Hogan Reviews

The third season of “Visions” is an odd one. The first season had the whole fresh ideas and “weird, Star Wars made by anime studios!” thing going for it, and Season 2 had fresh ideas from animations studios around the world. This season is more shorts by anime studios, some of which are sequels to ones from the first season, so it all feels less special this time round. Some are good, some are middling, some are bad, as per usual with any collection of short stories, but overall I felt this was the weakest Season of the three. Let’s take a look, anyway (and with no Spoiler Section because that would just take too long to recap the ends of all nine shorts…)

The first short is a sequel to Season 1 classic “The Duel” called “The Duel: Payback”, fittingly. This time the Ronin is targeted by not just a Sith called Aneé-san but a rogue Jedi called “The Grand Master”, who was wounded by the Ronin during his Sith days and wants revenge. There are some fun set pieces, especially a gambling den in between two AT-AT walkers, and duels between the Ronin and both his opponents are well done so it was a strong start to the season. The second story is “The Song of Four Wings” and is set on a snowy planet where a small band of rebels resist the Empire, as they do. The main character is Princess Crane who at one point merges with her droid and speederbike to create a weird X-Wing-like mech suit, which was fun in a very Anime-way. Other than that though, there isn’t much to say about that one. Story three is “The Ninth Jedi: Child of Hope”, a sequel to, well, “The Ninth Jedi” from Season 1, a story so liked by myself and others its actually getting its own full season soon. Possibly due to that however this short doesn’t do a lot, our hero Lah Kara is almost immediately separated from her crew of Jedi and other allies from the first story and meets a droid called Teto, who helps her recover from being in the vacuum of space for a bit (in a protective suit, obviously!) Two bounty hunters arrive and after a few scuffles Lah is saved by her returning crew but the droid sacrifices itself to take out the bounty hunters, leaving Lah and the other returning characters in exactly the same place as when the short started, ready to search for Lah’s father’s killer in the full series. Like I said, it’s like they’d already written the upcoming TV show so had to slot a “filler” episode in before it. Not bad, just not very noteworthy.

Duelling happening in The Duel? Whatever next…

Episode 4 is “The Bounty Hunters”, and sees a pair of, you guessed it, Bounty Hunters called Sevn and her medical droid-turned-assassin droid IV-A4, the former being an ex-member of a criminal group called Basham but she left them when a Jedi appeared and wiped out a Basham base and convinced her to follow her own path. Good backstory, but the main story is Sevn being hired to “stop insurgents” by a rich industrialist only to find out the insurgents are actually just trying to get their kidnapped children back from the industrialist who uses them as slaves. Naturally this leads to Sevn turning down the money to do something good. Short number 5 was “Yuko’s Treasure”, which felt more like an American cartoon from the 80s rather than an anime short, as the titular Yuko is looked after by her large carebear-looking robot BILY and soon meets a her first friend in a boy called Sola and together they get into an adventure involving some very slapstick comedic villains (one of which is voiced by Steve Buscemi weirdly enough!) and find a hidden treasure, which in this case is a spaceship that the trio can explore the stars with. It was fine I guess, but didn’t feel very Star Wars-y or anime-y.

A lot of these screenshots are from earlier episodes in the show, but hey-ho… Here’s the Princess before she transforms into an X-Wing mech thing!

Episode 6 is a sequel to Season 1’s “The Village Bride” called “The Lost Ones”, where the protagonist of that earlier serial, the ex-Jedi known only as “F” finds herself helping some refugees fight off the Empire who destroyed their home due to Carbonite mining and she ends up finding her old Master who had died in the previous short but is now back as a darkside-using cyborg. The two have a dramatic duel and all that, which was fun at least. It was good all round to be fair, one of the stronger ones. Episode  7 is “The Smuggler” sees a Smuggler (very on-the-nose some of these titles…) get caught up in helping an ex-Jedi called Gleenu smuggle a local Prince called Arluu off their planet after the Empire took it over and executed the royal family. Again some fun scenes, especially with Gleenu who has her lightsabre hidden in her own prosthetic arm, and it ends with the duo dropped off an the Yavin IV base, our titular Smuggler doing a Han Solo of “not wanting to get involved with the wider rebellion but ending up doing so due to her new friends” thing.

Yuko, Sola and a small pyramid-like droid I didn’t mention. Not pictured: BILY the carebear or Steve Buscemi…’s character. (or Steve Buscemi)

The last two stories were sadly the weakest for me, though I will give them credit for doing something different. Episode 8 is “The Bird of Paradise” and sees a Jedi Padawan blinded in a duel with a Sith and ending up wandering the jungle planet going through a personal journey of self-discovery, including facing her fears, quite literally. It’s beautiful to look at, but was sadly quite dull. The final episode is “BLACK” and… yeah. It was advertised as a “psychedelic story” set to jazz music, and it was certainly both of those things. It follows a stormtrooper at the end of his life going through some trippy experiences. It’s very short, very odd and just not to my taste.

Overall Thoughts:

“I’ll never forget you… until my full series starts, then I’ll probably never mention you again. Sorry.”

Star Wars: Visions – Season 3 (or Volume 3, I guess) is the weakest, with a greater mix of good, average and “not to my taste” than the previous two series that leaned more towards good. Still, I enjoyed watching it until the last two episodes kind of killed the momentum for me, so I can’t give it a bad score, but I doubt I’ll be watching any of these shorts again.