Star Wars Visions: The Ninth Jedi - Anime Meets Star Wars. Don’t Ask Why

By John Kirk

Rating: C

There are Star Wars fans and there are anime fans, but Star Wars Visions: The Ninth Jedi allows for both these circles to intersect on the Venn diagram of these two fandoms. But the real question is: why bother?

Star Wars Visions: The Ninth Jedi follows in the heels of the last three iterations of this experimentally conceptual way of telling Star Wars stories. There have been three volumes of shorts that look at episodic events or different perspectives that were bold ways of celebrating the love of this franchise with the freedom of not worrying about canon or continuity.

The Ninth Jedi is the first of a new way of expanding this banner by looking at longer form stories. In this case, there are eight episodes of the story of Lah Kara (Kimiko Glenn), the force-sensitive daughter of a lightsaber smith, Lah Zhima (Simu Liu). She must rescue her father while somehow train to be a Jedi, assemble a fellowship of Jedis and save the galaxy at the same time.

Oh, this all occurs while she is on a journey of self-discovery. It’s a bit convoluted.

The first criticism of this series is that while it is supposed to be a Star Wars story, it only regularly mentions a handful of recognizable references that harken back to the Star Wars franchise. These are: the Jedi and Sith, their lightsabers and the Force. Other than that, there’s really nothing in this series that a fan would recognize as a Star Wars story.

There are no species, weapons, space ships, political affiliations or settings that would allow us to identify this as a story set in a galaxy far, far away.

The ostensible reason for this is that this is supposed to be set far, far in the future where none of the typical Star Wars elements would be seen. But this drastically alienates Star Wars fans and hampers any type of relationship to the characters. I get that this is supposed to be an experimental way of telling a Star Wars story, but there are very few things that identify it as such.

Heck, substitute Sith for “evil knight”, Jedi for “spirit defender”, laser sword for light saber and the force as “space magic” and this could pass as a pretty generic anime plot. It even has the dull and drawn-out exposition with lines like “I can see that now I will have to face you in battle.” Or, my particular favourite: “Well, well. You have arrived.” 

There really isn’t anything about this story that adds to the Star Wars lore or canonical value, and that’s a shame because anime fans who are also Star Wars fans could have had a field day with an anime-style story about their favourite heroes like Luke, Leia or Han Solo. Instead, they get characters they have to work to identify within an unidentifiable galaxy.

What also is frustrating about this story is that it fails to give the audience an understandable plot. Kara has a lot on her shoulders. She has to learn to be a Jedi but she also has to go around the galaxy distributing lightsabres to other Jedi. Apparently, this is the way she assembles her fellowship, which flies in the face of everything that lore tells us about Jedi training.

But that’s okay when we meet the villain in this story, Lord Nawaam (Young Mazino), a would-be galaxy conqueror (for no real reason other than establishing order or something) and self-trained force-wielder who is neither Jedi or Sith, yet something better. His intentions range from stopping Kara from putting her Jedi crew together to building a really big gun to destroy the galaxy he wants to control.

Essentially, the frustration is the weakness in the plot. Lord Nawaam is obviously our Vader-style bad guy, but with his shifting plans, it’s kind of difficult to feel intimidated by him.

Plus, the fact that Lah Zhima isn’t just a guy who makes lightsabers but is also a powerful Jedi master who could have faced down Nawaam any time in the series is also a bit of a story killer.

On a sidenote, Kara’s hair style constantly reminded me of the girlfriend from Napoleon Dynamite. As soon as I saw that, I couldn’t take her character seriously anymore.

Well, that and the fact that I couldn’t figure out who the ninth Jedi was when I could only count seven in Kara’s Jedi companions. Here’s a couple of other things.

The lightsaber colours are supposed to represent what’s in the wielder’s heart.

Nahhh.

Also, don’t be surprised by the space elves.

Seriously?

You see, a lot of this doesn’t really work in Star Wars. It works fine in anime though.

But like I said: why bother?

Star Wars Visions: The Ninth Jedi. Directed by Shunsuke Tada. Written by Mitsuyasu Sakai. Cast (Japanese): Chinatsu Akasaki (Lah Kara), Tetsuo Kanao (Juro), Hiromu Mineta (Ethan), Hinata Tadokoro (Homen), Cho (Gramps), and Shinichiro Miki (Lah Zhima). Akio Otsuka returns to voice The Narrator.

Star Wars Visions: The Ninth Jedi streams on Disney Plus on August 5.