This was a sequel I was not expecting. Somehow even more experimental than the last collection of animated Star Wars shorts, Star Wars Visions 2 incorporates animation studios from outside Japan, which doesn’t always mesh super well with the Japanese dub but whatever. If case you missed my review of the first Star Wars Visions, the tldr is that I enjoyed the project overall. It had some lackluster entries to be sure, and the brevity made it difficult for most to have even the hints of a good story, but most of them were interesting, with a huge variety in tone and visual flair, and a couple were outright excellent. Visions 2 has a lot of the same elements but dialed up even further by the inclusion of foreign studios. As far as the animation quality is concerned, I would say Visions 2 is generally worse than Visions 1 but the variety in style is much greater. It makes for a swingy but interesting viewing experience. And while I prefer Visions 1, Visions 2, in getting away from Japanese tropes and conventions is more unique and a refreshing change of pace for the brief time it takes to marathon the shorts. From here I’ll review individual episodes ranked by preference and there will be spoilers, you’ve been warned.
9 – I’m Your Mother
This was the only episode I didn’t finish. Not only is the aesthetic literally Chicken Little in space, but the story features the same story beats about a kid and the parent they’re too embarrassed to be around from movies of that era. It could maybe have a cute story about family, but there are better options for that in other Visions 2 episodes without the cringe writing involved. Maybe this was secretly the best episode but I’m guessing a family pod-racing challenge is not going to be at the top of anyone’s list.
8 – The Pit
Visually, The Pit is one of the stronger episodes. The style is more traditional 2D, though none of the characters have anime proportions, giving it a more grounded feel. There’s a lot black people featured as characters, which makes me think a Western studio was involved, especially since the art style looks more like upper-end Western cartoons as well. Sadly the visuals are practically all there is to praise on this one. The story is about a group of what look like penal workers digging a massive pit at stormtrooper gunpoint to mine Kyber crystals. When they hit bedrock, the stormtroopers leave the workers in the pit and they have to find a way out. It’s a building block for an interesting story but because it has to be resolved in like 10-15 mins you can’t do a lot with it. So one of workers climbs out, informs the nearby city of their plight, gets captured and killed. Then the rest of the workers keep chanting “Follow the Light” and citizens from the city arrive to save them. Mucho underwhelming. Again the length is the killer, if this had a couple hours or episodes to work with you could build the initial premise to a compelling story. But as it stands this one starts strong and ends weak.
7 – The Bandits of Golak
The Bandits of Golak is… interesting to put it kindly. The story follows a young man and his kid sister travelling to a place their now deceased father told them would be safe after their village was destroyed. The sister has Force powers and neither the emotional maturity or smarts to not use them in front of other people. This causes a Sith to follow them and for a Jedi grandma dual wielding lightsabers to fight a green Jaffar with a double lightsaber. Ultimately the Jedi wins and takes the sister away but the brother is left behind as he has no Force powers. Visually this episode is hilarious. The fight animation is super choppy so it looks goofy as shit. And the overall aesthetic gives me old Pixar movie vibes. Definitely not one of the standouts on the visual front, nor the story side either if I’m to be honest. That said I do like the Middle Eastern flair and the inclusion of Turkic/Mongol throat singing when nomadic desert raiders attack the train the story starts on, a fun touch. This one certainly deserves a low ranking and it has an air of so-bad-it’s-good but this was at least a bit of fun. It’s kind of like watching the anime equivalent of a Bollywood film, albeit nowhere near as extreme as Bollywood.
6 – Auu’s Song
This was by far the hardest of these episodes to rank. Unlike Visions 1, where every episode save the music one featured battles, Visions 2 had several episodes with effectively no direct action, like The Pit. Auu’s Song was easily the strongest of those episodes. The visual style is something I’ve never seen before, a sort stop=motion/ claymation looking thing but with fabric of some kind instead of clay. Despite the odd style it works very well, lending itself to unusual character designs while retaining a mostly cutesy feel. The backgrounds look good at a distance and up close rocks and plants look vaguely like stuff you’d use on Warhammer mini bases, giving it a gritty feel which nicely contrasts the fluffier fabric look of the characters. In terms of story Auu’s Song takes place on a world rich in Kyber crystal that has been tainted by the Dark Side, requiring Jedi to purify the crystals after they’ve been mined by the locals. Auu is able to purify the crystals with her song and feels a strong compulsion to do so. But if she’s interrupted it can backlash and make the crystals unstable. Her father wants her to hide this ability, while Auu feels compelled to use it. Ultimately this leads to her collapsing the mine by accident but then singing in front of a Jedi to stabilize the crumbling land. Then she leaves with the Jedi after a heartfelt goodbye to her father. It’s pretty cute and simple, making to a great fit for the short length format of these episodes. This very nearly ranked 5th, and I consider it comparable in quality to the next show on the list though for mostly different reasons.
