'Star Wars: Visions' Official Trailer Released
Star Wars and anime. Not many would consider this a normal combination when it comes to the galaxy far, far away, but Star Wars: Visions disagrees. This will be a 9-part mini-series of individually made episodes created by some of the most famous animated studios coming out of Japan. As of now, a new trailer has been released, both a dubbed and a subbed version, as in the class anime tradition, to show off this amazing Star Wars project.
The nine shorts will have various studios behind them, all famous for their animation chops. This includes Trigger Studios for the short called "The Twins," which is about a pair of Force-sensitive siblings, both going down separate paths in terms of the light and dark side. Fun fact: this particular short, along with "The Ninth Jedi," will take place after The Rise of Skywalker.
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Not only will this anime be in Japanese as most anime are, but it will have an impressive dub as well. Actors such as Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Neil Patrick Harris, and Alison Brie will be part of this amazing enterprise.
This is probably one of the most unique projects in the Star Wars roster so far. For so long, some of us asked the question whenever a Star Wars project comes out of whether it is canon, how it fits into the timeline, etc. With Visions, we don’t have to worry about that. This is a project that is allowed to be free from the restraints of canon and really just show off what Star Wars storytelling could do. With beautiful animation, it really shows just the nature of what a Star Wars story can be without having to worry about the constraints.
Star Wars, despite wanting to be one cohesive universe, tends to want to limit itself to what it can do because of it. Fans can get very particular if something seems off or doesn’t quite match what came before. We get very sticky with the details that for once it will be nice to have something that doesn’t need to be bothered by whether or not it happened or not. This can just be a fun story to tell, and the details can be unimportant. Also, this allows for various styles of storytelling to pop up here as well.
Anime is a very unique style of storytelling. The animation and the visuals, all of which are an essential part of the story. For the most part, Star Wars animation has stuck to the same type of 3D modeling to make it more connected to its live action counterparts. While cool, it sometimes can get a bit tiresome when one wants to break away from the idea that it is all one connected universe. With Visions, those boundaries are broken. We can go all out now with the animation and show the various styles to make each and every short a unique, interesting, and great story.
Finally, Star Wars and anime might not be as weird a combination as one would think. After all, aren't the Jedi merely space samurai at their core? Lucas himself was inspired by many of the classic Japanese films such as Seven Samurai, which Star Wars has paid homage to on a number of occasions from episodes of The Clone Wars to the Kenobi novel by John Jackson Miller. Far Eastern influences are at the core of Star Wars’ history. So it would only seem natural that one day that the most famous style of Japanese animation would be made into a Star Wars story.
Star Wars: Visions is set to come out September 22, 2021 on Disney+.
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Source(s): Star Wars Youtube