Animating the Spirited: Journeys and Transformations

By Tze-yue G. Hu

Contributions by Graham Barton, Raz Greenberg, Gyongyi Horvath, Birgitta Hosea, Tze-yue G. Hu, Yin Ker, M. Javad Khajavi, Richard J. Leskosky, Yuk Lan Ng, Giryung Park, Eileen Anastasia Reynolds, Akiko Sugawa-Shimada, Koji Yamamura, Masao Yokota, and Millie Young

Getting in touch with a spiritual side is a craving many are unable to express or voice, but readers and viewers seek out this desired connection to something greater through animation, cinema, anime, and art. Animating the Spirited: Journeys and Transformations includes a range of explorations of the meanings of the spirited and spiritual in the diverse, dynamic, and polarized creative environment of the twenty-first century. While animation is at the heart of the book, such related subjects as fine art, comics, children's literature, folklore, religion, and philosophy enrich the discoveries. These interdisciplinary discussions range from theory to practice, within the framework of an ever-changing media landscape. Working on different continents and coming from varying cultural backgrounds, these diverse scholars, artists, curators, and educators demonstrate the insights of the spirited.

Authors also size up new dimensions of mental health and related expressions of human living and interactions. While the book recognizes and acknowledges the particularities of the spirited across cultures, it also highlights its universality, demonstrating how it is being studied, researched, comprehended, expressed, and consumed in various parts of the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Release date: Jan 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781496826275

Book preview

Introduction

The original concept of this book dates back to the time when we were editing the anthology Japanese Animation: East Asian Perspectives, which was subsequently published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2013. We learned that we were already separately yet concurrently working on our own research papers about the spiritual aspects of creative work expressed in film, theater, print, and other forms of representations. Our Australian reader, Gyongyi Horvath, who worked diligently behind the scenes proofreading the manuscripts, was also completing her master’s thesis work on the aspects of comics, violence, and humanity. Thus, we decided to come together again to produce this volume of essays, which focuses on the meanings of the spirited and its navigation in the diverse, dynamic, and polarized creative environment of the twenty-first century. Basically, the main theme of this book is the idea of the spirited and how it plays an important part in the animation medium and related subjects including paintings, comics, children’s literature, folklore, religion, philosophy, and so on.

The subject of animation studies continues to link us together as most of the contributors have built their careers as animation studies scholars, animation artists or assuming both professional hats at the same time. Indeed, animation itself has been described as a many faces subject.¹ It can be approached multidimensionally, as effectively shown in our previous publication. Its areas of inquiry are both interdisciplinary and far reaching, ranging from theory to practice and the ever-changing media landscape. In particular, we consider that the theoretical origins of expression and creation play a premier role in advancing any artistic production. In other words, the intellect of creation needs stimulation, inspiration, and robust inquiry as well, and this anthology aims to fulfill this educational space.

The Webster’s New International Dictionary (1950: 2429)² has the following definitions of the term spirited:

Having spirit, or essence; also, animated or possessed by a spirit.

1. Animated; full of life or vigor; lively; full of spirit or fire; as, a spirited oration; a spirited answer …

2…. Marked with breathing.

SPIRITED, METTLESOME, FIERY. SPIRITED implies ardor, animation, or fullness of life; METTLESOME often adds to spirited the implication of courage or daring; FIERY, that of impetuous eagerness or fierce vehemence; as, "shaking his head backward, somewhat after the manner of a spirited horse" …

The antonyms of spirited are dull, apathetic, lifeless, lethargic, stolid. At the same time, spirited also means clever, witty.

A later version of the dictionary, the New Lexicon Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language (1972: 958) further defines the term as "showing creative energy, spirited brushwork … having a strong assertive personality … having a specified character, quality etc.; public-spirited [A.F. or fr. L. spiritus, breath]."³

The spirited continues to preside overtly and covertly in the everyday learning processes of our humanity. For example, the educator, artist, scholar, filmmaker, student, traveler, and even a docile individual or homemaker equally recognize and acknowledge the dimensional presence of the spirited and its stealth. Very often, in recognizing its presence and engaging appeal, the path of understanding and exploration begins to take place. Inherently, the embarking leads to an unfolding physical-mental journey and inevitably, for better or worse, a course of transformation(s) or alteration(s) results; simply put, it becomes an organic process or evolution in the making with artistic aspirations or philosophical self-learnings to fulfil and experience.

