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A book sits quietly on a shelf. Then, years later, it breathes fire on a cinema screen. This transformation — from static words to vivid animation — is one of the most complex creative journeys in modern entertainment. It is not simply a copy-paste process. Everything changes: pace, tone, visual language, even the emotional core of the story itself. Fantasy, above all genres, demands the most from animators. Why? Because fantasy worlds exist only in the reader's imagination until someone decides to build them for real.
As a young artist growing up in NYC in the 1990s and early 2000s, anime and sci-fi/fantasy were my life. Robotech/Macross, Rurouni Kenshin, Gundam, Star Wars, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. These adventures (and many more like them) spirited me away from reality. Yet at the same time, these stories also helped me understand reality too as they featured gripping characters who often carried the fate of the entire cosmos on their backs.
But it dawned on me pretty quickly as a Korean American that there was a gap in the types of stories I was consuming. The Chinese had their fantasy epics which blew my mind with their scale and heroism. The Japanese had incredible anime and samurai stories. And of course the Western world gave us space operas and superheroes. My own homeland Korea though? I couldn’t point to any large-scale epic adventure that had its origin in Korean culture.
Thinking about Clarence Boddicker’s glasses from the film RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987) while sitting on the bench outside of the library at around quarter past two in the afternoon, Sebastian sits next to me.
I ask the following: “If Hazbin Hotel became novelised, each book dedicated to a character, when it hits Valentino, who would you want to write him?’”
“George Saunders. He’d get into his head.”
Sebastian’s answer rang a fresh thought across my mind that lingered in my brain for a while until, feverishly, I started noting the bones of this down.
The line between authentic and synthetic has become as thin as it can get, whether by choice or because of the way the world is today. When we look into it deeper, we can see the similarities with Jean Baudrillard's “simulacrum,” a copy without an original, where the representation of something becomes more real than the actual object itself. Animation is an ideal way to explore the concept of “simulacrum” and how it translates into our reality.
A history of animation aesthetics could be written simply by watching a Gaul drink the potion of Getafix the druid, in that famous quarrelsome village nonchalantly defended from Roman conquest by Asterix and Obelix, the indomitable duo born from the imagination of René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo in 1959. In the recent Netflix television series Asterix and Obelix: The Big Fight (2025), Asterix, having downed a sip of the magic brew, soars into the air and begins to change colour, transforming into cyan, magenta, and then yellow; the three colours of print.
When Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (Hiroyuki Imaishi, 2022–) was released, it quickly gained attention for its intense action, emotional storytelling, and striking visual style. Set in the same universe as Cyberpunk 2077, the series dives into the chaotic world of Night City—a place where technology is advanced, but human life often feels disposable. At first glance, it looks like a fast-paced sci-fi story about crime and survival. But beneath that surface, Edgerunners offers something more subtle. It presents a sharp critique of capitalism, one that is built directly into its world, characters, and visual language.
As discussed in Part 1, Shiori’s locket in the Japanese anime series Revolutionary Girl Utena (Kunihiko Ikuhara, 1997) begins as a sealed object that preserves an image and holds desire in place. Once opened, it is no longer an object or vessel made to sustain the appearance of stillness and the stable fantasy that it contains. In this second blog post, I will place the “Black Rose Saga” in dialogue with Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours: Blue (1993), drawing on the work of Slavoj Žižek to think through fetish, fantasy, and the strange space “between two deaths.”
When arthouse streaming service, MUBI, acquired one of the year’s surprisingly successful films, 6x Oscar-nominated The Substance (Coralie Fargeat, 2024), it was originally being distributed by Universal for barely $18M. However, French writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s refusal to cut certain scenes eventually allowed her to shop the film elsewhere. With Fargeat now satisfied and Universal likely banging their heads against the wall, The Substance has become an absolute hit, going on to make $70M+ at the global box office (D’Alessandro, 2024).
In this week’s blog, Fantasy/Animation sat down with Mikkel Mainz of SKJALD Animation studio, a full-pipeline creative house and animation studio located in Denmark, to discuss its experience working on successful web series and feature films, the interpretation of music through animated style, and SKJALD’s future animated projects.
