In The Intersection of Animation, Video Games, and Music: Making Movement Sing, editors Lisa Scoggin and Dana Plank gather fourteen chapters that examine how music operates across animated forms and interactive worlds. With a nod toward both classic and contemporary case studies, they anchor their discussion in three overarching sections: “Adaptation and Comparative Usage,” “Gender, Sex, and Sexuality,” and “Nostalgia.” The unifying claim running through all the essays is that sound—especially music—is never a passive backdrop. Instead, it shapes narrative, frames characters, and can even guide players’ choices. For animation scholars, this volume invites us to see music not simply as an add-on to visual storytelling but as an active, co-creative element in how audiences perceive movement and meaning.
What emerges is a comprehensive picture of how music, animation, and games interrelate—often in ways that push traditional boundaries. Editors Scoggin and Plank have thoughtfully arranged the chapters to feel complementary, resulting in a cohesive, wide-ranging overview of how “movement” can be made to sing—both literally and metaphorically.
More specifically, the opening section, “Adaptation and Comparative Usage,” focuses on how music can seamlessly bridge different media, from classic cartoons to modern interactive experiences. In “What is ‘Real?’ Diegetic Spaces in Epic Mickey,” Andrew S. Powell reflects on how that game’s paint-and-thinner mechanic rewires both narrative structure and the boundary between audible “realities.” This overlapping space, he argues, recalls early Disney cartoons in which characters—like Mickey Mouse—would seemingly address or reshape their own animated environments. Tristan Kneschke, in “Rusted Red: Machinarium as Political Allegory,” moves from Disney iconography to Czech animation traditions, framing Machinarium’s stark robot world as a subtle meditation on Czechoslovakia’s communist past. The game’s hand-drawn art and minimal soundtrack mirror the region’s long-standing penchant for poignant allegory. Switching tonal gears, María Lorenzo Hernández and Armando Bernabeu Lorenzo examine Gris in “A Watercolor That Can Be Played,” revealing how handcrafted visuals and a delicate ambient score coalesce into a wordless, dreamlike progression reminiscent of auteur animation. Reinke Schwinning then investigates the role of “classical” music—particularly Beethoven—in shaping animated films and games, underscoring how such musical references confer prestige or philosophical depth. Closing this segment, Lisa Scoggin provides a spirited look at Cuphead, demonstrating how 1930s-inspired rubber-hose animation and jazzy big-band cues form a polished modern homage, reminding us that the boundaries between “old” and “new” can be cleverly blurred.
The middle section, “Gender, Sex, and Sexuality,” focuses on issues of representation, sexuality, and identity. Karen M. Cook’s chapter on “Xandir P. Wifflebottom” dissects the irreverent series Drawn Together, where a self-aware, game-hero parody undermines heteronormative tropes via satirical musical cues. The show’s comedic approach, Cook suggests, reveals the flexibility of animated archetypes when reframed through a queer lens. Furthering the exploration of character through music, T.J. Laws-Nicola and Brent Ferguson consider Carmen Sandiego’s thematic evolution across computer games and animated television, showing how reorchestrations and vocal stylings cast her both as global mastermind and pop-culture icon. Dana Plank’s chapter on Dragon’s Lair re-examines Princess Daphne’s portrayal, observing how the coquettish score accentuates a tension between Disney-like innocence and an overt male gaze. Finally, Ko On Chan examines School Days, whose bright, romantic soundtrack slowly mutates into a harrowing soundscape, highlighting anime’s capacity to pivot from playful courtship to disturbing psychological drama.
The concluding section, “Nostalgia,” foregrounds how music evokes shared memories, often bridging decades or cross-media adaptations. Dominic Arsenault introduces the idea of “retrocursion” through DuckTales: Remastered. He shows that while modern orchestration updates the original NES tunes for contemporary ears, the underlying melodies remain central to a nostalgic sense of playful adventure. In “A Far-Off Memory,” Ryan Thompson explores how Kingdom Hearts III integrates iconic Disney songs, from Tangled to Frozen, seamlessly weaving them into an RPG structure. These recontextualized tunes anchor players emotionally and remind us of Disney’s transmedia depth. Matthew Ferrandino then analyses Adventure Time! —the Cartoon Network series that relies on chiptune riffs and a video-game-like sensibility. By fusing 8-bit elements with surreal cartoon humor, it appeals to fans’ own nostalgic attachments to “simpler,” early console aesthetics. Stacey Jocoy takes a slightly different path by examining the Rurouni Kenshin anime and its gaming offshoots, emphasizing how recurring musical motifs can preserve the spirit of the original series for longtime devotees. Wrapping up the anthology, Jason Cody Douglass and Rayna Denison profile Ni no Kuni—born from Studio Ghibli’s collaboration with a game developer—and highlight composer Joe Hisaishi’s emotionally resonant music. The authors contend that Ni no Kuni redefines “animēshon” by maintaining a distinctly Ghibli sensibility while introducing the interactive freedoms of role-playing games.
As a whole, the volume is both cohesive and wide-ranging. Each contributor adeptly draws from established scholarship in animation and music studies—such as Daniel Goldmark’s work on animation soundtracks and Tim Summers’ writing on ludomusicology—while pushing the conversation in fresh directions. United by a common concern for how music underwrites narrative, emotion, and visual style, these chapters jointly affirm the deep interdependency between sound and animation. Even readers whose interests lie in only one corner—say, Japanese anime, indie games, or Western cartoons—will find overlapping principles of how sound/music can steer viewer or player engagement. The editors maintain a coherent flow, with clarity and breadth. Most importantly, the book’s accessible yet scholarly tone makes it relevant to both academic researchers and practitioners interested in weaving music more deliberately into animated texts.
Concluding, The Intersection of Animation, Video Games, and Music: Making Movement Sing shows that music is never simply an ornamental layer. In each case study, it’s an active agent that defines how we experience movement, narrative, and character. Taken together, this is a book that animation scholars, game scholars, and musicologists can all appreciate—a documentation of our increasingly cross-pollinated media environment, where “making movement sing” has never been more vital.
Maria Katsaridou (PhD) is an Adjunct Lecturer and Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Audio and Visual Arts at the Ionian University of Corfu, Greece. She also serves as a Visiting Professor of Semiotics of Animation and Interactive Narratives in the Interdepartmental Master Program in Semiotics, Culture, and Communication at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She has given invited lectures, published two books, and contributed many articles and book chapters. Her monograph, Sylvain Chomet’s Distinctive Animation: From The Triplets of Belleville to The Illusionist (2024), is published open access by Bloomsbury Academics, adding to her body of work on animation studies.