[keynote lecture:] One distinctive characteristic of anime is the frequent use of close-ups featuring eyes. Big eyes have been read as “mirrors of the soul” or tools of gaze dynamics, based on the presumption that characters’ inside and outside, or the acts of seeing and being seen, can be neatly separated. But contemporary anime fiction does not necessarily comply, and the frontally taken one-eyed shot is a case in point. This talk will examine anime’s extreme close-ups of single eyes from a phenomenological angle. Instead of analyzing what the “anime eye” represents, the focus will be on how it operates for the viewer. In a way that easily appears “post-cinematic,” the “anime eye” comes to the fore as a sensory interface. It privileges haptic visuality and affective responses, accommodates small displays and fragmented forms of use across varying devices, and undermines aesthetic as well as narrative consistency (e.g. “chibi”). But questions arise: How anime-specific is it? Has it originated from manga, or reversely, entered Japanese comics as an anime-esque element? Furthermore, is it a marker of anime in general or rather bound to a certain period and genre? And finally, hasn’t anime always been “post-cinematic” to a greater or lesser degree?