Star Wars: Visions (TV Series 2021– ) Poster

(2021– )

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6/10
A mixed bag of satisfaction with the short stories
pranayjalvi1 October 2021
Star Wars Visions was a bag of mixed feelings, with couple of episodes being very good and the rest of them being either average or poor.

The ones I liked were :

Twins by Trigger which had a great animation along with decent action sequences.

The Duel by Kamikaze Douga was good in terms of story, although I felt the animation could have been better. The duel between the characters was displayed with effectiveness as well.

The Village Bride by Kinema Citrus had good animation and quality storyline with a satisfactory ending.

The rest of the episodes were average and couple of them (Tatooine Rhapsody and Akakiri) were totally dull and boring.

My Rating : 6/10.
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6/10
Stylistically beautiful, rarely substantive
fraser-simons25 September 2021
Arguably, people don't go see Star Wars for the plot, but even still, many of these episodes feel like they show the animation studios' prowess in their field, but have nothing worth saying. Most have no story to speak of, just a setup for a fight, which is fun, but have no point. There are a couple gems here, who do want to tell a story. The rest is nice to look at, but pointless and make an impression.
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7/10
Unique and original, if not somewhat clichéd.
kbressler-8538822 September 2021
A very unique and original series showcasing a slew of different animation and stylistic interpretations. I very much enjoyed the of anime aesthetic. As well, the music and sound design. With so many new and original characters and stories. The spirit of what makes Star Wars, feels very alive in this series. I love that Disney was willing to create something so artistically unique.

Unfortunately, the series is not without it's faults. Being a series of anime, it brings with it many tropes and cliches anime is often known for. This may not detract for more hard-core anime fans, but may be a turn off for more casual viewers. For me the dialogue often felt cringe and ridiculous. Even for Star Wars. Along with a few moments that just felt absurd, like characters fighting and talking in the void of space. If you can forgive this, this is a fun series to sit through.

Each story is self contained and original. None of this is canon and has no affect on previous or future shows and movies. Although I would have liked to have seen some "Legends" material explored or known characters given new life in anime style. But at least they aren't retreading the same popular characters, stories, and timelines. If you were expecting any legacy characters, sorry.

All that being said, I did enjoy Visions and hope for a second season. And hats off to Disney for releasing the entire series at once. I have NOT been a fan of their weekly Marvel shows release pattern. Each episode is less than 20 minutes and the entire thing is easily watchable in a single sitting.
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Half alright, half amazing
williamxbones1 May 2023
Warning: Spoilers
Season one is definitely worth of production but it's a mixed bag in my opinion, there's really good episodes but also some that leaves no impact on the franchise. The episodes "The Ninth Jedi" and "The Duel" were the two highlights for me, they both left me wanting more with their amazing animation and fun action. The episodes "Lop & Ocho", "The Village Bride" and "The Elder" all had interesting narrative with very good animation, these and the the two previously mentioned are something that make the show really worth watching. The episodes "The Twins", "T0-B1", "Akakiri" and "Tatooine Rhapsody" all had something to them but weren't really anything to brag about.

Season two was better, every episode brings something interesting to me as the diversity of studios and animation style made them all original. Even my least favorite are decent as "The Pit" brings solid political subtext and "The Bandits of Golak" is a nice showcase of culture. Other episodes such as "In the Stars", "Sith" and "I Am Your Mother" might've lacked an amazing story but had insanely beautiful animation. On the other hand, there's episodes like "Screecher's Reach" and "Journey to the Dark Head" that had stories good enough that they could've been longer. Finally there's "The Spy Dancer" and "Aau's Song" that had both and were breathtaking.

