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This paper examines how Takahata Isao’s reputation as a filmmaker was established, focusing on the period between Horus: The Prince of the Sun (1968) and Only Yesterday (1991), using Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of “field” and “consecration”. Through detailed analysis of promotion strategies, popular and critical reception of his films, and his appearance in different types of media in the form of essays and interviews, I will discuss how Takahata and his films were “consecrated”, or came to be recognized as something respectable and deserve critical attention. Throughout the analysis the focus will be on the relationship between different “fields” rather than his films. I will contend that the process of his consecration is deeply related to that of the establishment of the field of anime and its fandom in the late 1970s, and its relationship with other fields with greater cultural capital, such as literature and live-action films as well as non-Japanese animations. The association of Takahata and his films with these fields was used by media, stakeholders in film productions including Studio Ghibli and publishing houses Tokuma shoten and Shinchōsha, as well as Takahata himself, to distinguish him and his films from other anime.

This concluding chapter cites Michael Gondry's film, Mood Indigo (2013), in presenting the pitched battle raging constantly in matters concerning cinema and between attraction and narration. Being a driving force in the genealogy of the medium, this tension has been revived, in this day and age, in several critics' discussion of the film. The attractional effect produced by special effects, undermining the narrative economy parallels the tension between the homochrone and the heterochrone. In cinema, the homochrone reinforces the overloading of the special effect, in which viewers have no control. The digital world and its boundless possibilities are fascinating, but such a fascination must not compromise the rigor of one's research. However, digital technology makes it possible to fuse the two systems of artistic interpretation and total representation. This spirit of convergence gives birth to the concept of animage.