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Avatar: Seven Havens offers a striking visual makeover to the world of bending. The new series drops the familiar look of The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra in favor of post-apocalyptic alien landscapes filled with craggy orange mountains, sprawling deserts, and ominous green storms. Ancient, unidentifiable structures jut from the barren wasteland, hinting at a history that stretches far beyond the people now struggling to survive in it. There is a haunting beauty to these environments, resembling the pages of an illustrated sci-fi epic rather than the remains of a traditional fantasy kingdom.
One of the clearest artistic touchstones is French comic artist Jean Giraud, better known as Moebius, whom Avatar creator Bryan Konietzko mentioned as inspiration for the new series on stage at New York Comic Con 2026. Arzach and other works, particularly his contributions to the sci-fi anthology magazine Métal Hurlant, helped establish a visual language for alien worlds that feel simultaneously desolate and brimming with fascinating cultures. Moebius frequently anchored his frames with solitary figures set against colossal landscapes, letting strange architecture and alien terrain tell the story without leaning on heavy exposition. This same philosophy feels central to Seven Havens, where the wilderness is much more than a mere obstacle for Pavi and Nisha to overcome; it’s a standing monument to a deep and lost history that predates them entirely.
Moebius’ visual identity rests on crisp, ultra-precise line art paired with flat color gradients, a technique that makes impossibly alien worlds feel tactile yet dreamlike. His landscapes rely on fine hatching, sheer scale, and bizarre geometric geology, where sharp sandstone arches, carved monolithic ruins, and endless pastel horizons dwarf his subjects. Seven Havens adopts this exact visual grammar, most strikingly in the presentation of Ellora and the sprawling Harshlands surrounding it. Rather than relying on painterly backgrounds, the show adopts clean linework and high-contrast palette shifts, framing wide shots where Ellora’s walled structures rise abruptly near sun-scorched canyons. By surrounding these massive settlements with barren wastelands beneath ominous green-hued storm clouds, the series mirrors Moebius’ signature trick of using empty space to make the world feel ancient, mysterious, and eerily quiet, forcing the viewer’s eye to drink in the sheer magnitude of a forgotten planet — or, in this case, the familiar world of bending.
Moebius wasn’t the only influence on Seven Havens, of course, as co-creator Ethan Spaulding noted Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind as another inspirational pillar during the NYCC panel. Nausicaä exists in a world where humanity clings to survival amid the remnants of a fallen civilization, surrounded by uncanny ecosystems that are as breathtaking as they are menacing. Its landscapes invite awe rather than purely signaling danger, a quality that defines the visual identity of Seven Havens. Moreover, both Moebius and Miyazaki deeply admired one another, with Miyazaki frequently citing Arzach as a profound inspiration for his work. Their shared obsession with otherworldly environments makes them the ideal creative lineage for a series exploring life long after the end of the world.
The thematic connection to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind could extend well beyond its post-apocalyptic landscapes. Set in a dying world choked by a toxic fungal forest, Miyazaki’s film centers on a pacifist heroine who discovers that humanity’s survival depends on understanding and coexisting with nature’s destructive forces rather than waging war against them. Positioned against this premise, Seven Havens presents a fascinating inverse of Korra’s legacy. While Korra fought to establish balance, the centuries after her era remember her not as a savior, but as the catalyst responsible for the world’s ruin. Into this hostile climate step Pavi and Nisha, twin Avatars who serve as distinct stand-ins for Nausicaä’s two central impulses. Pavi embodies Nausicaä’s gentle empathy and instinct to heal a scarred world, whereas Nisha reflects her fierce drive to defend humanity from immediate threats. Where Nausicaä acted as a single bridge between a wounded planet and a desperate populace, Pavi and Nisha must navigate a world that actively rejects their role. Thus, Seven Havens reframes Nausicaä’s central question. The true mystery inherent in the story is not just uncovering what destroyed the planet, but determining whether the Avatars can ever restore trust between humanity and a world that views them as its annihilator.
Nausicaä’s environmental scope was not an isolated artistic achievement, but part of a broader evolution in Japanese animation that took shape throughout the 1970s and into the following decade. As science-fiction anime grew increasingly ambitious, a generation of creators began imagining worlds that extended beyond the immediate adventures of their protagonists. Space operas, dystopian futures, and post-apocalyptic landscapes offered new opportunities for expansive worldbuilding, allowing settings to carry their own emotional weight. Backgrounds became more than static scenery; they could evoke melancholy, suggest the remnants of lost civilizations, or make human survival seem precarious against the scale of the world itself. By the time Miyazaki made Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in 1984, this growing appetite for ambitious speculative worlds had found one of its most enduring expressions.
When asked what other types of content directly influenced Seven Havens, producer Ethan Spaulding noted this specific era: “Just in general, 1970s anime and the worldbuilding that they have; fantasy elements that were bigger in this version of Avatar than the other two,” Spaulding said to Polygon at NYCC. “I think that would encompass all of it, yeah, that’s the melting pot that we were using just for the art direction.”
The decade provides rich context for the show’s ambitions, wherein a wave of seminal speculative animation used setting to convey scale and mystery. While Spaulding doesn’t point to any anime directly, some of the greatest series were born in that era, like the wondrous adventures of Leiji Matsumoto, including Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999, and Space Battleship Yamato (a personal favorite), or even Miyazaki’s own Future Boy Conan. Such stories envisioned worlds that stretched far beyond the immediate horizon of their heroes, utilizing ruined landscapes, decaying monolithic relics, and layered histories on top of sprawling sci-fi settings that allowed viewers to piece fragments of the larger world together organically. Rather than treating fantasy as a mere collection of elemental powers and magical creatures, these works turned their environments into active participants in the story. Seven Havens embraces a similar ethos, granting its universe a sense of scale and lingering mystery that seemingly outlives the central narrative.
These diverse artistic influences — which even include Hiroshi Yoshida’s elegant woodblock prints — reveal a series determined to frame its ruined world as a place brimming with possibility. By binding these creative threads together, Seven Havens makes the prospect of exploring the familiar world of Avatar feel fresh all over again.
