In 2013 blogger Jon Negroni put forward ‘The Pixar Theory’: the concept that all Pixar movies exist in the same universe and can be organised into a single, cohesive timeline (see figure 1). The initial blog incorporates the 14 Pixar…
It would not be controversial to say that Disney’s historical record of representing women is complicated at best. It becomes even more complicated when we consider the Disney Princess franchise, a plethora of paratexts that arguably undermine any progressive readings…
Soon after the release of the 53-second teaser trailer for Pixar Animation Studios’ forthcoming Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird, 2018) – that premiered on November 18, 2017 and attracted 113 million views in its first 24 hours (becoming the most viewed…
My knowledge of the late Japanese animation director’s work dates to 1996, when his critically acclaimed animated film Grave of the Fireflies (1988) was first screened publicly in Singapore at the first Singapore Animation Fiesta, of which I was the…
Episode zero of the YouTube series Taiwan Bar (2014 – 2015), “Taiwan for Sale?” (Hauer, 2014), opens with a cute cartoon Formosan black bear sitting on a shelf with various kinds of drink bottles, while a lively voice-over says: Hello…
Pinoy animation has been around for almost four decades now. Yet, to-date the industry has been able to produce only four original feature-length animated films. The first has been Ibong Adarna (Adarna: The Mythical Bird), created by Geirry Garcia along with…
Created during the height of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Tiě shàn gōngzhǔ (Princess Iron Fan, 1941, by Wan Guchan and Wan Laiming) was the first full-length animated feature film made in China, as well as the first in Asia. Princess Iron…
The purpose – but at the same time the problem – of genre classification is to instill ‘purity’ and order through categorization. Genre categories have defied easy definition as the borders intended to separate them are always shifting and expanding,…
‘I don’t like games. You’re robbing the precious time of children to be children.’ – Hayao Miyazaki In 2008, whilst studio founder Hayao Miyazaki was otherwise occupied screenwriting Arrietty (Hiromasa Yonebayashi), other members of staff from Studio Ghibli – despite…
The “immobile engine” behind each animated piece is the animator, which appropriates acting as an invisible force over its creation. In this sense, this process of interpretation can be understood as the manifestation of the animator’s internal intentions on an…
