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Star Wars VISIONS Instant Reaction
732 Plays4 years ago
J Scotty is joined by returning guest & anime enthusiast Andrew Rogers to provide instant reactions to all nine of the animated shorts featured in the new Disney Plus Star Wars anthology series
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Transcript
Episode Introduction and Advertisements
00:00:00
Speaker
On this entry of Animation Deliberation, we are covering the exciting new Star Wars series. That's right, Star Wars Visions, the series that just dropped on Disney+, we're giving our instant reactions, so stay tuned for that right after these disturbances in the Force.
00:00:15
Speaker
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Host Introduction and Initial Impressions of Star Wars Visions
00:01:09
Speaker
Hey listeners, I've got an exciting giveaway to tell you about. For the month of September, the Stranded Panda Network is doing a raffle to give away your choice of a Nintendo Switch or an Oculus Quest. All you have to do is leave a positive 5-star review on any Stranded Panda podcast on Apple Podcasts. Each review counts as a raffle, so when you're done enjoying this episode of Animation Deliberation, take a moment to check out some awesome shows like Marvel Cinematic Universe Podcasts, Superhero Ethics, Source Pages, Binge's Assemble, and more.
00:01:37
Speaker
To see all our shows and rules for The Raffle, check out StrandedPanda.com slash contest. Now back to the show. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Animation, deliberation, a conversation, and a celebration of our favorite action animated series. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:02:02
Speaker
Okay. That's all I got. That was fantastic. Well, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. I didn't know how that was going to land, but I'm glad it got a good response so far. And everyone, if you don't recognize the voice already, it's not Zuhair. I am. I'm Jay Scotty. I'm the host of animation deliberation here. I am not joined by Zuhair this week. I am joined by a voice that hopefully you're coming to recognize that's becoming somewhat of a regular featured guest here. Mr. Andrew Rogers, welcome back. Well, thank you. The honor is always mine.
00:02:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate you always being so willing. You always bring a lot of great insights and I really admire your passion. So great to have you back. Yeah. Thank you. I'm, uh, I'm excited for Star Wars. It's a first time to talk about this with you guys. So this will be exciting. Yeah. Yeah. So we won't bury the lead here before we get into super spoilery details. I'll provide you the opportunity.
Deep Dive into Star Wars Visions: Favorite Episodes and Unique Elements
00:02:55
Speaker
Why don't you just tell me what your overall impressions on this new series is?
00:03:00
Speaker
Well, I will say I know that the show is definitely not going to be for everyone. I know that it's not going to be every Star Wars fan's favorite, but I absolutely love the entirety of this series. It was so much fun to get into. It felt proper Star Wars while giving us this amazing look at animation in the anime styles. These studios all did an amazing job. These writers are just fantastic at giving you such a gripping story that
00:03:29
Speaker
I have nothing but great things to say about this show, so I'm really excited to talk about this. Awesome, awesome. I feel like I kind of landed a similar area to you there.
00:03:40
Speaker
Some episodes were definitely stronger than others. I enjoyed every single one of them. It was nine different stories from seven celebrated studios here. Some landed a little bit better than others, but I absolutely loved every single one. And it was just so great to see so many different styles, all beautiful in their own right. Just doing what Star Wars does best, taking these motifs and just driving them home. So yeah, with all that being said, let's go ahead and just get into the nitty gritty and start spoiling this thing.
00:04:10
Speaker
a particular favorite episode or maybe a handful of episodes if it's too difficult to narrow it down? I think if I had to, I can pick two episodes. Okay. Two that I definitely went in excited for both of the studios that did those episodes, so I might be a bit biased because of that. Okay, cool. My two favorites, I would say, were the Twins, which was episode three, and the Ninth Jedi, which was episode five. Dude.
00:04:37
Speaker
We are 100% on the same page. Those are my absolute favorite episodes as well. I don't know if I can pick which of the two was better, but those two just had it all in my. Yeah, again, I'm only on my first viewing here and.
00:04:53
Speaker
Just we should kind of address this as well. We talked about it off air, but you listened or you watched all of these and listened to the Japanese voice performances and read the subtitles where I'll go ahead and say that I I listened to the dubs, but I also had subtitles going along with it. But with that being said, I do think that the Ninth Jedi edges out just a little bit better for me, but they're both just just stellar episodes. Yeah, for sure.
00:05:23
Speaker
Saying that, you know, I did the watch through in Japanese, I just kind of thought it would be an interesting way, hoping that you would watch an English as well. So we could have a little bit of different perspectives on kind of how it felt to see if it felt any different. But seeing that we had the same favorite episodes, I really like knowing, okay, both the English and Japanese did a good job. They didn't, you know, write it for one and not the other. They kind of put them together in a very nice format.
00:05:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And with the 9th Jedi being mentioned as far as English vocal performances go, it is worth noting we talk about the Marvel Cinematic Universe a lot on this show, as well as the Podcast Network, the Stranded Panda Podcast Network.
Star Wars Visions: The Ninth Jedi - Analysis and Insights
00:06:09
Speaker
Simu Liu, who just obviously appeared as Shung-Chi, he did the voice of La Zima, the saber-smith. No way. He did, yeah, yeah. Super cool to have him participate.
00:06:23
Speaker
Well, now I need to go back and watch this in English. That's gonna be fantastic. Yeah, yeah. But let's just, let's go ahead and break these episodes down. So while we've already kind of talked about the 9th Jedi a little bit more, it looks like it was production. Production IG. Okay, okay. Are you familiar with them before?
00:06:43
Speaker
Uh, yes, they are, uh, they're probably the biggest name studio. If I had to pick from all of the ones in the list, uh, their biggest title is attack on Titan, which you probably know. Yeah, of course. Okay. They also made ghost in the shell and one of my favorite guilty pleasure, anime's, uh, high Q. Oh, okay. Cool. Cool. So I am a fan of the work that they do outside of this. So I was excited to see them on the list and then them making this episode was really good.
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. I'm glad to hear that. And full transparency, as much as of a fan of animation I am, when it comes to anime, I will say I'm a bit more of a casual fan. I've got my celebrated series that I really enjoy, just off the top of my head. Death Note, Dragon Ball Z, Full Metal Alchemist, and I just recently enjoyed Demon Slayer and My Hero Academia.
00:07:37
Speaker
But all that being said, of course, I'm familiar with Ghost in the Shell and whatnot, but I would not have been able to tell you any of the production studios behind that. So just one more reason it's great to bring you in and bring that knowledge. But for my purposes, I did find this one to be one of the more cinematic episodes. I just felt like there was such a
00:07:57
Speaker
high level of detail in the background and just the character work, thinking about the speeder bike chase, just the action that really, I felt feelings of like Return of the Jedi, even though it was on an ice setting. And I felt a few of the episodes kind of reminded me of the studio, is it Studio Ghibli or Studio Ghibli? I always get confused on that. I believe it's Ghibli.
00:08:20
Speaker
I could be wrong. Ghibli, okay. It kind of had almost that flair to it to me. You have these highly detailed backgrounds and then just the characters kind of move around in almost like a liquid, very fluid fashion.
00:08:34
Speaker
And I just, I love the story as well, just seeing, you know, it was a bit of a mystery, a bit of a mislead, having this, this character of Margrave Juro. I want a Margrave Juro action figure with the green lightsaber like right now. I want the green lightsaber and the full mask on as well. That entire get up was so just honestly, I think he was an amazing character, that whole mask get up. It was just a menacing, awesome Jedi. And
00:09:02
Speaker
I agree. I want to see more of him and more merchandise of him. I also want merchandise of a lot of these characters. They gave us some really good stuff. Yeah, I hope we see a lot of these characters translated to various toys and collectibles and whatnot. But there was a moment where he grabbed one of the Sith's lightsabers and he like switched the color over, right?
00:09:24
Speaker
that whole thing of tempering the kyber crystals, so they changed to depend on who was holding it. Awesome design choice. Okay, super, super cool. Yeah. And I love the was her name Cara how she almost had that one that was like, you could see through. It was like, like, yeah. Yeah, that moment of it was translucent. Yes, translucent. Yes, yes.
00:09:50
Speaker
And then as soon as she started to show more power, it turned green to show she has more force power in her. Right. Right. Yes. Yes. That was just such a great idea. Yeah. And for my purposes, I love the blue lightsabers, but green is my favorite color. And I frequently find myself resonating the most with the characters that wield green lightsabers. So I love seeing so many of the bad characters in these various stories wielding the green lightsaber.
00:10:18
Speaker
Yeah. And while we're on the topic of lightsabers, just blanket statement across this whole show, the design choices of the Katana styles and the different swords that I don't know the name of, but the fact that they put them all over the place with the way that they looked was just so aesthetically pleasing and so cool. Yeah, for sure. It was, it was one of those things in the prequels, as much as I love the prequels, it was like you felt, especially with like the character of General Grievous, like they had to feel a way to like continually up the ante with like the crazy.
00:10:48
Speaker
lightsaber designs, but a series like this just lent itself to being able to do that. And we'll talk about it with one episode in particular, but they just do some really cool stuff with the lightsaber stylization for sure. Anything else you want to mention for the 9th Jedi? I guess I kind of wanted to bring up that old droid that was kind of like sipping hot oil tea. I just I love little little things like that to show you the slice of life of the Star Wars universe.
