In this latest Fantasy/Animation Footnote, Chris and Alex wonder about wonder - a term that emphatically traverses both fantasy and animation as fields of study, yet with alternate meanings and connotations related to everything from mid-1990s cultures of special effects appreciation to fantasy’s historical links to the so-called “wonder film.” Topics include the “wonder years” of special effects production and reception during the 1990s via what Michele Pierson calls a growing “connoisseurship” of effects technologies; histories of the effects-laden ‘wonder film’ as an industrial category and links to the ‘wonder tale’; wonder itself as both the aestheticization of thought and/or thought induced by aesthetics; wonder’s role in fantasy scholarship to describe distinctions between fantasy, horror, and science-fiction; and more recent turns towards expanded animation and the spectatorship and ‘siting’ of wonder in the digital age.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**