The Illusion of Life II 2 continues and extends the pioneering work in the theory of animation begun in The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation. It provides an abundance of understandings, approaches, correctives, and challenges to scholars not only in animation studies and film studies, but in disciplines across the spectrum. It proceeds on the assumption that animation, in increasingly taking center stage thanks to computer animation and anime, calls ever more insistently for focused, rigorous theoretical attention.

The sixteen essays composing the collection engage with post-World War II film animation in Japan and the United States, as well as with the expanded field of animation, including: the relation of live action and animation; video and computer games, the electronic, digitally animated mediascape, the city, flight simulation, the military and war; and animation in the entertainment industry. In addition, it contains essays of a more general theoretical nature on animation, as well as a substantial introduction addressing developments in animation and its theorizing.