In addition to this, there is also a humanistic strand of our anthology. We believe that the human condition is garnered by both the visible and invisible aspects of life. In fact, the latter can be indescribable; hence therein lies the desire to express it and give it visible form by the act of doing, creating, learning, and commencing a journey, and so on and as part of the self-reflective path to perceive the world(s) that we live in. It follows that the book project’s humanistic vision is guided by the yearning to give rein to an expressive breathing space allowing scholarly and artistic voices to make sense, read and explain critically, and also to heal and understand, across cultural and disciplinary boundaries by exploring and improving the mental and emotional wellbeing of others and so forth.

We demonstrate this by not restricting the contents to a certain disciplinary field or geographical region. The radar of the essays is meant to be extensive and wide, enabling an exemplary representation of various works focusing on the topic of the spirited coming from different continents and cultural backgrounds. As a result, multifaceted fresh perspectives can be presented whole-heartedly.

To date, within the animation studies community, Alan Cholodenko’s publication The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation (Sydney: Power Publications and Australia Film Commission, 1991) is often considered the earliest pioneer anthology theorizing the subject of animation. He has since published a second volume, The Illusion of Life 2: More Essays on Animation (London: Power Publications, 2007), extending more intense inquiries into the subject. A later book edited by Jayne Pilling, A Reader in Animation Studies (Sydney: John Libbey, 1997) covered a range of theoretical, critical and historical perspectives by including writings from both animation theorists and practitioners.

Appearing soon after was the Animation in Asia and the Pacific volume edited by John A. Lent (Eastleigh, UK: John Libbey, 2001[later with Indiana University Press]), which focused on the various animation developments on the continent and surrounding regions. Therein, for the first time, Asia-based scholars and practitioners were invited to contribute as well. Our previous work, Japanese Animation: East Asian Perspectives, was spurred by the tremendous rise of interest and popularity of Japanese animation worldwide, particularly the anime kind,⁴ and has been recognized as groundbreaking for introducing works translated into English from original Japanese, Korean, and Chinese writings as well.⁵ Another anthology is Animating Film Theory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), led by Karen Beckman, in which the contributors are eminent scholars in film, media, philosophy, and cultural studies with interdisciplinary interests in studying Japanese media and popular culture.

As this book goes to print, we believe that more anthologies are in preparation indicating the growing academic inquiry about the subject of animation in general and the expanding readership as well. For example, a newly published collection, Fantasy/Animation: Connections between Media, Mediums and Genres (Routledge 2018), edited by Christopher Holliday and Alexander Sergeant, features essays that examined the historical, cultural and theoretical relationships between fantasy and animation. Indeed, the realm of fantasy is encapsulated within the dimension of the spirited and is directly and aptly covered in some of the chapters of our anthology.

This volume is unique in the sense that it focuses on the insights of the spirited and how the spirited-oriented subthemes, journeys, and transformations are exemplified, examined, and interpreted in the context of visual representations with animation as the leading pivoting point of discussion. Our publication is also meant to appeal to a broader reading public interested in the ever-expanding dimensions of mental health, culture, and related expressions of human living and interactions in a broad sense as the collected essays show. Our fundamental binding interest is on the spirit of the human endeavor to create and express, the self-conscious attempt to understand the process and the parallel spirited reception from audiences. As such, the spirit of understanding is as committed as the creative process.

The main theme-subject of spirited dwells bilaterally on the term spiritual and its related contemporary hot topic of wellness and being; in short, the spirited and the spiritual are part of our essence as human beings. Though this anthology does not contain essays that ostensibly provide a compass to the reader on how to be spiritually well, its essays provide a glimpse of how the idea of the spirited is being explored, researched, treated, and produced by various authors, researchers, and creators working in different parts of the planet. Since prehistoric times, the human race has been bestowed with a thinking and expressive spirit where images are conjured up, resulting in the creation of project works and meditated missions of a various nature. Frequently, such accomplishments and endeavors are in reaction to the physical and cultural environments and sometimes in response to the changing physical and mental developments of each individual.

