Tag Archives: style

Conceptualizing the Anime Critic

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The New York Times this past weekend ran a celebratory article (and you should read it) about film professor and critic, David Borwell. Bordwell teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; he composes a huge compilation of analytical essays at his blog; and he’s the former mentor to one of my academic mentors, Henry Jenkins.

Bordwell has been a film critic for practically FOREVER, and he’s written some impressive and influential film criticism texts, such as “The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960″, in which he explains the history of film through the lens of technological development in relation to the Hollywood style.

Now, I’ve been thinking (also FOREVER) about media criticism and how I should apply it to both my thinking and my writing (specifically for this blog).

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Reflections on Anime: Animation and the Academy

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On 22 February 2009, the Academy (of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences) held its eighty-first celebration of film, generally known as the Oscars. This year resulted in a big win for Japan, who clinched the prize for best Foreign Language Film with おくりびと (Departures), directed by Yojiro Takita. Why is this win important? If you read through the award’s webpage, you’ll see that a Japanese film has previously been nominated for the award twelve times since 1956 without a single victory. So, よく頑張った, Japan!

But I want to talk about animation. In Japan, アニメーション (animation) has been abbreviated, in that Japanese way of abbreviating most long foreign words, to アニメ (anime), and the abbreviation covers every sort of animated design imaginable, from flip books to what American and global fans commonly refer to as the Japanese anime style. The fan following and global exportation of Japanese animation created anime as a visual style, one part of the grand scheme that is アニメ in Japan. Basically, アニメーション is a style/genre of film, while アニメ is a style/genre of animation.

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