Magic and Technology (2012)

I also think a large part of it is animation, too. Large part of technology can seem magic-like in animation (especially Japanese style), but films and other media make it difficult (tech is too real). I grew up on Japanese animation, and the fights are much more fantastical than not. But action films of Hollywood portray more of what reality is like, which can seem less magic-like and just plain gruesome (even when it is romanticized).

I also think this is why Japanese animation, when they are translated into the more real, film territory, enter uncanny valley. Some things must remain magical in the form that they were conceived in.

This post could do with more specific references, and fewer generalizations and hand waving.

Hephaestus was the god of the forge, smithing, and techne - yet he used magic to make many of his elaborate contraptions. Steampunk is a popular subgenre of sci-fi that blends the relationship between technology and magic. Tolkien opposes the technology of Isengard to the inherent magic of nature, but so does Miyazaki.

>> We are just, despite ourselves… special.

Aye, we're special. Nothing else in the entire universe has such a big idea of itself.

A better summation, from TVTropes.[1]

[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MugglesDoItBette...