Lucasfilm announced that a new Star Wars anime coming to Disney+ and Hulu this August. The Ninth Jedi will be an eight-episode miniseries following Lah Kara, a young Jedi introduced in Star Wars: Visions (2021). The trailer for the series dropped last week. Take a look down below.
This is a spinoff of the Star Wars: Visions anime from 2021, which introduced the characters. The Visions series was a collection of animated shorts set within the Star Wars universe. Now, Lucasfilm has announced that The Ninth Jedi will be the first of many longer-form adaptations of the shorts in a series called Visions Presents.
Soon after the events of The Ninth Jedi (season one) and The Ninth Jedi: Child of Hope (season three), Lah Kara finds herself in the midst of an intergalactic war, fighting a Darth Vader-esque villain. The trailer shows that the series will deal with questions of morality and what it truly means to be a Jedi.
Lah Kara continues to train in the ways of the Jedi under Margrave Juro. Kara goes on an epic journey of self-discovery as she and Juro’s small fellowship of Jedi-in-training embark on a quest to save her father.
The original Visions series spanned three seasons, each containing nine short episodes. The styles of animation varied greatly from episode to episode, with many, but not all, adopting a more anime-adjacent style. Others were all in black and white or looked almost like claymation or puppetry. Every episode brought something different.
Visions had a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, but a 60% score on the audience-controlled Popcornmeter. The day season three was released, ScreenRant reported a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.
Fans in the trailer’s comments on YouTube seemed enthused about the animation.
“Animated Star Wars never ceases to leave me in awe.” @benwasserman8223
“Of all the Visions Projects this one deserved the most to get a pilot” @dedrinzypool1209
“Finally… a whole new corner of the Star Wars galaxy to explore.” @RamayaBEatsSTudio
Hopefully, the show is as good as fans think it will be. If you have not watched Visions, at least see Kara’s episodes in season one, which are three and five, before this drops. The series will premiere on August 5 on Disney+ and Hulu.