Posts in EDITORIAL
Hazbin Hotel: The Villain is in the Details, and the Threshold Between Fantasy and Reality
Hazbin Hotel: The Villain is in the Details, and the Threshold Between Fantasy and Reality

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.

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EDITORIALDaniel ApplebyVILLAINY, GENDER, STYLE, TELEVISIONComment
Why Animation Is the Perfect Medium to Explore Simulacra
Why Animation Is the Perfect Medium to Explore Simulacra

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.

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EDITORIALPam BrownONTOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, FICTIONAL WORLDS, SPECTATORSHIPComment
The Animation in the Cauldron: Asterix's Magic Potion on Screen
The Animation in the Cauldron: Asterix's Magic Potion on Screen

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.

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EDITORIALFederico CadalanuFRANCE, ADAPTATION, COMIC BOOK, MAGICComment
The Hidden Critique of Capitalism Inside Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (Hiroyuki Imaishi, 2022–)
The Hidden Critique of Capitalism Inside Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (Hiroyuki Imaishi, 2022–)

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.

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EDITORIALLinda CarpenterVIDEO GAME, POLITICAL, FANTASY Comment
To the End of the World: The Haunted Architecture of Desire & The Triangulation of Longing - Part 2
To the End of the World: The Haunted Architecture of Desire & The Triangulation of Longing - Part 2

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.”

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EDITORIALYouxi ChenANIME, TELEVISION, JAPAN, GENDERComment
To the End of the World: The Haunted Architecture of Desire & The Triangulation of Longing - Part 1
To the End of the World: The Haunted Architecture of Desire & The Triangulation of Longing - Part 1

Revolutionary Girl Utena, the Japanese anime television series that first aired in 1997, follows Tenjō Utena, a tomboyish girl who dreams of becoming a prince and knight in shining armour. Upon entering the fantastical and highly hierarchical Ohtori Academy, Utena soon entangles herself in the ritualised duels of the Student Council, fighting for the mysterious Rose Bride, Himemiya Anthy, a figure objectified by those who compete for her hand. The series has a particular cyclical structure, with each episode lasting less than 30 minutes and structured into three narrative sections—episodes 1 to 13 form the “Student Council Saga”, episodes 14 to 23 comprise the “Black Rose Saga”, and episodes 24 to 39 conclude with the “Apocalypse Saga”. The structural arrangements highlight the series’ heightened theatricality, resulting in a tightly choreographed work with a recursive and self-reflexive mode of storytelling. As the series unfolds, Utena’s story spirals into a vibrant phantasmagoria with variations on themes of adolescence, trauma, desire, and revolution.

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EDITORIALYouxi ChenANIME, TELEVISION, JAPAN, GENDERComment
How Arcane (Riot Games/Fortiche Production, 2021–) Visualizes Class Conflict Through Its Fantasy World
How Arcane (Riot Games/Fortiche Production, 2021–) Visualizes Class Conflict Through Its Fantasy World

When Arcane (Riot Games/Fortiche Production, 2021–) first came out, most people focused on how beautiful it looked. And that makes sense. The painterly animation is striking right away. But what really makes the series stand out is something deeper. It shows class conflict in a way that feels almost physical. Not just through the story, but through the world itself. In Arcane, inequality is not explained to you. You see it instantly.

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EDITORIALLinda CarpenterVIDEO GAME, REPRESENTATION, ANIMATIONComment
Evolution of American Animation
Evolution of American Animation

Upon watching an animated television programme or a feature film, we do not always think about how it came to be. I do not mean what was involved in the production process, or the direction, rather about why it looks the way it does. Indeed, the American animation industry, over the course of a hundred years, has continually changed and evolved from what it has been before in drastic ways. With indie authors becoming more and more prominent within the animated landscape, we might witness a further new tide in the industry regarding the kinds of stories being told and explorations into the medium’s creative freedom. Still, since I was a child U.S. animation has evoked many questions in my mind. How did the American animation industry evolve over the course of its existence? How have it changed to become what it is now?

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EDITORIALVladimirov IhorRACE, HOLLYWOOD, REPRESENTATION, IDENTITYComment
Therapies and Rituals
Therapies and Rituals

Anyone who has spent some time at film festivals will be familiar with a certain tendency in non-fiction cinema: film-makers turning process into therapy, and their film itself into a document of their psychological and personal journey as they deal with unsolved family issues or the need to find identity or come to terms with loss or (rarely) happier aspects of the human condition. A number of titles come to mind even as I type: from Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie (2015) to Marusya Syroechkovskaya’s How to Save a Dead Friend (2022). It is very much a formula, the popularity of which owes more than a little to the widely-held belief, among programmers and agents, that these films fulfil their obligation to the art-house crowds (you can’t go wrong with meta-cinema) while also basking in the broader appeal of shared human experiences.

