Anime Platformization

The Anime Platformization Project at the Platform Lab concerns itself primarily with investigating the role of platforms in global animation production and viewing. From streaming television to using animated stickers in messaging apps, the platformativity of the animated form has only just started being researched; the Project aims to account for some of the impacts of the encounter between animation (especially Japanese animation) and platforms.

Recent Projects and Publications:

Our first Lab Report tackles streaming platforms from the angle of anime, one of the prime contents used to gather viewers and subscribers, and their dollars and data. Focused on the circulation of anime on transnational platforms, this Report addresses the rush, over the past decade, for streaming platforms to invest in anime and its audience, up to the point where anime has become a necessary market to take into account when discussing the global streaming ecology. Please our first Lab Report Anime Streaming Platform Wars (2022) here.

The reading and research group Animating Television (2019), cross-listed with the Global Emergent Media Lab. This group examined the objects, subcultures, and ecologies emerging from the nexus of animation and television. Television, in particular, television animation, has often been considered a “bad object”, yet television animation is also at the centre of many important discourses (such as the shift to streaming, fan cultures, transmedia developments, etc.) and game-changing media objects (queer representation, for example).

Guest blog post over at inmediares entitled “What Anime Curation Tells Us About The Streaming Wars” (May 2019).