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Though the 3D animation probably keeps you from mistaking Leviathan for a Studio Ghibli movie, there is an undeniable sense that Hayao Miyazaki’s influence runs through the entire show. Scott Westerfeld, the author of the books the Netflix anime was based on, certainly doesn’t try to hide from the comparisons to the whimsical and iconic works of Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.

“Leviathan is about a flying whale airship in World War I, which already sounds like a Miyazaki movie,” Scott Westerfeld told us when we spoke to him ahead of the premiere of Leviathan on Netflix. “The trilogy is full of strange creatures, and has two spunky main characters, so I get why the comparison is made. Leviathan comes out of everything I enjoy writing about – airships, bioengineering, vintage tech, diplomacy, girls pretending to be boys – so maybe it matches the collage-of-cool-stuff vibe that Miyazaki movies always have.”

“I’m sure the books are influenced by Porco Rosso and Castle in the Sky, with a measure of Kiki’s Delivery Service,” Westerfeld explained. “There’s a theory that every director makes one film their whole life, in which case Miyazaki’s One Film (for me, anyway) would be called ‘Look at this aircraft! Just look at it!’”

So if you’ve been watching Leviathan during this remarkably packed summer anime season and you find yourself longing for a Studio Ghibli binge, you can probably thank the abundance of airships and other hallmarks of a great Miyazaki film. The entire series is available to stream now on Netflix. You can read more of our interview with Scott Westerfeld in Popverse Jump, our weekly anime column. 

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

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