There’s a clear effort to pay respectful tribute to these oft-ignored cultural settings, while still producing a visually imaginative and distinctive sandbox audiences have never really seen from Disney. Kumandra itself is separated into a piano of territories inspired by Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Indonesia, all of varying degrees and fusions. It would actually be easier to compare the cultural world-building of Raya to Avatar: The Last Airbender, which built a broader Asian-inspired world of its own as the basis for a hero’s journey. You can easily imagine Kumandra existing on the same planet as Corona, Arendelle, and Motunui, not just because the characters themselves have a comparable art direction, but because they clearly share the same values and conceptual sensibilities of Disney’s core, cinematic energy, despite having vastly different tones and atmospheres. The tribes themselves are an amalgamation of Southeast Asian cultures translated into Disney’s mainstream, global-friendly language. They can only be repelled by water, as well as a particularly important dragon gem that is sought after by all of Kumandra’s tribes, who are engaged in constant war over the gem’s powers of protection. This next adventure belongs to Raya (voiced by Kelly Marie Tran), a warrior princess who has become a jaded wanderer as her homeland, a divided Kumandra, has become ravaged by plague monstrosities that can instantly turn their victims into stone.
In these ways, Raya and the Last Dragon certainly checks a lot of Disney-animated adventure boxes, while still adding a few of its own to boast. We’ve seen Rapunzel traverse Germanic-inspired countrysides in search of her family, Elsa and Anna navigate Nordic-like mountains as they solidify their sibling bond (twice), and most recently we’ve seen Moana collect artifacts and demigods in her voyage across Pacific-esque islands.
Raya and the Last Dragon was directed by Don Hall (Big Hero 6) and Carlos López Estrada (Blindspotting), and it certainly fits into the latest generation of computer-animated Disney films centered around young, female princesses with incredible abilities going on magical and more action-focused adventures throughout various mythical lands. It’s been a little over four years since Disney released an original film through their in-house animation studio, instead putting out sequels to Frozen and Wreck-it Ralph in the interim - by contrast, their other animation studio, Pixar, has released three originals in all that time.
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