Within the academy, animation is still a relatively under-studied subject field - though, clearly, this is beginning to change. This article is a polemical response to the nascent field of animation studies. It explores some implications of the marginalization of animation and confronts what it views as significant obstacles (and cul-de-sacs) with respect to the progress and consolidation of the subject as a legitimate field of scholarship. An overall approach is suggested which - in certain respects - is at odds with what has been undertaken in the field in the past and with what is professed as legitimate and epistemologically productive in the present.