Lucasfilm and Anime Join Forces in ‘Star Wars: Visions’ and Go Rogue


What if some of the most creative animation studios in Japan are released in a galaxy far, far away?

In the anime anthology series “Star Wars: VisionsJedi warriors fight enemies with faces like oni (a type of Japanese demon), and straw-hat droids inhabit feudal villages just outside of Akira Kurosawa’s classic samurai movie “Yojimbo.” There are Sith villains and bunny-girl hybrids, tea-sipping droids (OK, oil really) and sake-sipping warriors. Lightsabers are lovingly squirrel thrown into traditional bandages called furoshiki and red-lacquered boxes.

And this anime has high-end action sequences, stunning hand-painted backgrounds, and computer-generated wonders. And of course, there’s also the distinctly Japanese form of cuteness, “kawaii.”

TV show on Wednesday on Disney+consists of nine short films by nine different directors from seven different Japanese animation houses, each with a very different animation style. Films include a rock opera (“Tatooine Rhapsody”) and an eco-stimulating story (“The Village Bride”), as well as a psychological drama (“Akakiri”, blood spray intense) and a meditation on family. seen through the lens of classic yakuza movies (“Lop and Ocho”).

This is the first time foreigners from any country have access to the themes, ships, characters and even signature voices of the Star Wars franchise. “I really wanted to use the original lightsaber sounds,” said Kenji Kamiyama (“The Howling Princess”), director of “The Ninth Jedi,” the fifth installment of the series. “Children all over the world imitate this very distinctive sound effect when playing Jedi, and I felt we couldn’t change that sound in our short film.”

But it’s also the first time outsiders have been allowed to go “out of canon” in such a dramatic way, with stories outside and separate from a cinematic universe that has been lovingly created and cherished for generations over six decades. zealous fans are often resistant to even the smallest changes.

“We had concerns: How do we make this work?” James Waugh, Lucasfilm’s vice president of series content and strategy, said: “There were a few moments where I had to go, can we really do a rock opera in ‘Star Wars’?”

In many ways, this mix of the hugely popular anime and “Star Wars” worlds is natural. George Lucas has been open about the debt his creation owes to Japanese culture, citing Kurosawa’s 1958 period drama “The Hidden Fortress” with its charismatic hero, spirited princess, and two belligerent and hilarious villagers as the main inspiration for the first “Star Wars” movie. from 1977.

And then there’s the Force itself, with kimono-like robes, lightsaber duels (Mark Hamill and John Boyega trained with kendo experts to prepare them for their onscreen battle), and even elements of Buddhism and Shintoism. Little of this went unnoticed or appreciated by Japanese fans.

“Japan has always taken Star Wars with open arms,” said Chris Taylor, author of “How Star Wars Conquers the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise.” He noted the Japanese box office of “The Phantom Menace”, which alone grossed nearly 110 million – just a short distance from the film’s $115 million production budget.

The project was presented by Waugh to Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who greenlit the series in early 2020; The anime production company Qubic Pictures served as a crucial bridge between Lucasfilm and the Japanese studios. This is Lucasfilm Animation’s first run with each of seven companies, which includes Production IG (“Ghost in the Shell”), Kamikaze Douga (“Batman Ninja”), and Science SARU, whose feature film “Inu-Oh” premiered in Venice. is cooperation. International Film Festival this month.

“The animation coming out of Japan was so phenomenal that I was thrilled to think that these artists and storytellers were interpreting what ‘Star Wars’ meant to them,” Kennedy said. “I immediately felt it would take ‘Star Wars’ in directions it had never gone before.”

Even so, the decision to greenlight “Visions” was not an easy one.

“We really see ourselves as the guardians of the franchise, and as you know, every misstep is all over the internet,” said Jacqui Lopez, Lucasfilm’s vice president of franchise production and one of the executive producers. With most new series and spin-offs, he added, “we’re very careful to stay true to the timeline and canon.”

That’s why “Visions” is definitely Negative It’s part of the Star Wars canon. Placing “sights” among other places and times is hard enough without sniping fans on when and where all this supposedly happened.

“Getting outside the canon was truly a way of allowing creators to explore new worlds and expand possibilities in unexpected and refreshing ways,” said Justin Leach, Qubic’s CEO.

In addition to figuring out how “Visions” would fit into the Star Wars franchise, Lucasfilm had to grapple with a number of artistic and logistical issues. Anime is a multi-billion dollar industry (five of the 10 highest-grossing movies in Japan are anime features), and studios across the country are notoriously overworked. There were also geographic and language barriers.

“One of the hardest parts was creating visuals that combined the fairy tale-style lessons of Star Wars with the cutting-edge technology found in this universe,” said Eunyoung Choi, director of “Akakiri.” “Finding the perfect mix of these pieces so they wouldn’t overwhelm each other was particularly important.”

And then Covid-19 struck. E-mails and video calls replaced the hoped-for meetings in Tokyo and Northern California.

When work on the project began, the creators discovered Star Wars lovers in their anime home and vice versa. Anime studios have included staunch fans inspired by the franchise since their high school days. And many of the Lucasfilm creators were longtime anime fans and admired the work of the Japanese creators.

“When we had a zoom conversation with Takashi-san, there were shelves and shelves full of Star Wars toys behind him,” said Josh Rimes, director of animation development at Lucasfilm, referring to Takashi Okazaki, character designer at Kamikaze Douga. “He was a huge R2-D2 fan and had a really rare toy from a Pepsi promotion in the ’80s.”

The creators had questions about everything from which starship or landspeeder is right for each setting to the appropriate color of a Padawan’s robes. Kanako Shirasaki, Qubic’s chief production officer, facilitated many of these questions as a mediator – including a few about the Force.

“If you’ve watched the movies, you have an idea of ​​what’s going on,” he said. “But it’s pretty hard to explain and everyone has their own different take on it. So there was some very interesting back and forth. ”

Anime studios did it all, employing many of Japan’s top voice actors (Masako Nozawa, Takaya Hashi) and creating rich musical notes to accompany the onscreen action. Lucasfilm opened the extensive case of lightsaber hums and starship engine hums in Skywalker Sound, and oversaw the dubbing and voiceover of the English version, which included performances by Alison Brie, Kimiko Glenn, Henry Golding, and George Takei. Melody sung by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Eagle-eyed fans of Star Wars, Kurosawa, and Japanese pop culture will spy on Easter eggs galore. Only in “The Duel” is there a poster for “A New Hope” in the center of town and a clever nod to Daigoro, the precocious child warrior from Japan’s long-running manga and movie epic “Lone Wolf and Cub.”

For “The Ninth Jedi,” Lucasfilm combined two of its director Kamiyama’s stories into one. The first involved a turbulent period after the Jedi lost their master and there were no lightsabers left to possess. The other focused on a lightsaber master—think of a masterful master of samurai swords, but powered by super-powered kyber crystals—and his daughter tasked with bringing the weapons to the Jedi.

In all the shorts, when you eliminate the speeders and starships, the stories come down to the very human relationships between siblings, teachers and students, warriors and yes, droids.

“I think the essence of a Star Wars story is not too far from the essence of an anime story,” Lopez said. “Anime lets you go further out there, but the reason you care is because you care about that character on their journey.”



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