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.

The Firebird Suite, based upon Igor Stravinsky’s 1919 orchestral concert work of the same name, is a short animation directed by Gaetan and Paul Brizzi, released in 1999 as a segment within the larger animated feature Fantasia 2000 (Don Hahn, Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy, Eric Goldberg, James Algar, Francis Glebas, Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi, 1999) (Fig. 1). Within her introduction segment for both the animation and the orchestral piece from which it was derived, famed actress and film producer Angela Lansbury described The Firebird Suite as a “mythical story of life, death, and renewal.” In doing so, she alighted upon the simultaneous, unified, and diametrical relationships of inherently contrasting elements, such as death and life, and darkness and light, to one another —a concept that would come to serve as the primary narrative catalyst for both media.

Arcane, directed by Pascal Charrue, Arnaud Delord, and Bart Maunoury in 2024, is a tale of two sisters and their tumultuous relationship shaped by the neighbouring cities around them. Their choices influence the future of these cities, and the impact each has on the other is profound. However, there lies an alternate timeline where other aspects of the world are explored, and the audience gets a glimpse of what could have been. As this blog post shows, season two, episode seven of Arcane titled “Pretend Like It's the First Time,” contrasted with the series as a whole, portrays psychological disorders not as a flaw but a facet of character through the lens of narrative and colour using a girl named Powder.