Star Wars’ First Full Anime Series Is A Stunning Triumph

Oh, I do love when a Star Wars project exceeds all expectations, offering something fresh, intriguing and, best of all, surprising. Watching the galaxy far, far away’s first full-length anime series, Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi, I felt as excited as I did when I first discovered the original Star Wars movie, when I watched Din Djarin meet Grogu, or when I witnessed the Narkina 5 inmates stage the most courageous prison break ever put to screen in Tony Gilroy’s Andor.

Like the best recent franchise stories, The Ninth Jedi is Star Wars through and through, but it’s also something new; a chance for the brand to explore its virtually limitless narrative potential — and explore, it does. The Ninth Jedi is the first full spinoff created under Lucasfilm’s new Star Wars: Visions Presents banner, continuing the story introduced in Production I.G’s first two Visions anthology shorts: season 1’s “The Ninth Jedi” and season 3’s “The Ninth Jedi: Child of Hope.”

Crucially, Star Wars: Visions’ stories aren’t strictly considered canon, giving director Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit) and his team the freedom to experiment with Star Wars‘ pre-established lore. The Ninth Jedi is set in the galaxy’s distant future, when the Jedi and the Sith have “all but disappeared.” All that remains of the ancient Order is a handful of masterless Jedi, including Margrave Juro, Lah Kara, Homen, and Ethan, all intent on protecting the galaxy from the fearsome masked conquering general known only as Nawaam.

In true Star Wars fashion (and after a brief but welcome recap), The Ninth Jedi begins with a chase through space, as the Jedi’s humble ship is tracked by a much bigger vessel, one belonging to the last remaining Sith. The Sith’s relentless pursuit forces the Jedi to lead their enemy straight to a massive, spectacular black hole — their pilot droid, Gramps, is a genuine delight — hoping that its powerful gravitational pull will destroy their adversary’s ship once and for all.

This opening scene offers a brief but fulfilling taste of the beautiful shots and sequences on display in The Ninth Jedi. It’s more than enough to become invested in this newly imagined version of the galaxy and Kara’s and her fellow Jedi’s heroic adventures. Stick around for all eight episodes, and you’ll be treated to a classic Star Wars story wrapped in a stunningly animated and emotionally satisfying package.

Star Wars & Anime Are A Match Made In Heaven

For a franchise with such a long and celebrated history with animation as a storytelling and artistic medium, it’s genuinely surprising that it’s taken this long for Star Wars to produce a full-length anime series. The Ninth Jedi proves beyond a doubt that Star Wars thrives in a proper anime format. It’s visually stunning and unique, recognizably Star Wars in every way, and yet the designs for the characters, the ships, the planets, even the Jedi’s lightsabers all feel completely new. It captures the same feeling of awe and imagination as the original Star Wars movie did, a sense of nostalgia and belonging despite the fantastical setting.

I’m especially fond of the way The Ninth Jedi treats the franchise’s all-important lightsaber duels. While anime lends itself to being more bombastic and over-the-top, especially with fight choreography, the duels between the Jedi, the last remaining Sith, General Nawaam, and Kara’s kidnapped father, sabersmith Lah Zhima, feel more grounded, weighted somehow. Yes, the show’s strongest Force-wielders still flip around and make massive leaps through the sky, but every move, every strike, has a purpose.

The Ninth Jedi has made me even more excited about the possibility of additional future Star Wars anime series.

The duels are both fast-paced and easy to follow, suited to the characters’ personalities and their developmental arc. Kara’s growth as a Jedi and as a Force-user can be tracked through every single battle; one of my favorites occurs in the second half of the series, when she confronts one of the Sith Hunters who kidnapped her father in the original “The Ninth Jedi” short. The way the scene builds its tension, with Kara teetering on the edge between the dark side and the light only to discover a brand-new part of herself, is masterful.

Kara isn’t the only compelling and well-developed character in The Ninth Jedi either, not by a long shot. Most of the show’s leading players get an earned hero or villain moment, in keeping with traditional anime storytelling tropes and Star Wars’ most important themes. Nawaam’s backstory is genuinely surprising, a strange, impressive blend of some of Star Wars’ most imposing villains, including Kylo Ren. Nawaam is a great anime antagonist, but I could also easily picture him in a live-action Star Wars story (and in a TikTok fan edit).

If anything, The Ninth Jedi has made me even more excited about the possibility of additional future Star Wars anime series. Setting up Star Wars: Visions Presents as a separate label is one of the best moves Star Wars has made in recent months. Kamikaze Douga’s “The Duel,” Studio Trigger’s “The Twins,” Kinema Citrus’ “The Village Bride”; after The Ninth Jedi, I’ll happily watch any other full-length Visions spinoffs Lucasfilm may have planned.

The Ninth Jedi Highlights Star Wars’ Greatest Strengths

Nawaam and Kara in a lightsaber duel in Star Wars Visions Presents - The Ninth Jedi

On the surface, The Ninth Jedi’s plot is a Star Wars tale as old as time. A dictatorial, Force-wielding tyrant intends to rule the galaxy, with the Jedi leading the fight against him and his army. It’s the Separatists versus the Republic, the Empire versus the Rebellion, the First Order versus the Resistance all over again. There’s even a planet-killing super-canon. While this invites obvious comparison to the most famous Star Wars stories told in the galaxy far, far away, these similarities are actually The Ninth Jedi’s greatest strengths, rather than its biggest weaknesses.

It makes the story feel more accessible and familiar, allowing the show to drop the viewer into the middle of the conflict without slowing down the pace with slow exposition. It also leaves room for the anime’s most original ideas to stand out, including the way it defines what it means to be a Jedi, how it explores different connections to the Force, and what a lightsaber represents in Star Wars.

The Ninth Jedi Character	Japanese Voice Cast	English Voice Cast
Lah Kara	Chinatsu Akasaki	Kimiki Glenn
Lah Zhima	Shin-Ichiro Miki	Simu Liu
Margrave Juro	Tetsuo Kanao	Andrew Kishino
Ethan	Hiromu Mineta	Masi Oka
Homen	Hinata Tadokoro	Patrick Seitz
Nawaam	Nao Omori	Young Mazino
Gramps	Cho	JP Karliak

Lightsabers are arguably even more vital in The Ninth Jedi than in Star Wars as a whole. However, in this version of the galaxy, they’re built by a sabersmith. More importantly, the kyber crystals that power the blades react instantaneously to the wielder’s heart and mind. The colors are still the ones we all know and love (for the most part, anyway), but they tell us much more about the characters’ state of mind in the midst of battle. Refreshingly, we see more non-Force-powered characters wielding Jedi lightsabers, too, allowing the series to switch between fighting styles. It’s such a simple, small lore change, but it makes a great impact.

This doesn’t make the lightsabers in Star Wars’ primary continuity feel inferior in any way; like everything in The Ninth Jedi, it’s simply a different perspective on George Lucas’ and the franchise’s incredible worldbuilding and narrative foundation. All in all, it’s a celebration of all that Star Wars has to offer, rather than a reinvention. Star Wars fans unfamiliar with anime storytelling conventions may struggle to adapt to the dialogue, plot beats, and remixed lore in Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Last Jedi, but the payoff is more than worth it.

Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi is streaming now on Disney+.