00:11:13
Speaker
He was so sassy and so upset and the crazy cackling while he was flying the ship. I don't know what his deal was, but I want to know more about these droids' lives that he's the only one left and is kind of crazy. And then just watching them fight like, wow, she's pretty good. They're still sipping his drink. The peanut gallery over there for sure. Yeah.
00:11:40
Speaker
Yeah. And I did also want to say on the topic of this episode, um, the entirety of that chase scene that you brought up with the speeder bikes, um, leading into that when they had the whole mining process of the Kyber crystals, that was just beautifully done. But the music throughout the entirety of that was so.
00:11:58
Speaker
just jaw dropping i was taken right into the scene it felt classic star wars where you had the curious woodwinds and then you know the big flaring trumpets would come in during the fight scenes but the music throughout the entirety of this episode i think may have been the best of all nine um they just did such they did an amazing job composing for it to be noticeable but still just adding to the scene was a really really good job star wars is always known for the music for sure
00:12:29
Speaker
They did really good with the show in terms of that, but that entire mining scene was just so much better because of the composing. Yeah, I'm excited to go back and rewatch it. The music didn't stand out to me as much, but I think that's just because I was so sucked into that scene. Sometimes that's just the music doing its job.
00:12:47
Speaker
Yeah, and that may also have been a part of me not listening for the English words. Oh, sure. That I was able to focus more on the music and the other things going on in the background because I'm not actually focusing on the Japanese words because I didn't actually say that at the top. I watched in Japanese. I do not speak Japanese. I'm completely reading some things. Yeah, it's important to clarify there.
00:13:07
Speaker
All right, cool,
Star Wars Visions: The Twins - Style and Storytelling
00:13:09
Speaker
cool. Unless you had anything else you want to bring up about the 9th Jedi, I think we can go ahead and transition to the other episode we both brought up as our favorite, the twins. So I'll kind of let you take the lead on this one since I took the lead on the 9th Jedi.
00:13:25
Speaker
Well, I'll start off on the same thing that I said with the other one. I'm familiar with this studio. This is Trigger, Inc. I believe is the studio. They made Kill la Kill. That's one of their big animes. Right on. And I enjoyed...
00:13:39
Speaker
that show through and through, I would recommend it to anyone over the age of 18. Okay. If you're looking for anime, it was enjoyable, but crazy. And that entire show is very similar in style to the way that they did the art in this episode. Oh, cool. I absolutely love the way that they did this where some of the stuff in the background was the lineless drawn out painted colors. And then the minute you get into a fight scene, they have these extremely sharp lines and jutting movements that just make it look
00:14:09
Speaker
Not quite fluid, but it's just this, you know, jarring jumping back and forth the entire time as they're swinging the lightsabers and going about the
00:14:20
Speaker
action movements as you will. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And then the story was great too. Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah. For my money, this was the most visually interesting. It was a more simplified style, but it really did. You brought up the backgrounds without any outlines and being very painterly. It reminded me of some of the 1950s advertising or something you'd see in the background of one of those
00:14:46
Speaker
old Tom and Jerry cartoons, obviously updated for modern times with a lot more fidelity, but it kind of had that art deco feel. But yeah, I agree. Not only just the stylization, but the story itself, it was rather simple. And one of the motifs of Star Wars has always been like the dichotomy and the balance of the force. And there's frequently been twins featured in a lot of the stories. And I just felt like they took everything over the top and exaggerated everything. The story
00:15:16
Speaker
the characterizations and the style and it just worked for me and like just seeing a giant multicolored lightsaber rip through a Star Destroyer was just amazing. Oh, that scene was just beautiful. Yeah. And they let you sit on it for so long that you just had all this time to appreciate it. Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah.
00:15:39
Speaker
And you want to talk about over the top as well, that opening scene of the light panning over the first Star Destroyer, only to show that it was connected to a second Star Destroyer. That reveal was fantastic, as well as it just being this crazy out there, never thought we would have done this kind of thing.
00:15:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And even though the animation style is very different from something like what if with this being much more 2D than 3D, I did feel like with just kind of almost the lighting, like you get extreme blowouts and then like I'm thinking of the droid that was hovering around who very much was like the evil version of C3PO. There were times where he was like partially in the background and he was like completely blacked out except for his eyes and just super cool and super effective.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, they did a really good job with the way that those characters look and their lighting choices. And again, this is me knowing the studio well, they do it on purpose to be very starkly different at times to show you, we want you to focus on this thing, but everything else is just blown out of proportion in the background.
00:16:46
Speaker
And it's a really nice stylistic choice to show you what they want to show you. This episode gave the first movie poster, or rather poster that I want to put on my wall. And it's that end scene of him on the pole with the dual stuns and the X-wing in the ground. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Super cool. Super cool.
00:17:03
Speaker
Yeah, very evocative of Luke Skywalker looking out at the binary sunset on Tatooine, which I kind of wanted to bring up the other aspect of it that reminded me of what if a bit and sorry to bring up what if obviously it's on the on the mind right now, but there were certain moments in this episode I kind of felt like we were seeing like a multiverse version of Luke and Leia and it wasn't until like we saw the helmet ripped off of of arm or am whatever it was.
00:17:29
Speaker
and saw that she had blonde hair and blue eyes, just like her twin. Yeah, there was a moment there, especially Kari. Even in the English vocal performance, he sounds a lot like Luke. And his droid was our duo instead of R2-D2. And again, I brought it up. That's just what Star Wars does great. It gives these familiar beats. And George Lucas said it himself. Some fans don't really like it, but he said it's all poetry, it all rhymes.
00:17:57
Speaker
it's all repetitive. But yeah, I really like seeing it just done in such a unique way. Yeah, and Star Wars was always not sci fi, it was a space opera. So give us those big poetic moments like this. And it's just gonna do what Star Wars does be a little campy, but also super fun. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Anything else you want to bring up about the twins?
00:18:21
Speaker
I mean that scene with the six arm lightsabers that was coming out as well. Oh, yeah. We saw that in the trailers. You guys talked about how awesome it was going to be and it was it was crazy. Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:33
Speaker
I think this one is the most outlandish in that room. Yeah, without a doubt, just the fact that they're having a battle like on top of a Star Destroyer. I love every single Star Wars movie. I have my issues with some of them. And I won't spend too much time being negative here. But with The Last Jedi, one of the scenes that doesn't really work for me is when Leia uses the force when she's floating out in space. But again, like this kind of property and this stylization is the perfect place to just do those crazy over the top kind of things.
00:19:04
Speaker
Exactly. It's what I said, uh, again, not to circle back, but when I first featured on what if animation is just the perfect medium for these things, because there's no need to suspend disbelief because you already know that it's not real. Correct. So you can do anything you want. Like there was a brief moment when he was standing on top of the X wing.
00:19:22
Speaker
Like, wait, shouldn't he have a spacesuit? And then after that, I didn't care because they were going through hyperspace while he was standing on a X-ray that would never happen in live action, but was amazing. Correct, correct. Yeah, super cool. Super cool. Okay, I guess for the rest of the episodes, did you have other ones that you're just really like itching to talk about? Or should we just hit them in chronological order from here or featured order?
00:19:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think at this point we'll just go in feature order because I have great things to say about all of them, but those were the two that I definitely wanted to talk the most about. Yeah, yeah. That was, I just got to say what a pleasant surprise it was. We did a little bit of a housekeeping before we started recording, but that was just such a pleasant surprise to find out that we both had the two favorite episodes. And I'll be curious to hear what episodes really resonated with other people. But as we mentioned, every single one of them was pretty good and pretty quality.
00:20:17
Speaker
The first episode we got was the duel, and this one was done by Kamikaze Duga. Am I pronouncing that correctly? I believe so. Okay. I felt like this one was, we talk about the twins being very, very unique in its stylization, but this one I felt was almost like
00:20:38
Speaker
I suspect there was almost like motion capture done for this one. I don't know a lot about the studio or their process, but it was like a rotoscoped motion capture kind of feel for me. Yeah, it was almost dizzying. It kind of felt like the beginning of Into the Spider-Verse, like my eyes had to adjust to this
Star Wars Visions: The Duel and Tatooine Rhapsody
00:20:56
Speaker
style because my mind couldn't handle what was going on because of the way that they had this 3D, not 3D shaky line kind of effect.
00:21:08
Speaker
But no, I'm vaguely familiar with the studio. Their main anime is JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which I have not taken the time to watch personally. I don't believe you had that on your list either. I've seen a couple of episodes, but I couldn't pontificate on it by any means.
00:21:26
Speaker
Okay. But their stylization, it was really unique, really interesting. I liked the black and white with the specific colors of blasters and lightsabers kind of sprinkled in there. Yeah, that was probably what I appreciated the most about this particular style outside of some of the weaponization that we'll get into. Just when the first time you start to see some blaster fire or some lightsabers ignite and everything else has been black and white up until this point makes it just
00:21:56
Speaker
really beautiful and stand out all the more. Yeah. Although I think there was that droid at the beginning that was wearing the straw hat. I think he had some lights in it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's true. A little yeah, a little straw hat. That was kind of funny. He was a silly little droid. That's what we like to see. They gave droids a lot of character in this show, which I always appreciate. Sure, sure. Yeah.
