Anime Auteurs: Rethinking Auteurism in Japanese Animation from Miyazaki Hayao to Ōtomo Katsuhiro - Betty Stojnić

PANEL 2: WRITING ANIMATION HISTORY Utorak, 9. lipnja, 15:35-16:05

Anime Auteurs: Rethinking Auteurism in Japanese Animation from Miyazaki Hayao to Ōtomo Katsuhiro
Betty Stojnić (Nagoya University)

As animation from Japan becomes an ever-larger part of various cinematic canons, animators such as Miyazaki Hayao have come to acquire “auteur status”, encouraging scholars and critics to pursue director-oriented approaches to anime history grounded in auteur theory. Building on my doctoral research – an auteur study of Ōtomo Katsuhiro, best known for Akira (1988) – this presentation examines the methodological, theoretical and historiographic challenges posed by “anime auteurism”. Unlike Miyazaki, Ōtomo is rarely treated as an auteur, with this project being among the first sustained attempts to do so, raising the question of how auteurs are not merely “studied” or “discovered”, but actively constructed within animation history. Drawing on previous auteur studies of “canonical” anime directors, namely Miyazaki, Takahata Isao, Oshii Mamoru, and (more recently) Shinkai Makoto, I outline the dominant methodological tendencies in the field, from biographical accounts to glossary-style reviews of major themes, as well as analyses of a given director’s engagement with issues like artificial intelligence or climate change. I then reflect on my experience researching Ōtomo while based in Japan: visiting exhibitions, consulting art books, magazines and online fan archives, while determining which materials (or different versions of the same material) to include in the process of “assembling” Ōtomo the auteur. How should scholars catalogue an anime director’s oeuvre, which often comprises not only films, but also television series and manga? How do we discuss “intention” or “contribution” in the context of a complex studio system structured around fluid roles and shared skills? What is “anime”? What is its historical, national and/or commercial identity vis-à-vis Japan? The construction of the “anime auteur” is a fraught endeavour, uniting questions of authorship, national cinema, and medium specificity in a single motion. Precisely for this reason, however, auteur-based approaches offer exciting grounds for rethinking these categories, calling for a more critical engagement with director-centred animation histories.

Betty Stojnić holds a PhD in Global Screen Studies awarded by Nagoya University and the University of Warwick (co-tutelle). She specializes in Japanese cinema and animation, with a particular interest in film-philosophy and the depiction of technology and science in anime. Her research has been previously published in Mechademia, The Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, and Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image. Her paper, “Anime and Drone Warfare: Operational Images, Dissimulation, and Hypercinematism in A Farewell to Weapons”, was selected as the runner-up at the 2026 British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies publication awards for best published essay by a doctoral student.