Thinking Anime "Otherwise": Methods for Researching Animation "Away from the Screen"

Anime is one of the most successful Japanese cultural exports and a rare example of non-Western media with a truly global audience. This global popularity has sparked interest in old production materials—once overlooked as research objects—which now circulate as collector's items for fans, museums, and cultural institutions in Japan and beyond. Ephemeral artifacts such as design sheets, storyboards, cel layers, and background illustrations were the result of a fast-paced, labor-intensive production process; they were neither intended to last nor to be collected by their makers after production. Yet, these materials provide us with a unique window into specific moments and conditions of anime studio culture, revealing evidence of the ambiguities and contradictions that commercial animation often entails. This article approaches anime materials in two archives—one at Niigata University, the other at the Durham Oriental Museum—to explore what alternative methods and approaches these objects can bring to the study of anime and cel animation "away from the screen." What does it mean to collect and exhibit animation materials that, for their disposable and unattributable nature, were never intended to be collected and exhibited? What are the challenges of studying anime from its material components, deprived of its essential aspect of movement? And what use can researchers make of these objects in an age when digital production has made anime materials intangible as files? By examining what is often lost on the screen, this article proposes that anime materials offer unique opportunities for methodological exercises in thinking anime "otherwise."