Re-viewing Thomas Lamarre’s The Anime Machine after Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises: On the Critical Potential of Anime

• Main Author: Çalık, Selen
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: animetism/cinematism; anime research; Heideggerian philosophy of technology; media studies; structures of movement and depth
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss26/15; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/1949/viewcontent/_5BKKv00n26_2016_5D_204.4_ForumKritika__C3_87alik.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

This article aims to demonstrate how exactly Thomas Lamarre reads movement, plot, and characters in The Anime Machine (2009), as defined to an extent, yet not completely determined by the concept of the animetic machine. Mimicking the first part of Lamarre’s book, it approaches Miyazaki’s last work, The Wind Rises (Kaze tachinu, 2013). What Lamarre sees in Miyazaki’s manga eiga is a new way of gaining “a free relation to technology” as idealized by Heideggerian philosophy, but, of course, “in animation” (Lamarre 62). This free, critical relation seems to be most noticeably depicted in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no tani no Naushika, 1984) and Castle in the Sky (Tenkū no shiro Rapyūta, 1986). But does the same kind of criticality that Lamarre finds in Miyazaki’s prior works also apply to the latest one, and if so, to what extent? This again leads to the question whether the conclusions Lamarre arrives at actually capture the critical potential of his theory. In the discussion of these issues, anime is viewed not as a text, but a hub of interrelations, including those between audience groups. Finally, the argumentation arrives at the plurality favored by the medium itself, suggested by Lamarre himself, but not ultimately prioritized.