Star Wars: Visions offers a fresh look at Star Wars with anime styles in story and design! The anime series is an anthology consisting of four episodes for the initial release; “The Duel”, “Taooine Rhapsody”, “The Twins”, and “The Village Bride.” The episode length varies from 14, “Tatooine Rhapsody” to 19 minutes with “The Village Bride.” The first episode is from the Kamikaze Douga studio. “The Duel” is directed by Takanobu Mizuno. He has also co-directed Tokyo Onlypic 2008 (2008). This episode has a tie-in, Ronin: A Visions Novel, by Emma Mieko Candon. There is a choir as we pan down from the night sky, there is a large moon over a valley, looking down on a village below is a man with a scarred face and the long arcs of dark hair, like a samurai making me think of Blade of the Immortal, manga by Hiroaki Samura. The animation is mostly in black and white like the early samurai movies, The Hidden Fortress (1958), especially because Lucas used many story elements and cinematography from Kurosawa-san’s film.
The man is called Rōnin in the credits, usually a lone samurai without a master. It could be he broke from the Jedi Order for some reason. Brian Tee voices the character when he does talk, Tee was in Jurassic World (2015). His droid with the straw hat, R5-D56, prompts him to continue. A few samurai pictures were released in 1956, but I didn’t see any with a May release. They reach a village with rice fields and the man has a drink at a teahouse above the village. The animation is sketchy and looks almost rotoscoped. The owner of the shop (Joe Ochman) is an Ugnaught who asks about the man. Ochman provided voices for Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir. An armored Troop Transport Talk, very blocky with hatches on its side, thunders into the village. First Order stormtroors with cloaks and attachments to their armor deploy from the transport. They begin to fire their blasters, typical bandits, in samurai films and westerns. The Shopkeeper explains that they set up a camp at the mountains and are remnants from the war, the First Order War?
The stormtrooper leader, Trooper A (Patrick Seitz) is there to collect taxes and wants to see the chief. This would be the Child Village Chief (Janden Waldman). One of the troopers, F, is voiced by Keone Young who voiced Commander Jun Sato in Star Wars: Rebels. The trooper threatens the chief who raises his hand and snipers, whom the chief calls “guards” open fire on the stormtroopers. The guards include an RA-7 droid with a heavy blaster cannon. There is a woman in a cloak, an upward pointing diamond-shaped pendant on her forehead, this is the Bandit Leader voiced by Lucy Liu. A Trandoshan guard commander (JP Karliak) threatens her with his massive blades. She has a staff which extends to several red lightsabers, spinning like an umbrella, deflecting RA-7’s blasterfire. One of the blaster shots hits the teahouse and shuts down R5-D56. Rōnin goes to deal with the bandits, but wants the Shopkeeper to fix the droid by the time a pot he sets down boils. The Trandoshan commander wants them to fall back, but the Bandit Leader, she says she is a Sith Lord, draws him forwards with the Force.
The Rōnin calmly walks as the guards engage the bandits, dust swirls in the empty square, the Bandit Leader pulls apart the umbrella attachment and takes out a Sith lightsaber. She brings it down on the wanderer and finds he uses the Force to hold her blade with two hands around it. The Bandit Leader is stunned to see whom she thinks is a Jedi. His hand is poised at his side, close to his saya, a samurai katana scabbard. She has killed Jedi in the past and rushes towards him. Rōnin finally draws his lightsaber, a red lightsaber, a cinematic closeup of his unsheathing the blade! Her hood floats off and she has a three clusters of a white afro and a skull mask. This is the duel of the title. It is an interesting Sith tale, a good combination of Star Wars and samurai. I think it could easily fit into the Sequel Trilogy and Star Wars canon. It seems that the Sequel canon is slowly falling out of Star Wars canon so this series might also be Sequel almost canon. Is it called Visions canon? When do we get to see the manga of "The Duel"? Rōnin is fascinating, a Grey Jedi?, maybe his background is mysterious, absolutely fine with the wandering, Man With No Name, character. It would be interesting to see further adventures of Rōnin!
Four Lightsabers out of Five!
#StarWarsVisions, #Ronin, #BrianTee, #JoeOchman, #LucyLiu
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