To say I’m a big Star Wars fan would be the understatement of the year because I’m a massive Star Wars fan. Seeing The Empire Strikes Back as a 6 year old kid changed my life as I knew it at that time in my life. I wouldn’t know it until many years later, though, when I became a film critic. I take this franchise very seriously.  So reviewing the third season of Star Wars: Visions, I can honestly say I’ve seen a lot of Star Wars that is a cookie cutter of so much I’ve read and watched, over the years. In this third season, all the episodes are very similar to one another in more ways than one. That’s a bit tiring to watch. Maybe others who aren’t invested in Star Wars, like I am, will like these episodes more than I did.

Star Wars Visions is a series of animated shorts done in various styles to give Star Wars a different look and feel. In previous seasons, some of the short episodes have been quite brilliant. I can’t exactly say that about this season. Most of the episodes except for the first and last episodes 1: The Village Bird and Black are of an anime style. I’m not saying I don’t like anime because I do when the story is right and the characters are one I can get behind. All of these episodes are so similar in a way to the others. Except I did like episode 5 Yuko’s Treasure. That one had characters and a story I quite liked a lot.

Yuko’s Treasure takes place on Tatooine and deals with a little boy named Yuko and his teddy bear android Billy. And a different boy named Sola, he works for a group of Pirates and they are looking for some hidden treasure. The little boy Yuko and his bear dried run afoul of these Pirates, and the adventure is on. And there is a twist end I didn’t see coming, which made this episode my favorite of the season. Not enough of the episodes had this much originality to them, and that’s why I wasn’t as big a fan of this season as the past seasons. Not much originality to the season.

The other two episodes that are different vary from good to bad. One is a Black and White story episode 1, and the other is a color mishmash, episode 9, of I’m guessing the story of a stormtrooper. The first episode is mainly a Jedi versus Sith Story set in a samurai kind of aesthetic. The only color in the episode is that of the characters’ lightsabers.This gives a nice dichotomy to the rest of the episode. The story was a decent one but very similar to many of the other episodes, as I’ve already mentioned. The Color mishmash episode was like watching a blur the entire time. Somehow or other, it is supposed to represent the journey of a particular stormtrooper. His various ups and downs in his service to the empire. I felt like I was in a drug-induced haze while watching this episode. The animation style wasn’t up my alley at all. This was the bad one I mentioned. 

When I mentioned that there were a lot of similar things about the season, I already said the animation is one of them, but there are a few more similarities I want to mention. Such as most of the stories revolving around three things. All of the episodes seem to have children, boys or girls, learning to use the force, have an android in them, or have a sith lord in some kind of state. Some are bad guys/girls, and some are in their state of being the sinister force welders they are. This is why I’m not as much a fan of this season as the others. The similarities in the episodes weren’t as much fun to watch as episode 5.

Star Wars:Visions Season 3 was a bit of a disappointment to me. There was only one episode of the 9 I loved, and that was the 5th. Episode 1 was good but too close to the tone of many of the other episodes. Episode 9 was very different from the others but was very hard to watch because of the animation style. I was hoping to see many different animation styles like previous seasons and stories that weren’t cookie cutters of the other episodes. I don’t hate anime, but I’m not as big a fan of it as other styles of animation. For the most part, this season wasn’t what I wanted it to be or what I was expecting. Maybe some others might like it more than I did. I’m not usually such a big critic of Star Wars, but this time, I had to be. 

2 stars

Dan Skip Allen