00:22:20
Speaker
But with that black and white and only specific colors, it gave a lot of really unique lighting opportunities to just have the reflection of a lightsaber on someone's face where the only lighting is coming from those sources because that's the only thing they chose to put color in. True, true. Yeah, that's an excellent point. And just to talk a little bit about the actual story that took place, for my purposes, this one kind of harkened back to the
00:22:47
Speaker
samurai films of Akira Kurosawa thinking of like Seven Samurai where you have like a lone warrior that defends a village I would even say like the the recent movie Logan which paid a lot of homage to like a Western like Shane even that one even those like classic stories harken back to these like original samurai stories so I love seeing such a classic and basic
00:23:13
Speaker
tale kind of and storied tale recontextualized in the in the star wars world and uh the lone wolf and cub is a a kind of again storied and and heavily featured motif in a lot of western storytelling as well as in a lot of samurai tales and even still in the star wars universe here in the live action side of things the mandalorian has borrowed a lot from that that particular motif as well and i i felt like this episode probably
00:23:43
Speaker
felt the most in keeping with the tone that we've experienced in The Mandalorian, would you agree? Yes, it definitely had that mix because as a lot of cinephiles will know, samurai films and western films share a lot of the same values and storytelling attributes and this just fit right into that motif exactly as you were saying. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, so it's a village under attack, the chieftain is a young
00:24:12
Speaker
young person for some reason I guess all the adults have uh or all the other people that have stood up in opposition to these bandits that have kind of fashioned armor out of the remnants of of the empire basically you find out the bandit leader is a a Sith or a Sith acolyte or someone that came across a
00:24:30
Speaker
a Sith weapon. And then this hero that we've had defending the villagers the entire time actually reveals that he himself is a Sith or a former Sith. We don't really get the full story there. And again, this was the first episode I watched and I've watched all the other ones since then. So I might be a little bit fuzzy on the details. You can correct me if I'm wrong on anything there, Andrew. But this is when we do get to see what I was alluding to in terms of just the unique weaponization, the umbrella lightsaber.
00:25:00
Speaker
Yeah, before we get into the umbrella, not to correct you too much, but I believe the insinuation of the child standing up as the chief. They zoomed out the camera and there was a man lying either sick or dead on the ground. I think it was to insinuate that was his father and he was taking up the mantle of chief in this village. OK. In his head because the bandits.
00:25:23
Speaker
you know, had taken him out or something along those lines. Okay, understood. Yeah. But besides that, you were on the money with everything else. And yeah, that umbrella lightsaber was, it was interesting, because at first, I thought it was a number of lightsabers. I liked that they had that moment where she took the cap off of it, and it turned back into a singular lightsaber, kind of saying that it was spreading the beam or something. Yeah, that was cool.
00:25:47
Speaker
And I was curious, I don't know if you know, I didn't do any sort of research on this. Is there actually a Japanese fighting style where they use umbrellas or something like that? Because it felt very choreographed as though it was a formal fighting style in the same way that someone may fight with a katana or something like that. It had such a fluidness to it. It felt like it had to have been a real thing.
00:26:08
Speaker
Yeah, again, I need to do my due diligence and do the research there. I know the weaponized umbrellas is something that we've seen in Japanese films and samurai films. And I have to imagine that's based on some real world counterpart, but I don't know what
00:26:25
Speaker
the level of functionality there was. I know a lot of weapons that we have kind of like fantasized in modern media and whatnot don't necessarily work in the same way that they did in real life, but I have to imagine it's based on something. We'll do the research and follow up, but it's a great question.
00:26:43
Speaker
Yeah, and on that note, in all honesty, this episode did such a good job of not only expanding the Star Wars world, but giving us a different look at culture. They put so much effort into showing this to be like a small Japanese village and it felt at home in the Star Wars world, but still paid homage to the cultures that these writers are coming from and animators as well.
00:27:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great point. And that's one of the things that stood out to me in this episode, as well as a couple of the other episodes. I won't spoil them completely, but just off the top of my head here, the Village Bride, as well as Lop and Ocho. It was kind of nice to see as
00:27:22
Speaker
big and sweeping that the star wars tales often are even with series like the bad batch and clone wars people have kind of levied these complaints as well when you do often visit like a little village or planet it's a very surface level interaction you don't get a lot of like the
00:27:38
Speaker
the context and the nuance of what's going on. And I felt like every single one of these episodes, even though some of them were only 14, 15 minutes, they did just such a great job of creating that atmosphere and showing the actual ramification that these Star Wars have on the people on the planet.
00:28:00
Speaker
oh for sure these writers deserve credit for endearing me to the characters and the worlds that they were building with zero backstory zero knowledge you were just dropped right in but the minute that you know even this first episode the duel started and this warrior came over the hill with a little droid by his side i wanted to know what he was about what was going to happen what this duel was going to be and then you started to care about the village the minute that they got it started
00:28:25
Speaker
And you wanted to know who this enemy was, why they had the armor of the empire. It was just such a good job of giving us, like you said, a surface level look, but you wanted to know the nitty gritty of it. And they gave you as much as they could in a 15 minute stint, which is extraordinarily impressive. Yeah. Agree. Agree. Anything else you want to highlight on the duel, the opening episode of the series?
00:28:52
Speaker
No, I think it was fantastic. I did also love that moment of him giving the kid a kyber crystal at the end. Oh yeah, yeah. Just wondering, is he doing these good deeds? And then what is he doing with the rest of those kyber crystals? He had maybe a dozen in his jacket. Obviously, he's a collector like Grievous, but is he going to go around training up new acolytes or whatever you want to call them? Because he was obviously opposed to the Sith, but
00:29:20
Speaker
still having a red lightsaber tells you that there's something going on. Yeah, that's kind of an interesting thing, isn't it? We, again, it's, it's one of the, I hate to keep using the word motif, but it seems so appropriate, especially with a series like this. But in samurai tales, often you have the tale of the Ronin, the like,
00:29:37
Speaker
the warrior that has either been disgraced or lost his master, and you get that vibe with this guy. He was a Sith, but he's no longer. So what does that make him? He's willing to defend this village, but he makes it out that he's not a good guy. So if we get a season two, which I would absolutely love, as much as I would be open to seeing completely new stories, if they could do some follow up on some of these tales, I'd be entirely open to it, this one in particular.
00:30:04
Speaker
Well, fun fact about this one, actually, you mentioned him being a Ronin style character. They're actually writing a book called Ronin of visions novel, which I believe is supposed to continue on or give some more to this story. Oh, sweet. Yeah, cool. Just in looking at the
00:30:20
Speaker
notes on Wikipedia here I happened upon there's a book called Ronin that's coming out about this one I don't think there's any other continuations planned but you just might get your wish for this first well perfect cool all right are you ready to move on to episode 4 the village bride or excuse me episode 2 episode 2 Tatooine Rhapsody
00:30:43
Speaker
Yes, let's go on to this. Cool, cool. Do you want to take the lead on this one? Because I'll just kind of come out and say as I enjoyed this one, but I talked about some of them not landing quite as well for me. And this was one of the ones.
00:30:56
Speaker
Yeah, I'll take the lead on this one. This landed in a completely different spot for me. I think this is just a perfect way to show how much fun an anthology series can be. We don't have to take everything seriously. So let's just have a Star Wars rock band. So quick synopsis of the episode. Essentially it is a young Jedi running away at the start of the episode, stumbles upon a Huttese looking character. I don't know if we ever confirmed that he actually is Huttese or not.
00:31:26
Speaker
basically becomes best friends with this guy and says let's start a band. So him and a couple of others start a rock band only for Jabba the Hutt to send Boba Fett to hunt them down because this young Huttese betrayed Jabba by not taking over a portion of the business I'm guessing. And then as you know, they're brought in for execution and they play such good music that Jabba decides not to execute them.
00:31:54
Speaker
That's kind of the long and short of it. It was, it had to be that kind of fun and funny look. I agree. It didn't land in the, this is what I want from a Star Wars story boat, but I did just kind of enjoy the jovial nature of what was going on with it. It was a fun time. And I'm curious, how did, uh, Joseph Gordon Levitt do as our lead character? Because I believe he is credited as Jay, that lead
00:32:20
Speaker
voice actor and lead singer of the band okay okay yeah i thought he did a fine and serviceable job i don't think i don't think i actually did not recognize that it was him he did great with the singing but this is another one that i'll be excited to like go back and rewatch and listen to the japanese singing because i wonder how much they had to modify um the lyrics it was still a really enjoyable song with a nice message and had a good sound to it but there were a couple of times where i felt like the lyrics felt
00:32:48
Speaker
maybe the timing was a little stilted to match up with the music, but it was still really good. And I did think it was kind of funny that this episode, it was done again by Studio Colorito, which I don't really know much about, but for me, it was kind of more of a cutesy, kind of like diminutive style, almost like chibi style, not full on chibi, but like they had like everyone's heads are a little bit bigger compared to the rest of their body and whatnot.
00:33:16
Speaker
I thought it was funny that this was the episode that gave us the most like big name cameos. We saw Jabba, Bib Fortuna, Boba Fett obviously, he was actually voiced by Tumara Morrison. Yes, I did see they got him to come back, which I was excited for.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah, I recognize Tumara Morrison instantly. But again, like I said, this episode didn't land with me as quite as well, but I still enjoyed the hell out of it. So I'd be excited to rewatch it in the Japanese, like I mentioned, but also I'd re listen to it again in English just to catch a little bit more of Joseph Gordon Levitz, JGL Jiggle, his his performance there. Yeah, it was a fun one. Like you said, it was cute. It definitely felt more of a this is a kids episode kind of thing.