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EDITORIALPM CicchettiEMOTION, MEMORY, STOP-MOTIONComment
Animating Ambivalence: Quebec Contemporary Animation and Death Does Not Exist at the Ottawa International Animation Festival 2025
Animating Ambivalence: Quebec Contemporary Animation and Death Does Not Exist at the Ottawa International Animation Festival 2025

Over the last twenty years, the province of Quebec in Canada has built an internationally recognized cultural and digital ecosystem, particularly in the visual effects (VFX) (Mikros Animation, Rodeo FX) and animation (Cinesite, National Film Board) sectors. In 2023, these production studios and facilities represented more than $1.4 billion in revenue and thousands of jobs in Quebec, thanks largely to heavy involvement in successful foreign productions and fiscal benefits. However, in recent years, this business model has shown its weaknesses: the workers strike from the American entertainment union SAG-AFTRA in summer 2023, followed by the Quebec government's decision in May 2024 to cap tax credits for foreign entertainment companies employing in Quebec – reducing the credit rebate from 100% to 65% (Bongiorno 2024) – highlighted the structural precariousness of the local workforce (Arsenault, 2024).

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EDITORIALAurélie PetitNATIONAL CINEMA, HISTORY, AESTHETICS, INDUSTRYComment
Isle of Dogs (2018) as a Love Letter to the Japanese Culture
Isle of Dogs (2018) as a Love Letter to the Japanese Culture

When Wes Anderson unveiled his new stop-motion film Isle of Dogs in 2018, audiences perhaps expected another symphony of symmetry, irony, and warm absurdity. But here the action had shifted to Japan — a country whose aesthetic seems to reflect Anderson's style: strict and ritualistic, yet poetic and meaningful. Needless to say, Anderson has always been a Japanophile with a profound respect for Japanese art. "Some of the main inspirations for the film were Kurosawa's film noirs of the early 1960s, “The Bad Sleep Well” (1960) and “High and Low” (1963)," said Isle of Dogs production designer Nathan Harrod (qtd. in Desowitz, 2018). Indeed, Megasaki, the fictional city where the story unfolds, looks like a futuristic version of Yokohama from High and Low in particular, while Mayor Kobayashi is based quite directly on actor Toshiro Mifune, who played businessman Gondo in the Kurosawa’s film.

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EDITORIALRasul KuramagomedovJAPAN, STOP-MOTION, HOLLYWOOD, REPRESENTATION, NATIONComment
Projecting the Extrareal: Theatrical Animation, Reality and The Book of Dust
Projecting the Extrareal: Theatrical Animation, Reality and The Book of Dust

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.

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EDITORIALLola SargassoSPECIAL EFFECTS, THEATRE, HYBRIDITY, REALISM, COMPUTER ANIMATION Comment
The Bluest of Them All: Exploring the Visual Design of Megamind
The Bluest of Them All: Exploring the Visual Design of Megamind

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?

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EDITORIALCristina KovacsCOLOUR, COSTUME, HOLLYWOOD, COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILMComment
Foodfight! and How Not To Make a Movie
Foodfight! and How Not To Make a Movie

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.

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EDITORIALJacob PruittPRODUCTION, LABOUR, COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILM, HOLLYWOODComment
A Look Back: “Why do we pursue creativity?”
A Look Back: “Why do we pursue creativity?”

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.

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EDITORIALEmmanuel RochaANIME, JAPAN, ARTIST, GENDERComment
[Je]Witch: Watching Wicked through a Jewish Lens
[Je]Witch: Watching Wicked through a Jewish Lens

As a foreign student in the U.K., grappling with my relationship with my familial and cultural history of Jewish migration, the topic of “home” comes, well… close to home. So, when watching the recent filmic adaptation of the stage musical Wicked (Stephen Schwartz & Winnie Holzman, 2003-), Wicked: For Good (Jon M. Chu, 2025) (Fig. 1), and listening to Elphaba’s new song, “No Place Like Home,” I couldn’t help but put on my Jewish-witch-hat.

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EDITORIALDana GreenHOLLYWOOD, MUSICAL, POLITICAL
Portrayal of the Homeless in Tokyo Godfathers (Satoshi Kon, 2003)
Portrayal of the Homeless in Tokyo Godfathers (Satoshi Kon, 2003)

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.

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EDITORIALJade SonnakulFAMILY, GENDER, TRANSGENDER, CHILDREN, ANIME, JAPANComment
Culture’s Significance in Historical Context in Sister (2018)
Culture’s Significance in Historical Context in Sister (2018)

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.

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EDITORIALSarah VuCHINA, GENDER, CHILDRENComment
Analysis of Fantasia 2000’s The Firebird Suite
Analysis of Fantasia 2000’s The Firebird Suite

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.

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EDITORIALAustin Van ZandtMUSICAL, DISNEY, HOLLYWOOD, STYLEComment
The Other Side of Paradise
The Other Side of Paradise

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.

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EDITORIALChloe GoreANIMATION, GENDER, ROMANCEComment