Star Wars: Visions (2021)

Watchseries; I watched them all but really only liked "The Duel" I thought the story and animation style just "wasn't there" for most of the episodes.

I watched them all but really only liked "The Duel" I thought the story and animation style just "wasn't there" for most of the episodes.

Star Wars: Visions watchseries. There are some cool moments but overall, it doesn't feel like Star Wars and so many things don't fit into the universe like the characters and settings only made for this show. And mostly, what was the point of making this show in anime style? As a Japanese Star Wars fan, I don't want to see Star Wars in anime style. If I want to watch some anime, I will watch anime. I want Star Wars.

The first episode, "The Duel" - is an absolutely excellent homage to the Kurosawa films that originally inspired Star Wars to begin with - beautifully animated with a tight simple story - after watching this episode my hopes for this series were very high.

However, it takes an immediate down turn with the next episode, "Tatooine Rhapsody" - which is about a rock band being pursued by Boba Fett (hired by Jabba the Hutt) for vague reasons never fully explained. They play a concert for Jabba which convinces him to let them go... or something. It was really terrible.

Following that is an over the top ridiculous anime nonsense episode - I'm surprised I never heard the phrases "my power level is over nine thousand!" or "this isn't even my final form!" It is also way too self-referential to be taken seriously - with references to iconic quotes and scenes from several of the movies.

And from there everything just ranges from mediocre at best to downright awful. There are only nine episodes but "got a bad feeling about this" is referenced no less than four times. Every episode (other than Tatooine Rhapsody) plays out very similarly - culminating in a Jedi vs Sith battle. There's so much more to Star Wars than the Jedi and Sith and I really wish some of these episodes explored this universe in more creative ways, but that just doesn't happen.

Part of me wants this to go away and be forgotten, but the other part of me can't help but appreciate the *potential* that something like this could have. If they order a second season I will be cautiously optimistic and hope that it addresses some of what makes this season so weak.

The first thing said in the credits is "Inspired by Star Wars" but these episodes are anything but. All but 2 of these episodes, in my opinion, are stories that had nothing to do with Star Wars and then they sprinkled in a varying amount of Star Wars buzz words and concepts which was always to the detriment of the story.

Two episodes: episode 5, titled The Ninth Jedi, and episode 7, titled The Elder, are actually Star Wars stories and you can believe that the creators actually have seen Star Wars; the rest seem like someone came along after the script was written and swapped out every instance of "magic" with "force" and "hero" with "Jedi".

The one other episode worth watching is episode 4, titled The Village Bride. This completely fits my description of "non-Star-Wars story pretending to be Star Wars" however the Star Wars elements are very few and, thus, are unable to ruin what is otherwise a very good story.

The anime studios that produced these episodes are clearly very talented with most episodes having excellent animation, visuals, and sound design. I just wish they could have told their tales in the way they clearly wanted to rather than pretending they care about Star Wars.

Truly a risky move for Disney Star Wars but logical, considering Lucas's inspiration for the og films. And it turned out just ok. Which is a win for Disney Star Wars, I think?

This is a fragmented effort all round. Some episodes are good, some can rot in hell (I'm looking at you, episode 2) and some are flat boring. Considering how Marvel's What If has turned out (same company, the comparisons are inevitable) I expected more. They produced the first true middle-of-the-road outing for Disney Star Wars. Everything else has either been great (Mandalorian, Rogue One, Clone Wars 7) or unbelievably terrible (the rest). It feels like middling is a victory for Disney Star Wars and that makes me sad. So, even with the occasional bright spots, this show makes me sad.

It's worth a watch if you already have Disney+ but don't subscribe just to see this. Not worth it.

As an anime lover, I was disappointed to see how they crammed in almost every trope into very short, non-compelling stories. What is it nowadays? Shows are supposed to engage the viewers more than movies because there's more time for character development and building tension. But Star Wars visions skirts right around that and churns our boring, useless stories. It's not even canon. It adheres to none of the Star Wars rules without being groundbreaking or innovative. It's just over the top for Americanized anime. (Only the first episode is worth because they're making a comic for it to flesh it out because obviously a one off story didn't do it justice, just like all the other bad episodes).