Season 1: 6/10 Season 2: 7/10.
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7/10
Some reviewers are just blind
mhorg201823 September 2021
First, do the negative reviewers understand this is a DIFFERENT look at Star Wars? Since each episode is a stand alone, each must be taken as a separate film. Some episodes, 1, 4, 5, 7 are superb. 1 is like a Kurosawa film. 7 shows the bond between Jedi and Padawan. The other episodes vary. 6 is a clear homage to Osamu Tezuka and is just on. Episode 2 is the worst. This should be watched with an open mind-something Star wars fans don't have anymore.
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7/10
I really liked it, but it had flews
renilol24 September 2021
The bad episodes are really bad but the good ones are absolutely incredible qnd imo it makes up for the bad.
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6/10
I only found the first episode of 9 total to be compelling :-(
stevebondi30 September 2021
In general, I do not enjoy most anime due to the economical animation, the corny/exaggerated dialog, the wacky Sci-fi/Fantasy plots, and the simplistic face designs. And aside from the first episode, this series had all of this :-(
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9/10
Refreshing take on Star Wars
Star Wars Visions is simply what the franchise needed after The Sequel Trilogy ended: reinvention outside the main Skywalker canon.

This series of short films is definitely one of the most unique things in the Star Wars franchise to date: and I'm hoping there's even more experimental stuff like this in the future.

What do you get when you cross everyone's favourite space opera with Japan's top animators? A collection of stories that honour George Lucas as much as they do the works of Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki.

This is animated anthology television for the ages.
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7/10
It was great BUT
juhannjy22 September 2021
For real this is amazing but in a way , it felt short as hell . I wish it was longer . And there's some episode I did not like , but most of it , it was fantastic . Hell , I enjoyed this more than sequel had done xD.
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8/10
More of this please!
doomedmac6 October 2021
It's true that not every episode is gold, but there are plenty of good ideas here and I am all for good ideas! Some really outstanding episodes and great animation!
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6/10
Good and bad
dennislindfors23 September 2021
Ok. So this is new, an Animé style series of starwars. I didn't have high hopes for this but It was a bit better than I thought.

There is good and bad things about this.

I know this is a view on how animé animators sees starwars. And it's cool to see their views. Only that Starwars wasn't the right theme.

Idk. I did not get a starwars feeling to this series. The only episodes I got it from was old man and 9th jedi.

Most of the episodes was a bit weird, especially Twins episode. I thought it was super unrealistic and weird. That they breath in space, have bendable lightsabers. AND THAT THE GUY WAS RIDING THE XWING IN HYPERSPACE!!!

The episodes was 50/50

I whould rank the old man was the best episode by far and twins was the worst.

A good thing is that this series has new characters and new timelines and not only the beginning and aftermath of the empire.

Still there was a few in those timelines

Either way to end the review I whould like to say that this Series grew on me and that some episodes felt better when I saw it more. I hated It at the beginning but it grew and I hope for a season 2. But with more realistic episodes.
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9/10
Beats the sequels, let's appreciate it
tanker_8825 September 2021
Some episodes aren't great. BoT1, the band, but overall some of these stories in tone, story, and craftsmanship blow the sequels out of the water. Creativity. Character. Pacing to fit the scale. I loved this series overall. Recommend for dedicated Star Wars fans.
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6/10
Meh
Smokeshot22 September 2021
My hope was, there will be some cool anime-style or cgi animated short storys but it was all too childish for me. The animations are medicore and some episodes are really stupid and/or boring.

Love, Death and Robots is much better and worlds beyound.
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5/10
Deeply problematic recycled content
tsibosp7 May 2023
Most of the First season was above average,there were some hit or miss episodes but mostly the stories were fine and diverse. On the second season most, if not all of the episodes are the based on the same principle. A Girl (shocking I know) is oppressed - taken down etc finds she has inner strength and rises above the situation. When I read from other reviewers that most of the episodes were like this I thought, no chance they are just nitpicking. Turns out they were right. So from hundreds of plot pitches and ideas from studios around the world somehow the same pattern was chosen time and time again. This is deeply problematic.
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Hit and miss
evhkerr22 September 2021
The biggest problem here is that it's not clear who the audience is. I get the sense kids would love this stuff, but some of the dialog is just painful. Beautiful visually, though. About every other one is worth watching. Some good voice work, too, though not all.
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7/10
Fun new view of the Star Wars Universe...
pritol28 September 2021
Really enjoyed seeing the Star Wars universe displayed through a slightly different lens to normal. I've long been a fan of anime and it's unique cartoon style, so seeing that used was fantastic.

