Events PLACES TAKING PLACE Second Session: Animating the ‘Conflict Network’: Place, Language, and War in Genocidal Organ
October 15th, 2026. 16:00~18:00 JST
Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture (room 217)
Animating the ‘Conflict Network’: Place, Language, and War in Genocidal Organ
Post-9/11 Hollywood saw the emergence of what has been termed the ‘global network film’: a kind of narrative cinema that dramatizes the ethical dilemmas of globalized economic and geopolitical networks and the inequalities they produce (Narine, 2010). Taking the network film as its starting point, this talk examines the science-fiction anime Genocidal Organ (Gyakusatsu kikan, dir. Murase Shūkō, 2017) and its portrayal of military conflict as a globally interconnected phenomenon enabled by interventionist foreign policy, domestic surveillance, and transnational supply chains. Through a comparative analysis with the original novel by Project Itoh, the talk discusses the film’s animation of various locations across the United States, Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czechia, India, and the coast of Lake Victoria – geographically distant places that become nodes in a complex network of deliberately induced genocides orchestrated by the film’s antagonist. Whereas current scholarship on global or planetary network cinema focuses on live-action film, particularly Hollywood blockbusters, this talk explores how anime, unconstrained by location shooting or even the necessity of placing a camera within physical space, creates new imaginaries of a world interconnected by surveillance technologies, military conflict, and mass death.
16:00-17:00: Animating the ‘Conflict Network’: Place, Language, and War in Genocidal Organ
Post-9/11 Hollywood saw the emergence of what has been termed the ‘global network film’: a kind of narrative cinema that dramatizes the ethical dilemmas of globalized economic and geopolitical networks and the inequalities they produce (Narine, 2010). Taking the network film as its starting point, this talk examines the science-fiction anime Genocidal Organ (Gyakusatsu kikan, dir. Murase Shūkō, 2017) and its portrayal of military conflict as a globally interconnected phenomenon enabled by interventionist foreign policy, domestic surveillance, and transnational supply chains. Through a comparative analysis with the original novel by Project Itoh, the talk discusses the film’s animation of various locations across the United States, Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czechia, India, and the coast of Lake Victoria – geographically distant places that become nodes in a complex network of deliberately induced genocides orchestrated by the film’s antagonist. Whereas current scholarship on global or planetary network cinema focuses on live-action film, particularly Hollywood blockbusters, this talk explores how anime, unconstrained by location shooting or even the necessity of placing a camera within physical space, creates new imaginaries of a world interconnected by surveillance technologies, military conflict, and mass death.
16:00-17:00: Animating the ‘Conflict Network’: Place, Language, and War in Genocidal Organ
17:00- : Discussion
Speaker: Betty STOJNIC
Betty Stojnic holds a PhD in Global Screen Studies awarded by Nagoya University and the University of Warwick. She specializes in Japanese cinema and animation, with a particular interest in film-philosophy and the depiction of technology, science, and warfare in anime. Her research has been published in Mechademia, The Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, and Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image. She has presented at a variety of international conferences and symposia, including Mechademia, the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies, and Animafest Zagreb.
This workshop will take place in English. It will be possible to ask questions using other languages.
For the zoom link to participate online, please contact us.
Speaker: Betty STOJNIC
Betty Stojnic holds a PhD in Global Screen Studies awarded by Nagoya University and the University of Warwick. She specializes in Japanese cinema and animation, with a particular interest in film-philosophy and the depiction of technology, science, and warfare in anime. Her research has been published in Mechademia, The Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, and Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image. She has presented at a variety of international conferences and symposia, including Mechademia, the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies, and Animafest Zagreb.
This workshop will take place in English. It will be possible to ask questions using other languages.
For the zoom link to participate online, please contact us.