STAR WARS VISIONS

Going Japanese And We Like It

BY: Brendan Bell

Thanks to bad writing and constantly changing directors, the Star Wars films have been a bit of a disappointment recently. Everything else Star Wars-related has been doing great. Shows like The Mandalorian and The Bad Batch have received high praise, and video games like Battlefront 2 and Jedi Fallen order have been highly rated among gamers. The franchise looks to continue this momentum with the release of a new Disney Plus show titled Star Wars Visions.

Star Wars Visions is an anthology animated series that will feature nine short films produced by different Japanese animation studios. The show’s official description mentions that it will “bring fantastic visions from several of the leading Japanese anime studios, offering a fresh and diverse cultural perspective to Star Wars.” Two of the shorts will be directed by Trigger, the studio known for animating the hit anime Kill la Kill. The other seven will each be directed by a different studio.

The animated anthology format is new to Star Wars but it has been used for other popular media franchises. The Animatrix is an anthology film also made up of nine short films directed by the Wachowskis set within the Matrix universe. Halo Legends is another animated anthology film based on the popular video game Halo. It features seven short films from six different anime studios. What’s interesting is that Production IG worked on one of these shorts and produced the last short for Star Wars Visions titled The Ninth Jedi.

The trailer for Visions is very promising. There is a great display of various animation styles as well as different tones. We’re shown a mix of action, drama, and comedy. Disney and Lucasfilm must be seriously invested in this series as one of the nine shorts will tie into the upcoming book Ronin: A Visions Novel.