If you’re watching Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix, you might have noticed something Studio Ghibli-shaped, which the creators have confirmed was intentional.
For many younger or millennial fans, two of the greatest examples of animation in their lifetime so far will be Studio Ghibli and Avatar: The Last Airbender.
While the latter stormed Nickelodeon between 2005-2008, the Japanese animation house has become best known for movies such as The Boy and the Heron, Howl’s Moving Castle, and the Academy Award-winning Spirited Away.
Now that all eight episodes of Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender are available to watch, some fans might have noticed a reference to Hayao Miyazaki’s work – which creators have now confirmed was intentional.
Avatar: The Last Airbender creators confirm nod to Studio Ghibli
Episode 5 of Avatar: The Last Airbender is titled ‘Spirited Away’ – something that executive producer Jabbar Raisani confirmed was a subtle nod to Studio Ghibli during an interview with Dexerto.
“Yeah. I mean there’s certainly subtle nods not only to the animated series but to animation in general. In the show, we’re really trying to pull from all different kinds of inspirations. I directed Episodes 3 and 4 and also looked at a lot of Jackie Chan movies. There are very specific sequences, and hopefully, when you watch it, it feels like something familiar, in a good way,” he told us.
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“It’s, you know, it’s kind of like Thanksgiving for us here in the States. It’s familiar and you have it every year, yet it doesn’t matter how many times you do, it’s still enjoyable. That’s the feeling that I hope someone gets when they watch the series – there’s a certain comfort to watching it because it feels familiar, even though it’s new and different.”
The Studio Ghibli movie, which came out back in 2001, follows ten-year-old Chihiro and her parents who end up at an abandoned amusement park inhabited by supernatural beings. She then learns that she must work to free her parents who have been turned into pigs. It went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, becoming the only hand-drawn non-English language movie to do so.
In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the title references Aang’s first interaction with the spirit world, which he encounters in order to help fill the gaps in his Avatar abilities. However, the spirit world doesn’t quite function the same way as it did in the original cartoon, which you can read more about here.
All episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender are available to stream on Netflix.