Star Wars: Visions, Volume Three - Not so much Star Wars as Star Wars-flavoured Anime
By John Kirk
Rating: B-
Star Wars: Visions returns with a third volume anthology of Star Wars vignettes that adds new dimensions to the storytelling of a galaxy, far, far, away, with storytelling from leading Japanese studios.
But is it Star Wars or just anime about Star Wars? There’s a slight identity issue to resolve.
I mean, in one episode, one of the heroes turns their speeder into an X-Wing-inspired Mega-Man style of mecha armour. In another, a droid is shaped like a giant teddy bear. That’s pretty anime and it invokes the song by The Vapours “Turning Japanese.” In this season, so is Star Wars.
The big criticism about this third volume of Visions is that it really doesn’t tap into anything familiar from the franchise. All the stories are completely unique, featuring new characters, new settings and even new species and droid types. While some of the settings (like Tattooine) might be familiar, there isn’t anyone we know.
The stories choose generic archetypes from the franchise to base the stories. For instance: rogue Sith or Jedi hunting each other, bounty hunters, smugglers or Imperial occupied planets hoping to win a moral victory to preserve hope.
The themes are definitely Star Wars in nature: splintered families, young padawans trying to understand the mastery of The Force – they’re all themes that fans would expect to see. But It’s a tall order to get any sense of attachment to utterly unfamiliar characters in the space of 13-to-33-minute episodes.
While one may argue that the universality of the themes is what make Star Wars so attainable with a minimum of character development, it’s asking too much of the themes alone in this repetitive series. nature of this feature in the season that works against it. Season 3 of Star Wars: Visions actually devalues the property.
However, with that said, the first episode is the exception. “The Duel: Payback,” directed by Takanobu Mizuno and featuring the voice talents (English cast) of Brian Tee, Will Sharpe, and Suzy Nakamura, this story is portrayed in the gritty black and white manga style reminiscent of Lone Wolf and Cub, probably one of the greatest manga stories exported from Japan.
It features a duel between two renegade Sith and a former Jedi, now a member of a Fifth Column group known as The Crusaders. The setting is a backwards, out-of-the-way planet, the home of a den of an unknown rogue gambler. When the battle destroys the casino, the gambler joins forces with the two Sith against the invading forces of the former Jedi and his Crusaders.
We don’t know the reason for the duel. We don’t know the identities of the gambler, the Sith or anything about the Crusaders. There’s very little set-up for this episode and despite the absence of information, the story works. Why? Because it’s mostly well-drawn combat sequences in really cool Star Wars settings.
Sophisticated animation, great setting and a chance for dazzling fight sequences: those are the reasons for this episode’s success. “The Smuggler,” directed by Masahiko Ôtsuka, and featuring the voice talents (English cast) of Emma Myers, Tanner Buchanan, Judith Light, Cory Yee, Adam Seitz, Matt Yang King, Cindy Robinson, A.J. Beckles, Earl Baylon, and Sean Burgos comes a very close second, owing to some semblance of character development.
These are the only two episodes that stand out in this third anthology. The absence of familiar Star Wars icons, or absence of story information in the other episodes detracts from the enjoyment of the others as Star Wars stories and reduces them to simply anime stories that have a Star Wars flavour.
It’s easier to think of them as experiments. After all, that’s what the New Visionsanthologies are about. Considering the resources that Disney/LucasFilm has at its disposal, it can afford to venture into new territories and bring fans new perspectives in looking at their properties.
In that sense, Volume 3 of Star Wars: Visions can be considered a success, but the question it doesn’t really answer is: what does it bring to the franchise?
Megaman-style armour. Right.
Star Wars Visions Vol. 3. Cast Includes: Anna Sawai, Freddie Mark Strong, George Takei, Harvey Guillén, Jodie Turner-Smith, Judith Light, Simu Liu, Stephanie Hsu, Steve Buscemi, Brian Tee, Suzy Nakamura and Will Sharpe.
Star Wars: Visions, Volume Three streams on Disney+ October 29.