Interestingly, in an Eastern language—for example in Chinese, the jing (精) and the shen (神) Chinese characters come to mind—their corresponding meanings and definitions are analogous to the English meanings of the spirited/spiritual as introduced above,⁶ including the connotations, nuances, and explicit and implicit understandings of the various concepts enveloped within. The character jing represents meanings of essence, life, refinement, depth, soul, breath including goblin/the uncanny and so on. Similarly, shen also represents meanings of the spirit, mind, consciousness, sacred/divine, mystical/mysterious, expressive, and so on. Drawing on the different linguistic backgrounds of our colleagues, the multifaceted yet interlinked themes of the spirited seem to be replicated across several other languages. In other words, while we recognize and acknowledge the particularities of the spirited across cultures, we also believe in the value of keeping in mind the universality of the spirited theme and how it is being studied, researched, comprehended, expressed and consumed in various parts of the world in both similar and at once unique ways.

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS: JOURNEYS AND TRANSFORMATIONS

Working on different continents and coming from varying cultural backgrounds, our group of like-minded scholars, artists, curators and educators frame similar patterns of thought generally, although coalescing along different fields of inquiry. As a result, the fourteen essays are organized into five sections.

Essays in section 1 come under the title Mindful Practices, Creation and the Spirited Process. The first essay is co-authored by Graham Barton and Birgitta Hosea; their essay gives us a report about their project work in the United Kingdom where mindfulness workshops were introduced to art and design students, testing the effectiveness of experiential and mental self-awareness learning via meditation techniques. Their work is a spot-on educational development trend as in the United States of America, increasingly, K–12 schools and even Silicon Valley–based corporate organizations are promoting mindfulness programs to their constituents as well. As educators, ultimately, Barton and Hosea are interested in the well-being of the students and in developing positive attributes that would help them cope with academic stress and the pressures they will face when they join the professional world. Though Buddhist meditation techniques are introduced, the context is purely pedagogic and secular, and the objectives are focused on teaching and learning both for the educator and for the student.

International award-winning Japanese animator-artist Yamamura Koji writes about his texture of imagination via the selected animated works he has created over the years. His essay lets us catch sight of the spiritual and mental motivations that drive his creativity. Literature, music, choice of craft materials, and travels abroad to Eastern European countries formulate the thinking and creative process of producing animation. The psychological, emotional, subconscious, and unconscious aspects of making animation are narrated as he self-reflects on the power of imagination and the mind. The contour of work that goes into the making of art ranges from the material to the abstract; what Yamamura reflectively shares with us are the depths of his mind and the inner self /spirit or soul of creating animation as he seeks to understand his own art and the medium of animation that he expresses himself in.

Eileen Anastasia Reynolds’s first-person narrative also pays attention to the mental elements of filmmaking, in particular, therapeutic functions and benefits. Employing animating and live-action filming techniques, the Sea Fever film (2015) was made with her schizophrenic aunt cast as the main actress, and who assisted in the production process as well. For example, she taught and engaged her aunt to do stop-motion animation like simple cut-out and pixilation using paper, thereby transforming her aunt into a pixilation puppet and model in the studio work. The production process lifted her aunt’s spirits and might bring future prospects of casting. However, Reynolds is quick to self-question and, thus, cautions against exploiting persons with a mental illness in filmmaking. Essentially, cinematic therapy can be a healing and liberating experience if the objectives are meant to be therapeutical and for the benefit of the participants concerned. Her work opens up possibilities of what animation/film/cinematic therapy can contribute to society and indirectly ties in with Barton and Hosea’s current work in educating positive-minded art, design, and animation students.