00:34:04
Speaker
but yeah it fit right into the Star Wars universe in that way and you know happy Tatooine is something we never really get to see yeah it's a little better than the usual crime syndicate version that's true and have we ever seen rain on Tatooine that was something that definitely stood out to me there were like multiple rain scenes on Tatooine were that were they on Tatooine at the start or oh maybe maybe I'm confused on that maybe it was like Dantooine and just kind of looked like
00:34:30
Speaker
Tatooine, you might be right there. But when we did spend time on Tatooine, as a avid episode one fan, Star Wars episode one, The Phantom Menace, that is, which, you know, that might not jive with everybody, but I think I'm in good company here. It was great to see Mos Espa and the sight of the Boon to Eve classic. They basically lifted it right out of the film and animated it to scale.
00:34:56
Speaker
Yeah, and that 3D render that they did, it was a very nice look at the entirety of it. And yes, do not worry, you are in good company. I was young enough that I grew up with the prequels, like they were coming out as I was in that age demographic of supposedly Jar Jar's not so bad. Yeah, I got love for Jar Jar, so it's all good here. Anything else you wanted to say about this one?
00:35:22
Speaker
No, I'm with you. I want to go back and listen to it in the other language because I thought the song was good in Japanese. It felt very fluid. So it very well could be just a bit of a mistranslation in that regard. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And maybe that's why I'm looking at this episode a little bit more positively than you are is I just got a slightly different experience, which is kind of unique as well. Oh, for sure. Yeah. That's what.
00:35:47
Speaker
That's what's great about this, that we got such two professional performances on either side, just no matter what language it was spoken, it gives you that opportunity to go back and rewatch. But I almost forgot to mention, I would have kicked myself for not bringing this up. When the band was playing and they were getting really popular and you saw that their acclaim was spreading outside of the stadium and reaching people that were even in the cantina and whatnot, there was a great cameo there where it was friggin' Dan and the model notes from the original trilogy, the cantina band,
00:36:20
Speaker
Those guys looked pissed. There was another band that was going to usurp them as the number one band. Your musical skills are on point today, I must say. Thank you, thank you. I didn't notice that. I'm going to have to go back and look. Actually, one of my first thoughts was why was this not the band that was playing in Jabba's Palace in episode six? If they got this popular, why didn't we just get them there? That's a good question. That was the Max Rebo band, which is- Yes, I could not remember the name. Thank you.
00:36:47
Speaker
All good. All good. We can do a whole nother episode on the on the various bands in Star Wars, but maybe that's for the Star Wars Universe podcast. We're gonna have a tier list of bands at the end. Good stuff. Good stuff. All right.
Star Wars Visions: The Village Bride and TOB1
00:37:00
Speaker
Ready to move on to Episode Four, The Village Bride? Yes. This one's definitely high on my list of the remaining ones. Okay, cool. Cool. I felt like this one stood out for me as well. It felt it took that
00:37:17
Speaker
it took the opportunity of being in anime and relishing in that kind of slower, more beautiful, more heartfelt and sentimental storytelling there. And this was done by, okay, I'm gonna guess Kinema because they went out of the way to spell it with a K. Yeah, I did not even think to ask myself that question. I just assumed it was Kinema. Probably went the right way about it. Hopefully, hopefully.
00:37:45
Speaker
Yeah, so I did think it was a little bit more slow, but definitely very poignant and beautifully created.
00:37:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think this episode definitely is high on the list when it comes to the beauty of the art that they did. The entirety of that nature scene at the beginning was just stunningly well done. All of the forests, the mountains, it just looks so good. I couldn't help but to think of Demon Slayer immediately when we saw the man carrying a woman on his back.
00:38:16
Speaker
Well good call yeah, I went right to Nezuko sitting in a box as soon as That was an that's a perfect example of these storytellers not giving us backstory But expecting us to want to know more we had no idea who this bride and groom were or where they were going or why they were climbing up the mountain But it just piqued your curiosity enough to be like okay. I'm into this story. What's gonna happen from here?
00:38:43
Speaker
Yeah, agreed. It was a very interesting way to tackle the narrative there. It was almost like you were hiking through the woods with them. And as we were seeing this older character that was wearing the helmet, and he's introduced to the masked character, and he immediately says the mask doesn't suit her, so she's hiding something there. But as she's just eavesdropping and observing them make their trek, we as the audience are doing the same thing.
00:39:11
Speaker
very straightforward until they make contact with that stone. And what was it? The magina, the planet's memories. It was almost kind of like avatar in that way. All the inhabitants of the planet have a mental connection and a memory that's shared with the planet.
00:39:32
Speaker
Yeah, and I believe the insinuation was that this village is referring to it as the Magina, but it is the force and it's the embodiment of the energy and all of us and the memory that can kind of come with that. And that's why, you know, they were able to say, Oh, you feel the Magina to basically you're using the force, you can sense the force. And it was a really nice way to show that
00:39:53
Speaker
not everyone in the galaxy knows about the Jedi, not everyone knows about the force. Instead, it's this small village that just thinks they have a great relationship with nature. And it's actually they just have a great relationship with the force. Yeah, yeah, that's an excellent point. And the other thing that kind of stood out to me with this episode is that it took place in the Clone Wars era. And I think it's the only one that we know, like outright is taking place during like the separatist and Republic conflict, right?
00:40:21
Speaker
Was it during or was it after? Because I know these raiders, they said, reprogrammed the droids, so I couldn't tell if that meant the Separatists had already fallen, or if they had just stolen them from the Separatists. Oh, OK. OK. That might be a good point. Yeah, that could be, because obviously we're spending time with the memories of the planet. There could have been more passage of time than I realized. And I didn't pick up on the line where they reprogrammed them. So yeah, you're probably right there in that case. But either way, it's still nice to see droids.
00:40:50
Speaker
Yes, droids are always good. We didn't hear Roger Roger, which I know is a problem for some people, so. Oh, yeah, yeah. Again, growing up with the prequels, I love it. Yeah, it doesn't bother me at all. And then the ship that the bandits, I guess I'll call them bandits, raiders, what have you, that they were using to actually control the droids, it was like a modified Karelian freighter, which obviously looks a lot like the Malian Falcon, just with some modifications there. So always nice to see the references there.
00:41:20
Speaker
Yeah, I immediately noticed when there was that drop gate. Like that is that's Karelian. That looks like the Falcon right there. Yeah, yeah. I guess I and I hate to be, again, too negative because I really did enjoy this episode as well. But I did think that the awkward, excuse me, the ending was a little awkward because you had that whole showdown where she finally ignites her lightsaber and says that I'm a Jedi and saves the bride.
00:41:48
Speaker
from this this leader here and he drops to the ground and from there it transitions to kind of like a montage of these stills where you see her just kind of like leaving the planet and I thought it was a little bit awkward given how well everything was done up until that point yeah it was kind of just a okay everything is fine now she's taking care of this
00:42:08
Speaker
I took an insinuation that now she's going to go and do better, but there was that weird mix of she was looking for her master somewhere in the middle that was just never talked about again.
00:42:19
Speaker
So it was a bit weird with the ending. I do have to say, though, may have been the most classic anime scene of the ignition of the yellow lightsaber, turning it sideways like a sword, and then it just cuts to her moving so quickly that the camera can't catch her, and she's jumped through him, cut his hand off, and he slumps to the ground. It was just that jaw-dropping anime moment that makes you just want to go, yes, and clench your fists together and throw them in the air. It was so good.
00:42:49
Speaker
Yeah, you've seen it a million times, but it always feels so satisfying. Oh, it is. And it was super well done. So yeah, I agree. I think that's it for me on the Village Bride.
00:43:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think that was it. I actually took notes for once, usually for what if we're just kind of going off the cuff, but there was so much here I had to jot down some things. Yeah. All right. So we already covered the 9th Jedi, which was the 5th episode. So then we move on to TOB1, Episode 6, which was done by Science Saru, one of the studios that was afforded the opportunity to do multiple stories here. And this one,
00:43:30
Speaker
I'll say right off the bat, Astro Boy vibes.
00:43:34
Speaker
Yes, I do agree with that. I would say this for me was one of the episodes that fell a bit flat. Yeah, I agree. It was not my favorite. I also do want to throw out there that the studios that both got two episodes, it was Trigger and Science Saru. It seems like they did the two episodes in different styles, which I found really interesting. I kind of assumed they were going to use the same stylization for both, but they decided not to do that.
00:44:02
Speaker
Yeah, so yeah, I think trigger. I think pretty obviously they took their two different styles and like completely different directions to where I didn't even recognize it was the same studio until I saw it come up. But with science Saru, I think I was able to tell like right off the bat that it was the same.
00:44:22
Speaker
studio, even though they were done in different styles, there were a few things that were consistent throughout. I felt like it was kind of like the softer details that has almost kind of like a living like watercolor feel to it and a little bit of abstractness to it and kind of messiness. The lines aren't super clean or anything like that. Yeah, it makes everything feel kind of spongy almost. Spongy is perfect. Yeah, spongy is a great way to describe it. Yeah.
