Not that long ago, animation was largely considered, y’know… for kids. Unless you were a true aficionado of independent projects and distant international efforts, then outside of Japan (and the slow but growing reach of manga/anime into western territories) Disney and Pixar had the monopoly at the multiplex and on television it was in the purview of cheaper fare, reworked imports and shorts to make up Saturday morning escapades and tea-time tv. Cable began to change that with niche channels like Adult Swim, however, much like comics and gaming, the years and decades slowly but inevitably pushed at the boundaries of expectations as creatives and the public asked why paintings and literature could be taken as bonafide singular art-forms, but not the areas where they combined?
In the 1980s, shaking off the reputation of popular but ‘light’ tv shows such as the 1960s’ Batman and the 1970s’ Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk, the comics industry itself began producing beautifully painted and epic, thought-provoking, socially relevant stories that would earn their place in exclusive galleries and best-seller lists – Watchmen, Kingdom Come and V for Vendetta shaped generational expectations. Table-top role playing games (RPGs), like Dungeons & Dragons rose from dark basements and secluded school corners to slowly become a global phenomenon – nowadays, what action star Henry Cavill (Superman, Mission Impossible, the upcoming Highlander remake) doesn’t know about Warcraft isn’t worth knowing. The electronic gaming industry, ever buoyed by evolving technology such as motion-capture and rendering speeds, followed suit, moving from heavily-pixelated protagonists to almost photo-realistic sequences or a stylised art that flowed across the screen.
On television, we’ve had The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad and King of the Hill proving that animation can have an adult flavour when scheduled correctly. In an age where all these genres and industries now look to each other for inspiration (books and comics to film, games to tv, tv to games etc) it was only a matter of time before there was a wave of something… special. Not just a few isolated projects or a trickle of exceptions, but a recognisable surge where the mainstream started noticing the possibilities and acted upon them. Arguably the last few years – and especially 2024 – appears to have been that watershed.
In 2021, I wrote of Arcane‘s first season on Netflix as being: “… a marriage of design and movement, the choreography of conflict – sometimes as beautiful as a ballet, sometimes as bone-crushing as the most savage fight – that is quite simply mesmerising…”
The second season, recently released to the platform, built on that. Based around the characters involved in RPG sensation League of Legends, and the world established by the LA-based Riot Games (the company founded in 2006 and which has become a global company in the years since with offices and creators based in multiple countries) the first season of Arcane hit Netflix in 2021. It follows the concept of the games, telling the saga of a steampunk’d society warring with itself – the palatial and streamlined city of Piltover and the lower streets and less comfortable underbelly of Zaun that exists in its shadow. Tensions between the two city-states begin to fall apart even further with the creation of ‘hextech’ a mixture of magic and technology that threatens to upend the class-driven balance and also a new drug called “shimmer” that can transform humans into nightmarish monsters. The main story pivots between two estranged sisters, the battle-hardened Vi and the emotionally-unstable but engineering marvel Powder/Jinx… whose childhood separation and very differing mentors, sees them on opposite sides of the conflict, but each an outlier to the society to which they want to belong.
Quickly establishing that you didn’t need to be familiar with all the game’s complex mythology, it proved to be a great entrance for ‘newbies’ and a welcome extension of that universe for those already in the know. The animation, its key selling point, was immediately ground-breaking – lovingly deep and stylised in a way that went beyond ‘cartoon’ or even the popular ‘manga’ proportions and was far more textured and inviting than anyone had expected. For obvious reasons, it takes considerably longer to bring an animated production to the screen and though it’s been two years since the broadcast of the first season, it’s quite obvious the care and attention that has gone in getting this second season to the screen (and, on the downside, why the second season was the final run). At times it’s less like a tv show or a game and more like watching a painting come to life. While some anime outings are arguably interchangeable in their basic visuals, this was a saga that felt international and multi-denominational, deliciously uniquely complex in the loyalties of its ensemble and rogues gallery but simple to invest in – as if someone had taken those simple days of Marvel/TSR’s Dungeons and Dragons show of the 1980s but imbued and evolved it with the same passion, scope and maturity of content as a Game of Thrones episode. The cast was impressive: Hailee Steinfeld (Hawkeye) is Viv with Fallout’s Ella Purnell as Jinx. Lucifer’s Kevin Alejandro, Katie Leung, Harry Lloyd (Doctor Who and Game of Thrones), the ever-versatile Shohreh Aghdashloo (The Penguin) with Imagine Giants‘ infectious hit ‘Enemy‘ as the show’s opening credits and music from the lieks of Freya Ridings, and Ashnikko continue the show’s edgy musical commitment.
One of the most heart-warming movies of the last year was The Wild Robot, based on the books by writer and illustrator Peter Brown. Like a blend of the classic The Iron Giant (a personal favourite) and the more edgy moments of Pixar movies, here was that example of a film that played across all demographics and ages. On one hand, the idea of a lost robot learning to survive in a wilderness and charged with raising a young goose sounds saccharine and simplistic, but in the creative hands of director Chris Sanders (and with a cast including Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill, Catherine O’Hara, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames ) it works for adults too – an honest look at the trials and tribulations of being a caretaker and parent and finding your place in an ever-shifting world of new demands. The animation was dream-like, walking between the awkward potential over over-cutesy animals and the sheer beauty of a wild, untouched world of possibilities. It’s the kind of effort that doesn’t just generate good reviews, but wants you to dive in to ‘The Art of…‘ book and cross fingers for success in inevitable award nominations.
Equally emotive, Flow was a relatively cheap, independent production (coming in at around $3.7 million budget) between Latvia, Belgium, and France and told the tale of a cat and fellow animal survivors of a massive natural disaster and flood. Its win at this week’s Golden Globes came as a surprise given the mainstream competition, but perhaps it shouldn’t have been a shock. That success was one bound of momentum and timing, with a string of notable international film festival inclusions in its wake and a strong, inevitable word of mouth amongst critics. Also attracting attention was that Flow was created using Blender, the free, open-source software that is becoming more widely used by those who don’t have access to massive budgets. Its win – which will likely see yet more awareness in the weeks and award ceremonies to come, may be important on a wider scale, democratising a genre beyond mere money and studio power and making new, independent ventures ever more within the grasp of a new wave of animators and technology.
It hasn’t all been perfect. Some high-profile marketing for the final run over the Christmas period notwithstanding, Marvel Studios largely squandered the idea of its What If..? series. Despite maintaining a decent quality of animation – pleasing enough for a thirty-minute anthology if not ground-breaking, the animated series’ fault-lines were more with its narratives. yes, it drew from the comics version of alternate-realities and suggesting different outcomes for its universe of stories, but rather than going for the epic tales that people might have felt invested in, recent entries had shifted from the early promise of What If… Captain Carter Were the First Avenger? to high-profile silliness such as What If… Howard the Duck Got Hitched? What could have been great connective tissue for the MCU sometimes felt more like absurd place-holders coming from a cackling writers’ room. Still… it was pretty.
