Star Wars: Visions Season 3

Did you know that season three of Star Wars: Visions has already been out for several weeks? For some reason I've seen zero promotional material or even buzz about it, so thanks to Vulkk for bringing it to my attention the other week.

As someone who's not an anime fan, I was a little disappointed that we were back to all anime, all the time (after the wide variety of animation styles that were featured in season two) but oh well, I guess spotlighting Eastern animation in particular was always supposed to be the show's focus. Either way, I wanted to jot down some thoughts on each short again.

1. The Duel: Payback

As the title implies, this was a sequel to season 1's "The Duel", which had been almost universally beloved. In short, I thought this was good too, but somewhat less interesting to me personally. I was also a dork and had forgotten the details of the original, so I at first thought that it was going to be about the Sith lady from season 1 getting revenge, meaning I perceived the cyborg Jedi coming after the Ronin as a kind of surprise twist. It was only on rewatching the original Duel that I realised that actually, we saw the Sith lady die, so this was always going to be about something else. 

2. The Sound of Four Wings

This was probably my least favourite of the batch for reasons I struggle to articulate. I didn't think it was bad or anything, everything about it just felt kind of generic and uninteresting to me. 

3. The Ninth Jedi: Child of Hope

Another sequel to a popular season 1 episode, though I felt that there was very little connection to the original with this one. The thing that stood out to me about the original Ninth Jedi was the surprise twist, not the generic anime protagonist, so a sequel that follows that character on a completely different adventure was always bound to not grip me in the same way. I still enjoyed it overall though, except that I found the little droid sidekick a bit grating. Maybe I'm just over cutesy characters that always speak in third person. Just how many times do you think the word "Teto" appeared in the script? 

4. The Bounty Hunters

This one was merely okay to me. There were parts that had me intrigued and parts that left me feeling a bit disappointed. The droid actually coming back with his assassin personality activated was a pleasant surprise for example, but I didn't love that the protagonist wore this face mask for the entire episode, making you think that maybe she's sick or scarred or something, but then it's literally nothing.

5. Yuko's Treasure

I didn't think an episode featuring a little kid and a droid shaped like a teddy bear would be my favourite but somehow that's exactly what happened. It just had a certain charm (comparable to Skeleton Crew) that really worked for me.

6. The Lost Ones

Apparently this one was another sequel, to season 1's "The Village Bride", but I only found that out afterwards and again, I wouldn't have been able to tell because what was interesting to me about the Village Bride was the culture of the village that got saved, not the relatively generic protagonist. Still, I liked it as a stand-alone too, as the studio's world building was very strong again. 

7. The Smuggler

In this one I liked the story as a whole, but somehow the English voice actor delivered every line as if the main character was supposed to be six years old (when she was clearly a grown woman) and that really threw me off. Other than that I thought it was cool.

8. The Bird of Paradise

This one was the most visually beautiful episode of this season in my opinion, and I liked that it was more contemplative and had a somewhat open ending. 

9. BLACK 

I have no idea what this one was about beyond the description provided in the episode summary. It's totally psychedelic and impressive from an artistic point of view - and I'll say that I was engrossed for the entire duration, but I also wouldn't want to watch it again. Definitely something different though.

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As a whole, I feel like this season was perhaps the weakest one so far, though not by much. I just didn't really care that much about the sequels to previous episodes and would have wished for more visual and narrative variety. Still an interesting series though, and I continue to appreciate that it tries to do different things with the Star Wars property.