Under the sea, monsters lurk. Despite The Little Mermaid (Ron Clements & John Musker, 1989)’s Sebastian singing about under the sea being better, audiences have long held a fear of the ocean and what lies beneath. It is an understandable fear, linked to the fear of the unknown; after all, it is estimated that 80% of our oceans remain unexplored.
The final episode of the current series of the podcast addresses the phenomenon of KPop Demon Hunters (Maggie Kang & Chris Appelhans, 2025), the most watched original animated film of all time on Netflix whose global reach, critical and commercial success, and intensified fandom has positioned it as central to the contemporary ‘Korean Wave’ marked by the international visibility and popularity of cultural exports produced by South Korea.
For Episode 173, Chris and Alex introduce the films of Michel Ocelot with this close look at the filmmaker’s successful animated adventure film - loosely based on a West African folktale - Kirikou and the Sorceress (Michel Ocelot, 1998). The discussion into the film’s articulation of magical realism, power, and struggle features special guest Lewis C. Seifert, who is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Brown University. Lewis’ research interests encompass early Modern France, gender and sexuality studies, folk narratives, and the environmental humanities, and he is the author of Fairy Tales, Sexuality, and Gender in France, 1690-1715: Nostalgic Utopias (Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France (University of Michigan Press, 2009).
The Fantasy/Animation podcast welcomes as its special guest for Episode 172 Professor Karen Redrobe, who is Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Professor and Undergraduate Chair in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work traverses film theory, animation, and feminism, and she is the author of Vanishing Women: Magic, Film, and Feminism (2003) and the new book Undead: (Inter)(in)animation, Feminisms, and the Art of War (2025), as well as editor of Animating Film Theory (2014) and Deep Mediations: Thinking Space in Cinema and Digital Cultures (2021, with Jeff Scheible). In this instalment, Karen introduces Chris and Alex to the life and career of the artist and filmmaker Helen Hill, who died in 2007 aged only 36, but whose ebullient imagination on display across her experimental shorts pushed at the boundaries of direct animation, stop-motion, and do-it-yourself methods of animated filmmaking.
The latest episode of the Fantasy/Animation podcast marvels at the era of technologically-powered immersive experiences and high-tech live concert performances through a case study of the Sphere Las Vegas, whose 16K resolution/160,000-square-foot wraparound screen was announced via a series of 40 virtual reality concerts held by U2 between September 2023 to March 2024. Joining Chris and Alex as they navigate these new forms of concert illusion is Dr Tim Jones, an Assistant Professor of Media Arts at Robert Morris University who specialises in animation, film history, media production, and Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) experience design.
The Fantasy/Animation podcast has a new theme tune! Click here to read about its origins and influences from composer Francisca Araujo.
Building off the recent podcast on KPop Demon Hunters (Maggie Kang & Chris Appelhans, 2025), Footnote #80 examines Netflix as a popular digital platform via both the context (and illusion) of choice and the algorithmic processes that create, tailor, and appeal to our audiovisual desires, but equally Netflix’s contribution to the contemporary landscape of media production and consumption.
For Footnote #79, Chris and Alex engage the seminal work of Edward Said and his coining and development of Orientalism as a critical framework for mapping the acceptance of the presence of a distinction between East and West, and the terms under which such a geographical and, crucially, conceptual division has been understood.
Footnote #78 of the podcast focuses on the imagination as Alex takes Chris through the world of generative cognition and the many philosophical reflections that discuss our mental forces, which in turn allow us to conjure ideas, thoughts, concepts, and images that do not exist in the material world.
What might it mean for animation to ‘expand’? Footnote 77 confronts the performances and technologies of expanded animation, a term that speaks to both the broadening out of animation and its many sites of production, exhibition, and consumption, as well as those intermedial or multimedia live works that involve different kinds of animated images.
Fantasy/Animation gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Society for Animation Studies (SAS).
Fantasy/Animation gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the ASIFA-Hollywood’s Animation Educators Forum 2021 Faculty Grant
Cristina Kovacs is a passionate creator of digital art with a focus on character design and visual development. Her dream is to make a difference by connecting and inspiring people of all walks of life through creativity and zeal in the field of animation. Her senior capstone, The Mermaid of Venice, is a visual development pitch deck for a proposed 5-7 animated short film. Its story begins in 17th century Venice, when masquerade balls are at the height of their historical popularity—and humans are not the only guests in attendance.