00:44:47
Speaker
Like I did want to go up to this droid and just like give him a squeeze. He just looks like he needs a hug. Yeah. It was one of the ones I kind of said it about Tatooine Rhapsody. It was a little more cutesy. We were afforded the opportunity for some cool action sequences that were kind of stylized that I liked. But I thought that they were subverting expectations by making it so like
00:45:11
Speaker
cutesy and kidsy in the beginning and like him having his imagination like open up and dreaming about being a Jedi and he talked about having this calling and his
00:45:22
Speaker
His creator, the guy that's kind of watching him, the professor, I think is what he refers to him as, he gives him this rule, never go in the basement. I was suspecting that we were going to have a darker turn where when he finally went into the basement, he was going to find out that at one point in time, he was a human and was his padawan and he suffered a grievous injury or something like that and had to be facilitated.
00:45:45
Speaker
Yes, I was almost expecting something similar to have been like, that's why he has this imagination is because he was a kid that wanted to be a Jedi or something along those lines. I'm a little happy it didn't go there, but there was still a lot of emotion behind what went on between him and the professor throughout this episode, though. I give them some credit for that. Oh, sure. Sure. Yeah. It felt like the Pinocchio story. I was going to say I got some serious Geppetto and Pinocchio vibes if he's a real boy.
00:46:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And then as soon as you hear his name, T-O-B-1, I was like, okay, Toby. Oh, you went Toby. I thought it was an Obi-Wan reference of Obi-Wan. Okay, okay. But did you actually catch, I know you said you watched with subtitles that toward the end of the episode, as he started developing the Jedi powers, and when he kind of knighted him as the Jedi ghost, he switched from calling him T-O-B-1 to calling him Toby?
00:46:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I did notice that, yeah. That was a very humanizing moment for him. Oh, certainly, certainly. Yeah, no, I agree. That was kind of his moment of becoming a real boy. Yeah. As it were. I do have some questions about how a droid can use the Force, but again, suspension of disbelief, they kind of cut these writing studios loose and said, do what you want. Yeah, for sure. But I didn't know that would be possible.
00:47:10
Speaker
Well, and that's one of the things a lot of, like, animes and sci-fi kind of explore as well is, like, at what point does, like, artificial intelligence kind of, like, blur the lines between, you know, becoming sentient and is it possible in the Star Wars universe that a robot could evolve to the point to have a connection with the Force? I mean, that's all pretty heady stuff in this episode I don't think was necessarily tackling all those heavy themes, but it's interesting just to spark the conversation and everybody... That's the thing, Star Wars is for everybody and everybody has
00:47:41
Speaker
the things that they take away from it and the things that sparks their imagination. So at any rate, these are all talented animators and storytellers. So I realized just the opportunity. The Inquisitor was cool and the lightsaber battle was pretty cool. And I liked a lot of the lighting that went on in opposition to the kind of spongy and unclean style we talked about. I felt like that's kind of where they honed in and allowed the lighting of the lightsabers to allow for some of those harsher and more clean lines.
00:48:10
Speaker
Yeah, I thought it was good. I was not a super big fan of the fight scene in this episode specifically. It just felt a little too all over the place for my liking. It was a little too like blobs kind of moving around each other.
00:48:26
Speaker
I can hear that. It was very cartoony. And I think it kind of reminded me of some of the cartoons from the 90s in some ways, like Dexter's Lab and stuff like that. That's why I liked it. It almost felt Looney Tunes asking, like, those movements just can't happen, but you're OK with it? Sure. Yeah, that's a good comparison there. Yeah. Oh, anything else you want to say about this one? No, no, I think.
00:48:50
Speaker
I think it was still a good episode. I can't really complain about any of them, but I would say this is probably at the bottom, so we got another three good ones to go. Yeah, and I imagine that'll probably be the general consensus is that this one probably won't.
00:49:06
Speaker
land with as many people but there might be some people out there that this was just right up their alley and it might end up being their favorite one. Yeah and I think there's always the conversation and Star Wars is a really good example of this of it's for everyone and there's different age groups like I said I grew up with the prequels so I have much better memories than people who were excited for Star Wars and then were let down by the prequels because they grew up with the original trilogy because I kind of went through that with the sequels.
00:49:35
Speaker
Oh, sure. Sure. And I know kids growing up now that are far younger than me that love the sequels because that's the Star Wars that they grew up with. And that's perfectly fine. So there might even be someone younger or older that loves this episode. And I think that's great. Yeah, I could not agree more could not agree more. That's what's great about Star Wars. And ready to move on to the next one, episode seven, The Elder. Yes.
Star Wars Visions: The Elder and Lop and Ocho
00:50:04
Speaker
All right, this one didn't make my top two, but it was still one of my favorites for sure. And this was trigger, trigger returning. Yes. Yeah. And we already talked about how different a style they chose to embrace. This was the one like I honestly did not know it was trigger again until I saw the credits.
00:50:23
Speaker
Yeah, it was a bit rounder in terms of what they did. They didn't take the sharpness and juddiness that we talked about loving in the twins, but they still did a fantastic job with all of the art stylization in this. And this is another great one in talking about the culture that they brought to that small village that is very Japanese, very cultural, and very, you know, homey feeling.
00:50:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, agreed. I guess as far as like the story for this one, we kind of compared TOB1 to like Pinocchio. I felt like this one was almost like the story of Icarus, where you have this like headstrong Padawan who is like itching for a fight and he kind of flies too high too soon.
00:51:09
Speaker
Yes, it's definitely a story that we've seen before in all sorts of different mediums, but they did a very good job of differentiating it and making it something special. Yeah, yeah. And you just build up this relationship between the mentor and the Padawan. I know the Padawan's name was Dan, but I don't know if I caught the master's name, but he very much reminded me of like a young Qui-Gon Jinn. Yes, the master was a Qui-Gon for sure. Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.
00:51:38
Speaker
But yeah, anyway, you have this Padawan that's like itching for the fight. And this master kind of wants to give him that freedom to learn. And that's when they split up. They know that there's a disturbance that they've sensed. And that's the whole point that they come to this planet. It's an ancient and evil force, but he doesn't know if it's necessarily Sith or not. So they find the ship and the master wants to stay by the ship. And the Padawan pursues the old man up the mountain where he has what
00:52:06
Speaker
I found to be, we've talked about some of the lightsaber battles in this series, how effective they were. We didn't really bring it up in the 9th Jedi, but that was one of the things that I appreciated about that episode the most was the choreography in the fight. But this first lightsaber battle with the Elder was the most terrifying for me. I actually felt like a lot of tension. I thought he was a very effective and scary villain, and I really feared for our heroes.
00:52:34
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't necessarily even know whether or not our heroes were going to make it out at all. I could have very well seen that this was the end. And that's why we never heard about this Sith because these Jedi never got back to report it kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, it could have been anything like that. They did a fantastic job. And I loved the way that it came full circle almost with a moral at the end of I don't know how it would have gone if life had not caught up to this man and he was older. If he was in his prime, what would have been different?
00:53:03
Speaker
Right, right. And it's like, that's kind of the lesson there. It's as much as the elder himself presented the obstacle that they had to face, it's like kind of like the obstacle that everyone's facing is time. The young Padawan, he hasn't had enough time to become the warrior that he wants to be. The master at this point in time, he's kind of in his prime, but the elder
00:53:27
Speaker
is not so but the master has the the cognizance and knows that he's already weaker than he was and that the the padawan will become stronger so as much as it was like a story of Icarus flying high too high too soon and I thought that Dan was dead and I would have been I would have been okay with that as well it was nice to see him be able to be afforded the opportunity to learn learn that lesson yeah beautifully said for sure they did a great job with this and I agree this lightsaber battle was good
00:53:55
Speaker
I don't believe you've watched Clone Wars, have you?
00:53:59
Speaker
Only a handful of episodes. Well, I will say in the Clone Wars, it gives me such an appreciation of Count Dooku in the way that he is a casual lightsaber fighter. When he will face someone like Obi-Wan, he just tosses his lightsaber around knowing that he is better than him. And it felt very similar to the way that the Elder against the Padawan was just, eh, I can take you on any day, kid. Let me just throw my lightsabers around a little bit to get warmed up here.
00:54:27
Speaker
And it was a very eloquently done fight to show what happens when you're not quite as experienced. Oh yeah, for sure. And again, just how scarily the elder was animated the way his eyes, his pupils kind of like shrunk in and you just got these big hollow black eyes and his toothy grin.
00:54:45
Speaker
the yellow to the green. Yeah, he's relishing the fight. And just the fact that he's so giddy and gleeful makes him that much more menacing and scary. And he's, he's pretty short to his kind of comical. When you see them, you get that classic, you know, when a duel is about to happen, you get the horizon line with the two figures facing each other off just to see how comically taller Dan was than him. It was a little funny. Yeah, and it's definitely the bit of an anime trope of the strong old man that is smaller, but still far superior.
