Review of Donna Kornhaber, Dream Sanctuary: War and the Animated Film. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2020. When one thinks about wartime animated films, propaganda film comes to most people’s mind. Indeed, since the 1990s, studies in animated propaganda developed…
Review of Caroline Ruddell and Paul Ward (eds.). The Crafty Animator: Handmade, Craft-Based Animation and Cultural Value. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. The Crafty Animator: Handmade, Craft-based Animation and Cultural Value is a coherent collection of essays centered around the production of…
Review of Daisy Yan Du. Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements of Chinese Animation 1940s-1970s. University of Hawai’i Press, 2019. Daisy Yan Du’s excellent Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements of Chinese Animation 1940s-1970s is essential reading for anyone interested in Chinese or Japanese…
Review of Masao Yokota and Tze-yue G. Hu (eds.). Japanese Animation: East Asian Perspectives. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013. This book was put together by a prominent clinical psychologist with a long experience in the psychological dimensions of animation…
Review of Meike Uhrig (ed.). Emotion in Animated Films. New York/London: Routledge, 2018. Emotion in Animated Films explores the rich territory of emotions and their representation within animated films, particularly with a view on emotions as represented within computer animation. Books…
Review of Kayla Rae Whitaker. The Animators. London: Random House Trade, 2017. Animation often draws on literature. Disney had his fairy tales and every good anime starts life as a manga. Inspiration travels in the other direction far less often.…
Almost 24 years ago, in November 1995, audiences flocked to the movie theater to see a new kind of animated film: one not drawn by hand, but created entirely within a computer. While some may have gone due to the…
Review of Nea Ehrlich and Jonathan Murray (eds.). Drawn from Life: Issues and Themes in Animated Documentary Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. This book project evolved from a collection of proceedings during a 2011 conference held at Edinburgh University…
Review of Raz Greenberg. Hayao Miyazaki: Exploring the Early Work of Japan’s Greatest Animator, New York/London: Bloomsbury, 2018. There are those who advocate history-less animation, curricula that focus on the teaching of techniques and technology. In his book, Hayao Miyazaki:…
Review of Rayna Denison (ed.). Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli’s Monster Princess, New York/London: Bloomsbury, 2018. In March 2000, during a visit to the cinema, I chanced upon a mysterious poster design featuring a golden medallion embossed with the image of…
