Star Wars Visions - Ranking and Review

Disney have just made the most unexpected decision with the Star Wars license – turn it into an anime short series a la Animatrix made by a bunch of respected Japanese animation studios, primarily dubbed in Japanese, and completely divorced from the main Star Wars timeline. It’s bizarre, confounding and utterly unexpected – but it gave us some good Star Wars stories to liven up the monotony.

So to clarify – Star Wars: Visions is a short-form animated series consisting of 9 15-20 minute shorts set in the Star Wars universe. What makes this especially interesting is that Disney gave the story and animation reigns to Japanese anime studios, who took strong influence from the works of Kurosawa and classic Japanese adventure films which inversely also inspired George Lucas to create Star Wars.

So in some way, Visions feels closer to the adventurous, no rules, stylishly adventurous core of Star Wars than many of the recent Star Wars movies. Those are inherently quite corporate and following a safer structure, so Visions’s originality, stateliness and uniqueness feels much more authentically Star Wars. The series overall feels much like the Star Wars worlds we imagined as children separate from the main story, and that tapping into the inherent imagination of the IP is its greatest achievement.

However, if I were asked to judge whether I would consider Visions more of an “anime” story or a “Star Wars” story, I would definitely call it an anime at heart. It’s full of anime clichés that have been mocked to death at this point, like over-monologuing villains, over-the-top flying battles, weird tonal shifts and deadly seriousness.

The Star Wars aesthetic is supplementary, and sometimes barely visible as the series edges closer to Astro Boy or any other sci-fi anime you can name. That may disappoint some viewers who are looking for a full-on Star Wars adventure instead of a bunch of anime shorts, but for those looking for good animation and cool stories at a time like this? Visions delivers.

The Duel

The most obviously Kurosawa-inspired short out of the bunch, The Duel sees a lightsabre-wielding ronin coming across a village under attack, forcing him to get violent. Using an animation style where black-and-white tracing is layered over 3D-models, the short is appropriately noir-ish, resembling in plot and tone Seven Samurai.

I think that The Duel is the best short out of all the ones in Visions not just for its cool Kurosawa stylings, but also its cohesion with the Star Wars narrative and tone in its presentation. A common theme with the others is that they have very little to do with actual Star Wars, but the robots, the lightsabers, the tone and the fighting in The Duel all feel like a genuine episode of The Clone Wars, just slightly more violent. It’s a good start so far.

Tatooine Rhapsody

Star Wars’s music is the most iconic part of it, so typically when people hear non-Star Wars music in a film, they react pretty intensely (that’s why the infamous “I’m Han Solo” song from Kinect Star Wars became a huge internet meme). Tatooine Rhapsody asks the stupid question “what if Star Wars had rock music” and rolls with it. Surprisingly, it does work, providing a reasonably funny exploration of rock music in Star Wars.

The animation may be too cutesy for some, but to me, it added to the light and comedic tone that the short was going for. Following a space rock band (led by Joseph-Gordon Levitt) who must rescue their friend, Tatooine Rhapsody is bizarre, but really quite fun, especially compared to the self-serious nature of the other shorts.

The Twins

Three films in, we’ve got our worst. The Twins is every single bad anime cliché rolled into one – two overpowered individuals throwing shit at each other for too long, power and electricity that never gets explained, over-the-top voice acting, DECLARATIVE dialogue, good and evil, a lack of humour, and ultimately a fundamental homogenisation of the source material’s tone into "anime" tone.

However, in spite of the annoyances of all these tired tropes, I’m still well impressed by the quality of The Twins’s animation. Unlike Love, Death and Robots, there are no episodes that look like flat Fant4stic planets; rather, there’s plenty of colour, life and movement in these hand-drawn images, and that may be satisfying enough. But I still didn't like this.

The Village Bride

The Village Bride, featuring an all-Japanese-American cast for the English dub (including Karen Fukuhara and Shang-Tsung himself, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), is perhaps the most relaxed short out of the series. It doesn’t feature intense battles or family drama, but instead much quiet journeying and pretty vistas, before the final two minutes blow stuff up.

It’s this mellowness that lets The Village Bride stand out, especially considering the pedal-to-the-metal drama that The Twins had. The story and characters aren’t particularly interesting, but the short feels very much in connection with the slower-paced elements of Star Wars, the meditation and learning away from the bloodshed. It’s certainly decent, if not memorable.

The Ninth Jedi

Featuring the dream team of voice actors including Kimiko Glenn, Simu Liu and Masi Oka (although I’m disappointed that they couldn’t squeeze my boy Steven Yeun in), The Ninth Jedi brings an interest in lore and mythology that many of the other shorts don’t. Focusing on those who make lightsabres, it’s interesting to hear how they find their owners, and how they come to be such important weapons.

It’s this lore that invigorates The Ninth Jedi, but it also stands out amongst all the shorts due to its ability to match its storytelling skills with its visuals and music. Many of the other shorts fail to make as interesting a story, but The Ninth Jedi brings together a strong bunch of characters in an intriguing premise to keep audiences interested beyond the superficial. One of the better ones of the series.

T0-B1

An absolutely shameless tribute to Astro Boy in its character design, writing, humour and art style, T0-B1 is so obsessed with homage that in many ways it forgets to be a Star Wars story. If it weren’t for a couple of small moments at the end, it would have nothing whatsoever to do with Star Wars, but it would still be enjoyable in and of itself.

The best part of T0-B1 is its cute, relatable child protagonist, full of life and a desire for adventure against the wishes of his protective cranky maker (Kyle Chandler). Its light tone compared to the rest of the shorts helped it stand out for me, although its references may prove too overpowering for some.

The Elder

Starring David Harbour as the word “stoic” incarnate, and James Hong as a Sith Elder (having played Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Malaysians and Indonesians, space Asians was probably the next step), this short manages to somehow bore the viewer despite the quality of its animation and the power of its cast.

With most of the action relegated to the background, The Elder is full of dry conversations with no interest or anything relevant, which are further undermined by David Harbour’s stone-cold voice acting making it seem like background noise. By the time the Sith Master has been chopped in half, the audience is somehow asleep. Despite that, it’s certainly more coherent than The Twins, so it’s slightly better.

Lop and Ochō

It’s rare to see a short film that really needs to be way longer, but Lop and Ochō shows exactly that. Mainly focusing around the relationship between two sisters, the short barely focuses on them as siblings, almost immediately depicting them as adversaries and ending halfway through the story’s logical pathway.

It’s a shame, because there’s plenty of good stuff here. The world-building and its connection with Star Wars is strong, the voice acting and animation is as surprisingly consistent as it is across all the shorts, and there’s plenty of great integration of Japanese anime tropes with a Star Wars story. But as a narrative? A lot more is required.

Akakiri

Akakiri stars the bizarre trio of fictional martial artists Snake Eyes, Chi-Chi and Sulu (A.K.A. Henry Golding, Jamie Chung and George Takei), and throws them into an exceptionally animated, yet narratively erratic short about a small group travelling to do something (I’ve already forgotten what they were trying to do). The pacing flies all over the place and characters barely develop from where they started.

But it’s certainly not the worst of the series – it’s neither as aggressively cliched as The Twins, or as stone-faced as The Elder. It’s great animation crossed with irreverent storytelling and sloppy pacing, entertaining, but not particularly interesting. It was an okay way to end the series, at least.

Now, my overall ranking:

1. The Duel

2. The Ninth Jedi

3. Tatooine Rhapsody

4. T0-B1

5. The Village Bride

6. Lop and Ocho

7. Akakiri

8. The Elder

9. The Twins

My grade? A B.