The first sneak peek at the Star Wars: Visions anime anthology series is finally here, and it is as exciting as you'd expect. The franchise far, far away has long looked and felt like an anime, so it's about time the franchise comes full circle and becomes an actual anime (even if the Star Wars Galaxy of Adventures micro-series already had an anime aesthetic). The teaser reveals the acclaimed anime studios bringing Star Wars to the medium it was always meant to be in, and gives us some exciting details for what we can expect when the anthology series premieres this fall on Disney+.
Star Wars Visions will be unrestricted by either canon or time period, with the nine-episode series bringing us new and familiar characters in stories that can be anything from big and action-heavy, to sweeping romantic, comedic, or even a "rock opera style film" titled Tatooine Rhapsody.
The nine-episode series will include shorts by studios Kinema Citrus (Made in Abyss), Science SARU (DEVILMAN crybaby), Production IG (Ghost in the Shell), and Trigger (Promare, Kill la Kill). If you've ever seen a show from one of these studios, you know that their sensibilities and styles fit perfectly within the world of Star Wars while bringing something unique that we haven't seen before, and who knows, maybe Trigger's shorts will include their mandatory drill.
The teaser premiered as part of this year's virtual Anime Expo, where we learned more from the stories in the anthology, like Production IG's The Ninth Jedi, which takes place in the far future where the Jedi have fallen into legend "and need to come back as darkness threatens the galaxy" in what sounds like Seven Samurai but with Star Wars (which already sounds fascinating), and centers on a "lightsabersmith" which we've never seen in the franchise and now I can't stop thinking about. Fans of anime should keep an eye out on the series, which is not only taking inspiration from the movies that inspired Star Wars, like Akira Kurosawa's movies but even the granddaddy of anime itself, Astro Boy, with the classic anime's sound designer lending his talents to one of Science Saru's shorts, Akakiri. And in even more exciting news, Made in Abyss composer Kevin Pekin revealed he's composing the score for Kinema Citrus' The Village Bride.
Here are the episode titles and the studios working on them:
Kamikaze Douga - The Duel
Geno Studio (Twin Engine) - Lop and Ochō
Studio Colorido (Twin Engine) - Tatooine Rhapsody
Trigger - The Twins
Trigger - The Elder
Kinema Citrus - The Village Bride
Science Saru - Akakiri
Science Saru - T0-B1
Production IG - The Ninth Jedi
Star Wars: Visions will arrive on September 22 on Disney+. Watch the trailer and some images from the show below:
