Review: Hoppers (Daniel Chong, 2026)
Review: Hoppers (Daniel Chong, 2026)

Hoppers (Daniel Chong, 2026) is a true return to form for Pixar, albeit in more of a “shitpost” example of Pixar just having fun. The marketing leads you into thinking Hoppers is going to be an Avatar-esque film about environmentalism and yes, it is that but it slowly turns into a roller coaster ride of unpredictability and surrealism, somewhat akin to Monty Python and the Flying Circus (1969-1974) or a late 90s-era “gag” anime like Excel Saga (Shinichi Watanabe, 1999-2000). If that sort of millennials to early-boomer-humour is your style, then Hoppers will be for you (and if you’re like me and literally grew up alongside Andy in the Toy Story [1995-] movies, then Hoppers aligns up with your sense of humour, developed in the mid-2000s to early 2010s).

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FILM REVIEWGuest ReviewerPIXAR ANIMATION STUDIOS, COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILM, ENVIRONMENT, DIGITAL, POLITICALComment
Animating Ambivalence: Quebec Contemporary Animation and Death Does Not Exist at the Ottawa International Animation Festival 2025
Animating Ambivalence: Quebec Contemporary Animation and Death Does Not Exist at the Ottawa International Animation Festival 2025

Over the last twenty years, the province of Quebec in Canada has built an internationally recognized cultural and digital ecosystem, particularly in the visual effects (VFX) (Mikros Animation, Rodeo FX) and animation (Cinesite, National Film Board) sectors. In 2023, these production studios and facilities represented more than $1.4 billion in revenue and thousands of jobs in Quebec, thanks largely to heavy involvement in successful foreign productions and fiscal benefits. However, in recent years, this business model has shown its weaknesses: the workers strike from the American entertainment union SAG-AFTRA in summer 2023, followed by the Quebec government's decision in May 2024 to cap tax credits for foreign entertainment companies employing in Quebec – reducing the credit rebate from 100% to 65% (Bongiorno 2024) – highlighted the structural precariousness of the local workforce (Arsenault, 2024).

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EDITORIALAurélie PetitNATIONAL CINEMA, HISTORY, AESTHETICS, INDUSTRYComment
Isle of Dogs (2018) as a Love Letter to the Japanese Culture
Isle of Dogs (2018) as a Love Letter to the Japanese Culture

When Wes Anderson unveiled his new stop-motion film Isle of Dogs in 2018, audiences perhaps expected another symphony of symmetry, irony, and warm absurdity. But here the action had shifted to Japan — a country whose aesthetic seems to reflect Anderson's style: strict and ritualistic, yet poetic and meaningful. Needless to say, Anderson has always been a Japanophile with a profound respect for Japanese art. "Some of the main inspirations for the film were Kurosawa's film noirs of the early 1960s, “The Bad Sleep Well” (1960) and “High and Low” (1963)," said Isle of Dogs production designer Nathan Harrod (qtd. in Desowitz, 2018). Indeed, Megasaki, the fictional city where the story unfolds, looks like a futuristic version of Yokohama from High and Low in particular, while Mayor Kobayashi is based quite directly on actor Toshiro Mifune, who played businessman Gondo in the Kurosawa’s film.

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EDITORIALRasul KuramagomedovJAPAN, STOP-MOTION, HOLLYWOOD, REPRESENTATION, NATIONComment
Refracted Reality: The Truth of Fantasy in The Wedding Veil of the Proud Princess
Refracted Reality: The Truth of Fantasy in The Wedding Veil of the Proud Princess

When I first encountered the part of L. M. Montgomery’s 1911 book The Story Girl that contained the tale of “The Wedding Veil of the Proud Princess,” I was struck by a sense of recognition. As a director and storyteller myself, it felt less like discovering a story and more like remembering one I had always known, a fairy tale so archetypal that it seemed impossible it was not already part of the shared cultural canon. Its setup of a beautiful princess who declares she will only marry the king who conquers all kings, and the payoff of this turning out to be Death himself, has all the hallmarks of a medieval fairy tale.