The second section, Objects, Spirits and Characters looks into the uncanny and fantastic dimensions of storytelling. Sugawa-Shimada Akiko’s essay focuses on the topic of inanimate objects and artefact spirits (tsukumogami) in Japanese folk beliefs and discusses how they are transformed into various contemporary multimedia platforms, including an online web browser game, a mobile game, anime TV series and even theater performances. As these inanimate objects and their corresponding tsukumogami often date back to historical periods and persons and even certain religious sites as well, the spin-offs include fans tourism and contents tourism developments expanding into places like museums or cafés, where crowds of fans/audiences congregate as a form of pilgrimage to experience or grasp the real-life physicality of the object or spirit concerned.

Japan is a renowned animation mecca. It produces more than half of the world’s animated television programs and films (Hu 2010; Yokota and Hu 2013), both annually and on a seasonal basis due to the medium’s popularity within the country and internationally. Anime, a popular form of Japanese animation, continues to dominate the storytelling arena, intriguing audiences worldwide. Raz Greenberg analyzes the archetype of the heavenly woman in the Japanese context, besides tracing its existence in the Western context, especially its debut in the American live-action sitcom Bewitched. His case study covers three well-known anime feature films, Castle in the Sky (1986), Ghost in the Shell (1995), and Millennium Actress (2001), and espouses the intriguing appeal of these heavenly woman characters presented in the narratives. A number of traditional Japanese folktales, inter alia, including folk festivals and so forth are adaptations from Chinese sources, as Greenberg relates in his research.⁷

The originating factor is—as Sugawa-Shimada’s work has shown as well—the psyche of the country’s folk beliefs is a mixture of Shintoism, Buddhism, and Chinese philosophies, and inventively, Japan continues to offer a variety of mythological subjects and character story designs despite its high-tech rational facade and exceedingly industrialized status. Since the 1990s, Western fandom’s fascination and scholarly interest in anime’s subjects like monsters, heroes, heroines, robots, and others have prevailed unabatedly.⁸ Greenberg’s reading of the heroine characters facilitates us further into studying the ambivalent elements of the heavenly woman character/archetype outstandingly created in anime. His essay is a timely piece of writing, especially for one to begin a seminar discussion about anime heroines and their complex roles within the storylines, in comparison to straightforward character presentations found in many commercially made animations, such as Disney’s animated feature films. Richard J. Leskosky’s essay fits perfectly in this section as well. He introduces the concept of metanoia in the analysis of Japanese animation characters, particularly, those featured in anime. First, Leskosky gives us an outline of the concept as found in Christianity as well as Western thought and culture. However, he observes that the relative frequency of metanoia is significant in anime, especially in the mental and spiritual set-ups of the characters, thereby contributing to complex and multiple developments in the storylines. His survey of the character studies does not rest on a couple of TV anime series alone; the breadth includes several notable long-running TV anime and their feature film releases, live-action Japanese films and those well-known rehabilitated monsters like Godzilla, Mothra, and Gamera. In tracing the character arcs of anime narratives, Leskosky settles that the metanoia concept coalesces into the ever-evolving treasury of Japanese animation and that the latter is representative of Japan’s spiritual thought, historical past, and its present composite industrialized formation.

Essays in section 3, Inspirations from the Spiritual-Cultural Realm, elucidate the heritage of spiritual thought and ideas that auteur animators in China, Iran, and Japan draw upon in their animation-making enterprise. Iranian animation artist and scholar M. Javad Khajavi writes about the increasing creative and scholarly interest in digital calligraphic animation in the Middle East and the United Kingdom. To adequately appreciate Islamic calligraphy animation, he explains that one has to understand the hidden layer of meanings enclosed within the visual structures. Readers are introduced to Sufism, an Islamic form of mysticism, and its historical poetic influences bestowed on Islamic visual culture and, most recently, the symbolism that appears on the animation screen. Due to religious reasons, Islamic art is limited to noniconic expressions. Yet, artistic visual manifestations of the word are bountiful in the Islamic world. The endless possibilities of spiritual calligrams and their digital transformations in advancing the imagined narrative provide the gist of Khajavi’s distinctive contribution. He is also an animation artist; this collection is fortunate to have his participation as published English writings on Middle Eastern and Islamic animation are very limited and hard to come by.

