In “anime”, there is often the morphology of movement or the movement of morphology presented with which characters and backgrounds seem to merge on screen, as seen in Akira and My Neighbor Totoro. In order to make clear the dynamics in which such images could be engendered and materialized, it is necessary to take into account the way in which modern Western optical technologies such as photography were received in Japanese visual culture. In the late Edo era, there was a transmedial environment where kabuki’s body performance, ukiyoe’s image of the body, nozoki-karakuri, gesaku, and photographic apparatus were in a close interaction and engagement, thereby bringing to life performing and viewing, and reading and speaking, further triggering affects and emotions, with language and image intersecting each other. This is a kind of the animating performance of image. Among the bases of anime is a genealogy of the animating image, as vital to the examination of animation, and moving image in general.