This paper aims to explore whether we can gain new insights and understandings of the Neo-Confucian diagrams of the Chinese Song scholar Zhou Dunyi (1017-1073) and Korean Joseon scholar Yi Hwang Toegye (1501-1570) through digital 3D animation. The Neo-Confucian tradition in China and especially Korea had a strong focus on the human being and our connection to heaven and earth, as well as creation. This led scholars to not only write down their theories but also visualize them through diagrammatic drawings. Such scholar was Zhou Dunyi, who created The Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate (太極圖, taiji tu), and Toegye, who created The Diagram of the Mandate of Heaven (天命圖, cheonmyeong do) based on Zhou’s diagram. These two diagrams are drawn in 2D. However, in recent years scholars have begun to wonder whether these diagrams, despite being in 2D, were intended to be imagined in 3D when observed based on certain statements found in the diagram’s corresponding textual explanations. The corresponding textual explanations of the diagrams have been studied before in the context of the diagrams being in 2D. Hence, if the diagrams have to be viewed differently, do we then have to analyze the textual explanation differently? As mentioned above, Toegye based his diagram on Zhou Dunyi’s, and therefore they have been compared in former research. Thus, would the comparison prove different if we viewed the diagrams in 3D instead of 2D? Lastly, we might ask whether employing digital methods, such as 3D animation, can aid us in the study of Neo-Confucian diagrammatic literature as well as provide us with new perspectives on how to study pre-modern Chinese Korean literature.

Shamik Dasgupta’s graphic novel Virulents, with illustrations by Dean Ruben Hyrapiet, offers an exploration of horror through the lens of mythology and technology. The increasing entanglement of technology and literature has transformed the ways in which narratives are created, disseminated, and received. The story follows an elite commando team investigating the disappearance of a military squad amidst intense bombing campaigns targeting suspected militant strongholds. The fusion of mythology and technology grabs another layer in its reconfiguration of the vampire trope through Indian mythological figures such as Kālī and Raktabīja (blood seed). The rhizomatic nature of these figures, representing boundless multiplication and decentralization, finds a parallel in the non-linear, fragmented structure explained in Deleuze and Guattari's book A Thousand Plateaus. The animated adaptation of the text utilizes graphic novel cut-outs, 3D war elements, stop-motion techniques, and Flash animation, further reinforcing its postmodern digital hybridity. This work suggests that technological advancements can disrupt conventional power dynamics, as seen in the evolving relationship between humans and vampires. By analyzing the convergence of war, mythology, and technology in Virulents, this paper would like to engage with broader debates on digital humanities and comparative literature. The study aims to demonstrate how digital tools such as animation, network analysis, and distant reading reshape the study of literature. It also interrogates whether technological advances redefine established mythological and supernatural narratives, challenging the presumed dominance of the supernatural over the human. The paper would like to contribute to the ongoing discourse on the role of artificial intelligence and intermediality in contemporary literary studies.

This paper conducts a cross-cultural comparative analysis of borderland narratives in the Global South, focusing on The Story of Southern Islet (Chong Keat Aun, 2020) and Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra, 2015). These films portray borderlands—the Malaysian-Thai border and the Amazon rainforest—as liminal spaces where cultural hybridity, ecological trauma, and colonial legacies converge. Through non-linear storytelling and symbolic imagery, the films explore themes of discrete identities, spiritual connections, and the entanglements between humans, nature, and colonial histories.

Employing Deleuze and Guattari’s “deterritorialization” and the framework of postcolonial ecocriticism, this study examines how borderland spaces in these films transcend their geographical and cultural boundaries, functioning as metaphors for identity reconstruction and resistance against colonial structures. The analysis highlights how The Story of Southern Islet reimagines Southeast Asian borderlands as spaces of cultural syncretism, while Embrace of the Serpent envisions the Amazon as an ecological and spiritual frontier resisting the colonial project.

By situating these films within the theoretical discourse of spatiality and postcolonial studies, this paper argues that the cinematic borderlands in The Story of Southern Islet and Embrace of the Serpent reveal the transformative potential of hybrid cultural identities and offer a critique of modernity’s impact on both ecological and cultural systems.