Hu Tze-yue G.’s work interprets the artistic and individualistic components of China’s much-celebrated watercolor-and-ink animation, which tends to be obscured by the glorified nationalistic discourse. Probing into Daoist inspirations, the late animation director Te Wei’s Cowherd’s Flute (1963) is the subject of her interpretation. Daoist thought and practices have presided in Chinese culture since antiquity and have been the yoke and tether of Chinese traditional views of life at various levels. Exteriorly, a fellow Chinese authority can easily recognize and appreciate the aesthetic appeal of Daoist-inspired artwork. Inwardly and ironically, there is also a profound ethnic intuition to discern the rebellious individualistic meanings embroiled within many Daoist-inspired creations, be it a painting, poetic verse, literary text, and so forth. The watercolor-and-ink animation, a highly acclaimed Chinese invention, though initially supported by the state apparatus, was eventually not allowed for public screening, and artists were persecuted. Hu recaps and recuperates this episode in Chinese animation history and argues that the Daoist influences in Cowherd’s Flute have a peculiar universal flavor—for international audiences and Chinese residing overseas as well—especially its narrative themes of freedom and imagination. In the Chinese case, Daoist thinking continues to reign in the Chinese spiritual psyche—nationally, ethnically, and, at the same time, in a private individualistic sense.

Yokota Masao’s essay is based on his ongoing research on the late Japanese distinguished puppet animator Kawamoto Kihachiro. In fact, readers should cross-reference his essay that was published in our previous anthology (2013: 265–84). A clinical psychologist by training, Yokota is persistent in focusing on issues that concern the mental health of his fellow countrymen. The auteurist range of Kawamoto’s puppet animations frequently concerns Buddhistinspired stories and themes. Even his last directorial project, The Book of the Dead (2005), had vibrant messages about the embrace of repentance and the virtuous offering of compassionate acts and prayers. What are the spiritual motives and intentions behind Kawamoto’s prolific animation career? How may one read into the metaaspects of his work? Besides Buddhism, native folk religions are also enmeshed in Japanese spiritual thinking; Yokota takes us back in historical memory and highlights segments of Japan’s cultural past via Kawamoto’s career, including the devastating Second World War, during which Japan was both the aggressor and the vanquished.

In section 4, Comics and Children’s Literature: Their Transformative Roles, Gyongyi Horvath’s essay is based on her master’s thesis research on a much lesser known children’s comic, 100 Days in the Land of the Thousand Hills (2011, hereafter 100 Days). A noncommercial publication, it was created to promote greater understanding of the Rwandan genocide and encourage rehumanization of the ‘other’—both for victims and perpetrators of the violence—among youth. Funded by the United Nations, the comic has been distributed largely to that particular region of Africa as an educational resource and its worldwide distribution is very limited. However, this unassuming publication has made inroads into academic institutions and literary critique circles.⁹ Horvath begins by evaluating the engagement values of the comic genre; using 100 Days, she tests the effects of the genocide story on a group of young readers in Australia and how they learn from the educational messages of a human story that occurred in a different geographical setting. Her essay divulges the detailed modus operandi that underpinned the fieldwork conducted, and model samples are provided in an appendix.

The comic genre has often been regarded as the predecessor or close cousin of the animation medium. Notably, the written word remains an integral component of the comic narrative, besides the presence of visual imagery. As stated earlier, the editors of this anthology do not restrict the animating experience as merely to the film perspective—the ideas of giving life, taking action, and the resolution to solve something are considered as fragments of the spirited moments and valid manifestations of the term animate. Here we pay tribute to the creators and sponsors of 100 Days, the significance of Horvath’s project of shared humanity, and the suggested ways to prevent/ end problems of inter-/intraethnic conflicts and violence, to highlight that there is a need to better understand the darker side of humanity as well.¹⁰

