Amin Abbas

DUBAI: Syrian animator Mahmoud Moftah worked on animes throughout his career, taking direct inspiration from Japanese culture. He worked on shows like ‘My Dress Up Darling,’ ‘The Genius Prince’s Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt,’ ‘JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean’ and ‘Super Crooks.’

In an exclusive interview with Arab News Japan, Moftah shared his inspiration for anime & manga, he said: “My inspiration was from a lot of artists such as ‘Hiroyuki Yamashita,’ ‘Yutaka Nakamura,’ ‘Toshiyuki Inoue,’ ‘Masami Mori,’ ‘Chengxi Huang’ & ‘Shingo Yamashita.’”

“My favorite anime is ‘Dragon Ball Z,’ I know there’s a lot of amazing shows too, but I used to watch DBZ a lot on my childhood, so it’s an emotional choice,” he added.

Moftah established his career in 2021 but started learning about animation in 2019. He said he liked working on animation because an animator can easily adapt “imagination into something that feels real.”

“My first project was called ‘Naruto Fan Opening’ as the name says, it’s an opening for the anime ‘Naruto.’ Me and a lot of amateurs and some professionals back then made it, it was really such a good experience I learned a lot from it, you can find it on YouTube just search for Studio TonTon,” he added.

Moftah is working on many upcoming projects, including ‘JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean,’ ‘Boruto’ and a lot more.