Something in Wings reminded me of the early 1980s television series The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. I think it's partly the story-a small being befriends a bird and gets to fly on its back-and partly the animation style used here. The Wonderful Adventures of Nils was a Japanese adaptation of a Swedish novel from the early 1900s and used traditional 2D cel animation in the classic anime style of that era, blended with European storybook charm.
While the anime aesthetic wasn't present in Disney's 1977 film The Rescuers, that film also used traditional 2D cel animation and followed two mice flying on the back of an albatross. A shared characteristic in both of these earlier works is the use of static, painted backgrounds, with only the main subjects-typically animals-being animated. That's exactly the approach taken in Wings as well.
As for the story, it's emotional, though not particularly deep-but still quite lovely.
