One of the absolute highlights of Star Wars in the Disney+ era has been Star Wars: Visions. Over the course of its three seasons, spanning shorts from animation studios across the globe, the animated anthology series has consistently put out banger after banger — from Volume 1‘s Ronin inspired ‘The Duel’, to Volume 2‘s Aardman racing caper ‘I Am Your Mother’, to last year’s Volume 3 and the phenomenal stormtrooper odyssey ‘Black’. Among fans though, Production I.G. and Kenji Kamiyama’s ‘The Ninth Jedi’, which started in Visions‘ first season and continued in Volume 3, has been a real favourite. So much so that its story — of Kara, a young Force-sensitive girl searching for her missing father, the last known sabersmith in the galaxy, while evading Jedi Hunters — has now expanded to Star Wars: Visions Presents — The Ninth Jedi, the franchise’s first full anime series. Check out the visually dazzling trailer below;
And here’s the English dub, if you’d rather;
Stunning hybridised 2D/3D animation? Check! Adorable droids? Check! Clashing sabers left, right, and centre? Check! A mysterious new masked villain, Interstellar style black holes, and our heroine getting caught in a tug of war between the pull of the light and the temptation of the dark? That’ll be a triple check, folks! Yeah, we’re thinkin’ Visions is back — and if this first trailer for The Ninth Jedi is anything to go by, then perhaps a non-Jedi/Sith/Mando centric Star Wars story is exactly what the ever-so-slightly-wobbling franchise has been crying out for. And the concept of a new kind of lightsaber that directly reflects its user’ heart is very compelling, especially as new ‘baddie’ Nawaam’s saber burns blue while our fave Kara is seen here wielding what appears to be a Sith-red blade. Very interesting…
This time lead-directed by Shunsuke Tada (Kamiyama remains a supervising director), The Ninth Jedi‘s latest chapter — all eight episodes of it — is light speed-skipping to Disney+ on 5 August, meaning we really don’t have long to wait until we find out what’s next for Lah Kara. Now this is where the fun begins!
