At the time this is published, Persona 5 Royal (Persona 5: The Royal in Japan), an updated version of the smash-hit Japanese Role-Playing Game (JRPG) phenomenon Persona 5 (2016), will have just released in Japan on the PlayStation 4. The…
Japanese cinema and television shows are filled with ‘healing’ (iyashikei) images of cats. Cat actors in these live-action shows and films frequently adorn narratives that allow viewers to consume their kittenish cuteness, their languid decorativeness, or their playful viciousness for…
The work of manga artist Nekojiru is distinctive for two key characteristics: short stories that contrast cuteness with cruelty, and the use of anthropomorphized cats as protagonists. This includes her autobiographical works, Jirujiru Ryokouki (Jirujiru Travelogue) and Jirujiru Nikki (Jirujiru…
Cats have long been part of the lives and imaginations of humans. Egyptians worshiped the cat goddess Bastet, Persians feared these animals as potentially evil, Chinese aristocrats prized them for their rarity, American Puritans associated them with witchcraft, while the…
“In creating new characters for our cartoon films, one of our main sources of inspiration has been the world of animals. And we’ve always been very much impressed with the cat family. This group of carnivora includes more than forty…
In memory of my friend Hannah Frank and her cat Ingeborg Two decades into the twenty-first century, animated fauna is thriving. A famous nonagenarian mouse with infinite spending power holds the American entertainment market ever more securely in its white-gloved…
Thursday 19th to Saturday 21st September, Texas Tech University The 2019 Animation and Public Engagement Symposium (APES) held at Texas Tech University in Lubbock – thanks, among others, to the support of the Society for Animation Studies – brought together…
Thanks to its legacy of animated fairy tale films, Disney will always have princesses. But will it always have the Disney Princess franchise? In an attempt to come to grips with her feelings about the astonishingly lucrative line of merchandise,…
Anyone who has ever responded to a call for papers has, at one point or another, experienced the perverse pleasure of stubbornly latching onto a topic that was not mentioned therein and running with it. It was in that contrarian…
Indexes, icons, and symbols. According to Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic theory (1974), we can identify three basic types of signs: indexes, icons, and symbols. Indexes, such as photos, videos, and films, have a factual connection with their objects since they…
