Robert Jones – ‘To become rich without limit’: Positioning the Miyazaki Antagonist within Technological Contexts of the Japanese Economic Miracle (runner-up)

In the wake of its military defeat in World War II, Japan experienced a period of unprecedented economic change that stretched from 1946 to 1991. This period, referred to as “the Japanese economic miracle”, saw Japan experience huge economic growth and become ‘the world’s second largest capitalist economy’.[1] The economic miracle’s causes are still debated: […]

Goolam Hassen – Race and Identity and the Celebration of Black Excellence: An Analysis of Animated Representations of Blackness in Shawn ‘Jay-Z’ Carter’s The Story of OJ (runner-up)

2017 has been a particularly difficult year in terms of racial tensions in America, from Colin Kaepernick’s kneel during the National Anthem of NFL games to protest racial injustice in America in 2016; which seems to have snowballed in 2017,[1] to the deadly Right-Wing Nationalist protest that rocked Charlottesville, Virginia.[2] Race has always been a […]

Grace Han – Back to Front: Animating Melodrama in Makoto Shinkai’s Garden of Words (winner)

The late twentieth century witnessed multiple reconsiderations of the reiterated filmic melodrama in cinema studies. To some, the filmic melodrama stands as a poignant example of women’s film (Williams p. 2); to others, it represents the neo-Marxist liberation of bourgeois struggle (Gledhill pp. 6-8); and still to others, it exists as a mode of expression, […]