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CREATIVE REFLECTIONAnna-Ester VolozhARTIST, ANIMATION, CREATIVE PRACTICE Comment
Projecting the Extrareal: Theatrical Animation, Reality and The Book of Dust
Projecting the Extrareal: Theatrical Animation, Reality and The Book of Dust

What is animation’s relationship to the real? Much of animation scholarship – from Eisenstein’s glowing affection for ‘plasmatic[ness]’ to the newly codified photoreal (46) – dedicates itself to the pursuit of this question, probing the structures and ontologies of our inherently fantastic medium. As comprehensive as these critiques are, however, the vast majority refuse to question animation’s greatest obstacle to reality: the screen. Like its live-action cousins in film, most animation remains bounded by a flat plane, unable to interact with the tangible dimensions of our landscape. The advent of projected animation (a lamentably untheorised field!) explodes these boundaries, as the animated ‘real’ ventures beyond the surface and into the physical world of stagecraft.

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EDITORIALLola SargassoSPECIAL EFFECTS, THEATRE, HYBRIDITY, REALISM, COMPUTER ANIMATION Comment
The Bluest of Them All: Exploring the Visual Design of Megamind
The Bluest of Them All: Exploring the Visual Design of Megamind

Superheroes are a staple of American culture, following the adventures of men and women in tights who use their superhuman gifts to defeat villains that terrorize their hometown. However, one question has been commonly wondered by readers and viewers alike: What happens when the hero loses and the bad guy wins? The 2010 animated film Megamind, directed by Tom McGrath, may just have the most disruptive yet meaningful answer to this hypothetical. As the titular supervillain wins a battle against Metro City’s caped saviour after decades of failed attempts, everything else about the city seems to fall apart on its own after its core narrative event has been rewritten, and DreamWorks retorts with an even deeper question: what if the bad guy was never the bad guy at all?

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EDITORIALCristina KovacsCOLOUR, COSTUME, HOLLYWOOD, COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILMComment
Foodfight! and How Not To Make a Movie
Foodfight! and How Not To Make a Movie

Threshold Animation Studios’ 2012 animated feature film Foodfight! (Lawrence Kasanoff, 2012) is considered by critics and the audience as one of the worst animated productions of all time. But while Foodfight! performed poorly at the box office, in home video sales, and in critic and audience reviews, the film is often overlooked as a perfect example within the animation industry of everything that can go wrong when making an animated film. To understand its colossal failure, context in how, why, and when it was created is essential.

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EDITORIALJacob PruittPRODUCTION, LABOUR, COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILM, HOLLYWOODComment
A Look Back: “Why do we pursue creativity?”
A Look Back: “Why do we pursue creativity?”

Look Back (2024), directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama and written by Tatsuki Fujimoto, explores the emotional struggles involved when maintaining artistic motivation, told through the story of protagonists Fujino and Kyomoto. Through an expressive use of animation sound, and colour, the film immerses viewers in a narrative that examines the complicated relationship that artists often have with creativity as they seek validation and self-worth. This blog will analyse how Look Back, along with its manga counterpart, portrays the emotional complexities of creative ambition, burnout, and identity, while reflecting the internal conflicts many artists face when the passion in their art begins to waver.

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EDITORIALEmmanuel RochaANIME, JAPAN, ARTIST, GENDERComment
[Je]Witch: Watching Wicked through a Jewish Lens
[Je]Witch: Watching Wicked through a Jewish Lens

As a foreign student in the U.K., grappling with my relationship with my familial and cultural history of Jewish migration, the topic of “home” comes, well… close to home. So, when watching the recent filmic adaptation of the stage musical Wicked (Stephen Schwartz & Winnie Holzman, 2003-), Wicked: For Good (Jon M. Chu, 2025) (Fig. 1), and listening to Elphaba’s new song, “No Place Like Home,” I couldn’t help but put on my Jewish-witch-hat.

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EDITORIALDana GreenHOLLYWOOD, MUSICAL, POLITICAL
Portrayal of the Homeless in Tokyo Godfathers (Satoshi Kon, 2003)
Portrayal of the Homeless in Tokyo Godfathers (Satoshi Kon, 2003)

Common notions about the homeless have been perpetuated through demeaning tropes that only fuel their ostracism from society. Almost every television programme or film has depicted homeless people before, often portraying them in a negative light, using them for comedic relief, or simply treating them as shallow background characters, without ever addressing their situation seriously. Japanese film director Satoshi Kon, however, shines a spotlight on the personal experiences of these people, who often come from different backgrounds, by making them the main characters in his animated feature film, Tokyo Godfathers (2003).  Set in a snowy Tokyo at Christmas, the story follows Hana, a transgender woman and former drag queen, Gin, a middle-aged alcoholic, and Miyuki, a teenage runaway taken care of by Hana and Gin. While picking through trash, the three are interrupted by the cries of an abandoned baby. Not knowing of the parents’ whereabouts, Hana insists that they take care of this baby until they find them, to the dismay of Miyuki and Gin.

