The ascent of anime's presence in the pop culture landscape has prompted big media companies and big celebrity actors to stake a claim in the industry. Now, Disney is getting in on the anime action with the anthology series Star Wars: Visions for Disney Plus and the mouse house has released the show's trailer and unveiled the voice cast, which is brimming with exciting names.
Disney's Star Wars: Visions has the goal of giving some of Japan's finest anime creators a platform to tell original Star Wars stories with characters, locations, and scenarios never before seen in the franchise's history. The nine-episode season contains stories produced by Batman Ninja producer Kamikaze Douga, as well as famous animation houses such as Geno Studio (Golden Kamuy), Studio Colorido (A Whisker Away), Trigger (Kill la Kill), Kinema Citrus (Made in Abyss), Science SARU (Devilman Crybaby), and Production I.G. (the Crunchyroll original anime Fena: Pirate Princess).
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Many of Hollywood's brightest talents are included in the English dub version of Star Wars: Visions, which unveiled its stunning new trailer on Tuesday. Temuera Morrison reprises his role as Boba Fett in one episode, while new characters are voiced by actors such as Henry Golding, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lucy Liu, Karen Fukuhara, Simu Liu, Neil Patrick Harris, Kyle Chandler, Alison Brie, Jordan Fisher, Bobby Moynihan, and David Harbour, among many others. Notably, one episode in particular—"Akakiri" by Masaaki Yuasa's Science SARU—represents the first time an official Star Wars production has been performed by a majority-Asian cast, which includes Golding as well as Jamie Chung, George Takei, Keone Young, and Lorraine Toussaint.
Star Wars has been no stranger to animation over the course of its four-decade history. Two cartoon series, Droids and Ewoks, were commissioned in the '80s, a 2D-animated Clone Wars series was made by Samurai Jack creator Genndy Tartakovsky in 2003, and a CGI-animated Clone Wars film and TVseries premiered in 2008. Since then, Disney has released several animated series based on the franchise, including Rebels, Resistance, and Star Wars: The Bad Batch.
With an extensive list of fantastic anime production partners and accomplished voice actors, Star Wars: Visions is one of the most exciting Star Wars projects in recent memory. If Visions and Marvel Studios's What If…? are anything to go by, then Disney has a keen interest in utilizing animation as a prime factor in their catalog going forward. Whether or not animation buffs are Star Wars fans, Disney's recent dedication to the medium will certainly be cause for celebration.
Of course, Disney is far from the only company expanding its library of anime titles. Netflix has partnered with many big names, including Lakeith Stanfield and Rosario Dawson, for shows such as Yasuke, Eden, and their long-running Castlevania series, while Warner Bros. is hard at work on an anime film based on The Lord of the Rings subtitled The War of the Rohirrim.
Star Wars: Visions premieres on Disney Plus on September 22nd, 2021.
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Source: Collider