00:55:16
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. He's a little bit of an antithesis to Yoda in that way. Oh, for sure. Do we think Yoda's alive at this point? Yoda's what? Several hundred years old. If this was anything before our series, they could have very well known Master Yoda. That could have been an interesting one. Yoda was what, like 800, 900 in Return of the Jedi when he finally
00:55:39
Speaker
It was something like that, yes. Yeah. That's the thing too with this being like an anthology series, like they really could take place at any time. They always just make these illusions. Like the Sith were destroyed hundreds of years ago and it's like, this is all a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Yeah. And there was that moment of this could be before everything we've seen or this could be after. Like the Sith could be fully gone the second time that Palpatine was taken down. Yeah.
00:56:08
Speaker
Totally. And I love that they didn't feel the need on any of these episodes really to give us a timeline. They said it doesn't matter when this occurs. It's just happening at some point. We have some obvious illusions of, okay, the Empire might be in power, or this is pre-Empire during the Republic. So it was nice that they didn't feel the need to loop this into our Star Wars canon.
00:56:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I agree. They probably would have been kind of shoehorned and they probably would have had to make creative sacrifices to make that happen. So anytime you can just give a studio or studios like these that are so celebrated just carte blanche to do what they want. I think you're making the right call there. Was there anything else you wanted to highlight about Episode 7, The Elder?
00:56:58
Speaker
No, I don't think so. I think it was fantastic. This is a great example of them doing justice with unique lightsabers, the way that they looked like small dagger sized blades almost, but they also had that ring of energy at the bottom as though to be like a hilt protector. Yeah, yeah, that was cool. It was super cool. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. All right. Moving on to Episode 8, Lop and Ocho.
00:57:29
Speaker
So this was done by Geno Studio, who I have to imagine. Again, is it Geno, Geno? Again, I'm not familiar. I really should have looked up pronunciations. I have them all written down, but didn't actually think about how they... That's not on you to look up pronunciations. I'm the one that's running the podcast here. I should have, but I think people appreciate the kind of cavalier approach as well. At least I hope they do.
00:57:54
Speaker
We're generally pretty good about these kinds of things or rather, you and Zuhara especially are very good about making sure that we do justice to all of the things. Well, thank you. Yeah. I have to imagine the studio is again, all of these studios are celebrated, but I have to imagine this one has some particular clout because I again, I felt like
00:58:14
Speaker
the quality of the animation here, I felt like they intentionally embraced kind of like a retro feel that reminded me very much of like the late 80s, early 90s for very high quality anime like Akira comes to mind. There were a couple of times where I got Sailor Moon vibes. What did you think about this episode?
00:58:35
Speaker
Um, I thought it was fantastic. I will say just briefly touching on you talking about this studio. I have never heard of them before. Okay. They're actually a fairly young studio. They were founded in 2015. Oh wow. Okay. So when you talk about clout, I'm sure they're going to get there just looking at the high quality scale of this episode. They did such a good job of putting this whole planet in perspective and.
00:59:00
Speaker
building an entire culture within it that you understood almost immediately what was going on, what the dynamics were. And yeah, they did a really good job of creating something unique here for this planet. It gave me some familiar vibes. I can't remember the names of the planet in Rogue One where they were mining the kyber crystals.
00:59:20
Speaker
Jetta Jetta it felt very much like the city center of Jetta in some of those scenes where you had like the terror going on and the stormtroopers around like it felt very familiar like that but we're still different enough to be this big city scale that obviously was not what we had on Jetta
00:59:37
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. I think that's a very appropriate comparison. There were definitely Rogue One vibes and just in terms of getting to see the impact that the Empire can have on a planet on like an ecological level. So, and again, with the main character here, Lop, I just appreciate with like animation, some of my favorite animated series and animated characters are
01:00:01
Speaker
I can normally say this word. Why is it so difficult right now? Anthropomorphic. Anthropomorphic. Yes, thank you. But yeah, it's really cool to see a character. Again, we talk about cutesy and whatnot, but I feel like just having a character that looks like a rabbit but is so capable and badass. Passion is really cool and just sucks me in immediately.
01:00:29
Speaker
Yeah, it took me a moment to get adjusted. I will be completely honest. It didn't feel quite Star Wars yet because obviously we have all of these different alien races. But there's just something about the way that George Lucas created those aliens that they always felt scaly, slimy. We didn't have that many like specifically furry besides Chewbacca looking aliens. So to see straight up a rabbit was a little jarring at first. But then you just kind of remember
01:00:59
Speaker
Aliens are going to look different across the board depending on where they're from what they're doing and I was okay with it Then it was just a bit different at first to see Yeah, but that's totally fair. I can totally understand the adjustment period there I probably experienced that a little bit too, but I'm just got over it pretty quickly and I will say as much as I
01:01:23
Speaker
like this episode and really appreciated the story and the emotional impact. I do think that this is one of the times where it being a short I felt it didn't benefit as as much from like I really would have liked to see this particular story fleshed out a bit more and have gotten the full emotional impact of the falling out of this this
01:01:44
Speaker
family and these sisters. But all that being said, I will say TD's destruction, her little droid that was like her her selfie family photo droid, their destruction was was the most emotional I was in this entire series. Yeah, that was a heartbreaking moment. For sure. I yeah, I was upset. I was very viscerally upset in that moment as I was watching it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
01:02:12
Speaker
I completely agree with what you're saying. The pacing of the episode, I think, was just really weird. They were going for the slow build. We're going to tell you the story about these characters. We're not going to have a lot of action at first, but they still didn't have enough time to quite build it up. So I agree if it was just a little bit longer, the slow build form of it would have worked. And I think it just fell flat because they didn't quite get
01:02:38
Speaker
to the endearment levels that you're expecting out of something on a scale like this you could see where they were going and they were really really close and at the same time as much as we're saying we didn't get endeared enough we're both ready to cry over a droid but yeah all around i think it it was still a good thing you knew what was going on with this family why they were getting to the places that they were so
01:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And then it's just worth mentioning again, like how beautiful the episode was. We got to see some of the references to like Japanese color when the father's telling the story to Lop about the inheritance of the lightsaber. I really appreciated that stuff. And then just the cherry blossoms in the background when they're fighting, just absolutely breathtaking and such a unique backdrop for a Star Wars lightsaber battle.
01:03:32
Speaker
Oh, for sure. And the petals falling through the air just gave it this emotional quality that I can't quite explain why cherry blossom petals do that. But we all know that feeling of falling or sadness to it. Like I can't explain it. And it's almost a trope at this point because we've seen it before. Yeah. But I will say that may be one of the most visually stunning scenes that we got in this episode was the telling of the inheritance with the blue light on the ground as he's
01:04:02
Speaker
I believe force projecting or whatever the case may have been to bring up those images Of the people training with the lightsabers and it being passed from person to person and there was one amazing Detail that I noticed in there that I can't help but to bring up because I absolutely loved it they zoomed in and on one of the little training scenes right at the end and it was a
01:04:26
Speaker
circular symbol, it looked like a crane or something along those lines to be a crest. Great, great call. And then they transitioned over to the Jedi symbol that we're so familiar with. And it just showed this heritage to the Jedi symbol whilst also harkening back to Japanese culture and different things. And it was absolutely amazingly done. I loved the detail.
01:04:50
Speaker
They didn't need to do it, but the fact that someone came up with this idea of we're going to make it a crane as opposed to the normal symbol, I just absolutely loved. Could not agree more. I'm super glad you highlighted that because it stuck out to me as well. And yeah, absolutely beautiful and such a inventive transition there. I don't know whose idea that was, but they deserve all the accolades and all the kudos for it. It's beautiful.
01:05:15
Speaker
Yeah, and I will say, um, you said that the elder was probably your favorite fight. I think that this fight, um, may have been my favorite of all of the, actually, no, the ninth Jedi was better. I kind of forgot about that. Now this one was definitely up there with the stylized weapons of the father having, I cannot remember the name of the weapon for the life of me, but is the one that Raphael, the Ninja turtle, uh, uses.
01:05:40
Speaker
Oh, the side side. Thank you that they had these futuristically Star Wars styled side, but they were still just normal blades that the sister was using. I definitely do not know the name of the weapon, but it's the three.
01:05:56
Speaker
Link with the blade on either end, but as opposed to having chains in the middle They had the beams of energy to hold it together and then coming out with the katana style Lightsaber that had an engraving on it so that you knew that it was the family sword We've seen it before in other mediums and that's a thing that they do within the culture They just did a really good job with all of the weapons and then the choreography Choreography of the fight was also just fantastic as they're shouting at each other. You could feel the emotion There's just so much gravitas to the entire thing
01:06:26
Speaker
Oh yeah, 100%. And I agree with you. I kind of bounce around on which particular fight is my favorite, but I do agree with you that this is definitely one of the standout ones for all of the reasons you listed. And then I guess with the Elder, I don't know if it is actually my favorite, but it is the most harrowing for me. It just kind of was the most tense.
01:06:45
Speaker
But I think I agree with you that the ninth Jedi featured the best choreography but this one we already mentioned like the the cherry blossoms in the background I think it kind of celebrated that that style of Kung Fu and swordplay that's a little more like wire worky if that makes sense kind of like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Baggars. Yeah, the classic mediums for all of those is just exactly what they were shooting for and I think they hit it.
01:07:10
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I'm with you there. I was just gonna say I'm almost wondering if we didn't do 9th Jedi justice as we keep talking back on it. I'm like, we really just gushed about that for a couple minutes. We didn't actually say how great the fight scene was and all of the other things. We were just like, oh, this was great. That was great.
