Battle Lines Drawn: How Animation Depicts Real World Conflicts
The prevalence of war and conflict in the modern world is
reflected in the cinema of practically every country. From
historical accounts of ancient battles to depictions of current
conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, war has been and will
continue to be a staple topic for cinema around the world.
Within animation, though, there haven’t been a great many films
that focus themselves on real-life events; rather, it has
embraced the sci-fi genre that can discuss real conflicts
allegorically rather than directly. However, when animated films
have directly portrayed war, they have often proved that the
medium is at least as capable, if not more so, at doing it as
live-action cinema. The magic in the best examples of animated
filmmaking comes from the marriage of fantasy and emotional
reality. The current kings of animation, Pixar and Studio
Ghibli, maintain their success by grounding their films with
simple, human emotion at the heart. When combined with