Any fan of Star Wars or Anime is well familiar with Star Wars: Visions, but if somehow you missed it, it is Star Wars made by Japanese anime studios. If you haven’t seen the launch trailer, I highly recommend checking out Star Wars: Visions right now.
The trailer shows off 9 different anime-style stories made by some of the best anime studios in Japan. The list includes juggernauts like Production IG (makers of Haikyuu and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) and Studio Trigger (made Kill La Kill and Little Witch Academia). I gathered from the trailer that we are in for a visual spectacle with all the studios bringing their A-game to the Star Wars Universe.
Hopefully, Star Wars: Visions will prove to be popular enough to warrant more episodes and seasons done in traditional anime style. Disney has taken a bold step, which I’m sure is to attract the anime-loving audience towards their digital platform. The competition is what excels the industry forward and is also a positive thing for the consumers.
Netflix already has a large variety of original anime, and Disney wants a share of the pie. Imagine watching a Black Widow anime down the road. Exciting, isn’t it?
What is Star Wars: Visions?
Star Wars: Visions is an upcoming animated project that will launch on Disney Plus. The whole
season comprises 9 episodes that are set in the Star Wars universe. All the episodes are standalone, and you don’t need to watch them in any order. Most of the episodes are made by different Japanese anime studios. Think Marvel’s What If…?, Black Mirror, or Love Death & Robots, and you got the right idea.
You can watch Star Wars: Visions with original Japanese voices as well as subtitles, or you can watch the English dub version that also includes a pretty great cast featuring Alison Brie, George Takei, David Harbour, and Lucy Liu.
Star Wars: Visions – Why It Is a Big Deal?
While we have a lot of examples of Japanese properties making their way to Western audiences like Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and Castlevania.
This has been going on for decades now. There are not a lot of examples of Japanese-made animations based on Western franchises. So it is a rare occurrence that we get to see the Japanese adaptation of an existing Western franchise and a franchise that is extremely popular.
Star Wars: Visions has the rare opportunity to push the Western and Japanese collaboration forward. If someone told me that they are working on this before the trailer came out, I would think this is a gimmick, just a marketing ploy to get more people subscribed to Disney Plus.
Thankfully, after watching the Star Wars: Visions trailer, I was blown away by the visuals as well as the animation. This is not a flash in the pan, and the companies involved are focusing on delivering a good quality product to the fans.
Star Wars already has quite a few great animations under its belt; Clone Wars animated series that launched in 2003 remains fan favorites to this day. But there is also no denying that the recent Star Wars projects have been underwhelming at best, leaving fans stunned at worst.
Will Star Wars: Visions break the somewhat downward streak? I have no idea. But what I know is that the talent behind the projects is solid, and I’m hoping for the best not only as a Star Wars fan but also as someone who loves anime.
If you’re a fan of Disney, you can easily imagine Disney being lenient when it comes to their properties and allowing more Japanese anime studios to work on them. Anime Snow White, anyone?
