Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
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FALL 2020 35 FALL 2020 35 below: The da Vinci-like tailfin in How to Train Your Dragon was inspired by anime: "This coupling of organic and early mechanics felt very Miyazaki to me without being any specific reference," says Director Dean DeBlois. "When we started investigating the sense of flight and the weightlessness, the freedom and the peril—a lot of those references came directly from some of Miyazaki's films, [like] Porco Rosso. Images courtesy of DreamWorks Animation/Universal. specifically a very Miyazaki inspiration for me to suggest that maybe the dragon was in some way damaged and the boy would have to create this almost da Vinci-like contraption that would supplement and take the place of the missing tailfin. It just kind of had a visual appeal to me that also injected some wonder into it and some wish fulfillment." To DeBlois, the hallmark of anime is its bravery in an approach to storytelling that is not influenced by marketplace considerations. "There's no overthinking of who the audience is," he says. "It's just about what would be spectacular, what would be emotional and what would really be resonant. And I think that has defined the audience and the popularity of the anime genre, within animation as a medium. Just because it feels unrestricted in a medium that often is quite restricted, because of the budgets that are required in order to execute them and put them out into the marketplace."