Star Wars: Visions — Volume 3

Streaming on: Disney+

Episodes viewed: 9 of 9

There have been a lot of series and films based in the galaxy far, far away over the past decade. But in among it all lies animated anthology series Star Wars: Visions – a show that sees the expressive potential of animation draw from the franchise’s myriad cultural influences and expand them into stories of their own. The best moments of Star Wars: Visions have often been high points for Star Wars as a whole, and Volume 3 is no different.

Take this season’s outstanding opener, ‘The Duel: Payback’, a sequel to Volume One’s ‘The Duel’ from returning director Takanobu Mizuno, which doubles down on the Akira Kurosawa influences in the first Star Wars film in its feudal Japanese architecture and character designs. Its monochrome, experimental approach towards 3D animation, textured with mock film grain, keeps things feeling fresh, even though it marks Visions’ first revisitation. Another second instalment is ‘The Ninth Jedi: Child Of Hope’, which sees Kara (who we first met in Volume One) encounter a seemingly abandoned ship. Following intriguing characters with plenty of untapped emotional potential, it sets up the recently announced The Ninth Jedi spin-off series – a sign of the new life that Visions has breathed into Star Wars, and that there’s so much still left to explore beyond the boundaries of the Skywalker family, even in these repeat journeys.

The very best of these shorts merge aesthetic innovations with stories that hold real dramatic heft.

Some of the time, the joy of this show simply comes from seeing the visual traditions of anime through the lens of Star Wars – like the particular way missiles dance across the sky in ‘The Smuggler’ (where a mercenary helps an exiled prince flee his country), or how a speeder transforms into a mech suit in ‘The Song Of Four Wings’ (a bright and energetic story about a scouting mission gone wrong). The very best of the bunch merge those aesthetic innovations with stories that hold real dramatic heft – namely ‘Black’, ‘Yuko's Treasure’ and ‘The Lost Ones’ (director Hitoshi Haga’s brilliant follow-up to his Volume One standout, ‘The Village Bride’).

There are places where that creativity falls short. ‘The Bird Of Paradise’, as it follows a Jedi resisting the temptation of the dark side, spends a long time unpacking an internal conflict that ultimately feels rote. In fact, two-thirds of the shorts feature a Jedi – some more variation in that respect would feel a little more interesting, especially in a season with so many recurring stories.

But that doesn’t mean Volume Three doesn’t have diversity, in narrative or aesthetic. Of the new entries, ‘Black’ is the most exciting, directed by the legendary Shinya Ohira (who recently animated The Boy And The Heron’s astonishing fire sequence). Produced by a murderers’ row of animation talent, it’s a hand-drawn, avant-garde, jazz-scored odyssey into the fractured psyche of a stormtrooper. Horrified by the violence of his occupation, the world glitches and contorts around him, an expression of raw sensation that could only work in this medium – a realisation that uplifts this Visions volume, and the entire series. Seeing something that purely emotive and experimental emerge from one of Hollywood’s most famous, commercial franchises makes the whole thing worthwhile.