Park Giryung begins by examining the popularity of the TV anime series Heidi, Girl of the Alps, in Japan and Korea and the subsequent media consumption activities that resulted. Indeed, the international appeal of the Heidi story upsets Rudyard Kipling’s famous line about the East and West that never the twain shall meet. Though Park does not cover the Western reception of the Heidi TV anime series in Europe and elsewhere, it is known that the Japanese animated version of the Heidi story has elevated the nineteenth-century Swiss-originated children’s literature to newer worldwide recognition.¹¹ Her work serves as an initial survey of Heidi’s popularity in Japan and Korea and lays the groundwork for more research to be done. Resonating with Sugawa-Shimada’s work, Park also touches on the popular-culture-induced tours that ensued, thanks to the successful role of the animated media which transformed a modest children’s story into a visual-based emotive enterprise. It has been rather daunting for Park to compose and write in English; nevertheless, the editors believe that her topic aptly interweaves the main themes of the publication and therefore have worked steadfastly with her to improve her essay’s script in English.

Section 5 investigates how Buddhist Worldviews, Interactions and Symbolism transform the outcome and creativity of animation-making curriculum and spirituality training. Millie Young’s essay studies the influences of Buddhist philosophy and native Thai culture ideology in Thai animations. To date, there are very few such published critical works. Her study also enriches us with a substantial overview of the various types of animated narratives produced in that country. Unlike East Asia, where Mahayana Buddhism has a stronghold, Theravada Buddhism is a dominant religious dogma in Southeast Asia and Thailand, affecting the everyday lives of Thai people. Yet, the Thainess of Thai culture exerts its underlying weight as well. Balancing and meandering her pedagogic responsibilities of educating Thai students, Young sheds light on how she inculcates the best of the Western tradition of storytelling theories and devices, while at the same time making room for local experiences of narrative-building, allowing and encouraging her students to bring in different perspectives, colors, and nuances that surround and lie invisibly within the Thai culture. Her analysis locates us at a part of Southeast Asia where the spiritual thinking of the people is multilayered with the mix of the foreign and local, old and new. The second part of Millie’s essay tellingly reviews the illustrative spectrum of narratives spouting from the Land of Smiles. Fantasy and reality get intermingled not only in animated narratives but in life as it is—Thailand shows no exception and manages with its own variant model of cultural ideology.

Ng Yuk Lan’s essay takes us back into a historical period of Japan when not only painting, but also contemplating paintings of nature, especially the flower-and-bird type, served as spiritual training and inspiration for Zen practitioners. The heritage of artistic ideas and practices cannot be borne out in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries alone as this anthology has demonstrated so far. For example, the contemporary sprouting of digital 3-D Chinese brush paintings as mentioned in Hu’s essay is due to the existence of such traditional 2-D paintings in the past. In fact, the lesser-known form of Zen-inspired flower-and-bird paintings, which is the core subject of Ng’s research, have yet to be presented ostensibly in the digital format with new expressive, creative possibilities and interpretations. This is a potential area that future media artists and scholars can pursue.¹³

The essay may seem out of place given that the focus of Ng’s work is concentrated on an archaic form of generic Zen paintings. However, Zen (Chan) Buddhism’s influence on human material culture—even today—is invaluable. From priceless East Asian artefacts to modern Western architecture and design in general, one need not say more of its indispensable spiritual inspiration to human creativity and its contemplative-meditative dimension. Moreover, her work shines a spotlight on a historical period when cultural exchange between China and Japan was dynamic and stimulating; Zen paintings in Japan became both adaptive and inventive at the same time. Nowadays, the artistic backgrounds of many Japanese animations like those created by internationally celebrated animator-director Miyazaki Hayao are considered super realistic even though the drawn characters have two-dimensional characteristics. We believe that the present only makes sense if we pay due attention to the past, including the continuum of knowledge and matters that concern the mind, spirit, and cultural environment. Written from the discipline of art history critique and curation, the contents of her essay enhance our comprehension and appreciation of the spirited phenomena—moving or nonmoving, and the dynamic symbolisms pervading within.

Highlighting as well the pedagogic aspects of learning and designing the curriculum, Ker Yin first traces the Western problematic approach to teaching oriental art history, particularly the subject of Buddhist art and its accentuation on the material cultural characteristics and elements. As such, the physical dimension takes precedence over the spiritual, where, ironically, the foundations of Buddhist teachings are about emptiness, nonattachment and wisdom. In other words, they are beyond form and language. The world of Buddhist iconography, style, aesthetics, and so on, at best, can be read as mere superficial representations of what the Buddha taught thousands of centuries ago.

