Episodic memory performance is consistently higher for animate stimuli like humans or animals, than for inanimate objects. To examine the mechanisms underlying this “animacy effect”, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) while healthy, young adults encoded and subsequently freely recalled (exp 1) or recognized (exp 2) words referring to animate and inanimate objects. In both experiments, we replicated the animacy effect. Further, animates consistently elicited smaller N400-amplitudes than inanimates during encoding, suggesting that semantic access is facilitated for animate stimuli. No differences were found between stimulus types in any ERP markers thought to index elaborative encoding. In experiment 2, the word types did not differ in the early mid-frontal and the left parietal old/new effects, presumably indexing familiarity and bottom-up recollection, respectively. However, the late posterior negativity, presumably indexing effortful reconstruction of the study episode, was prominent for animates but absent for inanimates. Taken together, these results speak for a role of semantic processes during encoding, and effortful recollection during retrieval, in the animacy effect. Notably, these ERP patterns differ qualitatively from recently published results on the survival processing effect, supporting a dissociation of the mechanisms behind the two effects.