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EDITORIALJade SonnakulFAMILY, GENDER, TRANSGENDER, CHILDREN, ANIME, JAPANComment
Culture’s Significance in Historical Context in Sister (2018)
Culture’s Significance in Historical Context in Sister (2018)

The historical context of the one-child policy, alongside personal anecdotes and experiences, make the stop motion film Sister (Siqi Song, 2018) emotionally impactful. The film’s unique story of presenting a life with his little sister to only take it away and show the life he experienced alone is symbolic of the life of being an older brother taken from him. Creator and director Siqi Song displays the life-altering effects of the one-child policy with details of her own personal experiences of and relationship to Chinese culture. Through historical commentary, she crafts a compelling experience that reflects the policy’s emotional impact on China and its population through the creative treatment of her culture.

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EDITORIALSarah VuCHINA, GENDER, CHILDRENComment
Analysis of Fantasia 2000’s The Firebird Suite
Analysis of Fantasia 2000’s The Firebird Suite

The Firebird Suite, based upon Igor Stravinsky’s 1919 orchestral concert work of the same name, is a short animation directed by Gaetan and Paul Brizzi, released in 1999 as a segment within the larger animated feature Fantasia 2000 (Don Hahn, Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy, Eric Goldberg, James Algar, Francis Glebas, Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi, 1999) (Fig. 1). Within her introduction segment for both the animation and the orchestral piece from which it was derived, famed actress and film producer Angela Lansbury described The Firebird Suite as a “mythical story of life, death, and renewal.” In doing so, she alighted upon the simultaneous, unified, and diametrical relationships of inherently contrasting elements, such as death and life, and darkness and light, to one another —a concept that would come to serve as the primary narrative catalyst for both media.

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EDITORIALAustin Van ZandtMUSICAL, DISNEY, HOLLYWOOD, STYLEComment
The Other Side of Paradise
The Other Side of Paradise

Arcane, directed by Pascal Charrue, Arnaud Delord, and Bart Maunoury in 2024, is a tale of two sisters and their tumultuous relationship shaped by the neighbouring cities around them. Their choices influence the future of these cities, and the impact each has on the other is profound. However, there lies an alternate timeline where other aspects of the world are explored, and the audience gets a glimpse of what could have been. As this blog post shows, season two, episode seven of Arcane titled “Pretend Like It's the First Time,” contrasted with the series as a whole, portrays psychological disorders not as a flaw but a facet of character through the lens of narrative and colour using a girl named Powder.

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EDITORIALChloe GoreANIMATION, GENDER, ROMANCEComment
The World of Dreamers within The Wind Rises (2013)
The World of Dreamers within The Wind Rises (2013)

“Which would you choose, a world with pyramids or one without them?” is a central question within Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises. Released in 2013 by Studio Ghibli, The Wind Rises follows a young aeronautical engineer by the name of Jiro Horikoshi as he navigates through Imperial Japan while pursuing his dream “to create beautiful airplanes.” A real-life historical figure, Horikoshi (1903-1982) is known as the engineer behind the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighting planes that Japan utilized throughout World War II. Although the film depicts these inventions, Miyazaki shifts the focus to Horikoshi’s life rather than his industrial accomplishments, presenting him as an idealistic dreamer living in a romanticized period of Japanese history. Using Horikoshi’s character as the anchor of my analysis, in this blog I will delve into how Miyazaki confronts the cursed dreams humanity holds through the pacing of the story, the film’s artistic style, and the portrayal of characters, arguing how Miyazaki’s narrative embraces the idea that all dreamers are free to pursue their dreams regardless of the circumstances or consequences.

