This week, I focused on deepening my research and starting the first draft of my report. I began by looking for academic articles on Google Scholar to explore the aesthetics of violence in animation. However, I mostly found research about how violence in animation affects children, which wasn’t directly helpful for my topic. There wasn’t much written specifically about the stylistic or artistic presentation of violence in animation.
Since academic reports didn’t provide much insight, I decided to shift my focus to visual references. I watched several animated series and movies to gather examples and ideas. These included anime like Berserk and Demon Slayer, the animated series Cyberpunk, and Disney films like Beauty and the Beast. Watching these helped me analyze how different animations approach violence visually and narratively.
As I watched, I noticed many different themes in the content, such as pornography, sexual assault, patriarchy, bloodshed, revenge, cults and supernatural. Each of these could be explored deeply, but I realised that my report needed a clear and focused direction to stay within the word limit. To make the topic manageable, I decided to focus only on physical violence and bloodshed, particularly scenes involving death. This narrower focus would allow me to go into more detail and provide justice to the topic.
To prepare for the report, I took detailed notes while watching the series, including timestamps of key scenes that illustrated physical violence and bloodshed. These notes will be important references for specific examples I plan to use in the report.
Overall, this week was about finding the right materials to support my argument and deciding on the direction for my report. While it was challenging to find academic sources, the process of watching and analysing animations gave me plenty of insights and examples to work with for the next stage.