5 – Sith
Sith is easily the most surreal of the Visions 2 shorts in a visual sense. This is both a strength, as it has hands down the most style overall, and a weakness since it causes some confusion as to what is real. It seems to be a weird blend of 3D and the painted look I tried to capture in the picture above. It lends itself oddly well to the setting and mechanical aspects of the show and though the main character looks a little strange, especially in bright light I wouldn’t say she looks bad at all. The big dividing line with Sith is the painting stuff. It factors into the story somehow and I still am not fully sure it’s wholly metaphorical or not. The gist of the story is that one point this lady was a Sith but she abandoned that life and is living peacefully on her own working on painting, – but like Force paintings that she interacts with as if they were physical objects. She’s concerned because she can’t cover up the darkness in the painting, and when her former Sith master tracks her down and forces her to fight, she comes to the realization that she needs to make use of Light and Dark to fully master her destiny, visually represented by her double lightsaber with a yellow blade on one side and red blade on the other. Since she controls the paintings with her Force powers, acts with some of the painted objects as it they are physical and has a line about painting her own destiny, hopefully you can see what I mean when I say, I’m not sure what is metaphor and what isn’t. Obviously the bit about both Dark and Light being inside her is, but beyond that I’m stumped, which is one of the things that weakens this short. The action animation is excellent though, bombastic and kinetic, making full use of the 3D models. It also makes use of the painted to look make the lightsabers stretch and streak as they strike, it looks cool as shit. This was a very strong start to Visions 2 as the first episode of the collection.
4 – In the Stars
This one was really well done. It follows the story of two sisters on a planet conquered and polluted by the Empire. Their people have been wiped out and they are the only two left. They have a dynamic that reminds a lot of the blind guy and his bigger friend from Rogue One, with the little sister being adamant about the Force and trying to do things expected of their culture despite the circumstances while her bitter older sister scoffs at the Force and is irritated by her impractical little sister as the older sister has to take all the risks that keep them alive. It also has a distinctly Avatar the Last Airbender feel, especially with the plot and resolution. After both sisters combine their powers in a desperate situation they destroy the AT-ST that killed their mom and destroy the Imperial factory, bringing balance back to their world. The visual style is closest to Kubo of the Two Strings I think? I never actually watched that but what I remember of the trailers remind me of this. Like an even more artsy and rough claymation style. It also mixes in some really cute and visually stunning scenes using glowing powder on rocks to serve as paintings and tell the backstory of the sisters. I was almost prepared for this one to get dark and have the little sister get killed since she was pretty insufferable, but instead they went a very wholesome route and it worked out quite nicely. There’s some decent action animation but the themes of this one really carry the weight to this short.
3 – Screecher’s Reach
Screecher’s Reach has hands down the best story concept and the coolest individual visual moments, though not the strongest visual style overall. Visually it looks a lot like Samurai Jack, with character designs that are pretty derpy and unappealing most of the time. The backgrounds though have more a painted storybook feel with thick brush strokes for outlines and shadows, giving the team a lot room for cool visuals in the dark. Hence the above picture, where the painted strokes shine the best in a mix of utter blackness and the harsh red light of a Sith lightsaber. Easily the coolest visual of all the shorts, though all scenes of the obscured Screecher look *chef’s kiss.* These particular scenes and the story make up for the less appealing parts of the short. It follows Daal, a young girl who wants more than a life working at an Imperial factory and seeks a new path forward. She’s followed by 3 friends to the supposedly haunted Screecher’s Reach. When the Screecher appears everyone else bails but Daal, acting somewhat strange in other scenes stays behind and ultimately, demonstrates some minor Force powers and ends up killing the Screecher, who contrary to being a ghost as the kids believed is an ancient Sith crone, blind and feeble, living in her cave. After Daal kills the Screecher a ship arrives and a clearly evil alien lady appears to tell Daal she passed the test and can join her. This was what really made this short so special. Daal somehow attracted the attention of a Sith and her new master gave her a test to kill the Screecher so she could escape the factory to live a more meaningful life. But in doing so she has to leave her friends behind and start down a dark path. The plot twist came out of nowhere and made this short by far the most ambitious from a story perspective, its a really cool idea to have what seems like a normal good person corrupted not by anger or vengeance or other traditional emotions that cause Jedi to become Sith, but with the promise of freedom and a more fulfilling life. If not for the more consistent quality of the next two shorts, this would have been the my pick for top episode of Visions 2.