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EDITORIALGrayson BrewsterTECHNOLOGY, ANIME, JAPAN, STUDIO GHIBLI Comment
Marcell Jankovics’ The Tragedy of Man
Marcell Jankovics’ The Tragedy of Man

Considering the various ways that one could visually adapt Imre Madách’s 1861 play The Tragedy of Man - a widely renowned icon of Hungarian literature - Marcell Jankovics’ 2011 animated film of the same name makes a strong case for animation as the perfect medium to do so. Beginning in 1988, the film’s production was halted the following year due to major societal and governmental changes in Hungary after the crumbling of Soviet power in the Eastern Bloc (Ito, Astell). Having spent years raising funds to resume production incrementally, Jankovics saw his work to its completion over two decades later in 2011, its painstaking production process almost mirroring the themes of the work upon which it is based. The journey paid off immensely, as the final film proved to be what many deem a masterclass of both hand-drawn animation and literary adaptation. In viewing the film’s form, specifically its artistically crafted visuals and incorporation of various unique art-styles, this blog analyses how the story and themes that Madách presents are highlighted and powered by the animated medium through which Jankovics relays in the narrative events.

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EDITORIALMaya GangadharanADAPTATION, POLITICAL, SOVIETComment
If Anything Happens I Love You
If Anything Happens I Love You

A school shooting is every parent’s worst nightmare. Unfortunately, this nightmare is real for many parents in the United States. According to researchers at Education Week, in 2024, there were 39 recorded school shootings resulting in injuries or death; so far in 2025, there have been 3 events relating to gun violence on school grounds in the US (“School Shootings Over Time”). The persistence of school shootings in the US and the fear and grief they cause are extremely devastating to students and affected families. Communities like Mothers Against Gun Violence, Americans for Responsible Solutions, and Sandy Hook Promise demand change for schools and gun legislation. In this blog, I will analyze the use of colour and sound in Will McCormack and Michael Govier’s animated short If Anything Happens I Love You (2020), reflecting on how these elements of style convey a harrowing outlook on school shootings

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EDITORIALKaylee ErwinAMERICA, POLITICAL, VIOLENCE, REALISM Comment
Cinderbrew Meadery Mythic Dungeon Guide in WoW The War Within
Cinderbrew Meadery Mythic Dungeon Guide in WoW The War Within

Cinderbrew Meadery is one of the most distinctive dungeons in The War Within expansion. Here, players must not only fight enemies but also survive while dodging streams of flame and volatile magical potions that provide both buffs and debuffs. The dungeon is known for its quick completion, and many established groups use it as a fast source of gear and gold. However, if you're a newbie or solo player, the pace and results can be slow and inconsistent due to the random group members.

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EDITORIALCholo MedallaVIDEO GAME, GAME DESIGN, IMAGERYComment
Transformers: The Movie (1986) and the Refusal of the Call trope
Transformers: The Movie (1986) and the Refusal of the Call trope

Joseph Campbell identifies the refusal of the call in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces as a story trope where the main protagonist of the story is called to an adventure but refuses to go. The hero’s reluctance to act can come from a variety of reasons that are usually psychological in nature. Emotions such as guilt or fear try to keep the hero homebound so that he/she cannot soar and reach their full heroic potential. It is an age-old trend that is found in all mediums of mankind’s story form. Everything from epic poems, oral fairy tales, literary fiction, television shows and finally movies. It is a part of the storytelling tradition that Campbell famously calls “The Monomyth.” 

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SEQUENCE ANALYSISShakeem R. WinnNARRATIVE, STORYTELLING, HOLLYWOOD, ADAPTATION Comments
Wuthering Waves: The Anime Game That Gets Everything Right
Wuthering Waves: The Anime Game That Gets Everything Right

There's something special happening in the world of mobile gaming, and it goes by the name Wuthering Waves. Released in May 2024, this action RPG from Kuro Games has quickly become the game everyone's talking about—and for good reason. It's not just another anime game trying to grab your attention with flashy visuals. This one actually delivers on its promises.

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EDITORIALCholo MedallaGAME DESIGN, VIDEO GAME, INTERACTIVITYComment
Tracking Reality and Fantasy: how animated music videos play with the persona and non-persona of artists / bands - Part 3
Tracking Reality and Fantasy: how animated music videos play with the persona and non-persona of artists / bands - Part 3

The third exploration in this series focuses on those musicians and artists who prefer to foster a sense of obscurity and anonymity within the medium, therefore offering an alternative to the approaches to persona projection in the music video format made by Bono and Holly Johnson described in the previous two posts. In 1996, Fluke (John Fugler and Mike Tournier) created one of the main tracks for the new PlayStation game, Wipeout 2097 (Psygnosis) entitled “Atom Bomb.” Fluke were one of several emerging electronica artists who also created tracks for the game, including Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy and Orbital.

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EDITORIALJames Clarke and Shaun MagherMUSIC VIDEO, STYLE, REPRESENTATIONComment