Star Wars: Visions

First, do the negative reviewers understand this is a DIFFERENT look at Star Wars? Since each episode is a stand alone, each must be taken as a separate film. Some episodes, 1, 4, 5, 7 are superb. 1 is like a Kurosawa film. 7 shows the bond between Jedi and Padawan. The other episodes vary. 6 is a clear homage to Osamu Tezuka and is just on. Episode 2 is the worst. This should be watched with an open mind-something Star wars fans don't have anymore.

Star Wars Visions was a bag of mixed feelings, with couple of episodes being very good and the rest of them being either average or poor.

The ones I liked were :

Twins by Trigger which had a great animation along with decent action sequences.

The Duel by Kamikaze Douga was good in terms of story, although I felt the animation could have been better. The duel between the characters was displayed with effectiveness as well.

The Village Bride by Kinema Citrus had good animation and quality storyline with a satisfactory ending.

The rest of the episodes were average and couple of them (Tatooine Rhapsody and Akakiri) were totally dull and boring.

My Rating : 6/10.

The biggest problem here is that it's not clear who the audience is. I get the sense kids would love this stuff, but some of the dialog is just painful. Beautiful visually, though. About every other one is worth watching. Some good voice work, too, though not all.

Arguably, people don't go see Star Wars for the plot, but even still, many of these episodes feel like they show the animation studios' prowess in their field, but have nothing worth saying. Most have no story to speak of, just a setup for a fight, which is fun, but have no point. There are a couple gems here, who do want to tell a story. The rest is nice to look at, but pointless and make an impression.

Season 1 was a letdown for me. There's a few episodes worth watching, and a few that you definitely should skip, the others are just ok. The dialog and the english dub in general are not great, watch it in japanese if possible. There are some nice visual moments, but nothing really mindblowing. You can see the most interesting bits in the trailer. The bad episodes are awful and the good ones weren't good enough to really compensate for that. I'd give it a decent to strong 5.

Watching season 2 right after was a very pleasant surprise. It improved on the previous episodes in basically every way. Unlike season 1, there's a much greater variety of artstyles and a much more consistent level of quality. The dialog is not as cringy any more, and I would actually recommend watching most of the episodes in english. Every episode looks absolutely gorgeous as well, I can't think of a single one that i didn't like.

A lot of the season 2 episodes have a similar base plot (special girl saves the day with her special powers), so i'd knock off some points for that, but honestly i only noticed because someone else pointed it out. The overall presentation was different enough each time, and those "special girls" weren't even really the main focuspoint of all those episodes. The season overall was a strong 8 to a light 9 for me.