01:07:26
Speaker
We can take a moment before we transition to the final episode here Yeah, we can just kind of it's it's kind of funny because we're getting onto the ninth episode We will take a pause to go back to the ninth Jedi Yeah, yeah, let's uh, let's just get in into it like it's so it's uh, margrave duro duro margaret margrave duro yeah, I will say what the only issue I had with this episode is that the main character's name was ethan and
01:07:54
Speaker
I don't know why that bothered me so much, but we have these amazing names in Star Wars. We have these amazing cultures that are enveloped in to give us unique things. And then we just have Ethan.
01:08:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of funny. It was, it was kind of funny. And it was also that funny thing of I'm listening to it in Japanese. So Ethan is also the last name that you're expecting to hear. I'm just so used to anime where you have main characters like Kageyama or Gon or different things like that. They're very unique names. So Ethan is just so jolting.
01:08:29
Speaker
It's funny. Yeah. And I did appreciate the fact that they kind of like set him up initially, like you thought he was going to be the main character in the focal point. And you're going to kind of see him rise up. And even when, you know, they first look at the lightsaber and somebody else is holding it, but he takes it and he's the first one to ignite it. I was like, what makes this guy so special?
01:08:48
Speaker
Yeah, why did he get to ignite it when none of them have had a lightsaber before? He seemed to be an apprentice more than the rest of them being masters. Right, right. That's what I was thinking as well. But then it was just kind of nice to see that he wasn't as much as he was able to stand on his own and defend himself there at the end. It was really this complete and total novice.
01:09:10
Speaker
the master Juro Margre, excuse me. And then the, I don't know how old she was gonna be. I wanna say like between 14 and 16. Yeah, somewhere in there, I would guess. Yeah, but it's so, she's entirely more competent than Ethan. And then I guess I didn't really know what was going on until the very end with, what was the guy's name? Humon or something like? Yeah, Humon.
01:09:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, where he's kind of like a big behemoth of a character, but his his red lightsaber went back to purple while he was like locked in in combat with Ethan. And I guess he was just they only they only reveal it through dialogue, but I guess he was just influenced by the other Sith acolytes.
01:09:57
Speaker
Yeah it was interesting because I noticed like halfway through the fight his lightsaber turned back to purple and I was like wait a minute I thought he was supposed to be on the dark side there so it was a nice interesting touchstone of no he's he was good he was trying to do something and the fact that they threw it in the middle before acknowledging it was a nice little note.
01:10:18
Speaker
But I agree, Kara's competence was astounding when she first picked up the lightsaber in the Sabre Forge and the little droid started shooting at her and she just deflected all of the bolts. I was like, this is not something that a random person should just be able to pick up a lightsaber and do. Is she a Jedi? What's going on here?
01:10:40
Speaker
he got the whole revelations of she was with the force since she was younger. She had, you know, she grew up with a father that knew how to make lightsabers. And I think that was what made the scene of the speeder bike chase so good because she could drive backwards, I'm assuming because she could sense the trees
Star Wars Visions: Storytelling and Future Directions
01:10:57
Speaker
she didn't have. Sure.
01:10:58
Speaker
And it was so well done, the storytelling without having to specifically tell us things that they did in this episode, and I think that's part of why it was just so good, is they let you make your own revelations and assumptions as time went on. Yeah, you get that title, The Ninth Jedi, and I was constantly wondering, I was like, is Juro the Ninth Jedi? Is Ethan the Ninth Jedi? And then it turns out it was actually Kara, and super fitting for her to be.
01:11:27
Speaker
Hey listeners, pardon the interruption to this episode of Animation Deliberation. Just gotta hit you with a quick spoiler warning, and that's for Amazon Prime's Invincible episode one. So if you haven't seen that, just skip ahead about a minute. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, they have their nifty feature where you can skip ahead 30 seconds. So just tap that a couple of times and you should be good to go. So thanks for listening. Keep tuning in and back to the show.
01:11:48
Speaker
I did want to bring up though with the fight sequence with it both being our favorite. I did feel like when Juro reveals himself and kind of first starts owning the Sith Acolytes, I kind of got invincible when Omni-Man took out the Guardians of the Globe. It felt a little bit like that where they
01:12:08
Speaker
the people too late realize that they're in over their head. And spoilers if you haven't seen Invincible. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for that. I should have said that. No worries. But yeah, no, it was just that raw power that you felt from him in the same way that Omni Man just has that presence. The minute that Joro took out that first Sith Acolyte and grabbed the lightsaber, you were like, okay, things are things are going to happen here.
01:12:33
Speaker
Yeah, and that moment of all of them igniting the lightsabers and them being red was I didn't see it coming. I fully was taken blindsided by that one. There was that moment of something's going on. Why do they keep asking? Like, I don't feel quite right about this, but I did not expect that to have been what was wrong.
01:12:53
Speaker
I didn't think it was gonna be all of them. I thought at most it was gonna be two of them that ended up being bad, but yeah. It was definitely a nice little...
01:13:06
Speaker
I won't say a full on whodunit, but like the whole mystery of them constantly questioning them when Juro finally does reveal himself and he was there the whole time. It's like, oh, kind of felt like clue a little bit too. Now that you say that, though, can we please get a Star Wars based mystery movie? Ooh, yeah. Oh, I would totally do a whodunit in that style. I'm also really partial to whodunits, but
01:13:32
Speaker
Well, I mean, that's, that's a great thing with this series getting to see so many different styles and stories. Like I am a hundred percent advocate. Let Star Wars play with as many different genres as possible. Let's get a mystery Star Wars movie. Let's get a horror Star Wars movie. Like I'd be fully on board for any of those things.
01:13:48
Speaker
Oh for sure, and I was going to kind of save this for a summer at the end, but now feels like a really good time to say it. I am very hopeful for Star Wars going forward now. I know a lot of people were questioning, what do we do now that the Skywalker saga is over? What other stories can we really tell that are going to be interesting to people?
01:14:07
Speaker
Not a single one of these stories was within that ballpark. They just let writers do something amazing within the world that George Lucas already built. And they all did a fantastic job of finding something unique to tell within this world. And I can't wait to see what comes next out of the great writers and directors that we've already got announced to be carrying on the helm from here on out. I want to know what Taika Waititi is going to do. It's going to be it's going to be cool. Yeah.
01:14:32
Speaker
Yeah.
Exploring Star Wars' Future Beyond Skywalker
01:14:33
Speaker
While we're taking a little bit of a break to talk about some of the things we would like to see, and you bring up Taika Waititi in his upcoming film, I want to say just Rick Famayua, he's directed three episodes total of The Mandalorian. He did two episodes in season one and one episode in season two. Give that man a live action Star Wars movie, please. He deserves it.
01:14:58
Speaker
Oh, for sure. What do you happen to know off the top of your head? What episodes he did? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then just since you were so cognizant to give spoilers for, uh, in this ball to say brief, quick spoilers for a Mandalorian. So, um, in season one, he did my favorite episode of that season, uh, episode two, the child where, um, the Mandalorian gets his interactions with the Jawas. Okay.
01:15:23
Speaker
for the egg, getting the egg and everything like that. And then the other episode he did was actually, we were talking about kind of genre bending within Star Wars. I felt like this was the episode that's done it the most so far. It's that prison break episode where the Mandalorian has to team up with some old cohorts and they kind of like betray him mid mission. But there were definitely some sequences in that that I felt was like
01:15:45
Speaker
horror in the Star Wars universe. Yes, that one was good. And then did he also do the one in season two where he had to team back up with. Yeah, with Bill Burr's character. I can't remember what Mayhew. I think it was Mayhew or something like that. Mayfeld. Yeah, good call. Yeah. Yeah, that that might even be one of my favorite episodes of that second season, too. That one was just so much fun. Agreed. Agreed. And anytime you get an office space reference in the Star Wars universe, I'm I'm on board.
01:16:15
Speaker
Okay, now that we've had a little bit of a... You and I could definitely talk way more about Star Wars just beyond this, but we're doing a good job. We're just talking about animation or trucking. Indeed, indeed, indeed. All right, let's move on to the final episode of this hopeful first season. Maybe it'll be a one and done, but maybe we'll get another one. But episode nine, I will let you pronounce this one because I feel like you will do a much better job than I will.
01:16:42
Speaker
Uh, geez, now there's some pressure on here. Um, let's say Akakari or AKA Akakiri. Okay. I had to guess that. Yeah, I would agree. Akakiri sounds right. Yeah.
01:16:55
Speaker
We got ScienceSaru returning who did the TOB1 episode and I feel like we talked about the different styles and I said I didn't notice as much visual differences, there were some, but tone, this one is way, way, way, way, way more dark than what we saw from their previous outing.
01:17:18
Speaker
Oh, for sure. I think I'm actually a little surprised that this was the only super dark ending or rather running episode of the bunch. I kind of expected at least one of the other stories to take a turn. Yeah. But I think they did a fantastic job of being tonally harsh, whilst also giving us the little bits of comedic relief and a great story along the way.
01:17:45
Speaker
Yeah, I enjoyed this one quite a bit. Some things that stuck out to me is that I think it was one of the episodes that featured the least amount of spoken dialogue. There were a lot of times where they just kind of let you bask in the scene and absorb the atmosphere, especially there in the opening, just him battling the almost ostrich mounted warriors there.