In order to heighten the quintessential awareness of Buddha’s teachings in art history, Ker advocates and experiments with an integrated, coherent program using visual manifestations as functional education units, including the use of sounds, color, shapes, character figures, textures, and so on. She proposes a film-and-game hands-on educational project where the act of animating, creating, and expressing will lead to illuminating exceptional understanding of the Buddhist worldview. The experiential is indeed a much-valued element in the heart of Buddhist teachings.¹² Her work-in-progress project shows promising developments to come and hints at the future possibilities and potentials of Buddhist-inspired multimedia learning platforms.

Here, we also direct the reader to take up a philosophical perspective of the broader meanings of the animated as well. As mentioned at the beginning, the study of animation is multifaceted; it is not limited to the cinematic alone. Though movement is a key essence, the context is important too. For example, the context of the spirited movement as framed and the larger sociocultural framework that support the animated presence (Malpas 2012).¹⁴ In other words, there are unseen and unheard rhythmic energies as well inspired by spiritual and cultural ideas. The process of animation is not confined to the usage of mechanical devices only; from a wider philosophical and definitive perspective, we consider that there are other processes of animated movements that capture our attention and study too. In them, the spirited resides as well expressing in their specific modes and forms.

THE SPIRITED: WELLBEING AND MENTAL HEALTH CONNECTION

In 2017, the theme of World Health Day (April 7) was mental health. The World Health Organization (WHO) had also designated the year-long campaign slogan as let’s talk.¹⁵ Indeed, these essays and others beyond the collection all, on the whole, point to the significance of the spirited in negotiating, searching for and finding the balanced equilibrium of the mental side of human life.

As mentioned above, this anthology does not aim to prescribe a menu of actions of how to be spiritually well or what to do to become mentally resilient. However, one cannot ignore the up-to-date emphasis of WHO’s specific focus on mental health issues in the present fast-changing world. Essentially, each yearly theme is duly set in accordance to what WHO regards as current health issues within the world.¹⁶ For example, depression is estimated by the WHO to be the leading cause of disability worldwide and the burden of the disease continues to grow.¹⁷ In recent years, the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services has increasingly supported research on spiritual well-being and improving healthy lives.¹⁸ For us as humans, getting back in touch with our spirited and the spiritual sides is a craving many are unable to express—the essays discussed in this collection speak to and provoke a desired connection with something more meaningful beyond our material world.

Perhaps it is coincidental that our current published anthology of essays more or less echoes the contemporary, similar line of interest of WHO. On the other hand, our coming together is not accidental; rather, it spans the scope of our common themes of interest as we happened to present excerpts of our research in international forums¹⁹ and major conferences,²⁰ as well as through peer conversations²¹ and recommendations. We feel that it is a timely and relevant anthology for the liberal arts readership; at the same time, it is also meant for the broader population of scholars, artists, and readers, including social and medical scientists, interested in the universal themes of mental health, spirituality, and creativity.²² Incidentally, World Mental Health Day (October 10) is a day for global mental health education, and some countries have even instituted an annual mental awareness week to mark the importance of mental health in our daily lives. The 2018 theme was Young People and Mental Health in a Changing World.²³

Finally, it is not by happenstance that Buddhism as a spiritual practice and religion is somewhat foregrounded in this anthology. Among other reasons as the contents of the various essays show, for example, the paramount interest in anime necessarily impels us to the animation kingdom of Japan and its perpetually creative popular culture landscape. In that part of Asia, inadvertently, the influences of Buddhism have to be taken into account just as in Thailand, where its cultural genesis is unthinkable without debating the obviously noticeable Buddhist appearances. For further understanding, a glossary is included for the basic definitions of key Buddhist and other cultural terms mentioned in the essays. Broadly, each contributor in this volume has incisively chosen to define and explore his or her own piece of the spirited; the range of writing styles, thinking patterns, research efforts, and voices that