, and Miyuki, a teenage runaway taken care of by Hana and Gin. While picking through trash, the three are interrupted by the cries of an abandoned baby. Not knowing of the parents’ whereabouts, Hana insists that they take care of this baby until they find them, to the dismay of Miyuki and Gin.

The historical context of the one-child policy, alongside personal anecdotes and experiences, make the stop motion film Sister (Siqi Song, 2018) emotionally impactful. The film’s unique story of presenting a life with his little sister to only take it away and show the life he experienced alone is symbolic of the life of being an older brother taken from him. Creator and director Siqi Song displays the life-altering effects of the one-child policy with details of her own personal experiences of and relationship to Chinese culture. Through historical commentary, she crafts a compelling experience that reflects the policy’s emotional impact on China and its population through the creative treatment of her culture.