01:18:07
Speaker
It really reminded me like Samurai Jack. And again, just this almost, I don't know if you've watched the series from Geddy Tartakovsky, but he had this one called Primal, where it's basically about a caveman and his dinosaur dog, for lack of a better term. But it does a very similar thing where it just, there are long drawn out scenes with action and no spoken dialogue. And you just get the emotion and the physical toll it's taking on the character through like grunts and stuff like that.
01:18:36
Speaker
That sounds really interesting. And I agree, they did a great job with the non spoken, just showing it also gave you great times to appreciate the art. I can't even pick one thing to say or rather one reference to make. I mean, you could say Lord of the Rings or any random journey film, they just had those moments of them crossing the countryside. And like the there was the one that sticks out in my head.
01:19:00
Speaker
of the silhouettes of the birds while they're kind of traveling along and the couple of gentlemen are singing they just let you ask in the art and they made it that journey film of you're just going to watch these people walk across a mountain but you're going to be excited about them walking across said mountain yeah
01:19:19
Speaker
That's true. That's a great comparison. You bring up those two gentlemen that were singing and I felt like that was like we got our Timon and Pumbaa there. Those are archetypal characters where you have kind of the bumbling but well-meaning guides that are there along the journey. Yeah, I don't know if it's just because of also the similar architecture and cultural notes. I went to the three gentlemen in Mulan that were cohorts.
01:19:46
Speaker
Yeah. Maybe also because they sing and have a great time with all of that. But yeah, we're fighting for is always going to be a wonderful song. Yeah, well, now that you bring up Mulan, I think the the shortest of those three that you're talking about, it's been a while since I've watched that one. But as I recall, the shortest of the three was kind of the angriest. He definitely reminded me of reminiscent of the short one in this. Correct. Correct. Yeah. And I think that's why I went there, too.
01:20:13
Speaker
Yeah, makes total sense. This one, I did appreciate, again, like we talk about, like the satisfying dark conclusion. I'm glad that at least one of the stories ended on such a dark note. There were definitely parallels to Anakin, obviously. It's like a story we've seen trying to save a loved one and having this prophecy out there and trying to, you know, avert your fate.
01:20:40
Speaker
That's one of the things this poetic of Star Wars is sometimes it ends in tragedy. Yeah, it was a turn that I definitely didn't see coming as much as the evidence was there. I was like, no, he's going to stay good. He's going to stay good. He's going to do it for the girl. No, this, you know.
01:20:58
Speaker
hulking woman, I guess is the best way to describe her just showed exactly how powerful she was and said, you were going to submit to me, or she's going to die and probably you as well. And he had no choice but to make the dark turn. And that was exactly what happened. They did a fantastic job of telling that story. And also just in terms of it being, um, you know, this woman that I was at the King's or previous King's sister.
01:21:27
Speaker
That's yeah, he said that via dialogue. Yeah. Yeah that it was there was turmoil on this planet There was a resistance going on they were trying to take back the throne But for the first time in Star Wars, it wasn't the Empire. It wasn't the separatists It was just a small-scale thing happening on a planet and a Jedi happening to go back. I had a moment of and You may not totally get this one. So slight spoilers for you in the Clone Wars. Okay one in Duchess Satine okay, he has a
01:21:56
Speaker
very good relationship with this woman on a planet him and Quiagon saved years ago, he goes back just to help her with her small problems on the throne. Okay, very similar of this Jedi helped her while he was a Jedi and then said, I'm going to come back and help you again.
01:22:13
Speaker
Yeah. Well, yeah. If that's the case, I, again, I, I know who you said Sabine, right? Satine, not Sabine. Satine. Okay. I was going to say it is a relative of Satine. Okay. It gets a little, it gets a little weird. They're both Mandalorian. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have enough exposure to know who some of these characters are. So yeah. I mean, it sounds very, very similar in that regard because that's basically essentially what happens here. Yeah. But Obi-Wan doesn't turn.
01:22:40
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. That's true. Yeah, yeah. It's not exactly the same in that regard. Yeah. In terms of like him having like these flashes to the future, but we don't know it at the time, it seems like it's a traumatic memory from the past. That kind of stuff reminded me both of like the, I don't know if you've seen these films, but Memento
01:22:58
Speaker
and 12 monkeys where you have like this protagonist that has like this curse of knowledge of the future and they're doing everything in their power to avoid it but their actions actually seal their fate. The fact that he kept seeing that person that he killed and it ends up being the person he was trying to save all along.
01:23:15
Speaker
Yeah. And I was wondering, like, is it going to be the girl? Is it going to be the girl? And right before it happened, it was like, oh, no, it's a soldier in his vision. That's not a problem. And then it still was the girl. So they did that. They did a good job of, you know, having that burden of knowledge, like you said.
01:23:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Other than that, I just, I think I kind of mentioned it briefly. It was science Saru again, so they did that TOB one episode and we talked about something like the sponginess and almost like watercolor feel. I feel like some of that did translate across, but this was much more abstract. I felt like you had more like basic shapes and a lot more like harsh, hard angles and stuff like that. And I think that's what kind of lent me into that samurai Jack kind of feel.
01:24:01
Speaker
Yeah, as soon as you said Samurai Jack, I agree, it has that angular shaping in the same way that he does, and it was very well done.
01:24:12
Speaker
I mean, across board, we've had nothing but good things to say about the art. And I don't think that will ever change these anime studios know what they're doing. Yeah, yeah. 100%. Yeah, we've covered all nine episodes at this point. So I feel like we're probably winding towards the end there. I will open up the floor to you just to kind of highlight anything, anything else about the series that you haven't had the opportunity to say yet.
01:24:38
Speaker
I mean I think we've kind of hit all the major notes just because there was so much good to say that we've been talking for so long I I've been able to get it all out which is really nice I will say I absolutely love this format I was concerned at first that they were releasing it all on one day now that I see that they were only 15-20 minute chunks I think it would have been weird to only be getting one a week
01:25:01
Speaker
So having it be this kind of come out at once and watch it, I think really helped it be a good medium in this case for it. And I honestly kind of want Disney to continue on this pace of working with anime and Japanese storytelling, whether it be for Star Wars or not, if they will just open it up to their
01:25:24
Speaker
you know any of their properties i would be okay with a couple i mean we're already getting this in some form in what if but if we weren't and they wanted to do marvel hey tell a story in the marvel universe i think it would be really interesting and i hope the show does well enough that disney continues on this path i think it's a i think it's a really really good one
01:25:44
Speaker
Yeah, I'm with you there. It doesn't have to be Star Wars. It doesn't even have to be Marvel for me. If you want to go back to something like the Rocketeer, I'd be totally open to seeing the Rocketeer done in this kind of style. Or just give us completely new stories. Whatever you want to do, I'm completely on board for it.
01:26:00
Speaker
of this quality, it's going to be great. And we've talked about how much we enjoyed all of these episodes and how there's pretty much something there for everybody. I agree with you. Dropping it all at once was the right strategy because obviously some of these episodes are going to land a lot better than other ones. And I think it's just best to let people relish the ones that they really resonate with. That being said, I really do want to get some feedback from people. We know Star Wars is a treasured fandom within the
01:26:29
Speaker
Well, it's just a treasured fandom, period. But within the Stranded Panda Network, I know there's a lot of fans. So let us know what your thoughts are. Animation Deliberation Podcast at gmail.com is the best place to send those thoughts. And I will remind you, we have the review contest going on right now. So that'll interview for the chance to win a Nintendo Switch or an Oculus Rift. All you have to do is submit a review to one or all of the nine shows on the Stranded Panda Network.
01:26:56
Speaker
Please participate in that. Andrew, do you have anything that you'd like to plug to let the people know that you have going on? No. Keep listening to this show because whenever Jay Scottie or Zuhair want me to be here, I will most likely be here. We appreciate you, man. If you want to keep hearing more of my voice, then I guess you're just going to have to keep tuning in here.
01:27:18
Speaker
Right on, right on. Yeah, we definitely appreciate you. So thanks for being here. I have had nothing but fun. I will tell you that much. It has been a great ride. I hope that everyone out there has enjoyed adding me to it. I know it's definitely been a bit weird for me listening to just have the extra voice in the void. It's probably weirder because it's my own voice and I'm still listening to every episode. But I hope it's been a nice transition for everyone to hear a bit more of me.
01:27:47
Speaker
Like I said, you always bring a lot of great passion and a lot of great insights, so you're welcome anytime. As for myself, animation deliberation, obviously we've got the ongoing What If coverage. We'll also be covering Young Justice Season 3 in preparation for Season 4, which will drop next month.
Closing Remarks and Community Engagement
01:28:05
Speaker
And then I do have the ongoing Pan Division coverage for what we do in the shadows. And then there's some Benjers stuff I'm appearing on as well, including 007, so a lot of stuff going on.
01:28:16
Speaker
Stay tuned to all of that. That's T-O-O-N-E-D. Thanks, folks.
01:28:22
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Animation Deliberation Podcast, a proud member of the Strandepanda Network. If you would like to contact us, you can email animationdeliberationpodcast at gmail.com or follow us on Twitter at animationdelib1. For this and other great shows, you can visit Strandepanda.com or join the great community that is the Strandepanda chat facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash spchat. Tune in next time and remember, stay well.
01:28:50
Speaker
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