In both video games and animated films, worlds are constructed through a combination of animation, which defines what players see on the screen, and music and sound, which provide essential cues to action, emotion, and narrative. This book offers a rich exploration of the intersections between animation, video games, and music and sound, bringing together a range of multidisciplinary lenses. In 14 chapters, the contributors consider similarities and differences in how music and sound structure video games and animation, as well as the animation within video games, and explore core topics of nostalgia, adaptation, gender, and sexuality. Offering fresh insights into the aesthetic interplay of animation, video games, and sound, this volume provides a gateway into new areas of study that will be of interest to scholars and students across musicology, animation studies, game studies, and media studies more broadly.
This book offers a rich exploration of the intersections between animation, video games, and music and sound, bringing together a range of multidisciplinary lenses.
Part I: Adaptation and Comparative Usage
1. What is "Real?" Diegetic Spaces in Epic Mickey (Andrew S. Powell)
2. Rusted Red: Machinarium as Political Allegory (Tristan Kneschke)
3. A Watercolor that can be Played: Gris and the Appeal of Handmade Indie
Games (Marķa Lorenzo Hernįndez and Armando Bernabeu Lorenzo)
4. Building Worlds with Beethoven: Epistemic Roles of ("Classical") Music in
Animated Films and Video Games (Reinke Schwinning)
5. The Pseudo-1930s World of Cuphead (Lisa Scoggin)
Part II: Gender, Sex, and Sexuality
6. Xandir P. Wifflebottom, Video Game... Hero? (Karen M. Cook)
7. Who on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?: Two Case Studies in Aural Identity (T.J.
Laws-Nicola and Brent Ferguson)
8. Into the Dragons Lair: A Sonic Tapestry of Medievalism, Gender, and
Sexuality (Dana Plank)
9. From Fantasy to Trauma: Sound and Sex in School Days (Ko On Chan)
Part III: Nostalgia
10. The Retrospective and Retrocursive Stances in Retro Game Aesthetics: How
DuckTales Remastered Got the Last Quack (Dominic Arsenault)
11. A Far-Off Memory: Kingdom Hearts III and Musical Reuse (Ryan Thompson)
12. Chiptunes to Cartoons: Video Game Aesthetics in the Plot and Sound World
of Adventure Time! (Matthew Ferrandino)
13. Rurouni Kenshin: Anime-driven Nostalgia in Gaming Soundscapes (Stacey
Jocoy)
14. Looking Forward, Turning Back: Ni no Kuni as a Renegotiation of the
Animshon Concept (Jason Cody Douglass and Rayna Denison)
Lisa Scoggin holds a PhD in musicology from Boston University, USA, and specialises in music in American animation.
Dana Plank is Adjunct Lecturer in music history for the Hartt School, University of Hartford, and The Ohio State University, USA.
