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If you’ve been keeping up with anime this season, you can’t have missed everyone talking about Dan Da Dan. Between the over-the-top action scenes, the wild concept, and the gorgeous animation, the series has been a hit for both Crunchyroll and Netflix. However, one of our favorite scenes so far was inspired by the cozy slice-of-life scenes of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. 

Yes, you read that right. Even though Miyazaki’s work seldom has the sexual overtones and frantic action of Dan Da Dan, one of the biggest hallmarks of the legendary anime director had a big impact on Dan Da Dan’s creator, Yukinobu Tatsu. In an interview, he discusses how his experience working as a manga assistant for very low pay shaped his view of food in his work. “I myself was poor at one time. When I was an assistant, my boss gave me 1000 yen (approximately $6.50) and said, ‘Go get a midnight snack.’ I was incredibly grateful for that 1000 yen.”

The idea of food being a reward for hard work stuck with Yukinobu. If you’ve seen episode four of Dan Da Dan, you’ve seen that philosophy in action. In the cozy scene that comes straight after Okarun and Momo beat Turbo Granny, they settle down for a meal of crab legs with Momo’s grandmother. It is a sweet scene that doesn’t just serve to give the reader a chance to catch their breath after such a wild scene – it is a reward for the group after their first really big fight.

Like the rest of us, he is a fan of Hayao Miyazaki’s work, which often uses meals to give a sense of accomplishment and comradery. “In Miyazaki’s [films], people who have worked always eat. That’s because they can’t work anymore. I make my films in the same way so that there is always a meal after working,” Yukinobu explained.

As different as Dan Da Dan is from Miyazaki’s beloved films like My Neighbor Totoro or Princess Mononoke, the power of food to give us a well-deserved break runs through both. Because, no matter who we are, at the end of a long day, we need to refuel, regroup, and spend time with those dearest to us so we’re ready for the next big day.

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... 

• Why the finales of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, and One Piece feel like the end of an era in manga
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• Dan Da Dan is weird, profoundly inappropriate, and the perfect anime this season
• Why One Piece's Monkey D. Luffy is the perfect anime hero for the dark times ahead
• 40 years after its debut, Dragon Ball is a pop culture force like few others
• Dan Da Dan's most emotionally devastating sequence proves that sometimes words aren't necessary
• Gnosia, the "Among Us meets Everything Everywhere All at Once" visual novel is getting an anime adaptation that needs to be as weird as possible
• Assassination Classroom is a Shonen anime well worth revisiting, ten years on
• Sony is making big moves to own the anime industry by buying Kadokawa, publisher of Oshi no Ko, Sword Art Online, and Konosuba