Many of the animation programs at universities in Japan seem to focus on nurturing practitioners, while very few are going on in terms of scholarly research. As a result, a proper cycle in which future generations of researchers appear or participate cannot be established. In addition, it is impossible to build up of any research community and to make interdisciplinary collaborations happen through sharing research achievements. We can find many cases of animation research achieved so far under a journalistic approach. However, academic research will be performed in quite a different approach from it, and then have the advantage of enabling researchers to directly addressing the cores of specialized discourses. There is no systematic education for students who do not necessarily want to be artists; nor might they necessarily to be scholars, while still much interested in animation. Education for such students needs curriculums developed by different kinds of specialists from those who are engaged in fostering practitioners. The establishment of this new field as a discipline requires the presence of specialized, professional "animation studies specialist" within academia.