The collection of short stories are a little hit and miss, but some of them are really great fun. The animation is fantastic and there is a lot of creativity on display in the unique stories told. Lots of mention of Sith, Khyber crystals and lightsabers...not all of it canon, but all of it well thought out.

There are some contemporary themes in there, along with the good vs evil narrative, but anyone who is a fan of anime and Star Wars will love this. Very easy to watch, all I'm thinking now is wouldn't it be great if Studio Ghibli did a full length Star Wars feature....
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7/10
Not All are great
info-94-5464630 September 2021
Visually each is different which was expected. Individually there were only three that were worth a second watch to me and my family. I'm sure each person who watches visions will come up with their favorites and they will be different from mine. As a whole I read it a 7. However there are some episodes in my opinion that are a 9.
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7/10
Some are great, some are awful
tommydougherty14 October 2021
New interesting take and visuals never before seen in the Star Wars universe. An anthology with so much care and focus put into everything from the stories to the visuals. Every episode has a different anime inspired art style and tone that adds so much to Star Wars as a whole. It's hard to rate this together because some episodes were so good and others really should have never been made. There were a few episodes that I loved, a few that were okay, one that was bad, and one that I hated. I do hope they come out with more of these though because the ones that were good were amazing.

Episode 1: 5/5 Loved the art style and the story of a former dark side user (smith or inquisitor or other) making the world right by killing dark side users that are abusing their powers to torment society. Original visuals and weapons like katana lightsabers and an umbrella lightsaber. Love this episode.

Episode 2: 0/5 Cheesy, childish, literally the bad parts of anime with stupid stories and unrealistic plots. Star Wars did not and still does not need stupid teen anime rock band stories like this one. Bad episode Episode 3: 3/5 Holy yes, these are the visuals and over the top fight scenes I was hoping for when this show was announced. Super epic and fun to watch. But I think this would've been 10x better without the dialogue, people say the prequels have bad dialogue but holy crap this might be one one the blockiest and most narrative exposition dumping dialogues I've ever seen. The prequels look like Oscar winning movies compared to this. Some of it makes sense, you only have 18 minutes to tell the story so you might need some characters to give backstory but a lot of it is obvious and does not need explanation. Definitely enjoyed the battles but that's pretty much it.

Episode 4: 5/5 another great episode. The emotion in this one is what really shines. The story telling is superb and does everything it try's to do perfectly. More great visuals and plots that mesh so well with what Star Wars is at its best. It is short, sweet, and so well executed. Watching this episode put me in such a good mood, loved it so much. My favorite episode of the bunch.

Episode 5: 4/5 A really great Star Wars story that I honestly wish I could see a whole series on. They had a cool and interesting take on lightsabers that haven't been seen (at least in the current canonical Star Wars). Solid episode.

Episode 6: 3/5 it's a cute episode. The animation style reminds me old Disney like the Snow White dwarves kind of look. It's hard to make a good story in this short amount of time and it shows. It goes from no don't you're not allowed, we need to do this and not worry about becoming a Jedi, to okay fine here's everything you need to know about becoming a Jedi in less than 2 minutes. Still not a bad episode.

Episode 7: 4/5 well written and executed. It's an interesting concept and they do a good job of keeping it concise and find ways to show and not tell, there's no real exposition dumps. And there's a classic Jedi lesson demonstrated throughout.

Episode 8: 2.5/5 I think this episodes story would have benefited from a much longer runtime. They try to pack so much backstory Into the episode that 3/4 of the episode ends up being dialogue. There was literally a 3 minute argument that could have been much shorter. There was one fight scene at the end that was okay except for the person who just learned about lightsabers and picked one up for the first time automatically somehow knows how to use the force, that was something that definitely could have been left out.