2 – The Spy Dancer
The Spy Dancer is interesting in the sense that the only short with a lot of action and no Jedi or Sith. It follows the titular spy dancer who is working with the Rebellion because the Empire destroyed her home decades ago and took her son from her. So she’s spent years gathering intel, and currently in the episode, placing trackers on Imperial personnel, while putting on a Cirque de Soleil style show but in space. This short has a lot cool visual ideas despite having a more traditional, and quite solid animation style. The spy dancer uses transparent lines of fabric to seemingly float and fly throughout her stage, while using her huge billowing cloth accompaniments to dazzle and obfuscate as she moves around the venue with grace and style. It looks really cool and artsy while having a lot of gravitas. The short also some cool ideas about the Imperials, with each stormtrooper being an actual person with distinct personalities a la Finn and Phasma from the sequel trilogy and the commanding officer actually being the spy dancer’s missing son. She spots him in an alcove but can only see the uniform and droid, causing het to flashback to the man who took her son and almost fuck up badly enough to ruin the show if not for a save by her assistant. Believing she’s found the person she hates most she accelerates the plan, tells her assistants to leave and join the Rebels before continuing the show and working up to the commanding officer to go for the kill. But she stops just short of killing blow upon realizing its a much younger man. This leads to a big showy fight and eventually the reveal that the commanding officer is the spy dancer’s son, and she places a tracker on him before making her grand escape, full of hope for the first time in a long time. Good story, great visuals, me likey.
1 – Journey to the Dark Head
But as always there can only be one best episode, and Journey to the Dark Head wins hands down. The animation looks the most like anime though with its own flair, makes me think it was maybe a Chinese animation, certainly that’s what it most reminds me of. I really like the story as well, with a plot that has some interesting ideas and solid conflicts, and while the episode plot is very nicely self-contained it put in the legwork to neatly slot in to a larger show if they ever went that direction with it. Dark Head takes place in the middle of a Sith-Jedi war that the Sith are said to be winning pretty decisively. That irks our female lead who lives on a strange planet in the Outer Rim with a pair of matched Force-aligned statues. The energies of the statues trickle down during rains and paint vague prophecies on the stones below. The female lead is part of an order that reads and records these prophecies but is sworn to take no action, they are merely third party observers. The female lead doesn’t like this stance and wants to take a proactive role in helping the Jedi. After a flashforward an older female lead tells the Jedi Council about her homeworld and the potential to bend the fate the war by destroying the Dark statue. Some of the Jedi are skeptical but they agree to the plan sending a young Jedi with the female lead to destroy the Dark statue. The young Jedi is unimpressed by the plan and his companion, and is struggling with his internal balance as his master and disciples were slaughtered by a former apprentice turned Sith some years ago. On one of their stops to the Dark statue, the female lead picks up some bombs to destroy the statues and that Sith senses our young Jedi, following the pair to the statues. Before the female lead can destroy the Dark statue the presence of both Jedi and Sith causes the internal energies of the statues to light up, revealing to her that both statues have Light and Dark in them and her plan will fail. Then the young Jedi defeats the Sith with the female lead’s help and they continue their journey together, exchanging banter to show they’ve gained new respect for each other. Very solidly put together. The action is kinetic and looks great, though there was one sequence where it looked a little awkward. Overall though this is easily the best looking short with good character designs, excellent use of lighting and effects, and mostly fluid and punchy action. And as I mentioned before, while the episode is self-contained works well as short, the setting and characters are developed just enough that they could spin this into a whole show if they wanted to/were allowed to. It’s a shame this drops in the middle because it would have been nice to end Visions 2 on this short.
Mistakes Cheerio for Chesto 