Disney’s Hexed casts an unexpected spell—borrowing its flair straight from Chainsaw Man, the director reveals. Hollywood has long borrowed from anime when it wants something bolder, faster, or visually stranger than the usual studio formula. You can see that influence in projects like The Matrix, which drew on anime-style action language. And in films such as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, whose comic-anime energy helped redefine mainstream animation. Now that pattern has reached Disney, too.

Because the studio’s upcoming Hexed has reportedly picked up inspiration from an anime that feels far removed from a family-friendly holiday release.

The anime in question is Chainsaw Man, and that alone makes the comparison feel surprising in the best way. Disney’s Hexed is being positioned as an original animated fantasy about Billie Doe, a girl who discovers she belongs in the magical world of Hexe. Still, its directors, Fawn Veerasunthorn and Jason Hand, said in a conversation with Cartoon Brew that they wanted the movie to feel more cartoonish, more eccentric, and more visually adventurous than a typical Disney project.

“They do all kinds of crazy things with the eyes that I felt like we could totally do, but in a much subtler way,” Hand said.

Director Hand further explained the influence while talking with Cartoon Brew. He was talking about how the anime’s visual exaggeration encouraged the Hexed team to push character expressions, proportions, and design choices further than they might have otherwise. In the same discussion, both Hand and Veerasunthorn emphasized that Hexed was intended to capitalize on being an original film.

“Because this is an original film, we took it as an opportunity to think differently and get cartoonier,” Veerasunthorn said. Hand added that being cartoonier was a big thing they have been pushing across the board, noting that the production design is unusually colorful and the character proportions are intentionally bold, a creative direction that feels especially timely as anticipation continues to build around Chainsaw Man Season 2 and its next evolution of the anime’s distinctive visual style.

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That same push toward a distinct visual identity is also shaping how audiences are reacting to the film’s first footage, and it's not good.

Disney’s Hexed is already drawing attention for its look, and not all of it is positive. The new teaser has sparked a debate over whether the movie’s framing was designed with vertical, phone-first viewing in mind rather than the cinema screen. Some viewers think the trailer’s visuals are too centered, which makes the whole thing feel as if it could be cropped into a short-form social clip without losing much.

That has led to complaints that the movie may be bending too hard toward TikTok-style habits, where content has to read instantly and sit neatly in the middle of the frame. Others argue that this is less a technical mistake and more a deliberate aesthetic choice, since centered composition has been used in film long before social media existed.

What makes the reaction more noticeable is that Hexed is supposed to be an original fantasy with personality, so people expected a more playful visual language. Instead, some critics say the trailer feels a little too safe and symmetrical, especially when compared with more expansive animated world-building elsewhere in the genre. That has led to a broader complaint: if Disney is making a movie about magic and imagination, why does the teaser look so tightly controlled?

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What do you think about Disney taking cues from Chainsaw Man for Hexed? Does it make you more excited or more skeptical? Let us know in the comments.