The Disney Plus Star Wars anime anthology is looking genuinely cool
Star Wars: Visions will feature contributions from Kill La Kill's Studio Trigger, Production IG, and several other prominent anime studios
TV News The Disney
You’d be forgiven for forgetting about Star Wars: Visions; it was one of a huge slate of Star Wars-based shows that Disney announced at its Investor Day event last December, alongside far flashier projects like Ahsoka and Andor. As with most of those shows, fans of the franchise got little more than a logline for the project: An anthology of shorts produced by some of Japan’s most prominent animation studios. Intriguing, admittedly—what would “anime Star Wars” even end up looking like?
Like this, as it turns out:
We’re not going to lie: We’re now officially feeling pretty excited about Visions, which will feature work from Kamikaze Douga, Twin Engine, Trigger, Kinema Citrus, Science Saru, and Production IG. Disney released the above Special Look presentation online today after showing it off at Anime Expo Lite, giving peeks at all 9 short films making up the anthology.
The most exciting thing—besides the obvious exciting thing of lightsabers that look like samurai swords—is what a wide set of genres the project seems to be covering. Sure, we have more traditional Star Wars Jedi stuff like “The Elder,” “The Twins,” and “The Duel.” But there’s also material like Studio Colorido’s “Tatooine Rhapsody,” which is being described as a “rock opera,” and yeah, now that we think about it, we would like to see an anime rock opera set on Tatooine. Or Kinema Citrus’ “The Village Bride,” which has a painting-esque look to it, and far gentler color work. Or “T0-B1,” from Science Saru, which imports Astro Boy designs into a universe with no surfeit of charming robots.
That’s the coolest part of all this: Seeing tons of new artists get to try their hand at what “Star Wars” is supposed to look like. It’s a big galaxy, and it’s always been at its best when it pushes out into its strangest, most diverse corners. (Also, is it just us, or does anime Jabba The Hutt look upsettingly adorable?)
All episodes of Star Wars: Visions release on September 22, on Disney+.
25 Comments
We’ve finally come full circle from The Hidden Fortress. Guinness was good, but if Mifune had said “yes” to George Lucas…..
C-3PO & R2-D2 should’ve complained about each other’s corpse stink.
…Ewan McGregor might still be floundering in obscurity.
Oh shit, didn’t know this was a thing
This makes me genuinely unhappy. I’ve been avoiding Disney Plus since it launched.
Don’t get me wrong – for those people into Star Wars and Disney, I’m happy for you.But this Synergy can just die in a fire. I don’t need Disney owning f’ing everything.
So this is The Animatrix for Star Wars…
If this is anywhere near as good as The Animatrix then I’ll be happy. Especially considering that one part is done by Hiroyuki Imaishi and I love basically everything he does.
Well this looks fucking rad ^_^
Disney saw all those people making anime openings out of their Galaxy of Adventures shorts and were, like, “We should do that, but for real.”
I am a bit surprised this is actually coming out over here considering how long it took them to bring over the two Avengers anime series.
Oh, and of course there are already cries of racism because the one short had a black guy being a Padewan to an Asian guy.
This was made for Disney+ though, not exclusively for Japan like The Avengers anime. Also, Disney seems weirdly cagey about calling this an anime. Everything I’ve seen has described it as stuff like “anime inspired” which is bizarre since all the studios involved are anime studios.
There aren’t any magical girls. Unless Leia and Rey are?
NO INCEST.
For an uncomfortable experience, read the otherwise good Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, a 1978 novel by Alan Dean Foster that was the first official Star Wars spinoff novel, which Foster was allowed to create as thanks for ghostwriting the official Star Wars novelization (which was credited to Lucas). What makes the novel uncomfortable is Foster’s (understandable from the time) assumption that Luke & Leia would become a couple.
Prediction: all of it will instantly become canon. It’s that rad.
There’s a lot of impressive work people on Youtube that people have made just for fun.
When you give people who have freaking creativity and vision tell your stories and not someone who’s just good with the technical stuff who’s content with just retelling the exact same story over and over (Cough *** Abrams *** Cough).
It’s probably better if this won’t be canon (it doesn’t appear to be) to give these creators more freedom
Yeah judging by the concept art these shorts run the gamut from “Star Wars but with an anime aesthetic” to “Hidden Fortress only with Lightsabers.” Probably best to spare everyone years of base-breaking continuity debates and just say the whole thing is non-canon.
So this is The Animatrix, but for Star Wars?Count me in!
“… what would “anime Star Wars” even end up looking like?”We have known for years what a version of an “anime Star Wars” would look like.
(Yeah, I know I just posted this on io9, feel like I am spamming, but I just could not resist after reading the bit I quoted.) [edit] forgot to include the credit that the artist/animator is Paul Johnson/Otaking77077.
Ten year old me in the early 80’s would have killed for this Star Wars anime. I’ve never seen that before and it’s awesome. It’s like some mix of Heavy Metal, Starblazers/Robotech but SO much better.
I’m pumped for the Anime studios takes on Star Wars, but MAN whoever this guy is he needs to make his own Star Wars universe. Shoot, I’ll take him doing STAR CRASH with that style.
Animatrix, Blade Runner and now this, it always reminds me how proper funding could elevate Anime animation/stories to another league
Hopefully this will become an ongoing thing and not just these 9 shorts.
Someone give Genndy Tartakovsky another Star Wars show please.
I like that this trailer, rather than just show cool action moments, took the route of having the creators talk about what they wanted to do with the concept and what inspired them. You really get the impression that these stories are labours of love, which is a nice change of direction from the clear “Let’s hit those standard ‘Star Wars’ beats for the nerds” path of, say, ‘Rise of Skywalker’.
oh it’s looking “genuinely” cool? Not like all the other stuff you post about on this site?