Episode 9: 2/5 Super unoriginal story, literally took Anakin's exact motivations, actions, and arc and threw it in this character in a much more rushed and unbelievable fashion. Then they dressed it up in an anime skin to make it seem artistic and original. So many possible directions they could have gone without having to stick to canon and they make the most unoriginal story ever. Also a pretty boring episode overall.
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9/10
Ignore the angry nerd losers
jamesfitz-9430922 September 2021
Besides Mando, best thing Star Wars has put out in a while, refreshing and creative takes on original Star Wars ideas. PEOPLE DO NOT REALIZE THIS WAS MADE FOR THE FUN AND LOVE OF STAR WARS. Not everything has to be 100000% accurate and apart of the lore.
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7/10
When it hits it's a bullseye when it misses it's by a long shot
adamcastillofeb17 October 2021
A few episodes absolutely blew me away the ninth Jedi is absolutely A tier Star Wars entertainment unfortunately there are as many bad episodes as there are good twins being the worst of the worst it felt like for some studios this was a huge passion project and you can tell they are absolute fans of Star Wars while other studios seemed to only care for the attention a Star Wars project would bring to them and didn't even bother doing genuine research like they just skimmed through Wikipedia for cool tag lines the great thing though is all these episodes are short so you should definitely give it a chance and see what episodes stick out to you.
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10/10
Amazing different exploding funs
jojoiscool-6328822 September 2021
Very dynamic love love this spin on this franchise.
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6/10
Thoughts on Season 2
TheVictoriousV15 May 2023
The age of streaming, as it turns out, has a lot of problems -- streaming trounced cable something fierce in 2022, but more and more services of late report losing subscribers (not just because of the lack of cricket games, mind). But when it's still awesome is when it gives an outlet to smaller creatives who may have gone unnoticed in the past (as is especially true of sites like Shudder), even giving us entire variety shows where each episode gives a different creator/studio the time to shine (while also satisfying those darn output quotas). Hence we have Love, Death & Robots on Netflix and Star Wars: Visions on Disney+.

Now, Visions is more limiting than something like LD+R. The stories, of course, need to remain somewhere within the realms of Star Wars and there seems to be some kind of mandate for episodes to either focus on kyber crystals or have a scene where a family gets torn apart because one of the characters has to go train to be a Jedi (ergo personal connections are forbidden).

Still, the show does allow for several creators to do some truly out-there and visually unique things with this world and its mythology. In the first season/volume, the shorts were various types of anime -- including one that goes full Kurosawa (appropriate, since Kurosawa was one of Lucas' main inspirations when conceiving the saga) -- but here, the animation styles are a lot more varied, hailing from many corners of the world. Of course, they also range in quality:

The second might be my favorite. Done by Cartoon Saloon (Wolfwalkers), it has a distinctive hand-drawn look -- that also plays around with the frame rate in a fascinating way -- and is equally distinct in its Irish-ness (not just the accents but also the inclusion of a banshee-like specter, whose often minimalist scenes are a highlight of the season). The third, made in Chile, is quite good to look at (combining Laika-esque stop-motion with CGI) but features a pretty grating performance and a decidedly clunky way of delivering its backstory. We also get the clichéd but very delightful I Am Your Mother, made by Aardman Animation with all their signature British claymation charm -- and a cameo by the robot from the first-ever Wallace & Gromit short that made me giddier than any vacuous fanservice moment from The Mandalorian combined.

The worst of the bunch is the seventh episode, which looks like a janky, second-rate Clone Wars copy where nobody moves very naturally or seems to have much gravity to them (there's also a shot of CG water that looked straight out of a mid-2000s direct-to-DVD movie), but its character designs and settings give it a distinctly Indian feel (the studio is the Mumbai-based 88 Pictures) that I found interesting -- my friend also noted that its main antagonist gave the impression of a Bollywood villain. Aau's Song, by the South African studio Triggerfish, closes the season on a sweet note and another mesmerizing use of stop-motion.

