Star Wars Visions

I kind of liked the idea of bringing the circle of inspiration around full circle. The fact that George Lucas was originally inspired by not only 50s serials like “Flash Gordon”, but also by Akira Kurosawa’s samurai flicks, such as “Hidden Fortress” or “Yojimbo”, is one of the better-known back stories behind the OG trilogy. 

So bring it home. Let’s see what animators in the land the inspired the Jedi and lightsabers make of their hybrid cousin.

The answer is, well … Jedi and lightsabers, mostly.

In nine episodes produced by seven different Japanese animation studios we get two jedis fighting, a jedi rock band, two jedis fighting, a jedi fighting, nine jedis fighting, a robot jedi fighting, three jedis fighting, a furry jedi fighting and two jedis fighting.

In other words, the country that gave Star Wars its quasi-space samurai turns out to mostly be interested in quasi-space samurai. The characters, the settings, the costumes--the series doesn't look inspired by medieval Japan, it just looks like medieval Japan. Period. With jedis. Which is kind of a shame, I guess. Like a tourist who travels to Europe and eats nothing but McDonald’s, I can’t help but feel this is a missed opportunity, and wish that the animators had looked at Star Wars and seen something other than their own reflection.

Wellll-l-l-l, the visual look was always going to be the thing and the whole thing with this series anyway, wasn’t it? Like the “Animatrix” series (2003, or about five years ago by my reckoning) or “Halo Legends” (2010, i.e. that was just last week, surely?) the main if not only reason you do this is to splash a technicolor coat of Japanese cool over your product.

A couple of the episodes are indeed pretty to look at, especially the first one, “The Duel”, which has a very cool “Hellsreach” style jumpy, skittery black-and-white look to it, with splashes of red and blue color when the laser swords get whipped out.

“The Twins” gets a bit more gonzo, but looses several thousand points in my book for just copying the most iconic scene from “The Last Jedi”. Did I say the animators took nothing from Star Wars? My mistake. They took this one scene, and xeroxed it.

“Tatooine Rhapsody” and “T0-B1” are cutesy Astroboy style cheese harkening back to 80s animation; “The Elder” is basically “The Duel” again, only the bad guy is an old man instead of a woman; “The Village Bride” and “The Ninth Jedi” are a bit Ghibli with their wilderness scenes and plucky heroines, and “Akakiri” (red mist) is very Kurosawa with its bold use of color and bickering old guides.

There’s some stunt casting in the voices, with Lucy Liu, George Takei, David Harbour, Neil Patrick Harris and Temuera “Boba Fett” Morrison all taking a turn behind the mike, though as with much of anime its hampered both by trying to info dump at the speed of Japanese speech and by a listless give-me-my-paycheck delivery of hammy dialog. Voice acting is not in-person acting, and I can’t help but feel the production would have been better served by focusing on performances over names.

I do like the de-emphasis on canon though. It's a millstone that is only going to weigh down any future attempts to tell any other stories in this universe, so the sooner it is cast off the better. Just wish they'd been willing to go a little more lateral, but baby steps I guess.