Star Wars has flirted with anime for years, but it has never committed like this. Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi, which dropped all eight episodes on Disney+ and Hulu on August 5, is the franchise’s first full-length anime series, and early reviews suggest it may be one of the best things to carry the Star Wars name in a while.
From short film to full series
The show is the debut entry in a new banner called Visions Presents, which spins longer-form stories out of the acclaimed Star Wars: Visions anthology. This one expands “The Ninth Jedi,” a standout short from Visions Volume 1 in 2021, and its Volume 3 follow-up “Child of Hope.” It continues the story of Lah Kara, a young would-be Jedi in a far future where the Sith have fallen and the Jedi Order is gone, but hope for its return endures in a galaxy torn apart by war.
A heavyweight creative team
Animation comes from Production I.G, the celebrated Japanese studio behind Ghost in the Shell, with original Visions creator Kenji Kamiyama returning as supervising director, Shunsuke Tada directing, and Mitsuyasu Sakai writing. The English-language voice cast is stacked, featuring Kimiko Glenn as Lah Kara and, in a fun crossover for MCU fans, Simu Liu voicing Lah Zhima. Notably, the entire season released at once rather than weekly, giving fans room to binge Kara’s journey in a single sitting, something the anthology format never allowed.
Off to a strong start
Critics have responded warmly. The series debuted at Anime Expo in early July ahead of its streaming launch, and its early Rotten Tomatoes score sat at a perfect 100 percent across its first batch of reviews. Part of the appeal, as some critics have noted, is that The Ninth Jedi operates as something of a blank slate, largely free from the tangled continuity of the wider Star Wars universe. For a franchise that can feel weighed down by its own lore, a self-contained, gorgeously animated story is exactly the kind of fresh air fans have been asking for.