Bottom line: the further away from Disney Star Wars gets, the more interesting and imaginative it gets to be. Go figure.
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10/10
Amazing! Unexpected
jamrock-6735622 September 2021
This shows absolutely amazing from start to finish. Didn't disappoint at all. Started off strong and ended off Great. May not be for everyone but i still recommend you watch. Recommend watching episodes 2 and 8 I'm English and the rest in Japanese to give it more of that authentic feel. My personal ranking of the episodes has to be ep 1, ep 5, ep 3, ep 6, ep 4, ep 8, ep 2, ep 9.
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6/10
A mixed bag Warning: Spoilers
I liked some of the shorts, but I honestly think most of them would have worked much better as their own thing instead of being part of the Star Wars franchise.

I must say all of them are very , very different in tone with the movies, so there is a strong chance for hardcore fans to really hate this.

Here is a mini-review for each short:

"The Duel" is perhaps the best one of the bunch, being a sober tribute of the samurai films that inspired George Lucas. The animation style is nice and the plot is interesting.

"Tatooine Rhapsody" and "The Twins" are bad. Definately the weakest shorts from this anthology, displaying plenty of negative stereotypes commonly associated with anime (A flat characterization, a cheesy script, derivative art-styles)

"The Village Bride" is not bad, but barely feels as something related to Star Wars.

"The Ninth Jedi" is decent. Of all the shorts, this is the one close to the style of the films in tone (Though the way in which one of the surprise-twist bad guys turns good at the end was a bit unconvincing) I also dislike how this is apparently a sequel, rendering (once again) all the actions by Luke and Rey as pointless, since there is still a perpertual state of war in the galaxy.

I don't know why Disney likes so much turning Star Wars into some sort of depressing cycle where the past keeps repeating (Are the writers Sith fans, or are they just really, really unimaginative?) But other than that, the short is okay.

"T0-B1" is my personal favorite. Basically a mixture of Astroboy and Star Wars, very clashing in tone with the films, but has very imaginative visuals and a nice animation style, being very enjoyable to watch.

"The Elder" is another tribute to classic Samurai films. Without being as good "The Duel", is still a decent watch.

"Lop and Ocho" started in a very silly manner, but turned out to be better than I was expecting. Still, it almost feels as totally unrelated to Star Wars.

"Akakiri" is a tribute to "The Hidden Fortress", one of the main inspirations for Star Wars. It has an interesting animation style and a good atmosphere, but the plot felt a bit rushed and hard to follow at moments.

The overall result is decent, but definately uneven. My personal advice would be to completey skip Tattoine Rhapsody and The Twins, and appreciate the other shorts as some sort of "alternative" takes of the Star Wars universe with an open mind.
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5/10
From Incredibly Enjoyable to Incredibly Lackluster
lgladwill23 September 2021
Warning: Spoilers
I'm not sharing anything specific, but I will still put a spoiler warning on here just in case.

Here is the problem with Visions: Some of the episodes are absolutely amazing and really well done (The Duel, The 9th Jedi) and then others are just absolute garbage (Tatooine Rhapsody, The Twins).

I saw someone praising Visions for giving us something new in the backdrop of a universe we all love. Thor from Ragnarok immediately popped into my mind's eye, and I thought, "Did they though?" Almost all the episodes follow the same formula: a hidden "force user" (not always a jedi) steps forward to save the day. The only episode that doesn't follow this formula, and only within the last two minutes, is Akakiri.

It's a shame, because some of the episodes are really fun! Then there are the ones that just aren't (two living people fighting in the void of space with no protection, and yet the Droid is wearing a breathing bubble? Really?)

Of course, animation also has the power to alienate people, so some of the styles you will probably love and others you probably won't, and that's okay. I can only give it a '5' because the episodes that are good are really good and the ones that aren't are terrible.
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